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An article in today's New York Times talks about the extensive use of maps as tools in various cell phone/SmartPhone applications:

It has been 25 years since the desktop, with its files and folders, was introduced as a way to think about what went on inside a personal computer. The World Wide Web brought other ways of imagining the flow of data. With the dominance of the cellphone, a new metaphor is emerging for how we organize, find and use information. New in one sense, that is. It is also as ancient as humanity itself. That metaphor is the map.

 The piece goes on to connect maps with neuroscientists who believe that this type of representation of the world matches our internal brain functioning.

While interesting, I found the article a bit disappointing. I was hoping for a deeper analysis of how mobile computing has shifted how we handle information.

Nice Model

I saw this image posted at BoingBoing.

An artist put together real objects to model the user interface for Photoshop.

Very nice.

Some amazing art

A colleague shared some of Peter Callesen's art with me today.
In some of it, he creates 3-dimension paper sculptures. The rule is that each one is made from only one piece of paper.

There's an example of one above.

Here is what the artist says about his work:

My paper works have lately been based around an exploration of the relationship between two and three dimensionality. I find this materialization of a flat piece of paper into a 3D form almost as a magic process - or maybe one could call it obvious magic, because the process is obvious and the figures still stick to their origin, without the possibility of escaping. In that sense there is also an aspect of something tragic in most of the cuts.

The cool thing for me, in looking at them, is the progression from the more simple relationships between the figures and the original piece of paper (like the skeleton) to those where the relationships are more and more complex.

It made me think of the process of ownership, where knowledge or skills move from something that belongs to someone else to something that belongs to you. The relationship between you and the knowledge and/or skills gets deeper and deeper and deeper.

Check them out here.

How does learning work?

This morning my 3 1/2 year old looked at this picture, the cover from the latest issue of Wired.

Then, he said, "Look, there's some juice in the snow."

It reminded me that we learn new concepts by piggbacking them on what we already know. Then, as we go on, we fix any misconceptions (or they are fixed for us) -- hopefully.

Amazing use of tools to visualize statistics

Happy New Year!

Here is a video from TED which shows global health expert Hans Rosling looking at trends in the developed and developing worlds.

What he says is cool, for sure.

How he says it, using some amazing tools to visualize the statistics is really impressive.

What if we did this in our classrooms?
What if we taught our students to do this in (and out of our classrooms)?

It may seem strange, but ...

This year in my science class I have been focusing on designing activities to help the students model and visualize important concepts.

So, when I came across this video (thanks to BoingBoing) which demonstrates a software tool for designing plush toys (stuffed animals), it piqued my interest.

Enjoy!