Sunday, May 12, 2013

Basic tricks for computer use that you ought to know

New Times tech columnist David Pogue delivers real value for your time in this 6 minute TED presentation of 10 basic trick for easier everyday use of you computer, phone and camera.
Like: don't use your mouse to scoll on a webpage, use the spacebar to go down a screen - or shift space bar to go back up again.
Or: Press ctrl + to magnify the size of text on a webpage. ctrl - to back in size again. (it's the cmd-key on Macs)
useful stuff.

Thursday, May 02, 2013

The core of e-learning

E-learning, flipping the classroom, blended learning... it's been exploding recently.
Here are links to three podcast with some central actors in the field:

A presentation by Salman Khan at the London School of Economics

A presentation by Sebastian Thrun from Udacity for the Commonwealth club of California on april 17. 2013

And finally, some interesting critical observations from Nicholas Negroponte, ex-head of MIT Medialab, speaking for the Long Now Foundation. He argues that videoinstructions and online tests are disastrous for learning. He calls it instructionalism. Instead he reminds of the virtues of constructivism; learning by doing and making, and the combination and the combination of theory and practice.
His remarks are concentrated 44 minutes into the programme.