A Billion Users, But a Trillion Sensors

The web is starting to bring on new sensors that will change the way that we interact with the internet, data, and the world. By connecting the items of the world to the web, we will be immersed in a (insert really big metaphor like sea or galaxy) of data and information. This will change things once again. To get a grasp on what that looks like and to make a case that we will have to rethink how we build technical infrastructure and design user interfaces, the folks at MAYA Design created this video.


Trillions from MAYAnMAYA on Vimeo.

I really like to the simple approach in the video, showing how big a trillion things are and how they begin to consider where we will probably have to look for our own design inspirations. It is interesting to think about how this will impact science, education, marketing, collaboration, etc.  These changes also once again underscore the need to improve content aggregation tools. We will have to have better ways to handle this data. Finally, for the first time, I think it has made me think about how cloud computing will become a real necessity for leveraging all the data of the future. This is going to be interesting.

Lookabee Teaching Support on Facebook

High School teachers can now use Facebook to keep in touch with students. Mashable posted about the site here. Very interesting. Leveraging the social platform will allow students to keep in touch, use other services like Box.net. I think that it might be a little difficult because most schools ban Facebook and don't encourage students to use social networks. Of course you have to be careful about building services on a "closed" platform, but still this adds value to the end user.

If my high school teachers would have been willing to work with me through Facebook, I know I would have done better. There were so many times I wanted to ask questions and clarify assignments, but there was no way I was going to do it front of the whole class, who was just about to explode if they didn't get out of the room. For me, high school was so boring and terribly inefficient anything like this would have been so helpful.

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Great Resources on the Web for Sixth Graders

Hey, I am looking for some great resources (web sites) for sixth graders. Creative writing, problem solving... Anyone out there with any suggestions? I am usually the one answering questions like this, but I am rarely in the elementary classroom these days.

What would be even better is if any of you have a del.icio.us account with them already captured.

Thanks.




Photo from: http://flickr.com/photos/futureofmath/

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Freebase Project "synapses for the global brain"

Interesting description of Freebase by Tim Orielly.

If Metaweb gets this right, this bottom up approach will build new connections between data, new categories and ways of thinking. It will likely be messy and contradictory for a while, but as I told John Markoff for the story on Metaweb that he was preparing for the New York Times tonight, they are building new synapses for the global brain.

Hypercard and the New Web

Scott Wilson posted here about hypercard and the new web. This brought back a lot of memories for me. was my first take on building multimedia applications. I created several fully functioning Hypercard stacks in the early 1990s as part my graduate program at WVU. I also taught a graduate class that required students to develop hypercard hypermedia environments, so I spent a lot of time teaching the tool and evaluating others work. Thinking back, I really enjoyed building and experimenting with the tools and the concept of hyperlinks was so new and enticing.

Scott and David Davies discuss the similarities and differences of the interactivity and easy of use of the hypercard tool then and the web 2.0 now. I think about this often as I consider how to improve the learning process using the network. The hypercard of today is probably being built right now, if it isn't already completed. We built a prototype of such a tool, but we haven't released it to the wild. Well, maybe the easy of use to hypercard is a leap, but it is similar. We are re-developing a production model soon. I am anxious to get it out to the web.