WhiteyPaint Turns Walls Into Whiteboards Without Cramping Your Wallpaper’s Style
Feeling useless? The folks over at WhiteyBoard seem to have a solution: WhiteyPaint. As WhiteyPaint’s motto so clearly points out, “you’re useless without it.” While the verdict’s still out on that one, it does seem like a pretty nifty little product. It’s basically a quick-drying translucent paint that you can write on with whiteboard markers, and according to the maker, it erases well too. WhiteyPaint can be used both indoors and outdoors, and on just about any surface you can find. 30 square feet of paint will get set you back $75, but that’s basically a steal compared with competing products.
Codecademy Looks Like The Future Of Learning To Me
So CrunchFund invested in Codecademy, along with Union Square Ventures and a whole pack of others. Codecademy teaches people how to code. Starting with the assumption that you know absolutely nothing at all about coding. It eases you in by asking you to type in your name. And, suddenly, you’re coding. It gets a lot harder from there. I also like that Codecademy is asking users to create new lessons. There’s a great reason for investing. That’s two months since launch. 750,000 people have used it. There are hugely obvious business models down the road. Codecademy says that their goal is to become the way that anyone can learn complex coding concepts, even people who’ve never coded before. What really excites me about Codecademy is that you can learn almost anything this way. All I can think of is how if this was around when I was in college I may have actually learned calculus this way. I’d still have gone to college because college was four years of concentrated fun. Like this:
Wanna Improve Education? Demolish the Classrooms | Co. Design
"Education is experience, and the essence of experience is self-reliance." —T.H. White, The Once and Future King Who removed the classrooms? Apparently, the Danish government did. 3XN, an architectural firm based in Copenhagen, responded to the government's vision by creating a radically different learning environment for Ørestad College. 3XN's design for Ørestad College is a novel interpretation of agility and openness where the architecture complies with the pedagogy of individualized and interdisciplinary learning. In designing for teaching and learning, I am continually asking myself the following questions: 1. Well, I've found the answer—Ørestad College. For more of our coverage of 3XN's work, click here. For more images of the school, check out Dezeen. [All images © Adam Mørk / 3XN]
Ørestad College, Copenhagen, by 3XN architects
Ørestad College is a new educational building in Copenhagen, Denmark, designed by 3XN architects. Here are the facts: Ørestad College Ørestad, Copenhagen, Denmark The Ørestad College will be the first in Denmark to fulfil new educational visions regarding subjects, organisation and teaching systems. Communication, interaction and synergy has been key issues. The college is interconnected vertically and horizontally. The rotation opens a part of each floor to the vertical tall central atrium and forms a zone that provides community and expresses the college’s ambition for interdisciplinary education. Address: Ørestad Boulevard/Arne Jacobsens Allé, Copenhagen Client: Copenhagen Municipality Award: 1. prize in invited competition 2003 Completion: 2006 Size: 12.000 m2 Budget: DKK 200 mio. / € 27 mio / $ 32.5 mio Architect: 3XNielsen Kim Herforth Nielsen, Bo Boje Larsen, Kim Christiansen Engineer: Søren Jensen A/S Adviser: Helle Mathiasen, cand. pæd. ph.d. Kim Herforth Nielsen, 3XN
The Principles of Experience Design
Whitney Hess is the cat’s meow in the web design world. She’s an independent user experience designer, consultant and prolific web logger based in New York City. Today, at the Future of Web Design, Hess took the stage to share a universally applicable set of experience design principles that designers should all strive to follow to take a site or product to the next level. Hess defines guiding principles as the broad philosophy or fundamental beliefs that steer an organization, team or individual’s decision making, irrespective of the project goals, constraints, or resources. She first laid out the visual principles of design including harmony, unity, contrast, emphasis, variety, balance, proportion, repetition, movement and texture. But, she says, creating a good design doesn’t automatically mean creating a good experience. Hess’s principles can be applied to both online and offline worlds. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. “There is no such thing as a perfect design. 9. 10.
