Friday, December 31, 2004

Earthquakes
None of us planned to think about earth events this week.
SAVAGE EARTH Animations PBS A number of them.
Forces of Nature National Geographic
How Earthquakes Happen BBC
Deadly Quakes CNN Of the past 20 years.
Major Quakes of the 20th Century CNN With static plates map.
Mountain Maker Earth Shaker - You Try PBS Move the plates.
anatomy of a volcano MSNBC

Thursday, December 30, 2004

Tsunamis, 9-11, and the U.N. in Rwanda
For four days now, each check of the news brings a sadder report from the Indian Ocean. From here, just unimaginable in horror. 70,000 dead at this time. History tells us that the sadness and terror of Sept. 11 pale miserably before this type of disaster.

In April of 1994, in just 5 days, Rwandans murdered an equal 70,000 of their men, women, and children. Over the next 95 days, they would kill ten times more - 800,000 in all. While the U.N., Kofi Annan, and the world stood still.

Does the U.N. need to be rebuilt from scratch? 100 Days of Mass Genocide.

Tuesday, December 28, 2004

The Ottoman Empire--World History lesson plan (grades 9-12)--DiscoverySchool.com
We've looked at these before for interactive media; what I didn't know is they've added audio of vocaubulary pronunciations and definitions to the lessons.

Monday, December 27, 2004

IBM - ON DEMAND BUSINESS
OK, this is an ad for IBM and hass little to do with history. The story-telling, however, makes pretty efficient use of the medium.

Tuesday, December 21, 2004

The Video Game Revolution | PBS
This show ran back in Sept. I'm posting today mostly to get rid of a little slip of paper which says this: In it's various releases, Mortal Kombat took in $1.5 Billion. A billion and a half, for one game!

Monday, December 20, 2004

PISA Results Show Need for High School Reform
This report on students from 41 countries was widely covered. The results have to do with math, which is more easily comparable and literacy, which can be subjective. Places like the Czech Republic, Ireland, and Belgium spanked us.

Sunday, December 19, 2004

The 3D Bible Project
Students explore 3-D scenes from the Bible on this VRML site. I had the best luck starting from the cut-away views at the bottom of the home page.

Friday, December 17, 2004

Monkey Trial | American Experience
A video tour of the courthouse starts things; a gallery of political cartoons chimes in. But really, can you beat a site with Monkey Music?

Thursday, December 16, 2004

P2P Bibliographies with Bibster Slashdot
Another item whose significance may be deeper than first view.

Tuesday, December 14, 2004

Google & Harvard University's Digitized Library
Harvard has 15 million volumes, many in the public domain. Google has indexing & cash. You may soon search & read the holdings at Harvard for no-where near the $39,880 tuition! FAQ.

Monday, December 13, 2004

Flash timeline of Big Bang
A tour back through time to the beginning of time...and a unique way to do it!
TimeRef - Medieval History Timelines
"Follow the history of Medieval Britain from the time of Alfred the Great,... up to the start of the Tudor Age. Detailed Timelines contain events for years between 800 and 1499AD. Maps show the locations of castles, abbeys and cathedrals in England, Scotland and Wales. Every person and building on this site has its own timeline and links to related subjects. " Not to mention 3-D castles and a 3-D game!

Wednesday, December 08, 2004

Parthenon Graphics Timelines:? Full Size Images
Lots and lots of static timeline images. Designed for wall use, but a great resource.

Tuesday, December 07, 2004

Whose House? BBC
Game. This would be a great one with a lot more added to it. As it is, if you're right, you get no reinforcement for why. If you're wrong, you just get a cold "Wrong" before being shoved to the next house. Cool concept to build on!
'Muck and Brass' Victorian Public Health GAme BBC
Really vert limited decision points in this one. There must be a little more to the story!

Friday, December 03, 2004

Centuries of Citizenship - A Constitutional Timeline National Constitution Center
This is a great one! We introduced the Interactive Constitution a year ago; now they've added a Flash timeline. Even the loader is cool, with a reading in diverse voices of the Preamble. Timely music accompanies each era. Be sure to see Map and Point-Counterpoint in each era, and the best feature: Can you Vote?

Thursday, December 02, 2004

Who Wants To Be A Cotton Milionaire Victorian Business Game BBC
A fun way to learn a little about early industrialization. I'd like to see more reinforcement of the time period we're playing in.

Wednesday, December 01, 2004

HistoryLink 101
"A resource site for World History classes." Text, with lots of maps, pics. There's also Timelines By History Link 101.

Tuesday, November 30, 2004

BBC - History - Multimedia Zone
It's been awhile since we pointed out this gallery of BBC's interactive features.
Transcontinental Railroad Animation BBC - History
We've featured one or two transcontinental rail sites before; this one comes from BBC. One technique I like is that you must wait for the months to click by. Perhaps a little calendar tearing animation would add to the effect.

Monday, November 29, 2004

What killed the Dinosaurs? PBS
Flash interactive lets you compare the theories and evidence. From the Evolution series..there's a lot more media on this site.

Sunday, November 28, 2004

Center for Cooperative Research
No media here yet, but an interesting examples of open-source history writing. Unfortunately, the topic "Torture in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere" has nothing to do with Sadaam's rape and branding specialists.

Wednesday, November 24, 2004

Want to design video games? Dallas Observer
A reporter tells us an inside story of the students at SMU's Guildhall. There's more references to the game design school at the Slashdot item.

Tuesday, November 23, 2004

Who Graduates? Who Doesn't? Urban Institute
A Statistical Portrait of the Class of 2001 Summary and Full Report.

In Ohio, 2/3 of black males don't.

Monday, November 22, 2004

Google Scholar
In beta. A service for serious research. Of course, many or most of the retrieved articles will be behind pay-fer walls--its hard to run a technical society on advertising. [Your school or local library may have a subscrption. Often you can log on at home using your card number].

Sunday, November 21, 2004

Our Kids Deserve Better than a Google Future
"To highlight my point, I just did a search on Guadal Canal - the site of a rather significant battle in World War 2. [Results included:} The first failed to even load. .. My next recommended links were game cheat websites (dubious indeed especially with a .Ru extension), followed by three property or Hotel sites, three more games sites, two sites offering to sell me memorabilia but actually containing no useful information, and finally finished off with a method of cooking Guadal Canal cactus."

Friday, November 19, 2004

National Survey of Student Engagement Annual Report 2004
While the graphic design is most excellent, the content doesn't exactly titilate. The Wall Street Journal's highly critical review, doesn't even capture the blahness of the findings.
Most surprising element?: 16-20% report NO use of electronic media to do classwork. Is that a testable claim?

Thursday, November 18, 2004

The Great War . Maps & Battles . Europe in 1914 | PBS
Dynamic maps trace the major operations. There are also a number of voices and videos, and a nice overall index of this large site.

Wednesday, November 17, 2004

The 84th NCSS Annual Conference
Starts Friday in Baltimore. Who's gonna be there? Exhibitors.
Inside Tunnel "Harry" PBS | NOVA
You have seen The Great Escape, haven't you?! NOVA followed a team of archeologists as they searched the site of Stalag Luft III for the original tunnel. Use this interactive to explore the camp and tunnel Harry.

Tuesday, November 16, 2004

Activision: Call Of Duty
Arriving in stores tomorrow: Call of Duty-Finest Hour from Spark Unlimited, for console game systesm.

Monday, November 15, 2004

The Innovators Tournament | PBS | They Made America
Oh this one is hillarious. Students do an NCAA-type tournament chart, and pick the winners of head to head competition among 32 inventors: e.g. the inventor of containerized shipping vs. the creator of the bra!

Saturday, November 13, 2004

New Media TextbooksAwhile back we listed some textbook companies' online multi-media. This page from San Antonio College list 17 or so.

Friday, November 12, 2004

American Rhetoric: The Power of Oratory in the United States
Pretty sure we've mentioned this powerful audio source. Today I stumbled across one particular recording: the King Harry's St. Crispin's day battlecry, from Henry V.
The Mad, Mad World of Textbook Adoption Fordham Institute
Haven't read this yet, but the last report they issued was so controversial, why not!

Thursday, November 11, 2004

The Price of Freedom: Americans at WarSmithsonian
Wow! The Smithsonian has taken on the wars that made the nation - not the homefront, or women int the war, or industry, but the wars themselves. Opens today for Veterans Day. Also, the Post has a review: Our Wars.

Wednesday, November 10, 2004

Election 2004 | NY Times
The Times audio slideshow looks at the election and the term ahead. There's a map like the one mentioned last week. Now, can we get one of these that crosses the years?

Friday, November 05, 2004

Votes by County
Boy, this wouls make a great interactive. One of the more interesting phenomina is how differently city people see things compared with everyone else. This map shows how every county in the US voted. Even Orange county, hardly a rural backwater, voter differently than ajacent Los Angelos and San Diego counties!

Thursday, October 28, 2004

History Live
It's the morning after...in this case from the2004 Annual Meeting of the Association of the US Army. What a tremendous experience. storytellings of all sorts from the guys back from Iraq and Afghanistan. Would that every American could hear these guys. It's surely a different story than we hear on TV.

Tuesday, October 19, 2004

MER_wintergraphics_ver3.swf
I just like this simple little animation with text that captures the viewers eye. It's only about 80 pix high on Nasa'a rover homepage.

Saturday, October 16, 2004

Yahoo! News - Programs: New 'Sandiego' Has Better Graphics, Less LearningIntersting review of the old Geographic and History learning game now on Playstation2, Gamecube, and Xbox.

Tuesday, October 05, 2004

RFK | Shock Year: 1968 PBS | American Experience
An incredible year, and a remarkably different approach to a timeline. I'd like the ability to de-slect event categories.

Monday, October 04, 2004

Internet Grants to Schools Halted as the F.C.C. Tightens the Rules NYTimes
We've oft mentioned the $2 Billion paid by you and me for internet & computer service to schools, with iffy software to back it up. It looks like you may be paying more soon!

Wednesday, September 29, 2004

Sunday, September 26, 2004

The Gap - 50 Years After the Brown TulingCNN Programs - Presents
Even among students whose families have PhD's, Black students grades and scores are dramatically worse. CNN visits Shaker Heights and other schools.

Tuesday, September 21, 2004

NATURE: Puzzles & Fun
PBS' Nature series' collection of fun interactives. How a Diamond is Made starts things off.

Friday, September 10, 2004

Reach Every Child | Welcome! Horace Mann
Lesson plans from the textbook publisher, Horace Mann. History Section.

Tuesday, August 31, 2004

UN backs drive for free softwareBBC NEWS | Technology
The UN's belief that open source software can save money to be used on physical infrastructure.

Tuesday, August 24, 2004

RSS, Blogs, and Attention.XMLXML-Journal
OK, I haven't actually made sense of this yet, but it seems to bear..so remind me to read it!

Wednesday, July 28, 2004

Topics Entertainment
Inroduces a new line of educational software. The release said history software...but where!?

Tuesday, July 20, 2004

Historical Voices
Oh, yeah! If we had a sister project, this might be it! An awesome collection of voice recordings. and the structure for following research, promoting best practices, sharing ideas, etc.

Monday, July 19, 2004

Million Book Project
Ahh! Visiting in the library of Carnegie Mellon Univeristy (Go Tartans!), a plasma display recounts the story of digitizing a million books. China and India are partners with CMU in the massive scanning effort. Details like shipping containers full of shrink-wrapped books are part of the tale.

Thursday, July 15, 2004

Mozilla Foundation turns 1
So, do we know what this thing is? A short social experiment? The bow of a new wave in economic history?

Mozilla's open-source model had produced products of amazing elegance. And the future?

Wednesday, July 14, 2004

Defining the Barrierwashington post
Great Interactive with voice and video, and maps.The technique of laying a video over a map is why I founded this. When the map responded to the video, my heart lept.

Sunday, July 11, 2004

Galileo's Battle for the Heavens | PBS PBS | NOVA
Lots of little interactives in here: they focus on the science of galileo's discoveries.

Friday, July 09, 2004

Tour a Viking Ship PBS | Warrior Challenge. Vikings. Interactive Zone | PBS
Tour would work better if the explanation window stayed up.

Thursday, July 08, 2004

Mystery! A Thief of Time . A Hillerman Trivia Challenge PBS | American Mystery!
This little game ties a quiz with a drive through the Southwest.

Tuesday, July 06, 2004

Virtual Hajj PBS | Muhammad: Legacy of a Prophet
Thought we covered this Muhammad site, but I don't recall the Virtual Hajj part.

Friday, June 18, 2004

Accuweather Weather Host
OK, folks...here's the challenge! This link has no history; in fact it addresses the future. What it DOES do is tell a story using a cartoon face and a real voice, through Macromedia Flash.

I think the last one of these I've seen telling a History story was the Italian language treatment of Emperor Caligula, done circa 2000.

Thursday, June 17, 2004

feature3_map.pdf (application/pdf Object)
Can't help but blog this, though it isn't particularly animated. The richness of the map just boggles the eyes. So does the story of Bob Ballard's expedition to the black sea - in search of Naoah's flood. (See also the National Geographic intro, here.

Wednesday, June 16, 2004

Association for Educational Communications and Technology
"...a professional association of thousands of educators and others whose activities are directed towards improving instruction through technology..., not merely in terms of hardware (such as computers or television or projectors), but in terms of learners and their relationship to the people, events, places, and things through which they learn."

Thursday, June 10, 2004

Saturday, June 05, 2004

The New York Times > Life of Reagan Interactive NY Times
This recollection of Reagan's life is a little bit of a bandwidth hog, but definitely an example of how to use new media to tell a story.

Friday, June 04, 2004

Associaton for the Advancement of Computing in Education -Publications
Admit it, educational apps right now are really a hodgepodge of trial and error. With very little feedback about what is effective and what is not.

The AACE is "dedicated to the advancement of the knowledge, theory, and quality of learning and teaching at all levels with information technology." In these journals, you may find some thoughtful stuff to make your media more powerful.

Thursday, June 03, 2004

An Integrated Model of Multimedia Effects on Learning Andy Hede, University of the Sunshine Coast
Well, despite the distractions on the way across the OSU "Oval" this sunny day, managed to get a little research done in the education library. Not all that encouraging, if you're looking for hard evidence of what works.

This 2002 article takes a look at studies of Multimedia efficacy, and proposes a model of learning. Stay tuned...

Wednesday, June 02, 2004

The Iraq Memory Foundation
Congratulations to the people of Iraq, who not only chose their interim government, but moved it into place a month ahead of time. A day of celebration, its also a good week to remember those who's lives were brutalized by the previous regime.

Tuesday, June 01, 2004

Conflict Map Nobel e-museum
A timeline/dynamic map of wars & conflicts in the 20th century. It says there's a civil war ongoing today in Ireland, and dubs the Palestinian terrorism a "Colonial War", so caveat emptor on the content.

Friday, May 28, 2004

Faces of the Fallen washingtonpost
For this Memorial Day, a timeline, faces, and brief info on those who gave their lives in Iraq.

Wednesday, May 26, 2004

To Study History, Pupils Can Rewrite It New York Times
Making History, multiplayer game from MuzzyLane, aims to teach students by making students the decision makers. Gaming is a great concept, we've suggested here before. Be interesting to see if they get facts.

Monday, May 24, 2004

Colonial House . Interactive History PBS
While not much animation, the developers here have a wealth of ways to explore the people, time, and place of the Colonial House reality show. I liked guiding my colonists across the sea.

Tuesday, May 18, 2004

Circle of Stories | PBS
The original art of storytelling!! This wonderful site presents four native stroytellers. My request of the producers would be to separate out the introductions. Start with Rabbits Wish!

Thursday, May 13, 2004

The Oil PipleineMSNBC
Love the world map rollover page. I can see this reused throughout histories.

Monday, May 10, 2004

Ohio & Erie Canal
Wouldn't this make for a wonderful narrated Flash presentation?

Thursday, May 06, 2004

HMS NGA Historical Map Series
Some great maps--from Lewis and Clark to Antietam to Normandy and D-Day, from the National Geo-Spatial Intelligence Agency.

Friday, April 30, 2004

History Book Project
A resource of 800 full text books.

Also, if you have access to proquest (your university or public library may allow you access at home): American Periodical Series 1740-1900
http://proquest.umi.com/login?COPT=SU5UPTAmVkVSPTImREJTPTE0NEQ@&clientId=3338

Monday, April 26, 2004

Arms and Armor in the Age of Machiavelli
An interactive to put the pieces of armor on the knight. Alas, I fear most students would skip the text, as I have. We need to get sound on these things!

Saturday, April 17, 2004

Monday, April 12, 2004

Telltale Weekly
A cool new approach to getting quality audio recordings online. The aim: to make the recordings free once they are paid for. They pay the artists and studios, use public domain texts, and charge a quarter to two dollars for a download. After 100,000 downloads, the recording will be free. Interesting!

Sunday, April 11, 2004

Shroud of Christ?SECRETS OF THE DEAD | PBS
Interesting science than may change thoughts on the carbon dating. An interactive of the shroud offers some noteable technique.

Wednesday, April 07, 2004

Geography Network
We were chatting at the ESRI booth today (I was again trying to mop the drule from my chin over more technology). Mike the rep relayed that data streaming to Flash would be in the 9.0 release of ArcGIS engine.

Meanwhile look at the vast collection of GIS data available at the Geography Network site. A great place to start: maps.nps.gov

Tuesday, April 06, 2004

frontline: ghosts of rwanda | PBS
Tens years ago today, genocide of unimaginable scale commenced in the African country of Rwanda. In one week, 64,000 children, women and male civilians would be hacked and otherwise murdered. In another half week, 100,000 would be dead. After 3 weeks, the murders of the innocent would pass 170,000.

Yet the world stood by.

After 100 days (July 17), 800,000 children, mothers, fathers, grandparents would be brutally slain.

I beg you to watch the timeline in its entirety.

Thursday, April 01, 2004

Video Games Never Curve
d'ja ever notice that video games never give rewards based on "the curve"?

So why do teachers?

Wednesday, March 31, 2004

IBM Research | Projects | Text-to-Speech
This technology was demo'd in yesterday's item. Here, you can type in your own text, choose a voice, and have your text spoken to you.

Tuesday, March 30, 2004

Eternal Egypt - Home
Wow. I couldn't begin to describe the wealth of features in this site. From the Flash intro screen to the timelines to the maps and artifacts; webcams, animations, 360 views; just amazing.

Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, along with nine musems, partner agencies and our good friends at IBM produced this incredible site.

Oh, to top it all off, IBM embedded text-to-speech translation on all of the artifact description pages.

Monday, March 29, 2004

TUTANKHAMUN'S TRUMPET
This is indeed the best of the Internet. Hear a 3300 year old trumpet played --for the only time in three millenia. The wonderful instrument shattered on its first playing!

Also, at this link: NPR Performance Today

Thursday, March 25, 2004

Web3D Consortium - Open Standards for Real-Time 3D Communication
A new site from the Web3D consortium, with all things about "Open Standards for Real-Time 3D Communication". Do check out the UNREAL Realm of Concepts demo. Incredible! (You'll need the Flux Player, which I couldn't get to intstall in Mozilla).

Wednesday, March 10, 2004

Movies vs. Auschwitz OpinionJournal
Some stories need to be remembered. In every media.

Monday, March 08, 2004

Erma Ora ByrdCenter for Educational Technologies
Yeah, as in Senator Byrd. Like half the rest of West Virginia, this center has his name on it. Still, you might find some hints here.

Sunday, March 07, 2004

Whodunit? Public Enemy #1 PBS | American Experience
A game to collect and identify fingerprints. From the John Dillinger film.

Friday, March 05, 2004

Wednesday, March 03, 2004

Media Psychology - Division 46 of the APA
Caveat bloggee, I guess! The American Psychological association maintains a division for Media Psychology! A haven for dubious scholarship, I'll bet. Still, you may find a treat here or there to get into kids minds. This link is the list of grad schools in the subject.

Monday, March 01, 2004

Custom Mapping System
Lets you creat your own maps! Produces maps in jpg, or PNG, and uses SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics). SVG, by the way, is rapidly getting standardized. Mozilla Firefox 0.8 comes with SVG; you must turn it on, though.

Friday, February 27, 2004

Historic Atlas Resource - Europe
About 14 of these 33 maps are interactive or animated. Simple, but you can learn from them. Also, site has about 60 images of historic sites.

Ahh, and here's the project homepage, along with 15 interactive maps for American history.

Wednesday, February 25, 2004

Met Life Survey of the American Teacher
The 2003 edition of this annual report focuses on school leadership, particularly principals.

Most interesting thing I saw (from the 2001 survey): 1/3 of students say their teachers expect their schoolwork to be excellent. Compare this to 3/5 who say their parents expect their work to be excellent!

Tuesday, February 24, 2004

Happy National Engineers Week!
Ever wonder why people don't call the IEEE a 'terrorist organization'? Or deride it perenially as a polictical hack group? Are teachers and engineers that different?

Monday, February 23, 2004

Walk the Plank - interactive history game - www.SchoolHistory.co.uk
A great game for learning all kinds of history! Right now, there's 67 topics, from ancient Egypt to Malcom X.

Thursday, February 19, 2004

WW I - The Western Front, 1914 - 1918BBC
Great overview of the war. (And a great candidate for sound!)

Tuesday, February 17, 2004

Creative Commons
Helps authors and artists release their works with open-source like licenses. View the cartoon explanation!

Monday, February 16, 2004

Archaeology and the Bible UIUC
I mentioned last week Michener's The Source. A little more exploring turned up this wonderful set of pictures of archaeological sites of the biblical age:
  • Index
  • Tell Megiddo aerial view
  • Tell Megiddo side view
  • Tell Geezer
  • There's a bunch. Wouldn't these make a great Flash movie?

    Also: Another site about Megiddo, with a great graphic of the area of Galilee.
    And a story of Geezer, which sounds much like Michener's Makor.

    Sunday, February 15, 2004

    Our Education Buy WSJ
    For comparison, that's more than the entire economy of Australia, or more than the GPD's of Iraq, New Zealand, Ireland, Israel, and Venezuela combined!

    Friday, February 13, 2004

    Discovery Expedition of St. Charles
    The Lewis and Clark Corps of Discovery will soon set out again from Camp Dubois and St. Charles, MO for points west unknown. We didn't find any interactives here; perhaps one of you developers will join them!

    Wednesday, February 11, 2004

    Yes, Virginia, There is a Voucher Wall Street Journal, 3 Feb. 04

    Maybe when your childhood memories include waking up at midnight to a burning cross on your front lawn, you're not going to let a Teddy Kenedy or Eleanor Holmes Norton intimidate you. Just ask Virginia Walden-Ford.

    As executive director of D.C. Parents for School Choice, the 52-year-old Mrs. Walden-Ford played a pivotal role in the landmark vouchers that just passed Congress. She did that with a public campaign that pushed one uncomfortable fact: How many of the Congressman and Senators fighting hardest agains school choice choose private schools for their own little darlings. But the willingness to spread a little discomfort shouldn't be all that surprising from a woman whose father was the first African-American administrator in the Little Rock school district, and who herself graduated from the same Central High that was home to the Little Rock Nine.

    I was called 'nigger' most every day, and I begged my father--begged him---to let me go back to an all black school, ...

    Ms. Ford's own child was rescued from the D.C. schools by a generous neighbor.

    We don't think that vouchers and charter shools have the power to remake places like D.C. But for a few kids who escape that terrible system, you go girl!!

    Tuesday, February 10, 2004

    Historical Noughts and Crosses (Tic-Tac-Toe) BBC-History
    Woe for my education. I'm not even close to succeeding with this little game.

    Sunday, February 08, 2004

    Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly . COVER STORY . Biblical Archaeology . February 6, 2004 | PBS
    This video particularly grabbed my attention: I'm reading James Michener's The Source. Both describe the archaeological digs at Tells (mounds of city upon city) in Israel.

    Saturday, February 07, 2004

    Calvert School: Welcome
    Stumbled across The Calvert School curriculum as the curriculm used by one of the distance learning academies. It was first made available to parents in 1905 as a way to give families unable to attend a private school access to the school materials. Home schoolers have long used it.

    Thursday, February 05, 2004

    Malcolm X speaks
    And again for Black History month, 11 audio clips of Malcolm's earlier speeches.

    Wednesday, February 04, 2004

    National Civil Rights Museum
    For Black history month, visit the website of the National Civil Rights Museum, in Memphis. Not finding any rich media here; you could make them some!

    Tuesday, February 03, 2004

    History - Wikipedia
    Deprived, we are, here in the sticks sometimes. I had not yet discovered the full Wikopedia!
    This marvelously complete encyclopedia has sprung up in three years; with an amazing amount of content. A wonderful resource for you developers.

    It also serves as a warning of what this project should not be. Dry, passive writing like George Washington represent all that sucks in trying to learn a vibrant, exciting past.

    Sunday, February 01, 2004

    Linux is everywhere
    Oh, yeah! Open source meets the Super Bowl! The IBM ad campaign hits the really big shoooe. In the flash version online, hear the words of Darwin, Victor Hugo, Fredirick Douglas, Henry Gates.

    Monday, January 26, 2004

    John Brown's Holy War | Map The American Experience
    Follow John Brown's life against slavery.

    Wednesday, January 21, 2004

    mars Rover Landing Site | JPL
    A truly professional use of Flash to showcase the red Planet, and the Mars Rover program. Should find some idea here!

    Tuesday, January 20, 2004

    BarbariansThe History Channel
    I bethought this just a normal web page, til I clicked on the timeline link. It moved! They built, as it were, an imbedded timeline. Wondering what else might be embedded, I found the whole main wndow to be a Flash object; panels slide in an out. The meat we want, however, - animated maps, etc. still eludes us.

    Monday, January 19, 2004

    World War II Aerial Photographs on the Internet
    Today the UK put online a huge collection of WWII aerial photos. The address is allegedly www.evidenceincamera.co.uk. Since they pre-announced it, and Fox news, among other sources, broadcast the story, good luck getting on soon!

    Sunday, January 18, 2004

    Open URL
    Apparently a number of orgs, including the National Institute of Standards, are working on context-sensitive url's for reference works.
    This Caltech page has more info; and demonstrations. More demo here.

    Friday, January 16, 2004

    Recommended Reading - Ignite! Learning
    The good folks at Ignite! share their favorite books on education.

    Thursday, January 15, 2004

    The King Center
    You remembered today was the real birthday, didn't you? Dr. King's words and voice live on at the center's site: Flash animations, video clips, and audio all promote his vision for non-violent change.

    Wednesday, January 14, 2004

    PBS - Egypt's Golden Empire
    Oh, my!! Enter the interactive Egyptian Experience, choose the maps, then explore the temple of Karnak. With a diagram on the left, Quicktime 360deg. views appear on the right!

    The Heiroglyph Translator also makes great use of this medium. You pick a section of 5-6 glyphs, and it translates. Finally, there is a Life as an Ancient Egyptian section, with heiroglyps and photos.

    One worth discussing!

    Tuesday, January 13, 2004

    NECC 2004
    National Educational Computing Conference. Another excuse to visit New Orleans!

    Monday, January 12, 2004

    Forty Acres and a Mule - Song | Ignite!
    In the Reconstruction vein, this song tells the simple story.
    Reconstruction: The Second Civil War American Experience
    Tonight PBS/WGBH begin the two-part series on rebuilding after the civil war. The website offers an interactive map; sources; related sites; a view of thefilming; and video clips.

    Sunday, January 11, 2004

    The Free Software Community After 20 Years NewsForge
    Richard Stallman looks back and forward at his Free the Software movement.

    Thursday, January 08, 2004

    Timeline of the Conquest | PBS
    Especially look at the disease timeline: the graph background is a great new visual tool.

    Wednesday, January 07, 2004

    Ignorance officialis and 9/11
    The most striking feature of the CIA’s analytic culture was its blandness. The secrets were fascinating, of course, but intellectually it was a boring place to work. Most of the analysts simply weren’t as well read as they should have been. For instance, they seemed not to have read much more in history than most college graduates.
    And we know how learned in history are most college grads!

    Tuesday, January 06, 2004

    A Rising Nation American Experience | The Time of the Lincolns
    An interactive map of the US in 1850.
    There's also a quicktime panorama of a slave cabin interior. Needs furnished!

    Monday, January 05, 2004

    Thursday, January 01, 2004

    Eleanor's Tour of the South Pacific PBS|American Experience
    In 1943--19 months into WWII--Eleanor spent five weeks visiting the troops in the South Pacific. This interactive map follows her trip.

    My wish: I don't wanna chase the "Next" button all over the window.