Timely Snow

In late 2000, we started a project that involved working extensively with digital video, featuring multiple languages, multiple (ok, two) synchronized video, and transcripts. We learned how to get such video onto computers, do light editing, compress it into formats tractable with then-current computer technology.

Right now, one of the decisions is problematic in hindsight. This [...]

As part of our new project, we’re refreshing our equipment and revisiting decisions made at the turn of the millennium. Some of that information has been preserved by Sujai Kumar here. So far, we’ve decided to:

1. Use the Canon HG-10 [...]

Reading Rockets : Ten Myths About Learning to Read

Nice summary, based largely on Phil Gough’s ideas (not that there’s anything wrong with that). I’d probably quibble a bit with #7 and #8, but to a first approximation and for instructional purposes, a useful summary of some important myths about reading.

Yesterday we had our second class on motivation. I showed an old video from the Internet Archive – Maintaining Classroom Discipline from 1947. I thought there was a pretty good discussion of issues related to discipline and motivation, although it also brought up a very interesting concept alien to my own experience as a student. [...]

Today we had our second class, which included a syllabus review (postponed from first class so students could read it first), a discussion of the aims of education and how assessment figures into determining what is taught as well as what as been learned. We use a revised version of Bloom’s taxonomy of educational objectives [...]

In class today I used the Don Novello/Father Guido Sarducci 5 minute university clip, which was both apt and very clever. I need to try to find the original to make a larger, better copy for next time…

Nintendo.com Games : Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day

I’m not sure what this contains, other than Sudoku. The Michigan Daily publishes a relatively easy Sudoku puzzle every day, and I’ve been surprised at the number of people I see doing it. I’ve been playing around with Web Sudoku, which contains a timer [...]

MathandText

For some reason, I found this very funny. The weblog itself also seems very interesting, written by a school mathematics textbook developer.

In a few weeks I’m supposed to give a talk about the use of wikis and weblogs in teaching and research. Which would be easier if I knew more about them. This tool will certainly be used in what I do, though, so I’m storing the link here:

Jon Udell: Visualizing change
This is wildly cool stuff. [...]

I’m at a conference sponsored by NSF on setting standards for videography in educational research.