Thursday, August 17, 2006

Some Good Links

Wow, when they say "elite," they aren't kidding
About 3% of community college students who transfer get into elite universities.

Every educator, parent, and child psychologist should be required to watch this video of Sir Ken Robinson speaking at TED. We need to encourage and embrace creativity.

More amazing TED Talks videos. A fairly short video shows Jeff Huan demonstrating some amazing technology that allows you to interact with computer programs using your hands rather than a mouse and keyboard. Very fun and creative. After viewing Hans Rosling illustrate how world data can actually be compelling and educational, visit the website at http://gapminder.org/

If you're a music buff, check out the musical prodigies at TED Talks. The improvisation by the pianist is amazing after Goldie Hawn picks five notes for her to play as the basis for a composition. The violinist is also quite an amazing young lady.

If you've heard of One Laptop Per Child but haven't heard Nicholas Negroponte talk about it, you can check that out here also. This is a much shorter version of the talk I heard at NECC in San Diego, and some of the most fun stuff is missing such as why the software bloat (mainly from Microsoft) wasn't even an option for these fast, lean machines.

1 comment:

Wayan said...

Now isn;t that true! I loved Mary Lou Jepson's comment that the OLPC is "Its unburdened by the bloat of feature-itis that is responsible for most of the clumsy, unreliable, and expensive modern laptops today"