The Top 75 ‘Pictures of the Day’ for 2012 *Update: The Top 100 ‘Pictures of the Day’ for 2012 have just been published. Click here to check out the most up-to-date post! After the positive reception from last year’s “Top 50 ‘Pictures of the Day’ for 2011“, the Sifter promised to highlight the top 25 ‘Pictures of the Day‘ at the end of every quarter, eventually culminating in an epic Top 100 for 2012. It’s hard to believe we’re already into the final quarter of 2012. *Please note the photographs themselves were not necessarily taken in 2012, they just happened to be featured as a ‘Picture of the Day’ this year. Enjoy! Collection Online Featuring nearly 1600 artworks by more than 575 artists, the Collection Online presents a searchable database of selected artworks from the Guggenheim’s permanent collection of over 7,000 artworks. The selected works reflect the breadth, diversity, and tenor of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation’s extensive holdings from the late 19th century through the present day, and are continually expanded to include a larger representation of the museum’s core holdings as well as recent acquisitions. In addition to highlights from the Solomon R. Learn More about the Collection
ScienceBlog.com - Science news straight from the source Video: MIT's Latest User Interface Employs Gravity-Defying, Levitating Metal Orbs The future of user interfaces seems to be gesture-based, at least if one simply looks at where research dollars are flowing and what products--yes, like the Kinect--are coming to market. But the peripheral is not dead. Jinha Lee at the Tangible Media Group at the MIT Media Lab sees a different future, one that dispenses with gravity to create a much more tangible yet futuristic UI that lets users move and interact with floating, gravity-defying objects in 3-D space. Lee's prototype ZeroN is a small metal orb floating in free space that users can manipulate by moving around and placing in midair. For instance, the ZeroN can be used as the stand-in for a camera in a 3-D scene (imagine a scale architectural model placed in the ZeroN's working space; the ball can be moved around the model, changing the point-of-view of the 3-D representation in a graphic representation). The trick to all this is a precision electromagnet fitted to a moving actuator above the ZeroN's workspace. [Co.Design]
Bloggingheads.tv A List of Books | 623 of the Best Books Ever Written Schools Should Teach Science Like Sports Suppose you wanted to teach children to play baseball or softball. How would you go about doing it? One approach might be to sit them down and start having them memorize the rules of the game, the dimensions of the field, the names and statistics of past players, and a host of other facts. You would stop teaching them periodically to review the material in preparation for multiple-choice assessment tests. The students who showed a great aptitude for memorizing large numbers of facts could go into honors classes where they would memorize even larger numbers of facts. At the end of the process, without ever leaving the classroom, how well do you think the children would be able to play baseball or softball? Why have we thought that this process would work with teaching science to children? The Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) are intended to be a cure for this approach. Here is an example of one performance expectation, taken from high school Earth and space science courses:
NSDL.org - National Science Digital Library Photojournal: NASA's Image Access Home Page BanksyInside - A Digital Magazine Dropping What's Fresh on the Web The mysterious Banksy just released some new paintings on his website. You heard it right, Banksy painted on a canvas. All Banksy fans will appreciate. Here are a few of my favourites. 5 Quick Tips for Secondary Classroom Management That Actually (I Promise You!) Work This fall I will begin my sixth year of teaching, which is still weird to see written down because it seems like just yesterday I was struggling through my first. (And second. And probably third, too, for good measure.) Classroom management was my biggest struggle in those beginning-teaching years. I went in suspecting I would have classroom management in the bag because I'd had pretty extensive experience working with kids from babysitting, being a camp counselor and other volunteer-type roles. In my first year, I had no procedures in place and thought that my students wouldn't learn if I wasn't always nice to them. In my second year, I overcompensated for my leniency the previous year and behaved somewhat like a dragon. My third year is when things started to even out. Classroom management isn't like following a recipe, where you follow exact steps and end up with a beautiful finished product. 1. A quiet voice is way more effective than a loud one in the long run. 2. 3. 4. 5.
National Science Foundation Youth RadioAt 19, Youth Radio's Joi Morgan makes it her business to know what's in, when it comes to the latest cosmetics. But only recently has she started to wonder about the contents of the products she puts on her face—lipstick in particular. She brings us this story.View All NSF Science Now Episode 22In this week's episode we discover hidden dangers in crib mattresses. We learn about a new stretchable antenna for wearable health monitoring devices. We study the dynamics of deep Earth and finally we explore Antarctic ice sheets from above. Rashad Alakbarov Paints with Shadows and Light Artist Rashad Alakbarov from Azerbaijan uses suspended translucent objects and other found materials to create light and shadow paintings on walls. The best part is that you can easily create something similar at home – all you need is one or two lamps and some items from your desk. The stunning light painting below, made with an array of colored airplanes has found its way to exhibitions like the Fly to Baku at De Pury Gallery in London. Rashad adds, “Above the cloud with its shadow is the star with its light. Above all things reverence thyself.” Comments comments