Identify a Lie with 6 Simple Questions post written by: Marc Chernoff Email We all fall victim to at least a few lies during the course of our lifetime. Some lies may be extremely troublesome to our personal wellbeing, while other “white lies” may be far more innocuous. Either way, a lie is meant to deceive. So how can we avoid falling victim to a lie in the future? A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.- Mark Twain How do you know this? If you enjoyed this article, check out our new best-selling book. And get inspiring life tips and quotes in your inbox (it's free)... 7 Basic Rules for Making Charts and Graphs Charts and graphs have found their way into news, presentations, and comics, with users from art to design to statistics. The design principles for these data graphics will vary depending on what you're using it for. Making something for a presentation? You'll want to keep it extremely simple and avoid using a lot of text. Designing a graphic for a newspaper? However, whatever you're making your charts and graphs for, whether it be for a report, an infographic online, or a piece of data art, there are a few basic rules that you should follow. There's wiggle room with all of them, and you should think of what follows as more of a framework than a hard set of rules, but this is a good place to start for those just getting into data graphics. Check the data This should be obvious. Explain encodings Maybe you use a color scale to indicate magnitude or the size of a square to represent values. Without your pointers, it's a guessing game for the reader. Label axes Include units Include your sources
Every Teacher’s Guide to Assessment It’s not a stretch to say that assessment is a hot button issue in education; however, you’d be hard pressed to find an educator who doesn’t see the value in measuring student progress. Assessments themselves have been vilified, when, in fact, it’s why assessments are given and how the data is used that is really the issue. The Glossary of Education Reform gives this great overview of what high-stakes testing is and how it impacts students, teachers, and schools. Basically, high-stakes testing has consequences for the test-takers and givers—sometimes in the form of a high school diploma, grade advancement, and even teachers’ salaries. But not all assessment is high-stakes, and when done thoughtfully, the right assessment can provide extremely useful information for all stakeholders—students, teachers, parents, schools, and policy-makers Let’s take a look at what assessment is, why it’s important, and how it can be delivered in the classroom in a useful manner. What is assessment? Scoring
70 AI CS5 Tutorials Once or twice a week I like to come up with articles that really expose my viewers to the various types of tutorials that they need to get their latest designs off the ground. I have rounded up an amazing collection of high quality Illustrator CS5 tutorials that you will definitely benefit from. In this post, you’ll find everything from designing a clean retro 3D arcade text effect to creating a beautiful vector portrait. How To Create a Cool Chrome Text Effect in Illustrator How To Create a Cool Chrome Text Effect in Illustrator Retro 3D Arcade Text Effect in Illustrator Retro 3D Arcade Text Effect in Illustrator Create a Variety of 3D Lettering Effects for Poster Design Create a Variety of 3D Lettering Effects for Poster Design Learn to Create a Variety of Script Lettering Learn to Create a Variety of Script Lettering Create An Editable Metal Type Treatment Create An Editable Metal Type Treatment Grungy 3D Text In Illustrator Grungy 3D Text In Illustrator Shoot print work for your portfolio
Today Is Your Day To Win Home - Visual Thinking Strategies 33 Digital Tools for Advancing Formative Assessment in the Classroom I came across a great blog post the other day – Formative Assessments Are Easier Than You Think – that told the firsthand account of a teacher, Steven Anderson, who implemented formative assessment in his classroom. He used a sticky-note version of an exit ticket to elicit evidence of student learning and in his words, “what a difference that made.” Formative assessment is ‘easier than you think’ and with all the digital tools and apps now available for mobile devices it’s even easier. We’ve shared some digital tools before and with the five tools that Steven shared combined with our earlier suggestions there are now 33 digital tools that we’ve uncovered that are free or inexpensive and help teachers implement formative assessment in their classrooms. Here they are: A few of Steven’s discoveries: Lino – A virtual corkboard of sticky-notes so students can provide questions or comments on their learning. Poll Everywhere – Teachers can create a feedback poll or ask questions. Pick Me!
Time on the Brain: How You Are Always Living In the Past, and Other Quirks of Perception I always knew we humans have a rather tenuous grip on the concept of time, but I never realized quite how tenuous it was until a couple of weeks ago, when I attended a conference on the nature of time organized by the Foundational Questions Institute. This meeting, even more than FQXi’s previous efforts, was a mashup of different disciplines: fundamental physics, philosophy, neuroscience, complexity theory. Crossing academic disciplines may be overrated, as physicist-blogger Sabine Hossenfelder has pointed out, but it sure is fun. Like Sabine, I spend my days thinking about planets, dark matter, black holes—they have become mundane to me. Neuroscientist Kathleen McDermott of Washington University began by quoting famous memory researcher Endel Tulving, who called our ability to remember the past and to anticipate the future “mental time travel.” McDermott outlined the case of Patient K.C., who has even worse amnesia than the better-known H.M. on whom the film Memento was based.
Thinking Visually 15 no-prep games with just little scraps of paper One of the most flexible and useful resources in the classroom are bits of scrap paper. One thing that has really developed in my teaching over the years is my ability to react flexibly to things that happen in class, such as students knowing more or less about the language point than I expected, having wrong information about the class, students arriving late, or energy levels not being what I expected. One vital part of developing that ability to respond rather than just stick to the lesson plan has been to find and develop games that can be can be added to almost any class as and when needed. Most of these games use things that are already in the classroom or at least the school, such as the students’ fingers and textbooks- perfect for improvising and for the minimal resource situations I have often taught in. Games where you tell them exactly what to write 1. Give out two pieces of paper per student and ask them to write the two categories you will be looking at on them, e.g. 2. 3.
60 Small Ways to Improve Your Life in the Next 100 Days Contrary to popular belief, you don’t have to make drastic changes in order to notice an improvement in the quality of your life. At the same time, you don’t need to wait a long time in order to see the measurable results that come from taking positive action. All you have to do is take small steps, and take them consistently, for a period of 100 days. Below you’ll find 60 small ways to improve all areas of your life in the next 100 days. Home 1. Day 1: Declutter MagazinesDay 2: Declutter DVD’sDay 3: Declutter booksDay 4: Declutter kitchen appliances 2. If you take it out, put it back.If you open it, close it.If you throw it down, pick it up.If you take it off, hang it up. 3. A burnt light bulb that needs to be changed.A button that’s missing on your favorite shirt.The fact that every time you open your top kitchen cabinet all of the plastic food containers fall out. Happiness 4. 5. 6. How many times do you beat yourself up during the day? 7. Learning/Personal Development 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13.