Posted on 20th December 2005 by Judy Breck in Emerging Online Knowledge
ancient_humans, archaeology, britain, palaeontology
The portal node here to a project called Ancient Human Occupation of Britain is a quintessential example of how the freshest, most authoritative knowledge self-forms on the Internet. The purpose of the GoldenSwamp.com blog is to bring notice to websites like this one and to celebrate their profound value for education.
This AHOB website is a mirror of the collaboration of archaeologists, palaeontologists, and geologists at a number of different British Institutes, including the Natural History Museum and the British Museum — and we can all watch as they work to understand the earliest people of Britain. This AHOB homepage is also the center node of an interactive network among scientists, institutions, and resources that have interest and materials on the subject. The project is a better roadmap to the study of the ancient human occupation of Britain than could be found anywhere else online or off line.
How I found the AHOB website is of interest. The journal Nature is offering a “free” Flash exhibit of interviews with scientists about a recent related discovery. The “free” exhibit leads directly to a closed door to a Nature article about it — closed unless you are a paid subscriber. What makes the future very different from the past is that the closed off article is an isolated piece of partial information. The free and open project website can interconnect all the partial ideas toward the emergence of whole concepts.
Posted on 20th December 2005 by Judy Breck in Mobile Learning
ipods, learning
One look at the iPod kid here should convince anyone that his generation will not be denied these tools for their learning lives. Instead of banning them, as most schools now do, content for learning should be created to convey education through these marvelous cognitive mirror machines.
Posted on 20th December 2005 by Judy Breck in Subject Sampler
animal, beast, japanese, painting
The Pacific Asia Museum has a lively exhibit here about Japanese paintings over the centuries of animals. The beatle who is inspecting the pages is a genuine denison of the golden swamp that is the Internet. Arts, via Scout Report
Posted on 19th December 2005 by Judy Breck in Subject Sampler
angel-island, chinese, poetry
This beautiful and haunting exhibit interfaces the poetry of Chinese immigrants detained in California at Angel Island over the first decades of the 20th century. Literature via Scout Report
Posted on 17th December 2005 by Judy Breck in Emerging Online Knowledge
mit
This month’s newsletter from MIT’s OCW project is now online here. It lists MIT courses newly available and 75 others that have been updated. There is also a round-up news from other OCW projects.
Posted on 16th December 2005 by Judy Breck in Subject Sampler
This new scientific journal lets astronomers and students peer into the solar system over the shoulders of top Mars scientists. Astronomy via WorldChanging
Posted on 15th December 2005 by Judy Breck in Emerging Online Knowledge
The battle over whether kids should be permitted digital learning devices goes all the way down to babies! There is an article here in this morning’s New York Times dispensing doubts on digital time for babies. The naysayers remind me of the guys who reacted to the invention of the airplane by saying: If God meant us to fly He would have given us wings.
Most certainly, connecting with ideas virtually on a screen is a new way of learning — not something possible until a century ago when moving pictures were invented. It seems likely to me that digital learning may have a huge advantage for little guys: Lets them do virtually what their little hands and bodies cannot because of size and coordination. Their hunter-gatherer ancestors could not throw a until they grew tall and strong, but that is no problem stubby arms in multimedia. Some anthropological reflection here adds intriguing perspective to the possible leaps babies will make with early digital experience:
More recently, the researchers have studied the Mardu people of the Western Desert of Australia, and again found that children were adept hunters by the age of 5 or 6, and thereafter success was measured not by age, but by size.
Posted on 15th December 2005 by Judy Breck in Subject Sampler
This website can convert any measurement of any sort into any other sort of measure. It can convert older measures like cubits and leagues and new ones like gibibits and pebibytes. Reference
Posted on 14th December 2005 by Judy Breck in Mobile & Ubiquitous
Edutopia has a small round-up here of school programs in which students are using computers one-to-one (one computer to one student). Hopefully this is a peek over the horizon at what will be routine in the future.
Posted on 14th December 2005 by Judy Breck in Subject Sampler
An early online pioneer with Tibet.com, the Dalai Lama has now estabished his own website at DalaiLama.com. The Internet provides profound innovation in how directly we can learn ideas from influential people of our times – as well as from each other. Biography
Posted on 13th December 2005 by Judy Breck in Subject Sampler
Every official sound from every known human tongue is listed here and each one has an audio file you can play to hear the sound. The Phonetics Lab at UCLA hosts this digital polyglotia. Languages
Posted on 13th December 2005 by Judy Breck in Schools We Have Now
Way down deep in this IndyStar article on how hard schools have to work to keep cellphones, ipods and other technology from being used at school is this sentence:
A few teachers in some other districts are exploring the educational opportunities of the devices at their schools.
The disconnect is appalling between the new generation that has grown up with communications technology and the industry trying to educate them by forbidding the use of that technology. The disconnect that has already caused is that students have cut loose from taking school instruction as serious learning. They view it as a test-taking routine instead of learning the real world knowledge.
The goal of education is to to connect students to knowledge; for those now school age that will be done via technology over their lifetime. They know it. A few teachers do too. via Edutopia News
Posted on 12th December 2005 by Judy Breck in Mobile & Ubiquitous
Craig Barrett, CEO of Intel, told an audience in Sri Lanka that the MIT Lab’s $100 laptop is inadequate. The story is reported here. That is like saying because you can’t have surround-sound Hi-Fi that portable transitor radios are useless.
He said in his snub: “Not handheld devices and not gadgets.” It is handheld that empowers the individual student to own the technology and kids everywhere do love gadgets. His vision of rows of drones sitting in front of stationary muli-featured PC’s is the shortsighted one. The kid-owned $100 laptops will do a great deal to erode the student drone-mentality in the underdeveloped world, and will deliver some real knowledge too.
Posted on 12th December 2005 by Judy Breck in Schools We Have Now
Yesterday’s WIRED News carried this report titled Handhelds Go to School. It’s not 100% yet, as it should be, but 28% is big progress. Kids are getting the tools of their time to learn with. It’s happening at last!
Posted on 11th December 2005 by Judy Breck in Subject Sampler
A handsome, well-documented exhibit here documents the odd and damaging movement called eugenics that gained a large following in the first part of the 20th century. Attributing behavior to simplistic gene science, the movement advocated planning and control of human populations. The archive is a project of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. History
