The LTD Project Blog

The Better World Flux site provides an interface that creates graphic representations of world population trends in just a few easy steps:

• 0. Reset the display.
• 1. Drag and drop population trend indicators, or combinations of them, that you want to include in the display;
• 2. Click to add countries whose relative status vis-a-vis those indicators you want to highlight;
• 3. Explore the results:
  • a) either by playing an animation or moving the slider with your cursor to see changes over time, and
  • b) by clicking on colorful data bands to display the names of other countries in the same bands.

The indicators correspond to UN Millennium Development Goals. Clicking on the About tab on the Better World Flux site reveals a Glossary of indicators with cross-links to sources of data, some dating back up to six decades. For example, the life-expectancy indicator (1960–2010), which when animated looks bit like a garden slug crawling in general towards a better world, shows:

a. Japan’s human life-expectancy rose to the level of those of Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden, tops in the world in 1972;

b. Japan then became the sole country at the top in 1981, and was joined by Sweden again in 1983;

c. Switzerland joined those two at the top in 1984, along with a variety of other countries – between 1985 and 1993, including: Australia, Canada, Costa Rica, Cyprus, France, Greece, Hong Kong, Iceland, Italy, Israel, Macao, Malta, Spain, and the UK;

d. Rwanda became a separate node on the long-tail in the 1990′s.

e. Japan topped the list solo again in 1994, rejoined by Hong Kong from 1996 to 1998, and Switzerland in 1999.

f. Italy and Australia were next to regain the top band, in 2000 and 2001, respectively, followed by Canada, joined by Liechtenstein in 2002, and then Iceland and Israel again in 2003….

Thanks to Larry Ferlazzo for pointing out Better World Flux (The Best Resources For Creating Infographics, 2011.01.11), and to Richard Byrne, as well (Better World Flux – Create Animated Data Displays, 2011.02.04).

In an exclusive interview for the Library Thing, for the State of the Thing newsletter (June 2012), investigative television journalist Dan Rather responded to a question about important roles his former teachers had played.

One common thread for many of my teachers is that they believed in me and took the time to treat me as an individual. They taught me that it is not just about the destination but it is about the journey. However we try to reform our educational system, we must allow for teachers to see their students as individuals.

(Dan Rather: LibraryThing Author Interview)

Among other issues he also addressed were tenacious, growing corporate interests in control of conventional [news] media. That was in response to a passage the interviewer had quoted from Rather’s memoirs, Rather Outspoken: My Life in the News, about “‘censorship masquerading as good business’” (2012).

At the end of the interview, Rather mentioned developing new installments to come out this fall (2012) in a TV series on education (HDNet: Dan Rather Reports). I’m looking forward to following those developments.

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The snapshot below represents content inspired by one of Tom Barrett’s Interesting Ways collections. It’s of a mindmap that I’ve whipped up with a tool scooped by Nik Peachey in his Tools for Learners collection (…SpiderScribe, 2011.06.22). A link to the actual mindmap is here. I can hardly wait to get permission to contribute it to Tom’s crowd-sourced Google Presentation: Interesting Ways* to Use Google Forms in the Classroom.

Google Forms in the Classroom

[79 words]

Though I don’t remember . . . where such a meme may have originated, nor where I cottoned on to it, nor what labels or tags the original meme suggested using, here goes, in hope that whatever mechanism(-s) the original author envisioned and implemented to identify and collate responses will serve to collect this one.

• Do explain clearly and completely what and why you wish your audience to comprehend;
• Don’t expect your audience to disambiguate references that you make in your messages or posts (a precept that I have intentionally violated in this one); and
• Duh! Focus your messages and posts on single, or unified, topics.

Happy meme-ing!

Paul

Catching up on An A-Z… through a feed I read in Google Reader, I happened upon another couple of interesting yet very different posts:

• A is for Aspect « An A-Z of ELT (2011.03.20), and
• E is for ELF « An A-Z of ELT (2011.04.03).

The firsts sports less text; it offers a six-minute video clip instead. The post is as yet uncategorized, but bears numerous grammar-related tags: “aspect, grammar, present continuous, present progressive, tense” (A is for Aspect, retrieved 2011.04.07).

The second, reflecting on TESOL conference offerings, is more of a read. It also is uncategorized, but the tags reflect what the acronym in the title stands for: “EIL, ELF, English as a Lingua Franca, English as an International Language, Global English, World Englishes” (E is for ELF, retrieved 2011.04.07).

There are plenty of other interesting posts where those come from – A to Z and back again, which remind me that conglomerated categories and tags on this blog still await chipping apart and sifting for keepers.

This morning I was pleasantly surprised to find a Gmail message from Blogger notifying me of a fresh comment on a welcome message post I’d made yesterday on a blog that I use for a writing course. However, the comment turned out to be spam – carefully targeted spam at that. The comment began with brief praise, shifted to general observations – arguably on topics related to the blog and the post, and ended with thanks followed by a link to an external site.

I followed another link in the notification message from Blogger to the post itself, only to find “0 comments” on it. So I opened the Comments tab in the blog dashboard, and found the comment of which I’d been notified by mail not in the Awaiting Moderation inbox, but in the Spam inbox, instead.

Blogger comment spam inbox

That too was a pleasant surprise, because somehow or other Blogger had picked up on the inappropriacy of that comment, and quickly if not immediately decided not to display it on the course blog. That is, even though I had set comment moderation to apply only on posts more than one day old. There is no evidence on the post itself to indicate that the comment ever appeared on it.

Following the discovery of that comment in the Spam inbox, I tried to follow the link that accompanied it to the comment author’s profile (Essay). It was no surprise to find no public Blogger profile for the comment’s author. While I allow comments from Registered Users (Blogger Dashboard: Settings: Comments), rarely have I found spammers with public profiles, and even when I have, I do not recall them ever displaying blogs of their own.

Thanks to Blogger for successfully implementing an anti-spam scheme last year (2010), I’m a happy Blogger blogger.

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newhumanities Channel

Check out Richard E. Miller’s presentation for the Modern Language Association’s Presidential Forum, December 28, 2008, “to tell the story of how reading and writing have been transformed by the web” (YouTube, newhumanities, 2009.01.15), and see whether those are the kinds of reading and writing that we teach.

This Is How We Dream, Part 1

• Embedded
• Fullframe

This Is How We Dream, Part 2

• Embedded
• Fullframe

Screenshot from course wiki

The thumbnail image in the screenshot above adds color and variety to an extended and growing list of thematically related resources on a course wiki page. I found the picture using Compfight, retrieved the code from Flickr™, and embedded it in a widget in Wikispaces.

If all goes well, a screencast explaining the process follows (below). … Well, that sure didn’t work the way the way Sue says it does (Embedding Videos from Video Sharing Websites…, 2009.07.29).

So here’s a link to use to view it on the website:

• 2010-08-25_1538-FindingPicture (Screencast.com).

An outline for the screencast, derived from Freemind, appears below this snapshot of the mindmap/storyboard I followed:

Mindmap for screencast

Example of
Picture Finding &
Use with Permission

• ~ compfight.com
  • search for tags
  • keyword: world
  • options:
    • Creative Commons: Only
    • Seek Original: On
    • Safe Search: On
• ~ Flickr
  • Check License: “Some rights reserved” (sidebar)
  • Read owner’s explanation:
    • “All my images are copyrighted. If you intend to use any of my pictures for non-commercial usage, you have to sign them with © alles-schlumpf[.] It would be nice if you contact me first” (alles-schlumpf / Daniela Hartmann, c. 2009.05.28).

      “If you have any commercial usage, you need to contact me always first. USE WITHOUT PERMISSION IS ILLEGAL” (alles-schlumpf / Daniela Hartmann, c. 2009.05.28).

  • Get code
    • “Share this” (dropdown menu):
      • “Grab the HTML/BBCode[.]“
        • Select size:
          
          • in this case, “Thumbnail (67 x 100)”.
        • (Select HTML [default])
      • “Copy and paste the code below: …” (Flickr).
  • Post comments
    • BEFORE
      
      • “Great image! I’d like to use it on an English course wiki for university students I teach”
        (pabeaufait: c. 2010.08.24, 13:00, JST).
    • AFTER
      
      • “I used a thumbnail, linking back to Flickr, followed immediately by: ‘Global Player [/] © alles-schlumpf [/] Some rights reserved’” (pabeaufait: c. 2010.08.24, 17:00, JST).
• ~ Wikispaces
  • Widget: Other HTML
    • Code from Flickr
      • <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/29487767@N02/3574392846/” title=”Global Player by alles-schlumpf, on Flickr”><img src=”http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3161/3574392846_68f6ca215d_t.jpg” width=”67″ height=”100″ alt=”Global Player” /></a>
    • Title and rights statement (see comment 2 [above]) with links
      • ~ from title to picture page on Flickr
      • ~ from rights to Creative Commons

This quick post is to point out the addition of Scott Thornsbury’s blog to the LTD Project Blog’s Blogroll (in the sidebar). I’d had An A-Z of ELT in Google Reader for a while already, and decided to make a bit more of it than a private browsing location. For a description here on the awfully inert of late LTD Project Blog, I’ve called An A-Z of ELT, “Thought provoking observations and suggestions for [language] teacher development” (PB, 2010.07.31), while pondering where to put an auto-updating RSS feed display.

Instructional Designers’ Resolutions:
http://www.ltgreenroom.org/episodes/86 (includes show notes)

LearningTimes discussion (Re: Instructional Design Changes for the New Year?): http://home.learningtimes.net/learningtimes?go=2283667 (login required)

LearningTimes show notes (LTGR Ep. #72 – “Instructional Designers’ Resolutions”): http://home.learningtimes.net/learningtimes?go=2283652 (includes links to discussion, login required)