The Beauty of Data Visualization

“Good design, he suggests, is the best way to navigate information glut — and it may just change the way we see the world.” David McCandless

Cognitive Overload

Nuts and Bolts: Brain Bandwidth

Our brains can only process so much new information. Which is often overlooked when creating learning whether online or face-to-face.

Working Memory the brain can only hold and construct so much information at once. Working Memory needs to be moved to Long-Term Memory before more can be processes.

Long-Term Memory is how long learning can be retained. George Miller predicted that most people could only hold 7 pieces of information, plus or minus 2. Phone numbers are an example of this. But we also split this up often in learning into small groups of these 7 pieces of information.

Often some of the graphics and sounds can confuse a learner in web-based learning. Keep it simple.

Attention, “safe” environment and interruptions effect learning also, but often the instructor does not have much control over these.

21st Century Learning

Geeks and Girls

“Women earned about half of the bachelor’s degrees in science and engineering in 2006 (the last year for which the National Science Foundation has data), but only 20 percent of the degrees in computer science. That figure is dropping.

Cheryan’s research offers an explanation: Women don’t identify with the archetypal image of computer scientists. Cheryan’s subjects describe this image as “nerdy, techie, stay up late coding, energy drinks, no social life.… They don’t frequently take showers.” The geek room conjures this picture in our minds, Cheryan says, based only on the stuff we find lying around.

“You can walk into someone’s house and immediately get a sense of whether you belong or not. You don’t even have to know the people,” she says. “It communicates a sense of who put together that environment, who is currently in that environment, and who should be in that environment.” Her research also provides a potential solution: Change the perceptions by changing the stuff.

Jennifer Crosby of Williams College Professor Sapna Cheryan from Stanford University is bring girls into Second Life to see how they react to classrooms, especially those in a computer science area.

“Environmental things send really strong messages about who belongs in a domain and who doesn’t.

The game layer on top of the world… Seth Priebatsch

This decade is the “decade of games”… of course from TED.

Two things you’ll notice about Seth Priebatsch: One, his infectious, get-you-out-of-your-chair enthusiasm. Two, the inventory of entrepreneurial feats he’s managed to accumulate at a remarkably young age. The 21-year-old founded his first startup at age 12, and by age 18, he’d founded another — PostcardTech, which makes interactive marketing tours for CD-ROM.

Now he’s working on SCVNGR, “a massive experiment in building a mobile game together.” Backed by Google Ventures, the SCVNGR platform lets organizations tap into the power of cell phones and smart mobile devices to offer customized adventures — outside of the office, beyond the screen, in the real world.

“Their goal? To turn scavenger hunts into a business by offering companies, universities, and other organizations a platform on which they can build city (or campus) spanning activities.”
TechCrunch

Smile or Die

Boy, can I relate to this…. as I search for a job. Although I know you do have to try to keep positive, it is hard.

14 Ways to Kill Creativity

Even though a business may say “our people are our greatest assets”, that is not true. The ideas that staff present usually do not go very and these are the ideas that should be listened to. Matthew May book “In Pursuit of Elegance” discusses “why certain events, products, and people capture our attention and imagination.”

https://www.openforum.com/idea-hub/topics/innovation/article/ideacide-aka-14-ways-to-kill-creativity-matthew-e-may

Youngme Moon’s “My Anti-Creativy Checklist”

My Anti-Creativity Checklist from Youngme Moon on Vimeo.

Seeing with sound

A new device called vOICe converts visual images to sounds. The user then trains his/her brain to “see though his/her ears”.

http://www.seeingwithsound.com/

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20727731.500-sensory-hijack-rewiring-brains-to-see-with-sound.html

Retires over 65 are competing against teens in the labor market.

This is a great infographic on this phenomenon that has not existed since Harry Truman was president. Retires cannot afford not to work, but this is also preventing teens from getting jobs that will help their career.

TED for startups

If you read this blog, or was one of my students, you already now, how much I get inspired from TED.

“The mission of TED (Technology Education Design) is to promote “ideas worth spreading.” And as such, there is plenty of material that entrepreneurs – folks definitely interested in spreading their ideas – can find inspiring in the recordings available on TED’s website.”

This is a list created by ReadWriteStart, that list 10 videos everyone should listen to.