M.I.N.I.O.N.

(via APOD: 2013 April 30 - Humanity Explores the Solar...

Tue, 14 May 2013 13:51:59 -0500

(via APOD: 2013 April 30 - Humanity Explores the Solar System)

Nice image. Note the crowding on Mars?

That’s why the Titan mission might have been a better choice than MSL2…just a thought.

(via APOD: 2013 May 14 - Galaxy Collisions: Simulation vs...

Tue, 14 May 2013 12:25:58 -0500

(via APOD: 2013 May 14 - Galaxy Collisions: Simulation vs Observations)

Images Credit: NASA, ESA; Visualization: Frank Summers (STScI); Simulation: Chris Mihos (CWRU) & Lars Hernquist (Harvard).

Intersperse computer simulation of a galaxy collision with actual Hubble images of galaxies mid-collision and you get the feeling we know, pretty well, what happens when galaxies collide.

This is important because it means we’ve got a good handle on the larger-structure evolution of the universe at the galaxy level. We need to be sure of this if we’re going to do thought experiments, make theories, and test with observations into the ancient universe what it should look like in the past.

(via 27 Things You Had To Deal With As The Only Black Kid In...

Mon, 13 May 2013 13:51:53 -0500

(via 27 Things You Had To Deal With As The Only Black Kid In Your Class)

Just… *sigh*

A whole list of 25…

Things to do in Milwaukee...

Sun, 05 May 2013 22:02:14 -0500

…when you’re done with an EdCamp in South Milwaukee and you drove 2 hours to get there?

I’m not currently in Wisconsin, but it’s a possibility for Saturday, so I thought I’d turn to my tumblr peeps.

Keeping in mind that Jack sometimes has mobility issues, ideas?

Sick time

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 17:54:48 -0500

Apparently, my response to being really sick last night and most of today is to apply to another teaching job, finish the supplemental application to the summer teaching job, test-fold the smaller 5-petal rose, email the customer about paper choices, and work on the companion earring-sized paper crane that Jack wanted me to make.

"Is the take-home message, then, that cheating is good? Well…no. Although by conventional test-taking..."

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 12:26:12 -0500

“Is the take-home message, then, that cheating is good? Well…no. Although by conventional test-taking rules, the students were cheating, they actually weren’t in this case. Instead, they were changing their goal in the Education Game from “Get a higher grade than my classmates” to “Get to the best answer.” This also required them to make new rules for test taking. Obviously, when you make the rules there is no reason to cheat. Furthermore, being the rule-makers let students behave in a way that makes us a quintessentially unique species. We recognize when we are in a game, and more so than just playing along, we always try to bend the rules to our advantage.”

- Cheating to Learn: How a UCLA professor gamed a game theory midterm | Which Way L.A.?

When your students live the lesson, they learn better. IN this case, they also learn about learning.

Why your 8-year-old should be coding | VentureBeat

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 18:09:02 -0500

Why your 8-year-old should be coding | VentureBeat:

Tynker: http://www.tynker.com/

For young kids: visual logic programming, the first step.

Treehouse: http://teamtreehouse.com/

For young adults, life-skills in an environment they get.

CodeAcademy: http://www.codecademy.com/

For everyone, learn to hack, because it’s good for you.

"Life Pieces is doing something I’ve never seen before,” Taylor Sr. says...."

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 16:43:28 -0500

““Life Pieces is doing something I’ve never seen before,” Taylor Sr. says. “It’s like they take a personal interest in your child, and we have young men teaching younger men how to be men. And I love it.””

- In D.C., Art Program Turns Boys’ Lives Into ‘Masterpieces’ : NPR

Young People: Don't Be Afraid to Become a Teacher! | Edutopia

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 12:25:57 -0500

Young People: Don't Be Afraid to Become a Teacher! | Edutopia:

It’s not a profession to enter lightly. You won’t get the kind of professional respect that doctors or lawyers do…even if you should. It’s more of a calling. But, like a calling, it does not go easily ignored.

"What else? Well, nothing in American parenting is anything like the concept of ng’om, which is used..."

Tue, 16 Apr 2013 16:43:05 -0500

“What else? Well, nothing in American parenting is anything like the concept of ng’om, which is used by the Kipsigis people in rural Kenya to describe children who are especially intelligent and responsible. This concept of intelligence, as Harkness and Super have written, highlights “aspects of social competence, including responsibility and helpfulness.” These aspects, they add dryly, “have tended to be overlooked in Western formal theories of children’s intelligence.””

- Parental ethnotheories and how parents in America differ from parents everywhere else.

Y’know what? I’d like to call for a massive adoption of ng’om as a concept of childrearing in America, right f-ing now, because I keep seeing too much bullying and sexual violence among children lately.

(via Grace Hopper - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia) Dammit!...

Sun, 14 Apr 2013 12:25:55 -0500

(via Grace Hopper - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

Dammit! How is it that playing around with CodeAcademy (have you tried it yet? you should.) is the only way I’ve heard about Grace Hopper?!? And I fancy myself a computer person and particularly interested in women in computer history, and yet here’s the popularizer of the term “debug” - because she literally removed a moth from a relay in the computer - and the inventor of COBOL and standardized programming for COBOL and FORTRAN…and I didn’t know a thing about her.

“In 1952 she had an operational compiler. “Nobody believed that,” she said. “I had a running compiler and nobody would touch it. They told me computers could only do arithmetic.”^[15]”

A compiler. On UNIVAC. That no one said was possible.

Here’s the moth she debugged, by the by:

I salute you Rear Admiral “Amazing Grace” Murray Hopper!

Changing the Network to Connect the Learner Anywhere, Anytime | District Administration Magazine

Thu, 11 Apr 2013 12:25:51 -0500

Changing the Network to Connect the Learner Anywhere, Anytime | District Administration Magazine:

To address the needs for connectivity as more educator embrace BYOD (bring your own device) and other initiatives to lower the capital costs of connecting students, this article points out the larger-scale planning that must occurs, sometimes at county/state levels to allow cross-connecting students inside and outside of the classroom. It is all well and good if the teacher is available online all the time, and the resources exist 24/7, but if students can only connect at school, some of the benefits are lost. Good things to think about.

He’s my hero.

Tue, 09 Apr 2013 13:51:46 -0500

He’s my hero.

(via SDO - Solar Dynamics Observatory | SDO Pick of the...

Sun, 07 Apr 2013 13:51:59 -0500

(via SDO - Solar Dynamics Observatory | SDO Pick of the Week)

Last week’s SDO pick of the week is amazing, and you may want to click straight through to the video here:

March_prom.mov - quicktime movie
March_prom.mp4 - mp4 movie
March_prom.mpg - mpeg movie

I love watching prominences break up and the particles come back to the surface along the magnetic lines, falling as nothing “should” fall…except that they’re charged particles on a star instead of debris on a planet.

Original Caption:

A solar prominence began to bow out and the broke apart in a graceful, floating style during a little less than four hours (Mar. 16, 2013). The sequence was captured in extreme ultraviolet light. A large cloud of the particles appeared to hover further out above the surface before it faded away. Credit: Solar Dynamics Observatory/NASA.

(via ESO - potw1312a - The Lost Galaxy) FORS1 on the VLT...

Sun, 07 Apr 2013 12:25:58 -0500

(via ESO - potw1312a - The Lost Galaxy)

FORS1 on the VLT captures NGC4535 in a shot that looks clear and bright, but you can imagine that the fuzziness that you see here in the world’s most advanced optical telescope would be even more so in the 1950s. Thus, the ghostly appearance gives the nickname The Lost Galaxy.

This barred spiral is visible out through Virgo and is, in fact, one of the larger members of the Virgo Cluster, the dominant cluster in the Virgo Supercluster, to which our Local Group of galaxies, including the Milky Way and Andromeda, belongs.

Now the real work begins (Help @AstronautAbby fund her trip to Russia for a Soyuz launch)

Mon, 25 Mar 2013 15:17:34 -0500

Now the real work begins (Help @AstronautAbby fund her trip to Russia for a Soyuz launch):

She’ll be sharing her experiences with kids around the country and the world, but she needs your help to get there.

Go, tumblr, go!

(via Are you providing effective feedback? Or are students...

Thu, 21 Mar 2013 15:17:30 -0500

(via Are you providing effective feedback? Or are students ignoring you?)

Keep the grammar and conventions out of the early writing process!

Also, I have to wonder who, exactly, grades a draft?

I give points for doing the work, but have never graded a draft. That seems…wrong.

"Transgender and Intersex Students Gender (how a person feels) and biological sex (the physical..."

Sun, 17 Mar 2013 12:26:13 -0500

“

Transgender and Intersex Students
Gender (how a person feels) and biological sex (the physical makeup of a person’s anatomy) are two different things, and they are not always aligned. For example, a person may be raised as a girl but identify as a boy. Others may have been born with a condition that places their biological sex between male and female; they may still be deciding which gender they will ultimately adopt.
• Help students whose gender is incorrectly listed on paperwork to correct the situation and ensure school staff and students address them using their preferred pronouns.
• Designate a gender-neutral restroom. Binary (women/men or boy/girl) restrooms aren’t inclusive and can be unsafe spaces for transgender and intersex students. Allow each transgender or intersex student to use the restroom in which that student is most comfortable, whether it’s the gender-neutral restroom or the restroom that corresponds with the student’s self-identified gender.

Get Started
Evaluate your administrative forms and communications. Do they use gender-neutral language or provide an opportunity for students to communicate their gender identity? If not, make the needed updates.

”

- Best Practices: Creating an LGBT-inclusive School Climate | Teaching Tolerance

From the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Teaching Tolerance project. Always a good source of information.

Check any of their other resources out.

(via Distorted furniture looks like a glitch | Games Blog -...

Fri, 15 Mar 2013 12:25:52 -0500

(via Distorted furniture looks like a glitch | Games Blog - Yahoo! Games)

On a slightly lighter note for your Friday, that’s not a GIF error on your screen.

That piece is carved that way.

It’s called “Good Vibrations”. I wonder why?

CREDIT: Good Vibrations storage unit (Credit: Ferruccio Laviani/Fratelli Boffi)

Hate to do this, but we're in a bit of a bind...

Tue, 12 Mar 2013 20:53:00 -0500

…and it would really help if you went and looked at the books we have for sale here: http://www.amazon.com/shops/NearFutureBooks

Or the jewelry and other fun stuff we have for sale here: https://www.etsy.com/shop/nearfuturedesign

And please consider buying something?

They’re also the first two links on my sidebar at the main M.I.N.I.O.N. page.

Reblogs would help a lot too.