Visual Observations of the Web

How is the world feeling or reports worldwide in the past few hours?
Jonathan Harris gives a talk about Visual Observations of the Web at TED Talks and describes them as “Passive Observations.”
The We Feel Fine Project scans the world’s blogs to collect snapshots and blurbs of writers’ feelings. Diameters of dots are correlated to the length of feelings. Some dots revels snapshots submitted with this “passive observation” of feelings. You can manipulate the metrics to reveal the amount of similar thoughts of a particular location, gender, and even weather.
The Universe Project turns current events into constellations of words and pictures. News items instead of feeling are visually observed.
Both sites explain that we possess a deep need to express ourselves and that we have much more in common that we choose to believe we do.

The Progression of YouTube

Title: Progression of the Numa Numa YouTube
Description: Students learn how a simple music video released by a Former-Russian-Province Boy Band can generate a global exchange of ideas in the form of YouTube Videos.

• 2003 - Eastern European Band O-Zone releases a song titled “Dragostea din Tei”
  YouTube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mdb0B3Ib2gE
• 2004 - 19 year-old Gary Brolsma of New Jersey hears the song and records himself lip-sinching to the lyrics with his new webcam
  A Japanese Cartoon Copycat Video is released at this time
• December 6, 2004 - Gary uploads the video to internet video site Newgrounds.com
  He calls it the ‘Numa Numa Dance’
• January 2005 - The video is seen by millions of people
• 2005 - Video sharing website YouTube launches
  Gary’s Numa Numa Dance Video on TouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60og9gwKh1o
• The ‘Numa Numa Dance’ inspires thousands of copycat videos… and is eventually downloaded over 700 million times itself
• Chinese Cartoon YouTube Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8skO9d6lg4
• Japanese Dance YouTube Video (yes, that is a man): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERzTfsFpSaY
• Chinese Dance Music Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jH0sezjtBDo
• Korean Dance Music Video
• US Navy Numa Numa Video
• Balan - Sugar Tunes (Numa Numa) Compilation Video:
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5y4wehtHgw
  Integration: This evolution of YouTube is  unique way to get students thinking about how IT brings about a global exchange of ideas.
  Update: My classes made our own Numa Numa Video for the eInstruction makeover Contest!
  http://eimakeover.shycast.com/contestant/372/
  It was our first video production with mostly borrowed equipment, but my classes had so much fun creating the video!
  

The Petabyte Age

There was thought-provoking article in Wired Magazine July 2008 titled “The End of Science” and discussed how the massive amounts of data is replacing the need for hypothesis, modeling, and testing. Sensors and Web Databases are stored on almost infinite amounts of storage and can be accessed worldwide.

Malick View: If you feel that there was “something in the water” to create an unusually high-maintenance group of students in your class, there would be no need for hypothesis and experimentation, just go to the water utility company in the area and search which chemicals were found in the drinking water for the life spans of the students in your school region. Correlation instead of theory seems to be such the norm, we are no longer trying to speculate big topics such as Global Warming and how InfoTech is going to make our students productive citizens in the future, because the massive amount of data is currently not available.