Hero rats

Just watched a cool Ted talks video about rats!

These rats are "hero rats." Some are trained to sniff out land mines, others to sniff out tuberculosis.

The director of the program is a guy who quit his job as an engineer to solve some of the developing world's most pressing problems. I admire him.

I'd like to donate to the cause. Have to figure out my reluctant PayPal account first.

Those rats are both clever and cute!

12th day: Doing good on the Web!

I'm especially intrigued by the Kiva website. I like that the money is loaned rather than straight charity. Not that I'm against charity, but I like the idea of the money being used to help a business venture, something that can help sustain people for a long time. It's the "teach a person to fish" rather than "give a person a fish" idea.

I've done the Hunger Site clicking before, too, but because there's so little investment from me, I just ended up forgetting about it! I guess I should put a reminder on my computer.

What are the ethical considerations to promoting these in a class? I don't think I would feel comfortable doing it as I remember being a poor college student. I would have felt bad if a college prof encouraged me to lend $25 when I didn't really have that kind of money even to part with for a while! Still, it might be interesting to discuss the way they persuade their audiences.

Day 11: Thesauri!

OK, I'm a word nerd, and I LOVED this idea! I may have looked at something similar to it before. It's cool to see the links between words.

I started with the free site, Lexipedia. I like it, especially the idea of "fuzzynyms". But I think it's British, which might not work for my students. What would they do with the term "small beer" for trivial? Or "trifle"? What would they think of "jolly"?

Visual Thesaurus is also good, but the diagrams aren't as large for the non-paying customers.

Still. Very cool.

Day 10: Mind mapping

I love bubbl.us! I will definitely use it in my class. I have students brainstorm topics for blogging because writing "this is what I did today" is boring after a while. It will work great for prewriting--for the students who like visuals and that free-association that this kind of thing requires.

Here's mine:

Day 8: New Search toolz

I like the idea of these, but I'm having trouble making them work for me. The screen shots and variety in the cube was most intersting, but I couldn't get the cube to turn correctly! I tried the arrow keys, etc. like they said, but it would only rotate a bit and kept showing me one side.

Viewzi had the nicest interface. I like that. But it took forever for it to load the screen shots.

Don't know if I'll use these.

Day 7: Mashups

This is what I said on the Coe 13things blog:

The data masher scared me a bit. I kept thinking about Randy Christiansen saying "correlation does not equal causation"! I think that it would be a great way to manipulate statistics and mislead people. Or, maybe you could use it more ethically.

I'll try one of the picture mashups--I think I accidentally started creating it on Lisa's account. . . . oops!

Here's my picture mashup, with one MP3! Or you can view it below. Grab and drag to see different parts of it.

Day 6: Tiny URL

The difference between a kid's Xmas list and a mom's Xmas list:

The kid's Xmas list is what he wants for Xmas.
The mom's Xmas list is what she's going to buy everyone for Xmas!

Here are a couple things on MY Xmas list and tiny URLs with links to the websites:

Nanodots for Robbie
http://tiny.cc/v1bc2

Calligraphy set for Eli
http://tiny.cc/e53yv