Ryan Collins

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Author: ryan

Amazing archive consists of 140,000 VHS tapes

The Incredible Story Of Marion Stokes, Who Single-Handedly Taped 35 Years Of TV
News

In a storage unit somewhere in Philadelphia, 140,000 VHS tapes sit packed into four shipping containers. Most are hand-labeled with a date between 1977 and 2012, and if you pop one into a VCR you might see scenes from the Iranian Hostage Crisis, the Reagan Administration, or Hurricane Katrina.

It’s 35 years of history through the lens of TV news, captured on a dwindling format.

I would love to see the archives in December from the 70s and 80s, just for the
commercials.

November 25, 2013
Google Forms add features

Google updates Forms with progress bars, data validation, embedded YouTube videos, and custom messages

Google today announced four new tools for building surveys with Google Forms. You can now display progress bars, set up data validation, embed YouTube videos, and post custom messages when your form is closed.

Data validation is a feature I’ve been waiting on!

Via: @mguhlin

November 24, 2013
One iPad per classroom

The “One iPad” Classroom:

If you have been allocated just one iPad for your classroom then you have very different issues to 1-to-1 classrooms as the iPad is not designed as a shared device. But don’t despair! There are apps for that!

Via: @iPadWells via @WiredEducator

November 23, 2013
Thank you NASA!

NASA spin-off technologies

In 1957, notable science fiction author Robert A. Heinlein was asked to appear before a joint committee of the House and Senate after recovering from one of the earliest known carotid bypass operations to correct a blocked artery that was causing transient ischemic attacks; in his testimony, reprinted in the book Expanded Universe, he characterized the technology that made the surgery possible as merely one of a long list of spinoff technologies from space development.

Tang is not one of them.

Via: NASA spin-off
technologies

November 22, 2013
PowerPoint and the bored student

Attention, Teachers! Why Students Are Bored | Grant Wiggins:

PowerPoint. Yes, I agree that PowerPoint is a very valuable tool, but this only applies in certain situations. When a teacher writes paragraphs upon paragraphs on a single PowerPoint slide, and then proceeds to read them all verbatim to “teach” the class, I completely zone out.

And please, teachers, take special heed on the PowerPoints. This was the #1 disliked practice in our student survey:

Too much text on each slide; and reading directly from the slide.

Via: @mguhlin

November 21, 2013
Videogames don’t affect behavior

Finally, vindication!

Game Play Has No Negative Impact on Kids, UK Study Finds

A massive study of some 11,000 youngsters in Britain has found that playing video games, even as early as five years old, does not lead to later behavior problems.

via: @avantgame

November 20, 2013
Seven hundred years of lecturing…

Lectures Didn’t Work in 1350—and They Still Don’t Work Today

You point out that we’ve been using the lecture-based model since the 1300s. Why have we kept replicating a model that doesn’t suit everyone’s needs?

It’s a fascinating question. There’s a painting of a classroom by Laurentius de Voltolina from 1350 that shows it’s not working. Students are talking to each other or falling asleep while the teacher drones on. Why has this perpetuated? I don’t know. In our workshops we tell people to go to Second Life and check out a classroom—and they’re exactly like they are in the real world. It’s strange, because this is a place you can move by teleporting, you can do whatever you want. So using space in the same way is strange.

via: @chamady

November 19, 2013
“So, what do you want to learn?”

How a Radical New Teaching Method Could Unleash a Generation of Geniuses:

School had never been challenging for her. She sat in rows with the other students while teachers told the kids what they needed to know. It wasn’t hard to repeat it back, and she got good grades without thinking too much. As she headed into fifth grade, she assumed she was in for more of the same—lectures, memorization, and busy work.

One day Juárez Correa went to his whiteboard and wrote “1 = 1.00.” Normally, at this point, he would start explaining the concept of fractions and decimals. Instead he just wrote “1/2 = ?” and “1/4 = ?”

“Think about that for a second,” he said, and walked out of the room.

Via: @schinker

November 18, 2013
Chrome split screen extension

Purely Paperless: Tech Tip Tuesday: Split Screen Chrome Extension writes:

One extension that I have been loving lately is the Split Screen extension. With Split Screen, you can view two different web pages simultaneously without have to toggle between two different tabs or constantly resize your screens. As a recovering browser-tab abuser, I am pretty notorious for having WAY too many tabs open at once. Split Screen appeals to the “multi-tasker” in me.

Via: @CurtRees

November 17, 2013
Learn Python from Google

Google’s Python Lessons are Awesome:

The lovably geeky Nick Parlante — a Google employee and CS lecturer at Stanford — has written some awesomely succinct tutorials that not only tell you how you can use Python, but also how you should use Python. This makes them a fantastic resource, regardless of whether you’re just starting, or you’ve been working with Python for awhile.

via: @seankaiser

November 16, 2013