Science x2 - mLearning/Firefox 3.5 - TED Translations - Maths x2 - Quantum Projects - Archives - Images - Screen Capture

Note: For an audio version of this blog visit http://drop.io/wdlihblog to listen and/or download and/or subscribe to an RSS Feed or for iTunes downloads.

The Number of Unique IP Address Listeners to the audio version of the blog, since 7^th June 2009, is 40; 31 from UK & 9 from 4 other countries/territories.

A quiet day today, here in Lancaster University; only Keith and myself in the office. Apart from the cleaner we haven’t seen anybody else at all.

Today’s Finds include…

The June issue of the Spotlight science magazine is available.

Written for Intute by science writer David Bradley, Spotlight contains topical science articles and news features.

This issue has articles on...

meteor bombardment of the early Earth,
a new material for preventing barnacles from sticking to ship’s hulls and
a new source of natural gas.

Go to http://www.intute.ac.uk/sciences/spotlight/ to find out more.

Windows only: Firefox lovers have no doubt already updated to the recently released Firefox 3.5 for its new features, but if you are more the portable type, Firefox 3.5 Portable Edition is officially available for download.

This portable version is from PortableApps.com, makers of the popular, previously included in the eMagazine, Portable Apps Suite; bringing all the goodies of Firefox 3.5 to your USB drive. Users may still need to perform a little tweaking to get their extensions working with Firefox 3.5, but apart from that the portable version looks like it's ready to go.

Find out more at http://portableapps.com/apps/internet/firefox_portable.

A big thank you to my colleague Colin Gallacher for bringing this to my attention...

There are few things on the Web more educational and/or more thought provoking than TED Talks. TED, the Technology, Entertainment, Design conference, brings together some of the world’s brightest people, which in turn has produced hundreds of amazing lectures and presentations, most of which are available free via http://ted.com/.

However, they’re not accessible to all; every talk is in English, which excludes billions of people that don't speak English.

TED’s goal is simple: for every video to have a fully translated text version in as many languages as possible.

Visit http://www.ted.com/translate to find out more and/or to view a clip in the language of your choice.

By the way, when all the translations are completed, every video will have subtitles, language-specific destinations (thus you can share a specific translation), and the ability to browse by talks.

By far the coolest thing about this push are the time-coded transcripts, which makes it possible for a non-English speaker to jump to any point of the video with ease. Every sentence in every transcript can be clicked. Clicking on it will take you to the corresponding section of the talk. It’s amazingly useful and could even be helpful for brushing up on a language as well.

A big thank you to Alistair McNaught for flagging this up on the Apollo Mailing List. In his words...

"From Utah State University - a collection of online interactivities demonstrating a wide range of basic maths and numeracy skills. You can buy a desktop version or go online and use the web version for free. Pity about the title (national library of virtual manipulatives) but otherwise it's perfectly normal and seems very good."

As I'm sure you will agree that "Mathematics is not a spectator sport" and too much of current instruction fails to actively involve learners.

One way to address the problem is through the use of manipulatives, physical objects that help students visualize relationships and applications. Computers can now be used to create virtual learning environments to address the same goals.

The Utah State University team have created exciting new approaches to interactive mathematical instruction.

The National Library of Virtual Manipulatives is a resource from which practitioners may freely draw to enrich their mathematics/key skills/family learning/ classrooms. I also feel that the materials are also of importance for those engaged in Initial Teacher Training.

Find out more and get engaged by visiting the National Library of Virtual Manipulatives at http://nlvm.usu.edu/en/nav/vlibrary.html.

The Visual Arts Data Service (VADS) and the London College of Fashion announced a collaboration that has seen the photographic archives of three important cosmetics companies made accessible online for the first time.

The archives of Gala, Miner’s and Crystal, three prominent cosmetics companies operating during and after the Second World War, are held at London College of Fashion and have been digitised and made freely accessible through the ‘Enhancing VADS’ project, funded as part of the Enriching Digital Resources programme from JISC.

The collection is available at http://www.vads.ac.uk/collections/LCFGALA.

6:
And now for something completely different…

Page after page of this unsettling Photoshop effect, applied to well-known people- for example Roger Moore...

To view more, go to http://www.freakingnews.com/Celebrities-Upside-Down-Pictures--2433.asp.

The online image editing tool Aviary <http://aviary.com/home>recently announced another new method for easily creating screen captures of webpages without having to install any software.

To use this method simply...

type "aviary.com/" before the url of the page you're viewing.
this will launch the Aviary image editor at which point users can...

draw,
highlight, and
crop the screen capture.

When editing is completed, users can save the screen capture to their computer.

To read full instructions on how to use Aviary to create screen captures go to
http://aviary.com/blog/posts/capture-any-webpage-just-add-aviarycom-in-front-of-the-url.

This little trick from Aviary is worth sharing with colleagues and/or learners that need to create screen captures.

To find out more about Aviary go to http://aviary.com/home.

An online activity from http://www.learnyourtables.co.uk/ that will help learners practice and reinforce their multiplication tables.

There are three options available for practice including...

Drag and drop- drag equation to match the answer
Enter an Answer- provides an equation with keyboard to enter an answer and
Assessment- same as Enter an Answer however it gives learners a score at the end.

In addition learners can practice either single or mixed tables. The Drag and drop option works very well on interactive white boards.

9:
100 Incredible Lectures from the World’s Top Scientists