What we learned from designing an academic certificates system on the blockchain — MIT MEDIA LAB What we learned from designing an academic certificates system on the blockchain By Juliana Nazaré (@ju1es_), Kim Hamilton Duffy (@kimdhamilton), J. Philipp Schmidt (@schmidtphi) Over the past year, we have been working on a set of tools to issue, display, and verify digital credentials using the Bitcoin blockchain and the Mozilla Open Badges specification. You can find links to our source code, documentation, and discussion on our project homepage: The overall design of the certification architecture is fairly simple. Working on this project, we have not only learned a lot about the blockchain, but also about the way that technology can shape socioeconomic practices around the concept of credentials. Many of the most interesting challenges we encountered were not technical in nature, but they cannot easily be separated from the technology because small design decisions can fundamentally shape behavior. Issuer, Viewer, Schema (Beyond the) Hype Privacy
Limits Of The Human Body: How Much Sleep Deprivation, Radiation & Acceleration Can We Survive? By: Natalie Wolchover Published: 08/13/2012 09:21 AM EDT on Lifes Little Mysteries One hears epic accounts of people surviving bullets to the brain, 10-story freefalls or months stranded at sea. But put a human anywhere in the known universe except for the thin shell of space that extends a couple of miles above or below sea level on Earth, and we perish within minutes. Many of the boundaries within which a typical human can survive have been fully established; the well-known "rule of threes" dictates how long we can forgo air, water and food (roughly three minutes, three days and three weeks, respectively). Experiments over the decades — some intentional, others accidental — have helped stake out the domain within which we, literally, live. How long can we stay awake? Air Force pilots have been known to become so delirious after three or four days of sleep deprivation that they crash their planes (having fallen asleep). But at what point would he have died? How much can we accelerate?
Makey Makey | Buy Direct (Official Site) Study: Proof That We Sexually Objectify Women - Lindsay Abrams We look at women the same way we look at houses and sandwiches: as composites of attractive parts. Jason Lee/Reuters PROBLEM: Few would argue that the objectification of women is a real thing -- and a real problem -- but as yet there's been no cognitive explanation for it in a literal sense. METHODOLOGY: Images of average, fully clothed individuals (read: no supermodels in bikinis) were quickly flashed before the eyes of participants. RESULTS: Regardless of gender, participants consistently recognized women's sexual body parts more easily when presented in isolation. CONCLUSION: The cognitive process behind our perception of objects is the same that we use when looking at women, and both genders are guilty of taking in the parts instead of the whole. The full study,"Seeing women as objects: The sexual body part recognition bias," is published in the European Journal of Social Psychology .
Teacher's Quick Guide to Google Best Services I got you another poster that you will definitely love. I am adding it to the list of posters I have created before and I am also preparing another list of awesome posters that you hang on your classroom wall.Yes, I am determined to help you make your classroom look completely different this school year. Below is a great infographic from GCF Learn Free that sumps up the services Google offers us. Check out and tell us what you think
Top five regrets of the dying There was no mention of more sex or bungee jumps. A palliative nurse who has counselled the dying in their last days has revealed the most common regrets we have at the end of our lives. And among the top, from men in particular, is 'I wish I hadn't worked so hard'. Bronnie Ware is an Australian nurse who spent several years working in palliative care, caring for patients in the last 12 weeks of their lives. She recorded their dying epiphanies in a blog called Inspiration and Chai, which gathered so much attention that she put her observations into a book called The Top Five Regrets of the Dying. Ware writes of the phenomenal clarity of vision that people gain at the end of their lives, and how we might learn from their wisdom. Here are the top five regrets of the dying, as witnessed by Ware: 1. "This was the most common regret of all. 2. "This came from every male patient that I nursed. 3. "Many people suppressed their feelings in order to keep peace with others. 4. 5.
Learning to use My Blocks This tutorial explains how to use the "My Block" feature of the NXT-G programming system by working through several examples. What is a My Block? Why Use My Blocks? Making your First My Block Creating a My Block Viewing and Editing the Contents of a My Block Inserting a My Block into a Program Creating My Blocks with Input Parameters What are Input Parameters? Variables, Wiring, and Editing within a My Block Using Variables to Send Data to a My Block Defining Variables in a My Block Rewriting the Contents of a My Block Sharing Wires in a Tabbed Switch Using My Block Variables from the Main Program Making a Modified Copy of a My Block Copying a My Block Changing the Icon for a My Block Organizing and Sharing My Blocks Copying, Renaming, and Deleting My Blocks Broken Blocks Sharing Programs with Pack and Go Making a Sub-Menu on the Custom Palette What is a My Block? Figure 1: My Blocks are blue in color, and they appear in the Custom palette in NXT-G. Why Use My Blocks? Making your First My Block
What Does It Mean to Be Human? by Maria Popova Primates, philosophers, and how subjectivity ensures the absolute truth of our existence. What does it mean to be human? Centuries worth of scientific thought, artistic tradition and spiritual practice have attempted to answer this most fundamental question about our existence. From The Leakey Foundation, which aims to increase scientific knowledge and public understanding of human origins, evolution, behavior, and survival, comes What Makes Us Human? There is a lot more biology to our behavior than we used to think.” ~ Richard Wrangham Though the film is essentially an ad for The Leakey Foundation, that’s more than okay given that over the past half-century, the foundation has stepped up to the government’s consistent failure to properly fund scientific research and practically launched the careers of some of the greatest scientists of our time — Dian Fossey, Birute Galdikas, Don Johanson, Richard Wrangham, Daniel Lieberman, and even Jane Goodall herself. Share on Tumblr
52 Tips And Tricks For Google Docs In The Classroom Google Docs is such an incredible tool for college students, offering collaboration, portability, ease of use, and widespread acceptance – a must for students in online colleges for online marketing, for instance. But there are so many options, both hidden and obvious, that there’s a good chance you’re not using Google Docs to its fullest capability. We’ve discovered 52 great tips for getting the most out of Google Docs as a student, with awesome ideas and tricks for collaboration, sharing, and staying productive. 52 Tips And Tricks For Google Docs In The Classroom Access your documents from anywhere: Whether you’re in your dorm room or the school library, you can access your Google Docs. This is a cross-post from onlinecolleges.net
How Family Violence Changes the Way Children's Brains Function - Esther Entin - Health In much the same way that combat affects a soldier, violence causes a kid's natural alarm and response system to become too sensitive. Family violence affects the brains of children in much the same way combat affects soldiers, according to a recent study. The research found that chronic stress in children's lives affects their stress response systems -- in particular, two specific areas of the brain, the amygdala and the anterior insula (AI). Our body and brain are designed to recognize and react to threats to our well-being. The amygdala is the part of the brain that is involved in emotional responses, memory, anticipation of, and preparation for stress. When a person has been exposed to certain kinds of stressful situations, such as ongoing family violence, the amygdala may become overreactive. But it is not just the brains of those exhibiting the symptoms of PTSD that are affected. Simply put, it's much harder to play imaginatively when you are worried all the time.
How To Create A Google Drive Classroom How To Create A Google Drive Classroom by TeachThought Staff Using the cloud in the classroom can be a powerful thing. One of the most common uses of the cloud in today’s classroom is word processing, and one of the most common cloud-based word processing platforms is Google Drive. We’ve talked about offering voice feedback to documents. Since he clearly has experience in the classroom, this video is immediately better than the vast majority of universal Google Drive tutorials you’ll find. Update: A reader reminded us that Google Apps For Education is launching Google Classroom in September, a tool that “weaves together Google Docs, Drive and Gmail to help teachers create and organize assignments quickly, provide feedback efficiently, and communicate with their classes with ease.” In addition to other helpful tips, Behrendt includes information on: -Creating a class -Creating assignments -Sharing documents -Filtering results -Turning in digital work -Creating student portfolios -Naming files
7 Essential Books on Optimism by Maria Popova What the love of honey has to do with ancient wisdom, our capacity for hope, and the future of technology. Every once in a while, we all get burned out. Sometimes, charred. And while a healthy dose of cynicism and skepticism may help us get by, it’s in those times that we need nothing more than to embrace life’s promise of positivity with open arms. Here are seven wonderful books that help do just that with an arsenal ranging from the light visceral stimulation of optimistic design to the serious neuroscience findings about our proclivity for the positive. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince, one of our must-read children’s books with philosophy for grown-ups, is among the most poetic and hopeful reflections on human existence ever penned. Here is my secret. Published in 1943, translated into 180 languages since and adapted to just about every medium, Exupéry’s famous novella is one of the best-selling books of all time. Reviewed in full, with more images, here.