NorthStarNerd.Org

Academic Earth: From Harvard to UCLA

It's rare that a new learning portal excites me, but Academic Earth has definitely attracted the attention of the Northstar Nerd. After all, how could one not be intrigued about a web service which does NOT have the usual 1,000's of online advertisements and includes courses from these schools:

Universities:

• Berkeley
• Columbia
• Harvard
• Michigan
• MIT
• Princeton
• Stanford
• UCLA
• Yale

While the portal is not limited to engineering courses, given the focus of NorthstarNerd.Org here are the technical subjects: (other examples: History or Political Science)

• Academci Earth: All Subjects
• Academic Earth: Chemistry
• Academic Earth: Computer Science
• Academic Earth: Engineering
• Academic Earth: Mathematics
• Academic Earth: Physics

I hope Academic Earth's experiment in bringing some of the world's top courses online succeeds. The site carries the dot org label, and here is a link to their story:

• Academic Earth: About Us | Investors

Finally, remember to check out the Engineering Learning Section of NorthstarNerd.Org. I've added all the Academic Earth courses to the apprpriate sections. Academic Earth is also now included in the custom Google search engine (focus: engineering courses)
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Engineering Learning with a Twist

Question: What has 22 learning sections, six Google Custom search engines, and is now hosted on NorthstarNerd.Org?

Answer: The Northstar Nerd's Engineering Learning Portal

But wait ... just like any new offering around Christmas time, there's more! You'll also find learning resources devoted to Language Learning, Lego Robotics, Management, and Nobel Prize Winner Lectures.

In the future, you may always link to this content via the "Engineering Learning" menu selection in header navigation bar. However, for your convenience, the root Engineering Learning Portal page is duplicated below.

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These pages are link repositories of freely available engineering learning and reference content with a couple of other educational twists thrown in for good measure (bolded sections)! Your host, Rich Hoeg, is a knowledge collaboration expert whose goal since he built some of his company's first web sites in the early 1990's is open access to knowledge and learning. If you have suggestions for these pages, please contact me.

Sections with Google Custom Search Engines:

• Courses | Legos | Management| Nobel Lectures | Podcasts | Seminars 

Engineering Disciplines:

• Aerospace | Chemistry | Computer Science | Electrical | Mathematics
• Materials | Mechanical | Music | Physics | Software | Tech Mgmt | Other

Other Learning Sections:

• Engineering Software Design Tools
• Engineering Manuals
• Kid's Corner
• Language Learning

Are you interested in open access research?

• Course and seminars are great, but sometimes reviewing research is better!
• Access DSpace (technical research from MIT and other fine organizations)

These pages are link repositories of freely available engineering learning and reference content with a couple of other educational twists thrown in for good measure (bolded sections)! Your host, Rich Hoeg, is a knowledge collaboration expert whose goal since he built some of his company's first web sites in the early 1990's is open access to knowledge and learning. If you have suggestions for these pages, please contact me.

Sections with Google Custom Search Engines:

• Courses | Legos | Management| Nobel Lectures | Podcasts | Seminars 

Engineering Disciplines:

• Aerospace | Chemistry | Computer Science | Electrical | Mathematics
• Materials | Mechanical | Music | Physics | Software | Tech Mgmt | Other

Other Learning Sections:

• Engineering Software Design Tools
• Engineering Manuals
• Kid's Corner
• Language Learning

Are you interested in open access research?

• Course and seminars are great, but sometimes reviewing research is better!
• Access DSpace (technical research from MIT and other fine organizations)

Lego Engineering and Robotics

Last week I posted about the Google Lego Engineering and the Lego Engineering initiative at Tufts University. Although not strictly Legos, Stanford has an undergraduate robotics course which is worth a look for your advanced First Lego League student. The course is offered via Stanford's Engineering Anywhere initiative. I also added the robotics course to my Lego Robotics Educational Search Engine.

Photo Journalism 101 (story + images + music + animation = success)

You may ask the question ... what gives the Northstar Nerd the "right" to speak about the topic of photo journalism? After all, I've never worked for a newspaper (unless you count my high school paper, The Exonian). However with the advent of Web 2.0, the ability to tell a story, an ear for music and Photopeach, the Northstar Nerd has become Photopeach's leading "most featured content creator"!

Okay ... so what's my secret ... and what's Photopeach?

• First, PhotoPeach is a service that allows the end user to create web mashups that include your own uploaded photographs, music (including YouTube) and Flash animation.
• Second, you don't need to be web geek to create the photo animations. You can let PhotoPeach make its best guess ... and before you know it you'll see your images magnifying it ... moving ip, etc.
• Third ... Music, Music, Music!

The music you use is almost as critical as your images. The proper music drives your creation; the wrong music will bore your audience. For instance ... for each of these creations the music supports the story and images:

• One Armed Skier Conquers City of the Lake Loppet, I used "Eye of the Tiger from Rocky".
• Northstar of America, I used "North to Alaska"
• Triumph of the Proletariat (or how to bag leaves), I used Soviet Anthem music

You get the idea ... the music drives the content and the story. This brings up another point. Photopeach allows one to add captions. A brief animation caption will work wonders.

Now comes one of the most important parts ... your marketing. If you are taking photos of an event, you must create your animated show by the next morning. When folks who attended the event return home, Google will be their best friend. They want to see pictures of what they just particpated in ... first to the web will show up in the top Google results.

In addition, don't forget to microblog on Twitter, and contact show sponsors, web services etc. If your site does not carry advertising (such as my site, NorthstarNerd.Org), you would be surprised how many folks will link and add stories to your content.

For my own content, I've been picked up and promoted by ...

• Branson Air Show by the Branson Airport & Chamber of Commerce
• Sunrise Over Suomi by the Finnish American Minnesota Heritage Society
  and
• Blackflag Marathon by SkinnySki.Com

You may view all of my photoshows via Northstar Nerd TV.

Here are three examples:

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Project Polar Bear on PhotoPeach

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One Armed Skier Conquers City of the Lakes Loppet on PhotoPeach

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Old Testament (China) on PhotoPeach

Language Learning

A number of friends have recently asked me about Language Learning Resources, thus I decided to republish this post with edits, link audits and updates! This page will be maintained and always easily findable via the eLearning link in this blog's top navigation menubar.

This page was last updated on October 7, 2009

Language Learning Resources

Over the last several years my travels (business and pleasure) have taken me to China, the Czech Republic, England, India, Poland, Switzerland... not to mention many cities throughout the USA. What universally impresses me on all of these travels is the number of languages my peers and friends know. I am personally limited to English, and some college French and German .... and a few words in Czech. By US standards even this amount of knowledge might seem admirable, but it is not. When one is doing business, or visiting friends in another country, the ability to converse in the local language and understand cultural norms is not only an advantage, rather if possible, it should be considered the expectation.

Okay ... now that you've read my sermon, here are resources to assist in the task of learning another language. One neat smaller company out of the United Kingdom, Eurotalk. Although you will have to spend a few dollars to purchase their training, the number of languages upon which they provide instruction is amazing ... and not just to and from English.

All right, I always seem to have suggestions for "free" content, and thus here goes ... you will find three major buckets of resources (from the BBC, PBS, and eBooks)

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BBC Language Learning Resources (root page)

• Courses Covering:
  • English
  • French
  • German
  • Greek
  • Italian
  • Mandarin Chinese
  • Portuguese
  • Spanish
    .
• Other Resources:
  • Additional Languages (not full courses)
  • Essential Travel Phrases (MP3 Downloads in 36 languages)
  • Language Review: French | German | Spanish
  • News (in 33 languages)

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Annenberg / Corporation for Public Broadcasting Language Learning

It is one thing to take lessons, or use eLearning to learn a language, but the best most optimal way to become fluent in any language is to visit a given country.  However, since that is not always practical, Annenberg has a number of language learning video series which are streamed free via the net where you follow an story line acted our and presented by native speakers.  If you are so inclined, there are manuals available for purchase that correspond to the series.

• English
• French
• German
• Spanish - Level 1
• Spanish - Level 1

Important Note: A free registration is required to view this content.

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Language Learning eBooks

Obviously one can purchase language manuals and dictionaries from Amazon or your local book store, however there are other free resources available on the web.  Here are some I have noted that will support your language learning efforts:

It is often possible to use Google Book Search and WikiTexts to access or create your own eBooks. Some examples are provided, along with a tutorial explaining how to create and use your own Google eBooks.

• WikiTexts examples (downloadable pdf)
• Chinese: Mandarin
• French
• German
• Japanese

Using Google Book Search to create your own eBooks:

• Tutorial

Finally, it is one thing to learn the language.  It's also good to become familiar with a country's norms and background.  An excellent resource for this is the CIA World Fact Book.

Hacking Wireless Networks

Just discovered a new web site full of great security videos ... including the one noted in the blog post. The new service is named SecurityTube.Net. This looks to be a great site which a focus upon an extremely important topic ... network and computer security. Oh yes ... the lecture Hacking Wireless Networks. This service definitely gets added to my engineering seminar search engine (and the software site of the Engineering Learning Wiki)

Nobel Prize Winners Video Lecture Search Engine

The Nobel Prize is the top honor one may be awarded for scientific research or humanitarian work. Recent years have seen a significant number of Nobel Prize Winner Lectures become available via web based video. Given these lectures are found upon many diverse web sites, the Northstar Nerd decided such an important knowledge domain should have it's own search engine. Thus, I am happy to roll out a new search engine dedicated to these lectures. You will also find a new section of my Engineering Learning Wiki dedicated to Nobel Knowledge.

Use the search box found below to try my new Nobel Knowledge Search Engine.

Nobel Prize Winner Search Engines Sites:
(index contains 359 web pages ... last updated: 10/02/2009)

• Gustavus Adolphus College Nobel Conference
• Honeywell Nobel Interactive Studio
• Mahidol University Nobel Lectures (Bangkok)
• MIT World Nobel Lectures
• Nobel Prize
• Vega Science Trust
  
• YouTube: Honeywell Nobel Initiative
• YouTube: NobelPrize.Org Channel

If you know of other Nobel Lecture Video Series, please contact me. I will be happy to add those lectures. Finally, you may wish to see my other search engines and Google Custom Search tutorial.

Build Your Own Cosmic Star

It's been a while since I've seen a really good new site (at least new to me) that I wanted to add to my Engineering for Children section in the Engineering Learning Wiki, but SEED (Schlumberger Excellence in Educational Development) excites me. Here are just a few links:

• Build Your Own Star
• Math Puzzles
• Virtual Science Labs
• Science Festures

I've yet to explore the entire site; the amount of good content is impressive. I'm still learning how to build a good cosmic star!

Google Fast Flip Tutorial / Screencast

Google Labs just announced Google Fast Flip, and I got excited! This new service allows the user to more easily browse and decide what media content one would like to read (i.e. newspapers, journals and magazines). In fact, I liked Google Fast Flip so much that this evening I created a brief tutorial (three minutes in duration). Take a look and learn how browsing electronic media sites just got easier.

• Northstar Nerd Google Fast Flip Tutorial
  (may take a moment to load)

If you found this screencast useful, check out my other tutorials ... or Northstar Nerd TV! My other most recent tutorial is on the Google Wonder Wheel.

To help you quickly understand Google Fast Flip, I've included one screenshot below. Click to maximize:

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One item I left out of the screencast is how to order the various categories on your page. See the screenshot below for instructions:

E=MC2 ... or eScience + Physics + Microsoft = Wow!

Every once in a while I find something new in technical education which excites me ... in this case its some classic physics lectures (1964) taught by Dr. Richard Feynman. Why?

• The lectures in question are truly classic
• The technology behind the video streaming service is impressive

Even if you don't care about physics, you need to link over to Project Tuva. Make certain you start up at least one lecture, and enjoy! My thanks to the eScience at Microsoft for making me aware of this initiative. This content will be added to the Engineering Learning Wiki and its Google custom search engine within the next few minutes. I've attached two screenshots below ... click to expand and view full sized. The images doesn't do justice to the experience.