Data visualization is a really big deal. It always was, but the amount of data available is increasing at an accelerating pace, and thus the need for tools to represent and illuminate data is also growing ever faster. Some of those tools involve story-telling, where meaning is communicated. Some of them involve visualization technologies, in …

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2010-11-08_1040, originally uploaded by NDeRC2. This is too fun not to share. Check out this this live event display from the CMS detector at CERN. Just click the image to go directly to the live site. This screengrab of one of the earliest heavy ion collisions was captured on November 8, 2010. But there are …

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I came across a set of some 30 short videos on the subject of climate change, many of which touch on issues surrounding communicating about science in public venues.  I haven’t viewed them all, but it seems to be an informative series with something to offer anyone interested in clear communication about science. I’ve tried …

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2010-10-22_1204, originally uploaded by NDeRC2. Plato has Socrates show us, through the famous geometrical discussion with a young servant boy in the Phaedo, that entering into confusion is the beginning of learning. I’m thus pretty excited, because I’m about to learn somthing. I’m deliciously confused, and I’ve managed to pin the cause down with some …

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IMG_20101017_174237, originally uploaded by NDeRC2. I happened to stop by this sundial in front of Jordan Hall at the right time to capture both the shadow and the key to decoding it in this same image. As you can tell from reading the shadow on the face of the clock, the time seems to be …

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This past weekend I participated in the Education Project‘s second annual meeting. Sponsored by the Economic Development Board of Bahrain, the event brings together nearly 600 delegates from some 50 nations to reflect on the challenges and opportunities in education across the globe. This is a fascinating cultural event. I took too few images to …

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Even a hastily-assembled screencast can reveal a treasure trove of opportunity. Watch this few minutes of introduction to exploring images in Google Sky, and to using Aladin software to create astroimages from the world’s store of online data. This is great fun, and it can be done in a class period. A little technical stuff: …

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IMG_20100920_220619, originally uploaded by NDeRC2. Even a bad picture of Jupiter can show some wonderful detail. This is a cell phone image of Jupiter and two of its nearest moons. (I haven’t done the work, yet, to figure out which they are. There could be another of the four Galilean moons behind the planet.) One …

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This slide, taken from a blog describing the Summer 2010 International Conference on High Energy Physics, offers some glimpse into the long range planning that takes place in particle physics and in a number of other scientific fields, in this case on global and quarter-century scales. Teachers and students at the Notre Dame QuarkNet Center …

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Hi, NDeRC voicethread members. There’s an interesting conversation about to take place via Voicethread, from August 26 – 28. I’m going to do my best to follow along and participate, and I invite you to join in as well. The topic is important, and the medium is interesting. I would like to explore lab tours …

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