Can’t say my browser has ever made me feel insignificant, but ChronoZoom, a HTML5-driven, mixed media website that attempts to visualise the universe’s existence does a damn good job. Beware its initial superficiality — all it takes is a couple of clicks to find yourself lost in the history of, well, everything.
They’ve only been around for three months, but the Friends of Science in Medicine (FSM), a lobby group formed to combat alternative or complementary medicine with good old empirical data, is pushing its mandate hard. In its sights are Australia’s universities — specifically the ones running courses that focus on herbal remedies, aromatherapy, homoeopathy and chiropractic methodologies.
There’s a buzz around making learning digital, no doubt spurred by Apple’s recent declaration that iBooks 2 is the future of education. Now, the US government has come out in support of digital learning, claiming that all the country’s students will be using digital textbooks within five years. But can that really happen?
Admittedly, I did spend my childhood playing with explosives. But I certainly never had as much success as 10-year-old Clara Lazen (not pictured), who accidentally created a new energy storing molecule, tetranitratoxycarbon, that could be used as an explosive.
When OK Go were asked to appear on Sesame Street, the result was always going to be great. Their contribution, a song and stop-motion animation explaining the primary colours, is wonderful. Show it to your kids, or just watch it yourself.
Many of us don’t learn in optimal ways. We know that we forget new material, neglect to review older material, and study in ways that elevate cramming and procrastination to art forms. But there is research about how to be more efficient in these things. For example, dating back to 1885, there is a rich literature that explores how timing our learning of new and old material can affect education.
If you have aspirations of your bundle of joy being one day accepted at Harvard, winning a Nobel Prize or even exploring the stars, starting them off with baby rattles and pacifiers isn’t going to cut it.
Remember when Stanford offered those university-level Computer Science courses for free? Now the professor who ran them is leaving Stanford to start a project that will offer nothing but free CS online classes.
