How Many Universes are There?
How Folding Paper Can Get You to the Moon
The Cockroach Beatbox
This fantastic interactive presentation from Google is worth a look. It features videos, stills and animation detailing what happens to that email at the moment you click ‘send’.
Just How Small Is An Atom?
Ok, so this one is kind of brain-warping.
There is no real answer in this video, except that an atom is really, really, really small. So small, that if you blew up all of the atoms in a typical grapefruit to the size of a blueberry, you could fill the earth with blueberries. Yes, the atoms in a one grapefruit would fill the entire earth. Jonathan Bergmann does an admirable job of trying to explain the size and density of atoms and nuclei, and the brilliant animation (by UK studio Cognitive Media) makes it all fun to watch.
How can you not wish that Mythbusters’ Adam Savage was your science teacher? In this video, he explains how Eratosthenes calculated the circumference of the Earth in 200BC to within one percent of the actual diameter — just by using some simple math and the sun’s shadow. He just sounds so damn excited when he talks about Fizeau’s attempts to measure the speed of light in 1849 that he makes you want to go out and discover something too.
Keep your eyes peeled for more of the coolest educational TED Ed videos on our blog throughout this week.
One of our great Teach-IT lesson ideas was Prezi-IT. This free lesson idea shows you how to use the PowerPoint busting Prezi web software to build a spinning, zooming and flipping interactive presentation to really wow your learners.
Prezi can be used both for in-person and online presentations, and is used for everything from standard business communications to school projects to resumes; the company says its ten million users create a new presentation every second. The service may be best known for its use at TED conferences — here’s TED honcho Chris Anderson using it to conduct a talk on Web video at a 2010 TED event…
As it turns out, what Prezi is introducing doesn’t really amount to turning PowerPoints into Prezis. Instead, you import all the slides from a PowerPoint into Prezi, and can then drag some or all of them into an existing Prezi presentation. Once they’re there, you can zoom and pan around them just as with any Prezi element. Everything is editable, so you can tweak text, delete items and move stuff around.
Give it a try and let us know how you get on.
Did anyone miss the special day April 30th? Don’t worry, it wasn’t my birthday (that’s quite soon). It was the day the SQA published final documents for National 2 to Higher Courses here in Scotland.
This now means that practitioners throughout Scotland are busying themselves developing or putting the final touches to the new courses that will be delivered.
We at Do-Be are only to aware of the constraints and pressures involved in curriculum development in schools which is one of the reasons why our Teach-IT series exists.
Outdoor learning is an important development within this new curriculum and our Teach-IT Outdoors pack “is designed to build teachers confidence in delivering quality, creative and regular lessons outdoors. What makes these lessons unique is the use of the latest technologies to support learning outside.”
Take a look at our Prezi where you can find out more and as usual, get in touch if you would like to know more.
It is fantastic news that we have the opportunity to become re-aquainted with our good friends at Glasgow City Council (Scotland’s largest Local Authority) through the purchasing of our Teach-IT Outdoors resource. The Determined to Succeed team have purchased access and training to TIOD as part of their Determined to Engage project and will be recieving training during June in Glasgow.
Glasgow, and other Local Authorities have recognised that the creative ideas and technologies in Teach-IT Outdoors are highly transferable to other areas of learning and teaching. They can help to add breadth and depth and aid progression in the wider curriculum as well as make lessons inspiring and relevant.
Our lesson ideas will help you to:
• Use ICT to plan meaningful lessons outside
• Deliver fun and creative practical activities outdoors
• Record, reflect and share your experiences with the wider world
To find out more about accompanying face-to-face training or to order this resource contact us now.
We look forward to seeing you in Glasgow during June!
Everyone who knows a member of the Do-Be team will tell you the same thing – we are all so enthusiastic about our products and sincerely believe that they do make a noticeable impact upon our learners and the practice of professionals with whom we engage.
We have also had loads of great (published) feedback from our numerous presentations, training days and CPD sessions delivered to our customers. Pupils have also enthused about the Teach-IT series and how it engages, inspires and enthuses them in their learning.
Sometimes that is enough, but more of the same wouldn’t do any harm. So, we are delighted to publish an independent evaluation carried out into our Teach-IT product line.
‘Following a three month research process carried out in Autumn 2011, this report evaluates ‘Teach-IT’, one of a range of teaching products and services produced by Do-Be, a Scottish based company who promote the use of ICT and new media technologies within education settings. The research was funded through the Knowledge Exchange scheme of Perth College which is part of the new University of the Highlands and Islands (UHI).’
This independent evaluation was undertaken by Dr. Lynn Whitaker, a research assistant for the Centre for Rural Childhood, Perth College UHI, under the directorship of Professor Rebecca Wallace.
We at Do-Be are delighted with the evaluation, key findings and executive summary. We would like to take this opportunity to encourage our friends, customers and potential customers to download and read the evaluation for yourselves. We would also like to thank Dr. Whittaker and everyone who gave freely of their time to contribute to the evaluation.
If you have any comments or feedback on this please get in touch or alternatively, tweet us, or drop us a message on our Facebook page.
…to hear what other people have to say about us. The video below has a cross-section of our product users giving their honest and frank opinions about out Teach-IT series.
Have a watch, have a think then check out our resources for yourself. As ever, please get in touch if you would like to know more.
Within hours of Google launching its new online storage service, the terms and service have come under heavy fire by the wider community for being able to potentially stifle innovation and harm the users’ Google seeks to serve.
After Dropbox and Microsoft’s SkyDrive — the two largest online storage services on the Web — Google was late to the party by a number of years. While Google needed no advertising to drum up support, what may hold back uptake is that as per the terms and conditions of using the product, the files you upload to the Google Drive product undergoes a rights transition.
A quick analysis of Google’s terms of service shows how the search company owns the files you upload the minute they are submitted, and can in effect do anything it wants to your files — and that’s final. But there is a small catch.
Here’s what the terms say:
“Your Stuff & Your Privacy: By using our Services you provide us with information, files, and folders that you submit to Dropbox (together, “your stuff”). You retain full ownership to your stuff. We don’t claim any ownership to any of it. These Terms do not grant us any rights to your stuff or intellectual property except for the limited rights that are needed to run the Services, as explained below.”
Microsoft’s SkyDrive. (My Frontrunner so far).
“5. Your Content: Except for material that we license to you, we don’t claim ownership of the content you provide on the service. Your content remains your content. We also don’t control, verify, or endorse the content that you and others make available on the service.”
“Your Content in our Services: When you upload or otherwise submit content to our Services, you give Google (and those we work with) a worldwide licence to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works (such as those resulting from translations, adaptations or other changes that we make so that your content works better with our Services), communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute such content.
The rights that you grant in this licence are for the limited purpose of operating, promoting and improving our Services, and to develop new ones. This licence continues even if you stop using our Services (for example, for a business listing that you have added to Google Maps).”
The last sentence makes all the difference. While these rights are limited to essentially making Google Drive better and to develop new services run by Google, the scope is not defined and could extend far further than one would expect.
Simply put: there’s no definitive boundary that keeps Google from using what it likes from what you upload to its service. The fact is, according to its terms, Google may own any code or product you ultimately upload to its new Google Drive service, whether you realise it or not.
However, Google has since updated this first paragraph due to very vocal outcries from their product users. The update now reads
“You retain ownership of any intellectual property rights that you hold in that content. In short, what belongs to you stays yours.”
The chances are Google’s terms will never be an issue — and it is likely over-zealous lawyers making sure Google doesn’t somehow get screwed in the long run by a lawsuit — but it may be enough to push away a great number of entrepreneurs and creative workers who rely on holding on to the rights to their own work.
It always pays to read the fine print.
The April release of the In:tuition newsletter has landed on my ‘Digital Doorstep’. Filled with the usual inspirational ideas and free lesson resources, it is worth a read!
Did you get your copy delivered? If not, simply visit the In:tuition homepage.
In:tuition is an exciting new interactive life skills education programme for young people aged 9-14 years. The programme aims to build young people’s confidence, personal and social skills and help them explore how they make decisions and what might influence them. Its theme is alcohol, but its focus is wider, addressing a range of relevant personal needs in an age sensitive way.
