graphic design and social capital

Here is an interesting piece about the history of graphic design. It includes a sociological examination of graphic design and the use of images. It also categorized learners and practitioners of graphic design into interesting groups.

http://www.cvc.edu/faculty/articles-opinions/posts/taking-graphic-design-to-an-online-format-avoiding-conflict-and-building-social-capital

Community Colleges praised

Community colleges provide educational access and opportunities to a wide range of members of society. Here is an overly sunny article touting their success.

http://nationaljournal.com/about/njweekly/stories/2007/sotu/sotu01.htm

Paper or Plastic?

Last week we participated in National Employee Learning Week here at the San Diego County Regional Airport Authority. We asked several of our employees if they would like to conduct a one hour seminar on a topic they felt comfortable presenting. We had several participants, 11 to be exact, covering topics from Swing Dancing (fun and hands on) to How to Procure whatever you need to procure (not so fun and hands on). One of the best was presented by one of our resident enviornmental scientists. His was on Paper or Plastic? He talked about energy expenditure producing each and then showed us graphs and this video to bring his point home. I thought you should all see it. Let me warn you it is a little disturbing.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/oceans/la-oceans-flash-day4,0,7741594.flash

Can Kindle ignite interest in reading?

Just days after a report from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) warned of a continuing decline in reading among today's students, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos announced a new electronic book-reading device, the Kindle, that some experts are touting as the future of reading. But whether the device can help spark new interest in reading among a generation of students weaned on video games remains to be seen.
http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/top-news/?i=51001;_hbguid=a3720952-7dd7-4582-b77b-c4c08f667ee2

Common Metaphors and Their Impact on Distance Education: What They Tell Us and What They Hide

This article explores some of the common metaphors used to illuminate the Web and its application to distance education. Using the work of Lakoff and Johnson (1980) as a foundation for understanding and categorizing metaphors, the advantages and disadvantages for our future of such metaphors as the "Web,""Information Highway,""virtual,""surfing,""information as education," and "distance education" are evaluated.
http://www.tcrecord.org/Content.asp?ContentID=12089

Digital Video in Education

Staying on the topic of digital video, here's a site that offers tools for teachers, learners, and researchers.

http://archive.ncsa.uiuc.edu/Cyberia/DVE/FusionDVE/html/dve_front_door.html

"...as a researcher you will find that video can preserve more aspects of interaction including talking, gesture, eye gaze, manipulatives, computer displays. Moreover, video allows repeated observation of the same event, and supports microanalysis and multidisciplinary analysis. Video supports an analysis of the motion and the mathematics of motion. Video supports the construction of significant stories that tell and explain. Video can get researchers out of controlled laboratory settings and into the naturalistic field work. Finally, video provides analytical benefits: it can support grounded theory, whereby the emergence of new categories from source materials is carefully disciplined. Video can avoid the "what I say" versus "what I do" problem that can occur in self-reports. Video supports a critical incident methodology, but also allows examination of the lead-up and downstream consequences of the critical event."

Video Sites and Science

Video sites make science more accessible. Inspired by YouTube's success, several new science video web sites have sprung up online.
From the artical:
“A telegenic narrator in a lab coat swirls a flask as electronic music plays in the background. Created by four science and film students at the University of California, San Diego, the video shows a typical recrystallization experiment straight out of Chemistry 101.The six-minute epic, complete with bloopers, got 1,205 views on Google Inc.’s YouTube, but the number increased fourfold when the video was posted to SciVee, one of a number of online video-sharing startups designed to let scientists broadcast themselves toiling in the laboratory or delivering lectures.”

http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/top-news/?i=50918;_hbguid=45ca8bf7-0cd2-4589-92b0-b00cfa5f51a1

Kindle Falls Short of "Real" Books

There's an article in yesterday's Washington Post on issues with Kindle.

The Kindle's screen, for example, doesn't include a backlight and displays only a few shades of gray. Between the dark-gray text and the light-gray background, its contrast falls short of a newspaper's and is inferior to that of a book.
Worse, the Kindle's sluggish screen needs about 1 1/2 seconds to draw a new page, during which time the next page distractingly appears as a photo-negative image of itself before settling into place.
That delay seems short next to most waits on a computer but feels like infinity compared with turning a paper page. The Kindle screen's lag ensures there can be no such thing as flipping through a book on this device.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/05/AR2007120502611.html?wpisrc=newsletter&wpisrc=newsletter