October 2007 Archives

Citzendium

By Jason on October 31, 2007 1:50 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
Citizendium announced that Tuesday marked their one year anniversary. For those of you not familiar with the project, it aims to create a repository of encyclopedia articles that are written by people with related expertise. Unlike Wikipedia, authors and editors must have appropriate credentials and resumes to support their work, and they must use their real name. There are currently 3,300 articles being developed within the system.

Bitmap to Vector: VectorMagic

By Jason on October 28, 2007 7:54 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

VectorMagic is a project out of Stanford that allows you to upload a bitmap image. The application then converts the image into a vector based image. The site contains a series of samples showing the results of the VectorMagic algorithm compared to those of commercial products. The results look very good. This might be a good way to rescue that horrible .gif logo you use, turning it into a better quality .eps version that is reproducible in larger sizes.

GeoGebra: Teaching Geometry, Algebra, and Calculus

By Jason on October 26, 2007 9:00 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

linux.com ran an article this week about a GPL licensed application called GeoGebra. Written in Java, GeoGebra is multi-platform. From their website:

What is GeoGebra?

GeoGebra is a dynamic mathematics software for education in secondary schools that joins geometry, algebra and calculus.

On the one hand, GeoGebra is a dynamic geometry system. You can do constructions with points, vectors, segments, lines, conic sections as well as functions and change them dynamically afterwards.

On the other hand, equations and coordinates can be entered directly. Thus, GeoGebra has the ability to deal with variables for numbers, vectors and points, finds derivatives and integrals of functions and offers commands like Root or Extremum.

These two views are characteristic of GeoGebra: an expression in the algebra window corresponds to an object in the geometry window and vice versa.

PlayStation 3 SKU Count Makes My Brain Hurt

By Jason on October 26, 2007 8:48 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
From the Wired Games blog comes a Venn diagram showing the different PS3 SKUs and the features each comes with. Can we all agree that this level of complexity doesn't bode well for the PS3's holiday sales?

How Would Pikachu's Skeleton Look?

By Jason on October 26, 2007 8:34 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
Kottke recently pointed out an illustration of the anatomy of a balloon animal. He also linked to a series of work created by Michael Paulus. I wanted to point to this and make a few comments.

First, the balloon animal image is posted to deviantART. In educational blog conversations about Web 2.0, this is a site I haven't seen any educational pundits mention. The site encourages artists to post their art, comment on other people's work, form groups, etc. If MySpace grew out of music, deviantART is similar but has grown out of photography, painting, illustrating, etc. It's worth being aware of.

Second, having students explore the skeletons of cartoon characters is a brilliant assignment. In asking students to apply a concept they've learned about (skeletons) to an unknown quantity (i.e. Hello Kitty) you're forcing them to be creative, to reason, to be critical, and more. To me, this is what "21st Century Skills" are all about. 
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