Twitter in the University Classroom

in Books | April 8th, 2009

From The Chron­i­cle of High­er Edu­ca­tion’s “Wired Cam­pus” Blog:

“Cole W. Cam­plese, direc­tor of edu­ca­tion-tech­nol­o­gy ser­vices at Penn­syl­va­nia State Uni­ver­si­ty at Uni­ver­si­ty Park, prefers to teach in class­rooms with two screens — one to project his slides, and anoth­er to project a Twit­ter stream of notes from stu­dents. He knows he is invit­ing dis­trac­tion — after all, he’s essen­tial­ly ask­ing stu­dents to pass notes dur­ing class. But he argues that the addi­tion­al lay­er of com­mu­ni­ca­tion will make for rich­er class dis­cus­sions…

Once stu­dents warmed to the idea that their pro­fes­sors actu­al­ly want­ed them to chat dur­ing class, stu­dents begin float­ing ideas or post­ing links to relat­ed mate­ri­als, the pro­fes­sor says. In some cas­es, a shy stu­dent would type an obser­va­tion or ques­tion on Twit­ter, and oth­ers in the class would respond with notes encour­ag­ing the stu­dent to raise the top­ic out loud. Oth­er times, one of the pro­fes­sors would see a link post­ed by a stu­dent and stop class to dis­cuss it.

Get the full sto­ry here, and feel free to tell us about oth­er edu­ca­tion­al uses of Twit­ter. Just add them to the com­ments below. Last­ly, you can find us on Twit­ter here.

The Evolution of Religions: A Talk by Jared Diamond

in Religion | April 8th, 2009

A good find by Kottke.org…

Jared Dia­mond, the Pulitzer Prize-win­ning author of Guns, Germs & Steel (and Col­lapse: How Soci­eties Choose to Fail or Suc­ceed), offers a lec­ture at USC where he gets into the uni­ver­sal attrib­ut­es of reli­gions and their under­ly­ing adap­tive value/social pur­pose. The talk runs about 41 min­utes, fol­lowed by a long Q&A ses­sion.

For those look­ing for more aca­d­e­m­ic lec­tures, I should remind you of the recent launch of YouTube EDU and Aca­d­e­m­ic Earth, plus our large col­lec­tion of free uni­ver­si­ty cours­es.

via @kottkedotorg

YouTube Launches Library of Congress Channel (and Thomas Edison’s Boxing Cat)

in YouTube | April 8th, 2009

The Library of Con­gress has just set up shop on YouTube. On this new chan­nel, you’ll find some new and vin­tage footage. Above, we’re direct­ing your atten­tion to a clip called “Box­ing Cats.” It’s from 1894 and was pro­duced by Thomas Edis­on’s Black Maria film stu­dio in West Orange, New Jer­sey. In no way do I con­done cat cock­fights, but this is some intrigu­ing his­tor­i­cal footage. And who knew that there was a lit­tle bit of Steve Mar­tin in Thomas Edi­son? I’ve added the Library of Con­gress Chan­nel to our page, Intel­li­gent YouTube: The Best Smart Video Col­lec­tions.

The Talking Heads at CBGB’s (and a Virtual Tour of the Joint)

in Music | April 8th, 2009

CBG­B’s was a long­time mec­ca of the New York music scene, a venue that helped launch the Ramones, Pat­ti Smith, Blondie, and the Talk­ing Heads onto the nation­al stage. And then it closed in 2006. If you nev­er vis­it­ed the club on Bow­ery and Bleeck­er Streets, you can still take a pret­ty vivid vir­tu­al tour. It starts in the bath­room and you then can wind your way through the rest of the joint. Above, we’ve post­ed some vin­tage footage of the Talk­ing Heads per­form­ing “Psy­cho Killer” at CBG­B’s, some­where back in the mid-70s.

via Metafil­ter

Stanford Teaches You to Develop iPhone Apps (Free)

in Apple, iPhone, Stanford | April 5th, 2009

A quick heads up: Stan­ford has just launched a free soft­ware devel­op­ment course for the iPhone and iPod Touch. The lec­tures will be rolled out on iTunes first, and even­tu­al­ly they will be post­ed on YouTube as well. You can get the first lec­ture on iTunes here. This 10 week com­put­er sci­ence course is offi­cial­ly called iPhone Appli­ca­tion Pro­gram­ming. Watch for new lec­tures to be post­ed week­ly. You’ll be learn­ing to devel­op iPhone apps in no time.

You can find this course housed under the Com­put­er Sci­ence sec­tion of our col­lec­tion of Free Uni­ver­si­ty Cours­es.

The Rothko Panoramic Tour: A New Way to See Art

in Art | April 5th, 2009

This real­ly caught my eye…

If you did­n’t make it to the Mark Rothko exhi­bi­tion at the Tate Mod­ern (and chances are you did­n’t), then you can still see it vir­tu­al­ly. As you’ll see, the Tate Mod­ern has cre­at­ed a fan­tas­tic web site that lets you take a panoram­ic tour of the Rothko col­lec­tion. Once you enter the tour here, you should switch into full screen mode (look toward the bot­tom of screen), then use the arrows and your mouse to move around. You can move from room to room, and zoom in on var­i­ous paint­ings. Quite the way to see an exhi­bi­tion if you can’t make a long jour­ney.

A Closer Look at YouTube EDU

in Google, YouTube | March 31st, 2009

New Mega Author Web Site Now Online

in Books | March 30th, 2009

Not­ed by the LA Times:

With­out per­mis­sion or advance notice, Filed­ByAu­thor has cat­a­loged the infor­ma­tion of about 1.8 mil­lion authors into indi­vid­ual pages. There are biogra­phies, pho­tos, links to pur­chase books from online retail­ers and links to share the author’s Filed­By page through a dizzy­ing list of social net­work­ing sites. And every­one is there, from the novice self-pub­lished author to Stephe­nie Mey­er.

The not so favor­able LA Times piece con­tin­ues here. Get the Filed­ByAu­thor web site here.

Download New Bob Dylan (Free for the Next 24 Hours)

in Uncategorized | March 30th, 2009

A heads up from Stephen:

Free mp3 of Behind Here Lies Noth­in’ from Dylan’s new album avail­able at bobdylan.com until 5.00 a.m. tomor­row (Time zone?) Very good it sounds too. Shades of Ry Cood­er. Wish­ful think­ing maybe…

Thanks SG

Prague’s Franz Kafka International Named World’s Most Alienating Airport

in Comedy | March 28th, 2009

A fun­ny lit­tle piece from The Onion. Thanks to JB for send­ing this along. Keep send­ing us good items @openculture on Twit­ter.