Will Richardson Ted Talk

We watched a Ted talk about making the learning process different and better. Although I love and try to use some of the ideas he speaks about in my everyday life. I have an ipad, in fact I'm on it right now. I can use the ipad to teach me everything my teachers are supposed to and way more. I utilize the opportunities given to me in order to help me be more successful in learning and life. The learning system that I am deeply engulfed in is troubled. The American learning system is failing many children. We need to adapt to the resources students have and the WAY STUDENTS LEARN. We have fast paced classes and slow paced classes but we need to add creativity into the learning process. Change will be hard change can take a long time. It needs to happen but I don't think it will, at least in my generation it won't. But that's not going to stop me from using it to help advance my sucess as a person.

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Infographics

I don’t know about this class but in english we are supposed to treat wikipedia like the gritty underbelly of the internet. However, I feel that you can find a lot of important information on wikipedia so this post is going to be all of the really important/interesting things I find on the infographics wikipedia page.

“In 1626, Christoph Scheiner published the Rosa Ursina sive Sol, a book that revealed his research about the rotation of the sun; Infographics appeared in the form of illustrations demonstrating the Sun’s rotation patterns.”

It is commonly believed that cave dwellers were the first infographic creators, I think that is really cool but Christoph’s creations were the first infographics like the ones created today. Other early infographic creators include Florence Nightingale and Carl Ritter.

Nightingales infographic which was presented to Queen Victoria.

The Pioneer Plaque

Infographics were even created to communicate with aliens! Visual data representation is truly universal. It is so cool to consider that as humans we can create something that can, hopefully,  be understood by an extraterrestrial.

Infographics became more popular in the 20th century. “In 1972 and 1973, respectively, the Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11 spacecraft included on their vessels the Pioneer Plaques, a pair of gold-anodized aluminum plaques, each featuring a pictorial message. The pictorial messages included nude male and female figures as well as symbols that were intended to provide information about the origin of the spacecraft. The images were designed by Carl Sagan and Frank Drake and were unique in that their graphical meanings were to be understandable to extraterrestrial beings, who would have no conception of human language.”

Washington DC Metro Map

This picture made me realize I have an infographic hanging in my house.

The Tate Gallery By Tube

This is a picture of the image that is hanging in my house I honestly never even realized that this could be considered an infographic but it is pretty cool.

“Closely related to the field of information graphics is information design, which is the creation of

infographics. Author and founder of the TED, Richard Saul Wurman, is considered the originator of the phrase "information architect" and many of his books, such as Information Anxiety, helped propel the phrase "information design" from a concept to a job category.”

This was actually really cool to find out. It connects two of my favorite parts of my studies this year, and reminds me that I never have time to watch Ted videos lately which sucks.

*I tried to get all of the images on here instead of the links but my laptop froze whenever I tried to insert them*

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Beware Online Filter Bubbles

So I wasn't going to post a full-on analysis of this Ted talk but It did what it intended to, it made me think. The ides of having computers decide, with great accuracy, what I like and what I may like in the future is weird yet very cool. News websites aren't the only services that do this. From Pandora to Target modern life has become so wrapped up in what you want now. This helps you with getting people what you, think you, need at a better cost to you. However this technique removes much of the opportunity for creativity and finding new exciting things.I feel like these techniques should be regulated but this could easily be a sticky situation. I just hope that the internet remains a, somewhat, open place where people can express their beliefs, concerns, and qualms with the world.

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Ted Talk: Beware online filter bubbles.

So I watched another Ted talk today, I didn't have my chrome book so I just took notes the old fashioned way. If I have time I will retype type this all.

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Ted Talks

Ted is one of the best examples of modern media that can be found today. Hundreds of lectures, conversations, and speeches on every topic can be found in a really simple format. Its like YouTube only without all of the mindless content, although I love that too. I always want to watch these but I forget so from now on once a week I will watch one a week and review it. Here are a list of some of the ones I am most interested in.

We are all designers
Online filter bubbles.
Visual News
What is the internet

There are tons more that I want to watch but I will be starting with these four.

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Ted Talk: Crowdsourcing the news.

Today in class I watched this Ted talk entitled Crowd sourcing the news. In this talk, Paul Lewis, discusses the benefits that are achieved by using social medias like twitter, and facebook to create a complete version of events. He discusses two events where police reports are incorrect and using the power of the Internet he completes the story of two men's deaths.

Here are my semi-coherent notes that I took while watching the video.
strangers help in teaching and co-producing news
different perspectives added together to complete the story
the top officials can mislead people with their stories
newspapers accounts can change with edition
eyewitnesses collaborate and tell the real version of events
find people with the same information to prove
skeptical articles draw peoples own questions
someone somewhere has the proof
when people see the proof the other stories fall
the Internet can connect eyewitnesses who are very far away
information travels randomly through Internet but often gets to the correct place
people want to tell the truth and seek to get it off their chest
citizen journalism may be less respected so it needs exact verification
verify against other accounts to remove misinformation
people document significant events and share their stories
examples include the political unrest in middle east, Japanese earthquake
utilize the technologies that allow you to see individual stories in order to complete the story

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