ClappingTree’s Web 2.0

Check out Google for Educators. Launched about a week ago, this site includes how-to guides and lesson plans for various Google apps, such as Blogger, Earth, Docs and Spreadsheets, Web search, Book search, Maps, SketchUp, and Picasa (photo-sharing). In particular, Infinite Thinking Machine, a partner blog site, looks set to wow many with its new series of video tutorials. For example, ITM#1: Calling Planet Earth (00:09:27):

Here’s a podcast on the “who” and “how” questions of podcasting from The Podcast Academy (a sister channel of IT Conversations):

Curious about who’s listening to podcasts in general, or do you need to know who your particular audience is so that you can attract the right sponsors? The panel fields questions such as: Who are the listeners in categories of age, education, gender, and location? How much are podcasts being used for learning? How much for corporate purposes? These panelists discuss the latest metrics on who’s listening and who’s producing podcasts, plus offer creative ways of getting to the numbers behind your podcast.

Chanced upon this cool video entitled “MIT Sketching” on YouTube this morning (00:04:42):

Curiously, the MIT guy chose to call this “Assist Sketch Understanding System and Operation”. I believe this is a revised version of the Physics Illustrator that I was exploring a month or two ago. The software is basically “a motion simulator for the Tablet PC”:

Bring your drawings to life with the Physics Illustrator, Simply draw two-dimensional bodies, connect them in various ways and apply forces, then watch as animation makes the bodies move, collide, and interact.

(See also HOW TO: Use Physics Illustrator on non-tablet PC.)

A succinct illustration by Stephen Downes last Monday (see this Google video for his verbal explanation) on the differences between “groups” and “networks”:

In Downes’ words:

“The drawing depicts the often unnoticed assumptions that inform our understanding of groups, inform our sometimes slavish devotion to groups, and shows how these contrast with my own understanding of how interaction ought to occur, in networks. It’s not just a web theory (though it is that), it is a theory about life and society in general.”