In a recent report by Sarah Perez over at ReadWriteWeb we discover Howard Rheingold has been busy making the Social Media Classroom. This may have a significant effect on Moodle, another open-source project for a CMS (Classroom Management System). Although they are different, with SMC focusing on communication, and Moodle focusing on Management, I foresee that both will rapidly start looking more and more like each other.
The OEC is a truly monumental (2 billion words, each tagged by country, and more) digital expansion of the incredible Oxford English Dictionary. Note the OED is less than 100 years old. Now with this new and constantly updated “root” source of information you can drill down and get information about words in myriad ways. Sublime.
fantastic contraptionI don’t like to study, but I love to learn. Serious Games and Persuasive Games are two books I have been reading recently. They are about using games in education. I like this idea, and have written about it before.
Here are a couple of games. Try them out and see how well you can do.
It is good for math skills, especially geometry. It takes about 5 minutes.
Try another game that takes longer, and is good for physics. Lots of fun, but a big challenge.
Mark over on BoingBoing points us to Bob Staake’s video of creating a picture using very old software. It is the best illustration I have seen in a long time. Design is in the mind, not on the screen.
New York Times has an article about the best of online professors. Now that many universities are making their lectures available online for free, sometimes directly and sometimes through services like iTunesU, the next logical step is to separate the wheat from the chaff. Who are the best? Read the article.
