Last week, Google hosted a gathering called “Solve for X,” which brought together entrepreneurs, innovators and scientists interested in finding technological solutions to the world’s greatest problems. These solutions weren’t small in scope. No, they were all “moonshots,” ideas that live in the “gray area between audacious projects and pure science fiction; they are 10x improvement, not 10%.” And these moonshot ideas were all presented in TED-style talks that now live on the WeSolveForX website and the WeSolveforX YouTube Channel.

Eric Schmidt and Sergey Brin kicked off the event and framed the project, paving the way for Nicholas Negroponte, founder of the MIT Media Lab and One Laptop Per Child, to dream big and ask: Can emerging technologies empower children to learn to read on their own? Imagine how that would change the educational problems besetting the developing world? (Watch above.) Or how about this big thought from Adrien Treuille, assistant professor at Carnegie Mellon, who imagines a day when knowledge creation won’t be driven by universities and corporations, but rather by loose groups of individuals taking advantage of the internet and big data. That talk appears right below.

Solve For X: Google Presents Moonshot Thinking in Short, TED-Style Talks is a post from: Open Culture

On YouTube, the path to education is as narrow and as difficult to walk as a razor’s edge. Left to their own devices, kids have a tendency to veer away from the math tutorials and head straight for the water-skiing squirrels. What’s an educator to do?

Google believes it has the answer with “YouTube for Schools,” a new service that gives teachers and administrators the ability to filter out everything but their own selections from YouTube EDU, a curated collection of educational videos from sources ranging from Sesame Street to Harvard.

“We’ve been hearing from teachers that they want to use the vast array of educational videos on YouTube in their classroom, but are concerned that students will be distracted by the latest music video or a video of a cute cat, or a video that might not be appropriate for students,” writes YouTube Product Manager Brian Truong. “While schools that completely restrict access to YouTube may solve this distraction concern, they also limit access to hundreds of thousands of educational videos on YouTube that can help bring photosynthesis to life, or show what life was like in ancient Greece.”

To help teachers find the best material with ease, YouTube has organized the educational videos by subject and grade level, with more than 300 playlists to choose from at youtube.com/teachers. To learn more, or to sign up, go to youtube.com/schools.

Also don’t miss our own curated list of Intelligent YouTube Channels, which highlights the best video collections on the Google-owned service.

Google Presents YouTube for Schools, Makes Video World Safe for Teachers is a post from: Open Culture

Beyond Google+, we also have an active presence on Facebook and particularly Twitter. So if you want a double dose of Open Culture, you now know where to find it…

Open Culture Now on Google + is a post from: Open Culture

Last Wednesday, Liberian peace activist Leymah Gbowee paid a visit to Google to talk about her memoir, Mighty Be Our Powers: How Sisterhood, Prayer, and Sex Changed a Nation at War. Two days later, she was awarded the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize along with Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and Tawakkol Karman. The Googlers provide a quick introduction to her activism before the conversation begins….

via Google Book Blog

Nobel Peace Prize Winner Leymah Gbowee Talks @Google is a post from: Open Culture

Thanks to Google and the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, you can now fire up your browser and start taking a good, close look at The Dead Sea Scrolls, the ancient biblical texts found between 1947 and 1956, right on the shores of the Dead Sea. The Scrolls were originally written between the third and first centuries BCE, and they constitute the oldest known pieces of the Hebrew Bible. Since 1965, they have been on display in Jerusalem. But no matter where you live, you can view five digitized Dead Sea Scrolls, each photographed at a resolution of 1,200 megapixels. That’s roughly 200 times greater than your average camera.

To learn more about The Dead Sea Scrolls, watch this free lecture from The Great Courses: “Revealing the Dead Sea Scrolls to the World”  presented by Gary A. Rendsburg, Rutgers. (Get more free lectures by The Great Courses here.)

And, to put all of this context, please visit this free course from Yale University: Introduction to the Old Testament (Hebrew Bible) by Christine Hayes. You will find it listed in our big collection of Free Courses Online.

via Official Google Blog

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Google Puts The Dead Sea Scrolls Online (in Super High Resolution) is a post from: Open Culture

This week marked the eight anniversary of Johnny Cash’s death. Google didn’t give Johnny a doodle, unlike Freddie Mercury earlier this month. However the Googlers did create a special theme for their Chrome browser based on The Johnny Cash Project. And they announced it on Monday Night Football earlier this week. (Watch the commercial above.)

As you may recall, The Johnny Cash Project was launched as a global art initiative to honor the legacy of the influential singer.  The project asked fans to use a custom drawing tool to create personal portraits of Johnny. Then, the images were integrated into a music video set to “Ain’t No Grave,” the first track on the album released posthumously in February, 2010. The clip right above brings you inside the making of the crowdsourced video. The end result can be viewed right here.

Thanks Judy for sending this our way. Got a good tip? Ping us any time.

Google Brings The Johnny Cash Project to Chrome is a post from: Open Culture

Freddie Mercury, the voice behind so many Queen classics (Bohemian Rhapsody, Crazy Little Thing Called Love, We Are the Champions), would have turned 65 today, an age that means official retirement for most, but not for rock ‘n roll legends. To celebrate the milestone, Google has adorned its homepage with a collage of Freddie doodles, and released a related tribute video that brings the doodles to life. (Note: the doodles will grace US Google pages tomorrow — after Labor Day.)

If Queen was before your time, or if you never quite understood the band’s appeal, then let us bring you back to their heyday. First, Queen stealing the show at Live Aid in 1985. Brian May (now an astrophysicist and Chancellor of Liverpool John Moores University) plays guitar alongside Freddie. Find the remaining parts of the performance here, here, here, and here.

And next Queen’s legendary 1986 concert at Wembley Stadium, which runs 90+ minutes. This video was released by Queen’s YouTube Channel, and it will only be available online today…

If you’re now a converted Queen fan, just sit tight. A biopic with Sacha Baron Cohen (aka Ali G) playing Freddie Mercury will be released next summer.

Freddie Mercury’s 65th Birthday: Celebrate with Google Doodle and a Concert is a post from: Open Culture

Earlier this month Jennifer Egan, the newly-minted Pulitzer Prize winner, paid a visit to Google to talk about A Visit from the Goon Squad, her experimental novel that won the Pulitzer, among many other awards. That’s the ostensible focus. But the conversation moves quickly into other areas that will interest writers and readers alike — how Egan first develops ideas for her novels, why she writes her first drafts in illegible handwriting on legal pads, why she wrote a chapter of her new novel in PowerPoint (without ever having used the software before), what her novel has in common with The Who’s Quadrophenia (I’m hooked), and how technology might change the novel as we know it.

The Egan video went live yesterday, and runs about 54 minutes. Other videos appearing in the Authors@Google series feature conversations with Salman Rushdie, Neil Gaiman, Elizabeth Gilbert, Michael Pollan, Slavoj Zizek and Junot Diaz. H/T @webacion

Jennifer Egan, Pulitzer Prize Winner, Talks Writing @Google is a post from: Open Culture

During the final days of World War II, the United States dropped devastating atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. More than 65 years later, Hidenori Watanave, an associate professor of Tokyo Metropolitan University, has created a digital archive to preserve the memory of the Hiroshima bombing. A complement to the Nagasaki archive launched in 2010, the Hiroshima Archive layers historical resources into Google Earth, giving users the chance to explore a panoramic view of Hiroshima, survivor accounts, aerial photos, 3D topographical data, and building models.

The documents are all written in Japanese, which creates something of a language barrier for many readers. But a tour through the archive will tell you something important — something important about the Hiroshima bombing and how we’re memorializing the past in our new digital age.

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Hiroshima Atomic Bombing Remembered with Google Earth is a post from: Open Culture

Earlier this year, Google rolled out “Art Project,” a tool that lets you access 1,000 works of art appearing in 17 great museums across the world, from the Met in New York City to the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. (More on that here.) Now, as part of a broader effort to put art in your hands, the company has produced a new smartphone app (available in Android and iPhone) that enriches the museum-going experience, and it’s being demoed at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles.

The concept is pretty simple. You’re wandering through the Getty. You spot a painting that deeply touches you. To find out more about it, you open the Google Goggles app on your phone, snap a photo, and instantly download commentary from artists, curators, and conservators, or even a small image of the work itself. Sample this, and you’ll see what we mean. And, for more on the story, turn to Jori Finkel, the ace arts reporter for the LA Times.

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Google App Enhances Museum Visits; Launched at the Getty is a post from: Open Culture