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Three examples of multidisciplinary outreach to H.S. students
Sciences and history can nicely meet at historical sites. It engages the history-minded in science, and the science-minded in history. Two examples were recently discussed by Chris Shires, director of...
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Math and Science iOS apps for young children
In the era of tablets and smart phones, parents of small children may consider educational apps. Recently, the “Slashdot” online community discussed apps and kids. Nerdy parents chimed in with...
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Cars, trikes, and more create Google Street View
The Grand Canyon is yet another place that Google brings to your digital screens, from their Street View family of content. Google has been collecting street-level views of our world at a vast scale...
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What is Crowdsourcing? And how does it apply to outreach?
Crowdsourcing means involving a lot of people in small pieces of a project. In educational and nonprofit outreach, crowdsourcing is a form of engagement, such as participating in an online course,...
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Lessons to be learned from MOOCs, 2 years out
Online courses with very large enrollments have rapidly matured in the last two years, led largely by experiments outside mainstream academia by Coursera, Udacity and edX. Ambitious educators,...
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What is fan fiction?
Who owns art and culture? Does it belong to the artist? The legal property owner? Or the society that loves and appreciates it? Traditionally, old art is considered public, and new art is copyrighted....
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NASA boldly redesigns web site for 2005
NASA redesigned their web site, with a magnificent failure of design by committee. It is a failure of content (eliminated the most interesting details about the science and engineering), a failure of...
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Online courses for developing the developing world
Online education can have a real impact in the developing world. Last week, we needed to hire a programmer for a small freelance job. To my surprise, several candidates advertised they had completed...
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Changes over time, in photos and maps
Images gain new meaning when given the context of location or change. Two sites, from NASA and HistoryPin do this to good effect — such as showing the the dramatic melting of the Muir glacier in...
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I have a PowerPoint
Words matter. And so does presentation. Fifty years ago, this week, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his famous “I have a dream” speech. But what if King eschewed wordiness, and instead...
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What are the most important articles in Wikipedia?
Wikipedia has 4,362,397 articles in English. But how many of those are seriously encyclopedic, and what are the most important articles? We’ve been looking closely at Wikipedia for an upcoming app. We...
View ArticleDrones put a face on nature and culture
A new generation of small video cameras and consumer robotic helicopters make amazing video shots possible. Stick your phone on a drone for enchanting views of the natural world, architecture, museums,...
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Dinovember: Creative literacy starts young
“Uh-oh,” Refe Tuma heard his girls whisper. “Mom and Dad are not going to like this.” It’s Dinovember, and his family’s plastic dinosaurs have been getting into mischief all month. Every year, Tuma and...
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Challenges of crowdsourcing: Analysis of Historypin
Crowdsourcing can build virtual community, engage the public, and build large knowledge databases about science and culture. But what does it take, and how fast can you grow? For some insight, we look...
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Gender role literacy: Girls in science?
There are gender wars, and then there are casualties. It wasn’t until 2011 that the behemoth toymaker LEGO acknowledged girls’ desire to build with bricks, even though the company had long before made...
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