30 June 2009

Yack With Your Students


YackPack is "voice email" or an asynchronous conference call where all conversations are recorded for reviewing later. A demo is far better for getting to know YackPack.


YackPack has great potential for education. In fact, one of the founders has a day job as a research at Stanford who also teaches (occasionally) in the School of Education. You learn more about using YackPack in education.


This is my second look at YackPack. I was really excited back in 2007 when I learned of YackPack, but never incorporated it into my life. I think this is going change as I can already see multiple ways of using this technology. I will give you an update in six months from now.


PS - if you want to read more about YackPack check out this overview.

24 June 2009

Jigzone.com


Sometimes getting to the answer is half the fun. With jigzone.com, you have the choice of solving one of their wide variety of jigsaw puzzles or creating one with your own image. You can choose from a wide level of difficulty from 6 pieces all the way up to 247!

The puzzles can be solved on their website (click on the image below) or embedded on your own website or blog.

The images require a specific set of dimensions (400 x 300 pixels) and file size (less than 20K.

I've imagined using the idea as part of an internet quest - solve the puzzle to get a clue for the next location in the quest. Or alternatively, use the puzzle as a stand alone question: Identify the graph/equation(s) once the image is pieced together. Any other ideas?


07 June 2009

Wolfram Alpha




"All the world's knowledge made computable."


Wolfram Alpha is a project that is attempting to collect all of the data and make it available in for computations. For example, did you know there is an estimated 166758 girls alive today with the name "Ruby". The average age of those Rubys is 83 and 2979 Rubys are born each year.



We aim to collect and curate all objective data; implement every known model, method, and algorithm; and make it possible to compute whatever can be computed about anything. Our goal is to build on the achievements of science and other systematizations of knowledge to provide a single source that can be relied on by everyone for definitive answers to factual queries.

The site offers tons of examples in topics ranging from x to y. But check out their video introduction. It really gives you an idea how wonderful the site is and gets you excited for its potential.



Or, maybe you would like to give it a try right now. Just type a query into the box below. Try 456/23 or population of california or population of california vs canada