Dec
31
Dec
30
Picture from my friends blog. Amazing.
Dec
30
Picture from my friends blog. Amazing.
Dec
23
http://www.apple.com/trailers/fox/knightandday/
I have no idea what's going on, but it looks like a funny movie. Action Thriller Comedy? We will see.
Dec
23
Interesting article over at Fast Company. (here http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/cliff-kuang/design-innovation/infographic-day-college-really-worth-it)
The answer is yes and maybe? College graduates do earn more over the course of their life, but is that due to their work ethics and smarts or is it because of a college degree?
On thing that I find interesting is a lot of the problems the article points out are absent at my school Brigham Young University. We are the Princeton Reviews Number 1 Stone Cold School for like 11 years running or something. We we will go to parties just as much. They just involve food and crazy games versus liquid courage.
So read the article and make your conclusion. I think that college helps a lot. You learn to live on your own, you make tons of great connections, and learn how to learn.
Dec
23
I want it.
I need it.
Maybe it's my childhood love of Star Wars. Maybe it's the sweet design. But I want these shoes.
Dec
23
Great game. BYU destroyed Oregon 42-20. Max Hall ends as the most winning BYU quarterback. Pitta made amazing catches. The team is pumped and ready for bigger things in 2010. Super game.
Dec
20
Home in Washington. We made our annual drive up to Timberline to see the lights. This house was crazy. Alternating red and green over the entire house and yard. Love Christmas time.
IMG_0700
Dec
17
I love winter. It means snowboarding and Christmas time is almost here.
Dec
17
I tried to print a one page summary and got this one page print out saying I didn't have sufficient funds. I find that slightly funny and a bad user experience.
Dec
16
http://www.apple.com/trailers/paramount/ironman/
Looks great. I loved the first one. Hope the second one lives up to it.
Dec
14
While I don't agree with the idea that you can't have new ideas, it is true that there are often many people having the same good idea at the same time.
Elisha Gray and Alexander Graham Bell both invented the telephone at the same time.
In class today we had not one, but two presentations that dealt with the difficulties of students and professors syncronizing assignments and dates on the syllabus. And then on the same day I see this.
Dec
14
How the iPhone Could Reboot Education
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/12/iphone-university-abilene/
Good article. It's funny because I do this all the time. When a professor mentions a topic I don't know about, I will immediately Google it on my iPhone. Sometimes the professor will ask "Anybody know..." and I will Google that and answer the question. I think it helps me to be more engaged and active in the classroom.
There are a lot of arguments for not having laptops in classrooms (because seriously the iPhone is almost a mini laptop) but I think that those people who play Solitare and check facebook during class on a laptop, would just be the ones texting friends or sleeping, whether or not they have a laptop.
In the end, I think that supplying students with tools they can use to be more actively engaged and invested in the lectures can only help.
Dec
14
Here are some pictures of the recent snowfall. We got 17 inches at the resorts, so I will be snowboarding shortly.
Dec
14
Here is a mock up I did for my Digital Communications class. The original ad is for CookMate, an awesome app that recently launched.
The idea is to create a mobile educational software system that pulls in all the services that students and teachers already use to communicate and collaborate.
Dec
14
I love Christmas. Every year the BYU Folk Dancers put on a huge show called Christmas Around the World. Through some random events I made the Folk Dance Team and participated in the concert this year.
Dec
12
So I feel like I can confidently use the word cute to describe this little guy.
Dec
11
Dec
11
http://steveblank.com/2009/12/10/someone-stole-my-startup-idea-–-part-3-the-best-defense-is-a-good-strategy/good article. We should make sure we start this soon.
Joshua
Dec
10
by Skyler Vander Molen
Dec
10
Sometimes I run across words that I don't know. For example I just ran across the word parsimonious in a book. It means frugal to the point of stinginess.
I have an idea. I think that all books should have a link to a vocabulary test website.
You take the test once before you read the book. The words tested on include a lot of words that could be new in the book as determined by running the text of the book through a program that compares the words against a catalogue of the most commonly used english words.
Then, after you have read the book and encountered the words in context, you could take the test again and compare your score.
This score improvement could be tweeted out. For example "I just increased my vocab test score %35 by reading The Shack by William P. Young."
This would help students, make books a little more viral, and increase peoples vocabulary! You could even offer a coupon for a different book by the author or publisher upon successful completion of the test.
Dec
10
Pick the attribute that is most responsible for success:
1. Ability
2. Effort
3. Other people
4. Luck
Interesting that 3 out of the 4 can actually sometimes inhibit success. If you believe in ability, there will be a task sometime where you feel you don't have the ability. Other people are great until you are alone. Luck works until it runs out. Only effort constantly contributes to success.
I find this interesting because effort is largely downplayed in many of my social circles. When someone fails, we joke about them receiving an "E for effort" instead of an A.
So the next time you feel you are failing at a certain task, honestly ask yourself if you are giving it your best effort. Don't try to make excuses or find others to blame, look only at yourself. Chances are you can give it a little something extra. Like Rudy.
Dec
10
All students take notes. In fact everyone takes notes. At meetings, conferences, and conventions. Or rather we are told we are supposed to. But often we are not taught how to take notes. We just know that we are bad students/attendees/workers if we don't.
Here are 4 notes taking strategies from a variety of studies (Beecher, 1998 Note-Taking) to help you be that A student you've always wanted to be.
1. Don't write down everything - A fair amount of research says this is the least effective strategy. When you are trying to record everything, you are not synthesizing or finding what is essential.
2. Notes should be considered a work in progress - Once notes are taken, they should be continually added to and revise. I know I am guilty of writing my notes once and never even looking at them again, sometimes not even for the test. Reviewing and Revising notes can help to process and internalize concepts.
3. Notes should be used as study guides for tests - another simple one, but important. If we have continually added to and revised our notes students should be able to use them as a sweet test prep. This implies that you don't cram.
4. The more notes taken the better - often times we think of notes being "brief" but studies point to the amount of info in notes and achievement. However, we can assume that those notes use these other 3 principles. Otherwise, the "best" notes would be a video recording you make of every thing ever said in the class. But when we are synthesizing, working on and revising our notes, the more we take the better.
So there you have. Now stop reading this post and start studying.
Dec
10
I am reading a book called Classroom Instruction that Works. It is primarily for teachers. But I am learning things that help students (such as myself) as well.
I just learned a great idea on summarizing. To summarize effectively students need to:
1. Delete some information
2. Substitute some information
3. Keep some information
This seems quite basic, even simple, but I didn't learn it until today. Most of the time, I thought that a summary was just making something shorter. If I had to summarize a story, I would just tell it in shorter words. I never really tried to subsititue things unless it was changing a longer word for a shorter word.
What summarizing really is, or what it should be for effective learning and communication, is getting to the heart of the problem. The core. Summarizing is finding what is essential and nothing more.
Dec
08
http://livingstories.googlelabs.com/
Interesting collaboration. Basically a topic page, Google and the NYT are working together to create a timeline and relevant articles on major topics. Current topics include Global warming, the swine flu, and the war in Afghanistan.
Here is a write up on the NYT of course:
Dec
08
Interesting. Kind of a cool idea. I love it when Apple does anything in the social media category. Available in the US only, you can now purchase iTunes Online Gifts through Facebook.
You pick your theme, pick your amount from 5 to 50 dollars and an electronic gift card will be posted to your friends wall, and to their email.
This is powered by Gift Card Mall, and of course, Facebook.
Interesting idea. I would love to get one, am it makes a lot of sense for friends and family that don't live close.
Dec
07
I found this quite funny. It was on a post about business, but its funny even alone.
Dec
05
This is from an article in Entrepreneur.
The author states that sometimes the hardest questions are the big opened ended ones like "Why should we buy from you?"
Here is how he suggested you could answer that question. I really like the emphasis on honesty and openness.
Customer: So, tell us this. Why should we buy from you?
You: Honestly, it would be arrogant of me at this point to say why you should buy from us. I'm not even sure you should buy from us, much less why.
What I can tell you right now is why certain people buy from us, and why certain people don't buy from us. I can also give you an idea of why others buy from our competitors, and why some don't.
That's not bluster. Some customers put a great deal of emphasis on flexibility, others value clarity of contracts. I don't know which you value more. And that's just one small component; I'd be happy to list the issues we need to talk about in order to learn who you should buy from.
Nobody is better than everyone else across every single dimension--including us. So it's critical we talk about your various needs to determine who your best supplier is. If we sit down and talk honestly about what's important to you, together we'll learn whether my company is your the best supplier.
So let's get to work. Let's start working to figure out who you should buy from.
Dec
02
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Joshua Dance Likes World
About
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I love life, Macs, the outdoors, design, and chocolate chip cookies. The soft chewy kind.
I'm on Twitter
http://joshdance.posterous.com/
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