Building Understanding

A wonderful reminder by (ironically) DTAC Thailand to appreciate our human connections.  Love it.

I am still reeling on this one.

Just watched an amazing TED Talk by Stephen Wolfram, creator of Mathematica and Wolfram Alpha (the game changer in mathematics teaching and learning).  Truly amazing stuff.

Instead of trying to figure out our universe, he is using computational power to generate candidate universes that could be ours.  And, he explains, already some decent candidates that have come up haven’t required particularly complex rules.

Wow.

Interestingly, as he talked about how his programming in Wolfram Alpha will hopefully be able to compute its way to creativity and innovation, I noticed he does not consider at all the ethical implications of a possibly conscious artificial intelligence.  Perhaps he just saved it for another talk.

Any interest in math, science, a theory of everything, or just enjoy being amazed by what the human brain is capable of?

You have to watch this.

Thank you TED.

Technology can do a lot of things.

Some are faster ways to do tedious things (like repeated calculations, making graphs, or maintainig draft versions of writing).  These are helpful.

Others provide flashy ways to present ideas (like web sites, presentations, and publications).  These can be incredibly powerful.  They can also be painfully mis-used.

But there is a part of technology that we have only begun to tap into that is transformational.  There are things technology can do for us now, that simply were not possible before.

Technology can connect us to anyone.

Watch this.

(you most likely have seen this Connectivism video at either Wes Fryer’s blog or Jenny Luca’s)

Pretty powerful.  And technology allows us to do that now.

I’ve recently returned to my RSS reader (anyone else incredibly frustrated with Netvibes right now?) and as expected, rememberd why I loved subscribing to all these writers in the first place.

One in particular that I want to get out there quickly since it could be a powerful start to your year, is a video that NCS-Tech shared with the tag line:

Every. Educator. Must. Watch. This. Now.

So I did.

Fifth grader, Dalton Sherman of Dallas, TX delivers the keynote address -  just 2 days ago – to 20,000 educators.  Not to be missed.

A great inspirational speech to start your year.

He’s in fifth grade!

It’s making the rounds now and since it’s so new there isn’t much about this kid out there.  Here’s an article I found.

Also a little shout out to Tracy for reminding me to get back on the blog and start writing again…this hardly counts, but the first step is just getting on.