Steve Jobs: "People who know what they’re talking about don’t need PowerPoint"

This is a re-blog from Garr Reynolds "Presentation Zen."  As usual, Garr manages to hit the nail directly.  I remember a long time ago having a presenter come into my library with a Power Point.  He was ready to present, but the flash drive did not work for him.  He had to set the Power Point aside.  Later, the faculty told me that he did better with out it.  Power Point is a great tool, but you don't need it every time.

Re-post from Free Technology for Teachers

This post is from one of my favorite blogs:

Nobel Prize Games for Learning About Science & Literature

from Free Technology for Teachers by noreply@blogger.com (Mr. Byrne)

This afternoon I Stumbled Upon an old blog post of mine that I wrote when President Obama received the Nobel Peace Prize. That post got me to take another look at some of the education aspects of the Nobel Prize website.

The Nobel Prize website has an educational games site designed to help students learn about subjects in the areas of Physics, Chemistry, Medicine, Literature, Peace, and Economics. In all there are twenty-nine interactive games for students to play. Each of the science-related games and the economics game is based upon the research of Nobel Prize winners. The literature and peace games are based upon concepts central to the work of Nobel Prize winners in those fields.

FDR Day by Day

Free Technology of Teachers by Richard Byrne is one of the best resources for educators that I have come across.  Each day Byrne highlights a new resource.   FDR: Day by Day is another one of those resources.  This site, originating in the FDR library, combines primary documents of FDR's presidency with a timeline.  One can follow all of the events of the Great Depression and World War II as seen through the eyes of FDR.  Included are a variety of lesson plans.

Tribute to Steve Jobs

Here is Steve Jobs famous commencement speech at Stanford University:

WE ALL LEARN

Shared from The World Is Open: How Web Technology Is Revolutionizing Education (Wiley Desktop Editio
kindle.amazon.com
As the WE-ALL-LEARN framework indicates, we are no longer participants in Aristotle’s world where one could conceivably read from every book or document written. In the twenty-first century, no one can know all. However, we all can learn. And the vital signs of intelligence in this century are related to access and use of knowledge when needed. Knowing where to look, how to access, and what to focus on are the powerful strategies of today.

Good

http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/mystery_solved.png

PowerPoint design

Niall Ferguson: The 6 killer apps of prosperity | Video on TED.com

A great resource for economics, history, and global studies: Over the past few centuries, Western cultures have been very good at creating general prosperity for themselves. Historian Niall Ferguson asks: Why the West, and less so the rest? He suggests half a dozen big ideas from Western culture -- call them the 6 killer apps -- that promote wealth, stability and innovation. And in this new century, he says, these apps are all shareable.

Aurora explained

The Aurora Borealis from Per Byhring on Vimeo.

Interesting job

What I like best about this video is it's ability to tell a digital story, even if a person doesn't understand the language.

Fjellsikrerne from Sindre TL on Vimeo.

Little League Sign

This sign is from Daniel Pink's blog Emotionally Intelligent Signage.  It certainly does convey the message:

Mark Twain

The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can’t read them. - Mark Twain (attributed)

A Google a Day

Here's a new site I may use in library media classes next year.  A Google a Day poses a research question for students to look up, as well as an interesting Google app.

Endangered Animal Resources

Here's a great resource from the Google Earth Blog:
Disney's Worldwide Conservation Fund
is involved around the world in a wide range of environmental conservation efforts. They have just unveiled a Google Earth Plugin-based visualization that allows you to fly around the world to see the places where DWCF is working to protect wildlife.

You can read more about their new Google Earth feature on the Disney Parks Blog, or try it yourself on their Google Earth Plugin-powered site.

Dilbert again

Seth Godin on the Future of the Library

Via Stephen's Lighthouse.  This is great food for thought:

Yep, gotta love Seth:  The future of the library

“The next library is a house for the librarian with the guts to invite kids in to teach them how to get better grades while doing less grunt work. And to teach them how to use a soldering iron or take apart something with no user servicable parts inside. And even to challenge them to teach classes on their passions, merely because it’s fun. This librarian takes responsibility/blame for any kid who manages to graduate from school without being a first-rate data shark.

The next library is filled with so many web terminals there’s always at least one empty. And the people who run this library don’t view the combination of access to data and connections to peers as a sidelight–it’s the entire point.

Wouldn’t you want to live and work and pay taxes in a town that had a library like that? The vibe of the best Brooklyn coffee shop combined with a passionate raconteur of information? There are one thousands things that could be done in a place like this, all built around one mission: take the world of data, combine it with the people in this community and create value.

We need librarians more than we ever did. What we don’t need are mere clerks who guard dead paper. Librarians are too important to be a dwindling voice in our culture. For the right librarian, this is the chance of a lifetime.”

Read it. Re-post it.

National Jukebox at the Library of Congress

National Jukebox is another new resource at the Library of Congress. National Jukebox provides historical sound recordings from the early 20th Century.   For example I was able to find this excellent recording of the Argentine tango Volverás made in 1925 by the Argentine Orquesta Típica de Caro

Nicely done!

Tribute to Martha Graham:

Sources of Disruption in Library Media

This is worth a long look.  Stephan's Light House recently posted Sources of Disruption in Library Land  with the following chart from A Digital Outrigger.  It's just a tool for discussion, but I like the way it is done visually.  It certainly challenges us to take a more global view of the impact of the web on libraries.

History and the Doolittle Raid

Bloom's Revised Taxonomy Digital Tools

This comes from Richard Byrne's Free Technology for Teachers and from Kathy Schrock's Google Tools and Bloom's Revised Taxonomy.  Kathy Schrock has put together a great chart connecting Google Tools to each element of Bloom.  This is a valuable tool for anyone looking for an application to address one of Bloom's elements.  Another great resource mentioned by Schrock is  Bloom's Digital Taxonomy , a wiki resource.

Magic washing machine

Not only is this an excellent presentation, the author also makes a great argument of the importance of the washing machine as an invention:

Reinventing the research library (from MIT)

This video via Stephen's Lighthouse was produced by the MIT library.  It is also a good vision to consider for our school libraries, as we prepare children for work and education in this century.  Note the emphasis on collaboration in learning.

Organizing the book case

From Steven's Lighthouse:

How to tell a digital story

Here is an excellent example of a digital story.  Is there anything left out?   From Hiking in Finland by Hendrik Morkel.


The Longest Way 1.0 - one year walk/beard grow time lapse from Christoph Rehage on Vimeo.

"What's the Use Case" from Seth Godin's Blog

This is a re-blog from Seth Godin's Blog. He's absolutely right. How often have I approached a teacher with a software tool, an idea or a project without actually describing what the use is?

What's the use case?

Visit an architect. On the first visit, right after shaking your hand, she unrolls plans for a house. "Here are some sketches..."

Wait. That's backward.


Sketches for what? How do you know if I want a house or an office building? How am I to judge these plans? Is it a mind reading exercise?


The most effective way to sell the execution of an idea is to describe the use case first. And before you can do that, you need to have both the trust of your client and enough information to figure out what would delight them.


Then, describe what a great solution would do. "If we could use 10,000 square feet of space to profitably service 100 customers an hour..." or "If we built a website that could convert x percent of ..." or "If we could blend a wine that would appeal to this type of diner..."


After the use case is agreed on, then feel free to share your sketches, brainstorms and mockups. At that point, the only question is, "does this execution support the use case we agreed on?"


Don't show me a project, a website, an ad buy or an essay without first telling me what it's supposed to do when it works properly. First, because I might not want that result. And second, how else am I supposed to judge if it's good or not without knowing what you're trying to do...


Too often, we're in such a hurry to show off what we'd like to build we forget to sell the notion of what we built it for."

Finnish Library Association

Finland leads the world in education. Maybe this is why. (From Steven's Lighthouse.com)

Brene Brown: The power of vulnerability

This is another excellent presentation from TED.  Well worth watching.

How do we do the right thing.

Folk og røvere i Kardemomme by

I just came across a wonderful children's book in Norwegian from the 1950's. Folk og røvere i Kardemomme by by  Thorbjørn Egner.  It's a fictional town where there is only one law: Kardemommeloven (The Cardamom Act). 

The law is simple:

Man skal ikke plage andre,

(One should not bother others,)

man skal være grei og snill,

(you should be nice and kind,)

og for øvrig kan man gjøre hva man vil.

(and otherwise you can do whatever you want.)

It's now a famous expression in Norway.  I love it.

Three Good Resolutions for the New Year from Daniel Pink

Here are Three Good Resolutions for the New Year from Daniel Pink:  The resolutions are from a new book Practically Radical: Not-so-crazy Ways to Transform Your Company, Shake Up Your Industry, and Challenge Yourself,  by William C. Taylor.
1. I resolve to help my organization (and me personally) become “the most of something” in my field. It’s not good enough to be “pretty good” at everything. The most successful organizations (and people) are the most of something—the most elite, the most affordable, the most elaborate, the most approachable. For so long, companies were content operating in the middle of the road. Today, with so much change, so much pressure, so many new ways to do everything, the middle of the road has become to road to nowhere. What are you the most of?
2. I resolve to embrace a sense of vuja dé. We’ve all experienced déjà vu—looking at an unfamiliar situation and feeling like you’ve seen it before. Vuja dé is the flip side of that—looking at a familiar situation (an industry you’ve worked in for decades, problems you’ve worked on for years) as if you’ve never seen it before, and, with that fresh line of sight, developing a distinctive point of view on the future. The challenge for all of us is that too often, we let what we know limit what we can imagine. This is the year to face that challenge head-on.
3. I resolve to look for new ideas in new places. The more I study innovation, the less enamored I become of “benchmarking” the competition. What good is it to compare yourself against “best practice” in your field, especially if “best practice” isn’t that great to begin with? The most creative leaders aspire to learn from people and organizations far outside their field as a way to shake things up and make real change. Strategies and practices that are routine in one industry can be revolutionary when they migrate to another field. Do you have new ideas about where to look for new ideas?