Here is a cool video about a "a mechanical, binary adding machine that uses marbles to flip the bits" - in other words a computer made of wood, that works at a pace that we can grasp! Marvelous. (HT: Collision Detection). Check out the video: [youtube width="425"...
Posts related to: Creativity
Sitar Hero!
Why I love the Internets 🙂
On beauty in banality
Does beauty transcend banality and inconvenience? If this story about a violin virtuoso, Joshua Bell, playing on the subway station is any indication, we do not have "a moment to stop and listen to one of the best musicians in the world playing the best music ever...
On messing with your mind
A fascinating series of illusions to reveal just how complicated a phenomenon perception is. I was particularly impressed by the "rubber hand" illusion. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQtbcgBWobA
Is your head in the McClouds!
Scott McCloud is a pioneer in his field - the field of comics. (I had previously posted about him here). I just discovered (via Presentation Zen & Matt Koehler) a TED talk he had given back in 2005. It is a wonderful introduction to McCloud the man and his ideas....
Technology, creativity & illusion
Marco Tempest is magician who loves technology, or a techno-geek who happens to be a good magician. He brings an unique amalgam of high-tech and magic to his shows (see this article for details), but that is not what is most impressive about his work. What is...
Ambi-poetry: A mathematician reinterprets ambigrams
My friend Gaurav Bhatnagar (I had blogged about his new book, Get Smart: Math Concepts here), for some reason, known only to him, has decided to create a poetry-blog based around my ambigrams. Each posting consists of one ambigram (taken from my large collection of...
Another New Year’s card
We just created another New Year's Card / Video. Check it out: Shreya's Magic Touch [youtube width="425" height="355"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOrRsXaFE3o[/youtube]
Solving the rubik cube, blindfolded
A YouTube video of Soham solving the rubic cube blindfolded! [youtube width="425" height="355"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymi-iG8uhR4[/youtube] [Thanks for Michael Gondry for the idea.]
Binary Sudoku
Courtsey, XKCD!
Yet another stop-motion movie
One Nikon D70, two bored kids, one snowy day... and 49 seconds of fun. Check out the latest stop-motion goofiness! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drc6Oo4b9C0 You could also see the 12 Days of Christmas, desi style (the original can be found here) as rendered by Shreya...
Happy 2009, a stop motion movie
Soham, Shreya and I spent this afternoon making a stop-motion animation new year's card. Check it out... http://www.youtube.com/embed/7kw_icNKI44 Have a great 2009!
The Ethics of Dallas Clayton
I just stumbled upon Dallas Clayton's website. Lots of stuff there to enjoy... here's a short poem (as a sampler). ETHIC A father stands at the lip of the wharf with his daughter who is only three. They watch sea lions lounging about in the sun full with fish dazed...
TPACK & creativity
Matt Koehler and I just submitted an article for Learning & Leading with Technology, the flagship journal published by ISTE. The journal features practical ideas for using today’s technology tools to improve teaching and learning. Our work on TPACK was recently...
Best of SkyMall
I love browsing through the SkyMall catalog when I am flying. I never cease to be amazed by human ingenuity - the range of things we have built, irrespective of how useful (or useless they may be). Anyway, someone has now listed the 10 best (or worst, depending on...
12 Days of Christmas, the desi version
I love mongrel culture the mashing and creative remixing elements from different cultures and traditions to construct something new and, hopefully, wonderful. A great example is something my daughter, Shreya, showed me the other day. It is the 12 Days of Christmas...
TPACK and online learning
Matt Koehler and I just completed a talk on TPACK and online learning for the Faculty Seminars in Instructional Technology. The Faculty Seminars are a semi-annual two-day series of short courses for faculty who want to learn about using technology in instruction....
Mad scientist v.s. engineers
Just came across this brilliant cartoon... just had to blog it!
Brevity is the soul
I had posted earlier (see Twittering a tale) about short, short fiction that is suddenly the rage. Matt Koehler just introduced me to another example of this new emerging genre: Six Word Memoirs. Check it out.
Visual wit
I just stumbled upon this website of witty and original t-shirt designs. Two of my favorites are "Experimental music" (included below) and "Puzzled Putter." You can see all the designs here.
New media, new genres
There is an interesting article in today's NYTimes titled Content and its discontents by Virginia Heffernan. In this article she makes the argument the new digital, online media require new ways of representing information, new ways of thinking about how ideas are...
Daily routines of creative people
A while ago I had blogged about a webpage that chronicles how "artists work" (see my posting here). Now I discovered a whole website devoted to it. Check out Daily Routines. They are all interesting to read and the common theme that jumps out, for the most part, is...
designing research | designing technology
Matt Koehler and I usually have a end of semester show-case of work done by the students in our classes. This semester Matt has been teaching CEP955 (Research design and methods for educational psychology and educational technology) and I have been involved with...
Contruction (sic)
Check out this page of examples of bad design. Some of these look too crazy to be true - but who knows... stranger things have happened. Interestingly enough the title of the page is "Award winning contructions!" I wonder if that is deliberate. Site worth sharing with...
The role of Vitamin D in beta-cell function
Who says scientists can't have fun. I just discovered a series of videos on (where else) YouTube about scientists expressing their doctoral research through dance!!! What can be cooler than that? Check out one of the winners: The role of Vitamin D in beta-cell...
Microblogging in the classroom II
I had blogged earlier about my attempts at using micro-blogging in my face to face classroom. As I had said after the experiment At the end of the class, upon being quizzed, the students seemed to feel that this experiment had been a success and would like to do it...
ISTE: SIGTE Webinar on TPACK
The International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) conducts a series of webinars for its members. Matt Koehler and I just completed one today for ISTE's Special Interest Group for Teacher Education (SIGTE). The webinar was titled Technology Integration in...
Engineering Education, past & future II
A couple of weeks ago I made a presentation (with Neeraj Buch) to a group of engineering educators from India. This was a meeting organized by the College of Engineering and the Indo-US Collaboration for Engineering Education. Having made this presentation once I had...
Death & Taxes
I am always on the lookout for new and interesting visual representations of complex data and just discovered Death & Taxes, 2009: "is a representational poster of the federal discretionary budget; the amount of money that is spent at the discretion of your elected...
Analyzing political debate
Political debates are heavily analyzed - by pundits and laypeople alike. I had my own minor visual contribution to this discourse through this WordMap/Cloud of the third and final debate between McCain and Obama . Such wordmaps are fun to create and see but are not...