Lightening In Slow Mo
This is seriously cool to watch…
Go LHC Go!
The LHC was fired up today and it’s first successful test run went with only a small hiccup. Yay! Oh, for those of you not into physics the LHC is the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva, Switzerland. It’s the world’s largest and highest-energy particle accelerator. It also takes the award for world’s most expensive scientific experiment according to Newsweek.
Here’s a pic of the scientists all agog. the LHC is trying to recreate the Big Bang in an effort to find the Higgs Boson so that we may understand why things have mass.
European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) scientists applaud at the Cern's control center.
Digital Anthropology II
On this post, way back in the day I wrote about how thought-provoking Mike Wesch’s Web 2.0 video was. I appreciated the fact that he created it with the input and assistance his anthropology class. That says a lot about his teaching style. I’ve always worked harder for a teacher that involved me instead of lectured at me. It also made me more interested in the material than if I merely had to sit and listen. A key point to education INMH.
Here’s another video done by Wesch et al. I don’t think the quality is as high, nor the conclusions as strong as the Web 2.0 video but it’s still raises some excellent questions. I don’t agree with the overall sentiment that technology will save education, nor humankind in general. I do think technology can improve life in Western society but I don’t think technology, or at least digital technology, can do much for the rest of the world yet. I’m not an expert in the 2nd or 3rd worlds but it seems to me non-digital technologies that address basic needs are more critical–clean water, health care, agricultural development, housing, etc. Most of the world doesn’t have electricity much less a computer. A comment made late in the video and too briefly to make any significant impression.
What digital techonology CAN do is motivate a student to learn vis a vis the creative teacher–it should be used as a tool to inspire learning not merely to appease the short-term attention spans of today. As I see it, students seem more interested in socializing than learning. Why is that? Perhaps they have too much access to information and their brains just can’t process it all to any depth. I agree that classroom environments aren’t working. They didn’t for me and I’m an old goat. But does the use of social netoworking sites such as Facebook and MySpace as a tool in the educational arsenal work any better? I’d like to see how.
I finished my bachelor’s degree in the online program at WSU so I’m all for moving classrooms to virtual rooms. But I don’t see how decorating educational material with digital bells and whistles will get young students to be any more interested in learning than before. I think it’s more of an excuse by students to not perform well. Even when I was attending my virtual classroom most people I interacted with via chat rooms and the like were more interested in getting the degree so they could get a better job. I think that’s where the missing link lies. The big revolution may be to go back to apprenticeships, to delay college until the late 20s and to make our primary education more rigorous.
In the meantime, it would certainly help if students would cut themselves off the information superhighway for a bit. It would give students an opportunity to concentrate, to focus on what they want and need to learn. Less “white noise” going in means more brain power available to think, to consider, to be inspired. Turn the TV, iPod, cellphone and laptops off for awhile. See what happens.
Thoughts? Comments?
Wannabe Artiste
A bit ago I posted about my desire to pursue video making as some sort of artistic outlet. I have such cool mini-movies going on in my head all the time. Surely, it can’t be that hard to move them from the old grey matter into real-time so others can enjoy or be wigged out by my eccentricity.
N.B. - I’m only eccentric in my head, not in public.
The Windows Moviemaker is too simplistic and doesn’t allow me to do the really cool shite I have in my head. So I downloaded the Adobe C3 Premiere Pro thingy to take it for a spin. I thought ‘hey! I can totally work the Photoshop mojo so C3 can’t be that much harder.’
Famous last words.
Egads, I can hardly figure out how to open a bit of video I recorded! There’s SO much I can do with this tool and I have no clue how to start. Why can’t we have Matrix-like brain uploads so I can instantly know how to use this fine application? Cuz the Matrix isn’t real. Which kinda annoys me.
So far, it’s taken me about a week to figure out how to get my video clip into the app. And about 8 hours to figure out how to apply any kind of special effect. At this rate I should have my first masterpiece ready for you in about two years. And this coming from a gal who used to wade around in StudioVision with happy glee.
I guess this means I’ll be buying one of those 60 pound $500 how-to books. (ALERT! Gift Idea!)
Global Warming or Regular Old Climate Change
A couple of months ago I did all the usual yard prep one does before cold weather starts in: trimming back the delicate lantana, mint, pennyroyal, bee balm, and some little flowering plant who’s name I always forget. Then I get many bags of mulch and cover everyone in a nice toasty blanket of snuggleness to keep them warm till next spring.
Well, that didn’t go quite as planned. It’s been so warm that the poor plants are all confused and decided to stick their little heads above the mulch layer. The green little niblets are coreopsis (i think) and you all know the gerbera daisy. Look how happy they are! I hope they know that they are doing.
