More Mixed Media
Lessons Learned the Hard Way – this could be a lot of fun with literary and historical figures.
Real Life Fodder for Copyright Conversations
Participate in primary source research in real life. Geography, history, science.
Help scientists recover worldwide weather observations made by Royal Navy ships around the time of World War I. These transcriptions will contribute to climate model projections and improve a database of weather extremes. Historians will use your work to track past ship movements and the stories of the people on board.
Related posts
Phone Call to the 14th Century
Via This American Life I bring you “Phone Call to the 14th Century” (at the 26:34 mark).There’s a link to a version on the Kasper Hauser website but it isn’t nearly as good in my opinion. An opinion that may be shaped by the fact that I can still recite the intro to Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales in Old English and still remember the teacher that made me memorize it with disgust and loathing. Basic idea for those of you who have yet to listen- it’s a game show based on calling a hut in the 14th century and imparting as much key wisdom as you can in one minute. Such a simple idea and such potential for a history classroom. Simply remove 14th century and make your call as specific as you’d like (for instance the Aztecs pre-Conquistadors). Make your time longer or shorter, but keep the time pressure on or it’ll lose focus quickly. Students have to analyze the civilization at the time and think of all the things that might help that civilization, then it’s a matter of prioritizing them. I’d have them make the calls as actual recordings and then make it into a real game show. I’d probably have them categorize their main points and justify them in writing. Judges (teachers, parents, previous winners?) would judge […]
Honda’s Musical Road
The Santa Monica ad agency RPA cut half-inch grooves into a quarter-mile stretch of Avenue K, in the exurban L.A. desert city of Lancaster. The grooves were synched in such a way that driving over them at precisely 55mph caused Rossini’s “William Tell Overture” — a.k.a. the Lone Ranger theme — to echo in the air around you. –VSL So how cool would this be for physics, science and math? Lots of concepts to explore in a simple entertaining little Youtube clip. Wonder what it’d take to make your own version? Not necessarily with a real car- maybe a remote controlled model?
Cute Cats, Dissidents & Your School’s Filter?
I found this great post via O’Reilly Radar. It’s basically the notes from a presentation at eTech. I found the ideas and applications really interesting. If you want to see examples of Web 2.0 being used in amazing ways to change the world, this is the post for you. It ought to lead to some deeper thinking about the technologies and their possible applications both in schools and elsewhere. I thought this quote could apply to schools who are filtering in the typical “block all student communication” manner. (referring to getting a site blocked) This is a good thing if you’re an activist. Most Tunisians don’t identify as activists and might not be engaged with politics. But, like Americans and Europeans, they’re interested in seeing cute cats being adorable online. When the government blocks DailyMotion, it impacts a much wider swath of Tunisians than those who are politically active. Cute cats are collateral damage when governments block sites. And even those who could care less about presidential shenanigans are made aware that their government fears online speech so much that they’re willing to censor the millions of banal videos on DailyMotion to block a few political ones. Blocking banal content on the internet is a self-defeating proposition. It teaches people how to become dissidents – they learn to find and […]