Winsome Wednesday: "Doing DaVinci"

Doing da Vinci, a new interactive website with a companion weekly show, contains historical and scientific information about Leonardo da Vinci, as well as games and surveys. There are also video clips and information and interviews about the expert builders who brought da Vinci's machines to life, from his notes and diagrams.

One of the more interesting web applications on this site is Leonardo da Vinci's Personality Quiz. Several colleagues, including CoffeeDdaisy, Lona, sciproLdySlpr, Linda (Mrs C) and brina 1300 in our PLN, professional learning network, tried it out. We found it enlightening, as well as entertaining. This quiz would definitely capture the interest of students and teachers. It could be used as a lesson starter, sometimes called the anticipatory set.

This website contains timelines, samples of da Vinci's machines and a host of other applications that could be used by teachers of any subject.

The draw to da Vinci, as the ultimate Renaissance Man, remain his great and varied interests. Try out the website, quizzes, model-building and dramatizations. The companion television show will air each Monday throughout the month of April.



Image Credits:

Wikimedia.org

DaVinci Notes of Geometry of Flower

Leonardo da Vinci Helicopter and Lift Wing

My Plurkadian Tag Cloud

Plurk is a microblogging social network that my PLN, Professional Learning Network, uses to collaborate in real time and asynchronously.

A wonderful new feature, is the Plurkadian Tag Cloud. These are very interesting.

I can't wait until there is an rss feed for these Plurkadian analytics.

A Blog, Without Tag Clouds?

The blog LearnMore: Library Stream by Steve Campion is a wonderful introduction to tags and clouds, and I will pass this URL on to those I think need it. I have noticed that teched people are often very informed about computers, yet sometimes lack insight into cataloging and datamining. Both of these are skills I continue to hone. I enjoy the activity of deconstruction of text to summarizing tag clouds.

One specific problem area that I am noticing as I read other people's blogs, is what seems to be a total indifference to the necessity of tags. Another major problem is their lack of tags using words found in the posting. For example, a blogger had asked us, the forum participants, to provide some teched resource information, but the words used in the posting were not those used in the tags. Because the tags were incomplete and inaccurate, they were ineffective. This caused confusion among the readers.

Recently, I noticed a forum posting that referred me to a teched blog, but the blogger had not given the correct URL for the posting referenced. After an hour of sorting through the blog titles, I finally found the posting. I don't ordinarily stick with an issue such as this, but there was a desire to share this major issue (lack of tags or even proper titles) with others. Other bloggers can learn from this experience. It is an opportunity.

Being more like a chaotic stream of consciousness, blogs do not have the organizing structure that is inherent in websites and wikis. I believe it is the responsibility of bloggers to organize their chaos through tagging and clouds.

The tag cloud is very visual, yet it is text. I believe this understanding enables a wide variety of learners to access the blog posting they want to read. Isn't that what bloggers want? Visitors...Readers....Clickers;D

Steve Campion posted a wonderful blog about a critical issue in the interactive web. Tagging is a very important skill, and I believe those who can search effectively may also tag effectively.