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POPSNot "gonna" Turn It Down! "Company officials say they have no qualms about taking all the tax breaks legally available to them. To do otherwise would be like a consumer “insisting on paying full price during a store sale,” wrote Jeff Brown, a company spokesman. Even E.A.’s competitors acknowledge that its tax strategies aren’t particularly aggressive compared with others in the industry." POINT TAKEN! Time for Congress to get to work.
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POPSA Rose By Any Other Name When someone wants to create a stir, make a buck, or earn a doctorate, they give the old wine a new name. Now is no different. Infographics are graphic organizers, sometimes called data visualizations, formerly referred to as charts and graphs. There are some good examples here, but many of these are very weak in correlating data in a way that makes it more accessable. Always be careful when you use free websites. Read the fine print of who owns your work, once you've used the web application. Unless they have changed their rules, Many Eyes (owned by IBM) owns your data visualization, so I don't use it. No matter what, data visualization, oooooops infographics are here to stay. Using the best ones can help us understand concepts better than ever.
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POPSLife Should Be Fun It only takes a kid and a bit of time to make these healthy snacks that are fun and healthy. Try them. I particularly like the "hand" pressed panini.
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POPSBaby Callie: A Casualty of the Unvaccinated This child died this year because some who was not vaccinated gave her pertussis, also called "Whooping Cough". This disease is a scary way for a baby to die. Are you vaccinated? Is you family vaccinated? If you or your family are not vaccinated, I hope you will avoid contact with others. You have the potential to be death dealers.
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POPSDoes Anyone Care? Does anyone care if we lose all living things in our coastal waterways of the Gulf of Mexico? Pay attention.
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POPSBacterial Communities Identify Us! Each person's skin bacteria appears to have its own genetic signature which could be used to identify an objects' user. This research is in the preliminary stages. This is an intriguing concept that I believe people will find interesting, so I would suggest that teachers could use it as a current event article.
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POPSTheoretically Positive, Realistically Questionable An amazing discovery about gene manipulation to turn off the sexual reproduction of various plants. How will these experiments turn out? Will this endanger our food supply? or Will this discovery be just what is needed to cut out the monopoly on hardy seed supplies?
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POPSDivided We Fail! I love plain spoken writing that explains important concepts that are easy to understand. This writer gets it. A good manufacturer can divide all the parts of the process and expect to remain in business. Yes, that's what's happened in the globalization of manufacturing. We're dividing up our "industrial commons", and we're failing.
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POPSPerceptions vs Reality Can Mean Life or Death! Researchers have discovered that there are several variables that can have a statistical effect of patient survival, yet many "...surgeons placed less importance on sex, type of anesthesia, and ASA score ...." This new information could decrease the high number of deaths, up to 22%, from hip fractures and resulting surgery.
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POPSGoing Green and Saving Money Even though I believe the main way to save money on printing is to break the monopoly on toner that allows printer makers to receive $10,000 per gallon, I believe that changing the default font on all university email is a step in the right direction. This is a very creative solution.
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POPSChartle Your Data Several Plurk buddies have been raving about Chartle, an online web application where you can build your own online charts. It's very simple to use, so be careful. You might want to make Chartles all the time. Thanks to @cdltoz and @russelltarr
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POPSLevel The Play Back! Here is another wonderful example of how people are leveling the playing field for podcasters. You don't have to have expensive hardware or software to level the volume of all participants in your podcast. Just use THE LEVELATOR! This wonderful software takes your podcast or other audio file and changes the audio levels, so various speakers' words are at the same volume. This is quite a game changer. Try it out on Windows, OSX, or Linux(Ubuntu)
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POPSAdapt & Accentuate the Positive This song, Flume, that NPR covers is awesome. It was a great opportunity to hear a rock icon as he adapts his ideas and accentuates his positive views of newer rock.
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POPSWhat are Effective Schools? Yes, if you want to improve something, you must ask the right questions. How do you ask the right questions about making a community's high school effective? Find effective schools that resemble your demographics and implement their strategies.
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POPSCriminals Profile Their Targets A variety of mathematical models have been developed to help law enforcement find lawless hotspots that can develop once a crime has happened. This is excellent research, and it seems to me that police and other agencies could benefit from using the data.
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POPSNew Archetypes of Learning This is an excellent portrayal of the new archetype of learning: student centered, team oriented and driven by real life problems or projects. This type of learning is at the far end of the Sutman scale. Thanks to @teromakatero from my Plurk network for this link.
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POPSHobie's Tribrid The intersection of human, sail and electric power to extend the range of the kayak.
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POPSCollaborate, Teach and Learn What do you think of Synchtube? I think it could be used for many professional development opportunities, as well as class discussions and projects. The beta project has a bright future. Just use it.
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POPSInteractive White Board in Your Projector Do you want an interactive whiteboard, but there is no money in the budget for this type of technology? Well, now you can own a projector that has the capabilities to make any surface an interactive white board, all for a cost of $2,000 or less. Epson and Boxlight are the two companies who have combined a computer projector with the interactive capabilities of the IWB technologies. This would be an excellent value for schools that need a projector and want an interactive whiteboard.
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POPSA Turn of Phrase Will Make Your Day! Coin That Phrase was a 2009 finalist for the Chicago Innovation Award. It's a social interaction and networking service that brings cool phrases to the attention of others. While some of the phrases are classical ones, others are new. If you look the phrases over, you can vote on them or do other interactive activities. Do you have a phrase that is just about you? If so, try out this service. You can get T-shirts and other stuff to commemorate your cool turn of phrase.
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POPSIt's About Executive Function Karl Malone correctly, in my view, put this gun incident in proper perspective. It's wrong, and it's the worst incident that has ever happened to the NBA and it's reputation. I believe that this incident proclaims the nonexistence of the brain's executive function. This is the part of the brain that controls impulsive, dangerous behaviors. Only someone with immature impulses could have done this. It's too bad, Gilbert Arenas didn't ask someone with a more mature sense of self-control how to keep his guns appropriately away from his children. It seems to me that Karl Malone had a good idea of using a safe...OR he could put them in a safety deposit box. He certainly didn't need to put them in a public place where POTENTIALLY other children might find them. I'm hoping that the NBA will help provide the NBA players involved in the incident with some lessons in properly storing guns. It may be too late, but it's worth the effort.
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POPSHow many Google Tools? How many Google Tools do you use? In this nicely written review, 57 useful Google Tools for education are discussed. This article could be updated. What tools would you list today?
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POPSQuantum Aspects of Game theory I like the way the author explained the ways in which Game Theory can be used to help business, as well as the ways managers may misuse the theory. This is also a good model for teachers to use when developing a plan to implement standards, teach content, affect student behavior and more. One problem with using any model, is trying to cherry pick the "best, right" answer to a particular circumstance and not deviating from the plan, even when the scenario changes. As the authors state so well, the best way to use Game Theory is to develop a "...range of outcomes". As teachers get closer to the points where the various outcomes diverge, there is usually more data that can be used to revamp the model and hone in on the point of actual reality.
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POPSScience Research Needs Continuity Science Research needs continuity that cannot be found through the use of a market forces model. This article sums up the setback in alternative source energy research which happened in the 1980's. We may now be ready to set things right, f we continue to fund scientific research for alternative energy sources, such as algae. Carefully read the story of how we, yes we, abandoned alternative sources of energy and played our fiddles while the oil burned up our economy. Ooops! Now we bemoan the fact. On the positive side, one thing is different now, and that is the ability of people, including scientists, to get their message across without the help of traditional media. Journalists and their bosses failed miserably to report on these issues, so greedy people who only look out for themselves were able to bring us, as a nation, to our knees with the high price of energy and the destruction of our economy.
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POPSQualitative Research: Using Technology in Class This is a wonderful example of what I like to see, a reprise of a qualitative study into the uses of technology in the regular progression of improving students' use of technology while teaching class at the college level. Any teacher could use Ed Webb's protocol and replicate this research in their class. A teacher could even expand on this research by giving a formal pre-post test of technology skills and an interest inventory. Using Google Forms, a teacher could easily present the tests and survey (inventory).
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POPSAnother Balkanized Technology Rip-Off
What new technology do you have that isn't already obsolete as soon as you buy it? I can think of only one that I've purchased in the past thirty years. I did actually buy a computer that didn't become obsolete within three years. I can understand it if technology is truly growing and developing, and new, greatly enhanced products are being produced. That doesn't happen very often. From vinyl formats to programs to online image formats to music formats, the balkanized world of technology has introduced its most recent addition: E-BOOK READERS. The concept of importance here is that the e-book reader world is balkanized, separated....segregated, for no good reason. One might surmise that it is greedy desire for exuberant overspending by the consumer. Is this what drives the separation and format variations among the electronic publishers and e-book reader manufacturers? Each e-book reader accepts a few electronic publication formats. NO e-BOOK READER accepts all formats of ele
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POPSSnap.com Preview Pioneers Rocketry Planet gets it. The whole purpose of preview software or web applicants is to help readers move around your blog or website more effectively. Snap.com preview web application does that. It's not just seeing the website before you click on the link, even though that is a very powerful tool. Snap.com can also help save time by just opening a tiny preview screen that is still readable, saving memory usage as well.
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POPSFind the Family Footprint! Try this out and find what your family's carbon footprint really is. There are a variety of surveys that can be used to assess your family's carbon footprint. This is a very helpful one from the Environmental Protection Agency.
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POPSTeachers Can't Coast All through our lives, we are at various stages of interest and commitment to our work and personal lives. When you teach, you must be on target, and there is no room for coasting. This is this issue discused here in our PLN. I like the idea that Sharon Elin shared that possibly the "coasting" teacher may need some assistance to get back on track. Sometimes, personal or family illness can put a strain on a teacher's ability to respond in a robust manner to their students. As I always say, let's check out the antecedents, before we throw the baby out with the bath water. If assistance doesn't help, the "gold-bricking" teachers may need to work somewhere else where they may have better results with this behavior.
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POPSNetbook Turns to Touch Tablet This is what the netbooks were meant to be, accessible to students! With the upgraded Classmate PC by Intel, you can use a touch, a stylus or the keyboard. You only have to rotate the screen and fold it over the keyboard. You can find more information about this new netbook touch-screen tablet at ClassmatePC.
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POPSNRICH Your Student's Math Interactions I have used and shared this website for several years now. Students and teachers can access a variety of math problems and activities that can enrich student's learning. There are also interactive aspects for their access to this website. Students can set a particular background to show up when they work at the NRICH website. Try this website and sign up for their monthly newsletter.
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POPSLooking for Pearls A discussion of what we are missing in our conversations that could encourage a fuller understanding and acceptance of technology in education. Positve and negative comments have bits of truth that are there for us to mine to develop into pearls of wisdom.
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POPSMaking Technology Relevant for Education Using technology in our classes, just because it's out there, just for its own sake is a recipe for disaster. Technology in education is not the one new thing in town, it is the way we expand our teaching and learning. If we don't use it with an eye to relavance and rigor, the use of technology is pointless... This is why I chose this blog post to begin our group clog, the ABCs of PLN Power. Good teachers know how to teach, and good technology should enhance that good teaching through opportunities to expand student learning.
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POPSLighten the Load Lighten the load and save money when you use this inexpensive electronic gadget to test your various electric appliances and other devices. I've seen this gadget being demonstrated, and it is eay to use. This could really help schools or businesses save money also.
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