“Sir Ken Robinson is not just an amazing orator — he is the most-viewed speaker on TED.com. His three talks have been viewed an astounding 21.5 million times, making him the sneezing baby panda of the TED ecosystem. from Stephan's Lighthouse

From the British Film Council is a complete collection of World War II films.

From Open Culture, the only known recording of Sigmund Freud.

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