I love visual proofs of mathematical theorems. One visual proof I use quite often in my design courses (CEP817 or CEP917) is a visual proof of the fact that the sum of consecutive odd numbers is a square number. In other words: 1 + 3 = 4 = 22 1 + 3 + 5 = 9 = 32 1 + 3...
Posts related to: Design
Truly grasping 4-D
Understanding 4D while living in a 3D world. A stunning series of videos (freely available for download or online viewing) that teach you how to to visualize four dimensions. Titled Dimensions, these videos were created by a French professor of mathematics in...
Design for democracy
Very nice piece in today's NYTimes about ballot design (How Design Can Save Democracy). The article offers a list of problems with the traditional ballot and suggests a solution. A good example of the value of information design. Check it out here
Day 3: Meetings & Workshop
Day 2 ended with my meeting KHari (aka Chairman) and Rags (aka Chore) - two BITS batchmates, whom I hadn't met in almost 18 / 20 years. It was great catching up with them - but what that meant was that by the time I got back to my room I was totally exhausted and...
By the Numbers
I just discovered a blog by Charles Blow, visual Op-Ed columnist for the NYTimes. Titled By the Numbers it is a site for "discussion about all things statistical — from the environment to entertainment — and their visual expressions." Pretty cool. Check it out.
Day 2 Morning session, Mishra & Light
I just completed my presentation Education Technology and Teacher Education, the TPACK framework. I think it went well, though you have to talk to ask the audience what they "really" think. I had been allocated 60 minutes for my talk - but Radha and I discussed...
TAPS / TPACK videos
A few years ago, as a part of our PT3 project Matt Koehler, Ken Dirkin and I video taped a series of teacher interviews around authentic problem solving in teaching using technology. The teachers were winners of the TAPS (Technology in Authentic Problem Solving)...
Post-lunch session: Geetha Narayanan
Geetha Narayanan, Director Mallya Aditi International School and Srishti School of Art Design and Technology, is someone I have wanted to meet for a long time. One of the pleasures of of this conference is getting an opportunity to hear her speak ... and I was not...
SET conference: Mid-morning session
The next session State of ET in India Today and was led by fellow BITSian Manas Chakrabarti (now an independent consultant). He led an panel of teachers who have been using technology in their teaching. What was interesting was the manner in which corporate interests...
Links of interest
During Dr. Jalaluddin's keynote I took some time to search online for some reports, prompted by what he had been saying. (Yes I was listening not just browsing). The first is an European study: ICT in Schools: Trends, Innovations and Issues in 2006-2007. You can...
Heading to India
I leave for India tomorrow to participate in a Symposium on Education Technology in Schools: Converging for Innovation & Creativity being held in Bangalore from the 20th to the 22nd of August. The meeting is organized by the Quest Alliance, USAID and International...
The making of “Editing is Cool”
I had posted about this really cool video I recently found (see Life is about editing). Behold my surprise when one of the comments on the blog was from none other than Allee Willis (see her wikipedia page here, and personal website here). It was just great to hear...
Digital before his time
A recent story in the NYTimes about Peter Gabriel (An Old Rocker Gets Digital) brought back memories of Peter Gabriel's album covers. It tells you a lot about me that I know album covers better than I know his music! During his time with Genesis and later, when he...
Life is about editing
A fun and thought provoking, recursive music video by Allee Willis titled "Editing is Cool." The video attempts to capture the process of creating this very video, from the lyrics, to the music to the special effects and so on. Denise Caruso (at Salon) quotes Allee...
How artists work
An interesting (and growing) collection of "habits, rituals and small (and occasionally big) methods people and teams use to get their work done. And in the specific anecdotes and the way people describe their own relationship to their own work." Kind of cool and...
Blogging for the iPhone
I have been playing with an iTouch for the past few days and have have been quite impressed. What bothered me somewhat though was that my website (something I have spent hours designing) didn't morph itself as gracefully as I would have liked into this new interface....
Mirror, mirror
Imagine you are standing in front of a bathroom mirror; how big do you think the image of your face is on the surface? And what would happen to the size of that image if you were to step steadily backward, away from the glass? A recent article in the NYTimes (Mirrors...
How does my browser know I am Indian?
Over the past few weeks I have noticed that some webpages I visit have banner ads that are targeted to me quite specifically - in particular to my Indian origin. For instance this page (a story about ipods being used by the army) contains a set of banner ads that seek...
On finding the right (parking) spot
I had posted earlier about a "virtual speed bump" a visual illusion that make drivers think that they were approaching a speed bump when in actuality it was just a design cleverly painted on the ground. Now here's another one: Directions in a car park... As the...
Browsing for gender
Just found out about this rather nifty tool that looks at your browser history and estimates your gender. My personal results were as follows: Likelihood of you being FEMALE is 24% Likelihood of you being MALE is 76% Try it out for yourself, or read more about how...
Ask-ing Cuil questions of Google
How do we evaluate a search engine? Chris Wilson attempts to answer this question (with help from the crowd) in his article on Slate "How To Talk to a Search Engine: Three queries to help decide if Google or Cuil or Ask is right for you?" The three search items he...
AllTop
I just came across a rather different kind of news aggregator, at least compared to Google. The brainchild of Guy Kawasaki (ex-Apple evangelist and tech guru) you have to check out AllTop. This may actually become a regular destination for me.
Visual thinking
While researching my previous post about véjà du and Abraham Wald I came across "The Back of the Napkin Blog" (a.k.a. Digital Roam). This blog is devoted to visual thinking and representation. Very cool and very interesting... well worth a visit. Turns out that there...
véjà du for the first time ever!
I learned a new term today, véjà du. As we all know (didn't I write a posting about this earlier?) déjà vu (or paramnesia) from the French meaning “already seen” describes the experience of feeling that one has witnessed or experienced a new situation previously. It...
Pogue on design
David Pogue has couple of great examples in his latest posting about bad design in the world of software. Check out: It’s the Software, Not You. Potentially useful in CEP817/917...
Killing with a thought
I had recently posted a note (It's only a game...) building on some thoughts in an article by William Saletan. In this article Saletan describes how weapons are increasingly becoming like games. His recent post takes that whole thing one level further. He describes...
Font Face Off
Mike DeSchryver sent me this video... very funny particularly if you are a typophile like me...
Not so Cuil
I was just trying out Cuil the new search engine and came up with some strange results. This is what the front page looks like, rather dark for my liking, but again they had to do something different from Google's stark white front page. if you click on the "About...
A cuil new search engine
Cuil (pronounced cool!)... check it out. How does it compare to Google? Functionally? Design-wise?
sci-Phone
In a previous posting I raised the question about when does a piece of technology become an educational technology? One of the coolest pieces of technology today is the iPhone. Can it function as an educational technology? I have been considering getting one for a...