Free, Interactive Timelines with Chronozoom

I would like to introduce you to a free, online educational tool called Chronozoom. A product of the Microsoft Research team and the department of Earth and Planetary Science at the University of California, Berkeley, Chronozoom is designed to create dynamic, interactive timelines complete with images, videos, and other forms of media. Once you register with a free account, you can choose to view a large variety of featured pre-built timelines, or you can start your own. After choosing a start and end date, you can populate the timeline with any number of events (called Exhibits) and link to various existing media from around the web. When finished, you can even create a guided tour through your timeline. If you have a Microsoft OneDrive (formerly SkyDrive) account, you can include documents or images saved in the cloud.

Create your own interactive timeline at http://www.chronozoom.com. Check out the videos below to learn more about the creation of Chronozoom.

Aerial America: West Virginia

The Smithsonian Institution has released an episode of their "Aerial America" series highlighting West Virginia. Click the image below, to view the video online. Enjoy!   

The Changing Future of Printers

The death of the printer, and of paper have long been foretold (and even wished for). However, we seem poised for a world where printers and paper are used differently than the past. You’ve probably heard of 3D printers at this point, which use plastic to print 3D objects. However, technology is also driving paper printing in interesting directions. If you make you ink conductive, by adding metal particles to it, cool possibilities emerge. Nordic Semiconductor is showing off this prototype, which uses one thin electronic module, along with conductive printing, to create a Bluetooth keyboard that is printed on paper:

Imagine a world where every classroom has a basic kit of thin components (a la erector sets/lego sets/etc), that can be combined with many different printed designs to fit the need of the moment. Imagine this going one step futher, where the entire design can be printed. Perhaps you will someday print and cut out pieces of circuitry (on paper), and then stack them according to instructions inside a plastic shell you’ve printed on your 3D printer! This could be a fascinating way to bring technology literacy into future classrooms. Future engineers could design their own circuits to print.

You can read more here.