After a couple hours of trial and error I finally found a way to embed a Prezi on a WordPress.com site. There is a lot of information out there that is either wrong, or inaccurate so I thought I make a simple step-by-step list of instructions.

Step 1: Make a Prezi – Once you’ve finished your Prezi, make sure that you’ve made it “Public.” Private Prezis cannot be embedded.

Step 2: Sharing – Press the “Share” button. You’ll be presented with three options: viewing, embedding, and editing. Select the “Viewing” option not the “Embedding” option.

Step 3: Highlighting – You will be presented with a URL in the following format: http://prezi.com/prezi code/ prezi name/. Select and copy only this part of the URL, not the entirety of it.

Step 4: http://micetf.fr/wpprezi/ – Go to http://micetf.fr/wpprezi/. Past your URL from Step 3 into the textbox on the site and press the “Shortcode?” button.

Step 5: Copy - Copy the text the website generates.

Step 6: New Post – Create a new post on your WordPress.com site and select the “Text” tab.

Step 7: Paste – Paste the text from http://micetf.fr/wpprezi/ into your new post.

Step 8: Publish – Publish your new post and enjoy the fruits of your labour.

Please note that this techniques works for WordPress.com sites, not WordPress.org sites. For those sites there is an optional plugin available for embedding Prezis.

I hope this post saves you some of the frustration I experienced last night.

-Ryan Hunt

@Ryan__Hunt

1. Technology, Anxiety, and the Post-Apocalypse – I have a deep respect and admiration for the work Pete Rorabaugh (twitter: @allistelling) does as an educator. This is a new site created by his students to be a venue to post their writings about technology, anxiety, and the post-apocalypse. The project has a twitter account (@techapoc3120) and a Facebook page – follow and/or like them to support the students and their writing.

2. Extra Credits – Gamifying Education – My time teaching English in Korea taught me how valuable gamification can be to education. This YouTube video offers great examples and techniques for incorporating gamification in your classroom.

3. Day of DH – Day of DH is rapidly approaching, before we know it April 7th will be upon us. I’m especially excited about this year’s Day of DH because an extremely exciting project that I am a part of will be announced that day. Stay tuned for more details.

4. Googleable vs Non-Googleable Questions – This post details a thought experiment to encourage students to engage in higher order thinking by asking them to questions which Google cannot answer easily. I like the idea of this exercise and may try it out in my class next week, I’ll write a post about how it goes.

5. Is Education Ready for Youtube – While this article is somewhat old, it provides a good introduction to how universities are embracing YouTube as an education platform. In the five years since the article was written, YouTube has exploded as an education tool, housing everything from maker tutorials, to university lectures, to homemade DIY videos. As far as I’m concerned, YouTube is one of the best self-teaching resources on the web today.

Well that concludes another edition of ‘links of the week.’ Stay tuned to the site for a post offering tips for creating non-linear PowerPoint Presentations, as well as a post describing my ideas for my class on technology in education.

As always I’d love to hear from you – leave a comment, send me an email, or follow me on twitter.

-Ryan Hunt

@Ryan__Hunt

I hope you enjoy this info-graphic, I certainly did. Many thanks to Allison for sharing it with me.

The info-graphic can be found here.

In preparation for the course I’ve been going through my database of interesting links pulling out ones that focus on teaching and learning in a digital environment. I thought I’d use this post as an opportunity to share some of the links that have caught my eye.

1. How I turned my classroom into a ‘living video game’ – and saw achievements soar – While the average age of the class discussed in this article will be much younger than the one I’m teaching, this story is a great example of using ‘gamification’ to engage learners. The author notes that in video games players then to lose about 80% of the time, by embracing this model, educators can encourage students to take risks, fail, persevere, and learn.

2. Michael Wesch – The keynote speaker at TIES was Michael Wesch. His keynote was one of the most engaging and moving academic lectures I have ever attended. Much of his research examines new paradigms for education and pedagogy. I highly recommend visiting his Youtube channel and watching some of this lectures.

3. Flipping the Classroom with Kirch – This is a Prezi presentation made by high school math teacher Crystal Kirch in which she details how she uses the ‘flipped classroom’ method with her students. For those unfamiliar with the flipped classroom, it generally involves shifting the emphasis away from the teacher in favour of empowering students to lead the learning and teaching process. As someone who has made dozens of Prezis, I appreciate the amount of work she has put into this presentation. It provides a great introduction to the flipped classroom concept.

4. 20 tips and resources for using learning technology in higher education – This is a great resource from the Guardian filled with advice and ideas for intelligently incorporating technology in the classroom.

5. PowerPoint as an Interactive Teaching Tool – At TIES Beth and I gave a presentation on how to make non-linear PowerPoint presentations. While I’ll post a link to our presentation later on this week, this link is a good starting point for exploring how PowerPoint can be made a more engaging teaching tool.

Well that wraps up another edition of ‘links of the week.’ It’s been rather slow on the site as of late as I’ve tried to find my footing with a new schedule in a new town, but things are finally starting to come together. Look for an update-filled week including a post about how to make non-linear PowerPoint presentations, an info-graphic from a guest poster, and more thoughts about my upcoming course.

As always I’d love to hear your feedback – leave me a comment or send me an email. Have yourself a fantastic week.

Ryan Hunt

@Ryan__Hunt

“Conservapedia is a clean and concise resource for those seeking the truth. We do not allow liberal bias to deceive and distort here. Founded initially in November 2006 as a way to educate advanced, college-bound homeschoolers, this resource has grown into a marvelous source of information for students, adults and teachers alike. Our courses are ongoing and open to all here: Conservapedia:Index. We have received over 250 million page views! [sic]“

I can’t remember exactly what compelled me to check back with Conservapedia, but for some reason I found myself on the site. In the top corner of their homepage I noticed an ad that said, “Free courses are here.” I followed the link and quickly fell down the rabbit-hole of Conservapedia’s answer to MOOCs. Since 2011 Conservapedia has been offer its own version of MOOCs (Massively Open Online Courses) offering instruction on topics including: American History, World History, Economics, and American Government and Politics.

These courses are designed primarily to help homeschooled students improve their standardized testing scores and claim that they have helped many students excel in their college applications. The courses consist of written lectures, homework assignments, model answers, and final exams. Since the courses are run by Conservapedia’s founder Andy Schlafly, it appears that only one course is run at a time (the economics course is currently being offered).

Intrigued by these courses I went through the first lecture on “World History.” This lecture, consisting of text punctuated by a few images, presents the type of skewed  worldview that one would expect of Conservapedia. It plays to all the neo-Conservative talkpoints. Dogmatic focus on Christianity? Check (“We will make use of the Bible, which is the greatest history book ever written.”). Mistrust of science? Check (“There is no reliable evidence of man existing before 3500 B.C.”). Love of free-market economics? Check (“Taxes were a burden.”).

It should surprise no one that Conservapedia does a poor job of teaching world history, instead of dwelling on its numerous errors I want to focus on two things, namely, how Conservapedia uses history to pervert critical thinking, and an interesting case study of one of the site’s first students.

The purpose of Conservapedia’s MOOC isn’t to teach history, it’s to indoctrinate. While critical thought is generally the enemy of dogma, when perverted, critical thought can be its strongest protector. The lesson being taught by Conservapedia is to accept the ideas and beliefs from those on the inside, the “trustworthy” few, while questioning and rejecting everything said by liberal outsiders.

Schlafly does everything in his power to undermine experts and authorities, presenting his views as the only ones that matter. Take the following passage for example:

“Dates are based on the birth of Christ, and it is wrong to erase Christ from the annotation, as school textbooks do with “BCE” for “Before the Common Era” and “CE” for “Common Era.” To convert from a public school textbook, remember that BCE = B.C. and CE = A.D.”

The message here is clear – your textbooks are wrong, do not trust them. The course teaches students to mistrust their textbooks, but encourages students to give the answers the standardized tests want to here.

“History books speculate about “prehistory”, which predates writing (i.e., before 3400 B.C.). But there is no reliable evidence to support this speculation, and it is not worth spending time on. There is no reason to think that man existed for thousands of years without ever expressing himself in written form. But in case you are asked on a standardized test, historians describe the period of time known as “prehistory” as the “Stone Age.” They divide the Stone Age into two time periods: “Paleolithic” and “Neolithic”. The Paleolithic Age is older, when man relied mostly on hunting and picking nuts and fruit to supplement his diet. The Paleolithic Age was followed by the Neolithic Age, which consisted of the rise of agriculture. The “Neolithic Revolution” means the “Agricultural Revolution,” when farming became dominant. The dates of these ages are controversial, and historians have a bias for giving them older dates than archaeology actually proves.”

Once again this paragraph shows how Schlafly encourages students to mistrust the opinions of experts in favour of his own teachings. The best example of Schlafly attempts to pervert his students’ capacity for critical thinking is found in the homework assignment from one of his students named MaxFletcher.

One homework question from the first lecture of World History asks the students to pick one date from the lecture and explain why it surprised them, detailing why they think it may be wrong, or why they know it is right. MaxFletcher gives the following answer:

“What I find most surprising is the date of the flood when contrasted with the Egyptian empire. Only some 300 years had passed, three generations (give or take) and already an empire had begun! I am thinking that perhaps those dates are incorrect and the Egyptian empire started later. As I have read on conservapedia some dating techniques, such as carbon dating, are under some dispute so if using said techniques to date the beginning of the empire they may need to be recalibrated.” [sic]

MaxFletcher rightly observes that it seems unlikely that the population of mankind could go from two (Noah and his wife) post-flood to the size of the Egyptian empire in roughly 300 years. But instead of using his capacity for critical thought to question the existence of the flood or that the human race could rebuild itself from two people, he does as he has been taught by questioning the dating techniques of the experts.

Noticing that MaxFletcher had a Conservapedia account, I decided to see what he had been up to in the two years since he had written that homework assignment. Much to my surprise, MaxFletcher had been banned from the site for 5 years for “too much talk, not enough substantive editing.”

After doing some searching through MaxFletcher’s edit history, it appears the reason for his ban is more complex than the reason provided by the site. MaxFletcher appeared to have gotten into several arguments with a site administrator named Conservative. MaxFletcher felt that several of Conservative’s wiki edits were too extreme and made the site look less credible. Conservative called him an “atheist apologist” and  MaxFletcher responded thusly:

“Calling you out on your poor scholarship =/= atheist apologist. You show me where i have been an apologist for atheist behavior or retract. I am trying to make CP better but looking more and more like a wasted effort.”

After a few more exchanges like this MaxFletcher was banned from the site.

Going through the edit history and talk pages on Conservapedia is an interesting experience. There is a noticeable tension between users who want to make the site as fair and accurate as possible and those who simply want to use it as a dogma delivery mechanism.

Conservapedia is a fascinating case study for how some people use the web to create walled communities in an attempt to make themselves immune to outside points of view. It makes sense that with the rise of online learning and the increasingly proliferation of MOOCs, these communities would these tools to spread indoctrination and misinformation. The clear tensions that exist in the Conservapedia community gives me hope that even in the most dogmatic of online communities, some members will use their capacity for critical thought to disrupt the status quo.

This post is going to explore some of the possible methods for building a DIY book scanner. For those unfamiliar with book scanners, a book scanner is a tool used to take pictures of the pages of physical books, converting these pictures into files which can be used digitally.

At a basic level, the following parts are need to build a book scanner.

1. Lighting - something to provide even lighting to produce clear images of the page
2. Camera support - something to hold your camera at a consistent angle when photographing the page
3. Page flattener - something to flatten the page making it easier for OCR software to read the text
4. Cradle - something to hold the book in position
5. Electronics - something to trigger the shutter on the camera remotely
6. Camera – something to take pictures of the page
7. OCR software - Optical Character Recognition software converts your pictures in files which can be read on e-readers

If you want to build your own book scanner at home, you have two options: buy a kit, or build one from scratch. A number of websites offer mail-order book scanner kits. After doing some research, it appears that DIYBOOKSCANNER is a good option for people looking to build their first scanner with minimal fuss. For $475 USD DIYBOOKSCANNER will mail you a package consisting largely of laser-cut wood pieces containing nearly everything you need to build your own scanner (the camera and glass for the page flattener must be supplied by the builder).

DIYBOOKSCANNER also has a vibrant community to lend their help, advice, and experience to book scanner neophytes, some community members have even made Ikea-like instructions for assembling the scanner. A good overview of the building process, including the strengths and weaknesses of DIYBOOKSCANNER, can be found in the following article on Ars Technica.

After seeing what DIYBOOKSCANNER has to offer, Beth and I have decided that we can build our own book scanner for less than $475 using parts that will have uses other than book scanning. I believe that the key to building our DIY book scanner will be photography equipment.

Beth is an avid amateur photographer and I’m looking to learn more about photography myself. By using photography equipment to build our DIY book scanner we’ll be gaining both a book scanner and tools that we can use for photography. Here’s the list of equipment I plan to use to build our book scanner:

1. Tripod – this will be used to support Beth’s DSLR, insuring that pages are photographed at a consistant angle
2. Remote shutter - this will be used to trigger the shutter, speeding up the process of taking pictures
3. Photography lighting - this will light the page evenly
4. Cradle - I will make a cradle out of plywood and buy a sheet of glass to flatten the page
5. Camera - we will use Beth’s DSLR, I may buy a wifi-enabled memory card to automate the transfer of images to my Mac

When it comes to OCR software, it looks like there are two options: the easy but expensive option or the difficult but free option. Google allows free downloads of their Tesseract OCR Engine. This open source software offers accurate results, but takes quite a bit of tinkering to get up and running. Abbyy FineReader offers accuracy and ease of use, but costs $170 for a license. I intend to start off trying my hand with Google’s Tesseract engine and seeing how far I get with it. If I find it beyond my technical ability, I may break down and buy FineReader.

Once I start building our DIY book scanner, I’ll post about my progress. I’d love to hear what you think of my build plan. If you have any experience building your own book scanner, I’d appreciate some sage advice.

-Ryan Hunt

@Ryan__Hunt

1. The Deceptions of Data – This video of a lecture by Andrew Prescott explores our perceptions of data. He observes that while data is historically constructed and can be as “slippery” as any text or object, academics have a tendency to present data in more objective terms, often viewing it as a means, to quote Prescott, “of escaping from critical and theoretical concerns.” Prescott’s lecture reminds us all to be critical of data, because data, like anything else, can be deceptive.

2. Blogging and Social Media – This post from Jeffery Cohen’s blog In the Middle, stresses the joys (both academic and personal) that can stem from embracing blogging and social media. I agree with Cohen’s stance that social media can be used to create personalized academic communities that can help support students and academics during the hardest parts of academic life. Speaking from my own experience, twitter and the community that I have become a part of has been invaluable for me on both personal and academic levels. This post is well worth a read.

3. A Workflow for Digital Research Using Off-the-Shelf Tools – If a better introduction for getting started in digital humanities exists than William Turkel’s blog, then I am not aware of it. This ‘how to’ section is a wealth of information filled with tips and tricks to help you start “doing digital.”

4. The Best Way to Organize Your Gmail Inbox – It’s easy to let unread email stack up. This post offers a simple method for organizing your inbox. When it comes to organization, the easier the better.

5. Arts Future Book – This link directs you to a “multi-modal and open peer-reviewed academic article on the relationship between art historical thought and archival media” by Charlotte Frost, entitled “Is Art History Too Bookish?” This article encourages public peer review, soliciting feedback via comments and email. Not only is the article an interesting critique of contemporary art history, but it also serves as a potential model for the future of peer review.

Well that concludes another edition of ‘links of the week.’ Look for a fairly busy week on the site as I conclude the first season of ivrytwr video with our trip to the Kimchi Museum in Seoul.

If you have any comments, I’d love to hear from you.

Ryan Hunt

@Ryan__Hunt

Since I’ve been wanting to play around with these tools, Valentine’s Day provided me with an excellent opportunity.

Love

It’s hard to think about Valentine’s Day and not think about love. Let’s see how often the word love appears in Google’s corpus of books.

This ngram shows the  the frequency that the word “love” appears in all English language books in Google’s corpus from the years 1800 to 2000. Much to my surprise, the year 1888 had the most instances of “love” appearing in literature. If you had asked me to guess which year saw the most “love” before I created this graph, I would have imagined that it would have been a year closer to the present day.

The other thing that stands out to me from this graph is the drop in the appearance of “love” during the Second World War. Looking at the chart, the frequency of “love” drops sharply during the years 1935 and 1945. While a considerable amount of research would be need to connect this decline with the Second World War, it does make for an interesting possibility.

Love vs. Love

Not only does Google ngram allow you to search for the frequency of certain words, it also allows you to distinguish between parts of speech. Using commands like “love _NOUN_” and “love _VERB_” you can create graphs which compare the occurrences of  love when it is used as a noun and love when it is used as a verb. Let’s have a look.

This graph shows that while “love” follows similar trends when used both as a noun as a verb, it appears more regularly as a verb. I find it interesting, however, that the gap in usage between the two parts of speech narrow toward the end of the 2oth Century.

True Love

Google ngram also allows you to search for dependancies between words. Using the command “love => true” I am able to see the frequency the word “true” is used to modify “love.”

I don’t know if this implies anything cynical about our society, but the “true” is applied to “love” with decreasing frequency as we approach the present day.

Sex

Who says romance is dead? A comparison of “love” vs. “sex” shows that literature trends to write more frequently about love than it does sex.

While literature may have some romance left in it, the internet is an entirely different story. Using Google trends to compare searches for “love” and “sex” from 2004 to the present day, it tells an entirely different story about what people are interested in.

Over the past eight years, searches for “sex” have been nearly twice as common as searches for “love.” The moral of this story? If you’re looking for love, trying looking in a book store. If you’re looking for sex, maybe try a browser.

So that’s a brief introduction to my exploration of Google ngrams. I’d love to hear how you are using this tool for your own interests or research. If you have any ideas for how ngrams can be used, tips for using them, or stories of looking for love on the internet, please leave a comment.

Happy belated Valentine’s Day.

- Ryan Hunt

@Ryan__Hunt

When it comes right down to it, I’m not a future-oriented person. I would rather act in the present than dream about the future. While 3D printing has tremendous potential and may have a dramatic effect on our future lives, people are finding interesting, artistic, and innovative applications for the technology right now.

Today edition of ‘links of the week’ is going to highlight five links that examine how 3D printing is being used in interesting ways in the here and now.

1. Thingiverse – If you want an overview of how people are using 3D printers, Thingiverse is a great starting point. With the breadth of content on this community driven site you could easily spend hours exploring it. Thingiverse is a site for the 3D printing community where people can post their computer renders, physical models, or ideas. Many of the users even upload their plans for public use.

2. Shapeways – Shapeways is a 3D printing community and marketplace in the spirit of Etsy. This site gives 3D printers a venue to advertise and sell their products. Like Thingiverse, Shapeways is a good way to gain an overview of the kinds of things the 3D printing community is making.

3.Cory Doctorow’s the Future is Full of 3D Printers – This article links to a story written by Cory Doctorow in which he imagines the future of 3D printing, a world in which such devices have been declared illegal due to their potential for copyright violations. While this story may appear at odds with my anti-futurist opening, it raises interesting questions about the legal future for 3D printing. 3D printers have the potential to take significant power away from the corporate world by allowing people to design and build their own goods. Just as the internet has caused us to question the nature of copyright, so too will 3D printers.

4. Science in Three Dimensions: the Print Revolution – This article examines how the scientific community is integrating 3D printing into their own research. Researchers from palaeontologists, to biologists, to anthropologists are using this technology to aid their research. This article is a great introduction to how 3D printing is changing research.

5. Wearable Stratasys and Materialise 3D Printed Pieces Hit Paris Fashion Week at Iris van Herpen Show – Two weeks ago Stratasys Ltd. (a  manufacturer of 3D printers) announced that it was partnering with Dutch designer Iris van Herpen to show two 3D printed ensembles to Paris Fashion Week. These dresses were co-designed with Australian architect Julia Koerner and made using Stratasys Ltd.’s mutli-material 3D printing technology.

Well that concludes another edition of ‘links of the week.’ I’m still settling into my new environment in London, Ontario which means I’ve yet to establish a regular writing schedule. My goal is to write at least two posts this week. On Tuesday I’ll be attending a workshop on managing Zotero and Evernote research libraries. I hope to write about what I learn from this workshop.

As always I’d love to hear from you in the comments – if you know of any interesting 3D printing applications, or if you doing any 3D printing yourself, please let me know. Have yourself a fantastic week.

-Ryan Hunt

@Ryan__Hunt