Howard Rheingold

"Scapple is the software equivalent of how I work out my rough ideas on paper. (If I didn't hate the word "brainstorming" so much, I'd probably call it brainstorming software.) When I'm in the early stages of any project, whether that's a writing project or a software project, I tend to throw a bunch of ideas down on a big piece of paper, spacing out as-yet unrelated ideas, clustering related notes, and drawing connections between them, trying to work out how everything fits together. Here's an example of how my messy thoughts translate to paper at that stage:" - Howard Rheingold

"Others had created a working light bulb before Thomas Edison unveiled his incandescent light bulb in 1879, Freeberg remarks, but "Edison invented a new style of invention, a coordinated program of scientific research and product development."" - Howard Rheingold

"To begin, biologists have found that the biological origin of advanced social behavior in humans was similar to that occurring elsewhere in the animal kingdom. Using comparative studies of thousands of animal species, from insects to mammals, they have concluded that the most complex societies have arisen through eusociality — roughly, “true” social condition. The members of a eusocial group cooperatively rear the young across multiple generations. They also divide labor through the surrender by some members of at least some of their personal reproduction in a way that increases the “reproductive success” (lifetime reproduction) of other members. Leif Parsons Eusociality stands out as an oddity in a couple of ways. One is its extreme rarity. Out of hundreds of thousands of evolving lines of animals on the land during the past 400 million years, the condition, so far as we can determine, has arisen only about two dozen times. This is likely to be an underestimate, due to sampling... - Howard Rheingold

RT @iceskatingbears: Books in Heat blog highlights 3 @mitpress books by @hrheingold, Paul Ceruzzi, - Howard Rheingold

RT @brainpicker: When he was in the 9th grade, Aaron Swartz, who took his life last month, nailed all that's wrong with education http:/ ... - Howard Rheingold

RT @tiffanyshlain: Participate in our new film on #character - only takes a couple min - watch here: http://t.co/S4NGEDYWEg @hrheingold - Howard Rheingold

"uild your own Co-opoly experience with a custom version of the game! We can customize Co-opoly to your organization or community’s needs, incorporating your real-life experiences directly into the game. We will tailor Co-opoly so that it will be set in your community - with resources, allies, settings, and challenges that people in your community would face. Since Co-opoly doubles as a fun game and as a learning tool, a custom version will help you envision how your co-op will work together and how it will fit in your community. Use it for planning with your stakeholders, recruiting members, and training newcomers. During the customizing process, you will also identify potential problems and ways to avoid or remedy them for your co-op or community. Co-opoly can be adapted to various types of organizations, too. For example, we can give the game an agricultural theme for your farmers’ cooperative, or style it after your collectively-run bookstore. Whatever your needs, we can tailor... - Howard Rheingold

"One of the tools I have successfully used to break free of the digital classroom cul-de-sac is Ushahidi.[3] Ushahidi is an open-source, collaborative mapping platform that enables real-time data aggregation. It features a relatively simple interface that gathers information from any number of participants and, in real time, visually geotags that data with color-coded dots on an online map. A participant can upload photos, embed videos, write comments, or simply mark the date and time of an incident. Although it appears at first to be like another version of a custom Google or Geocommons map, what makes Ushahidi different is the speed and source of the data that is fed into the system. Like Twitter, the mapping occurs instantaneously and can be fed into the map from any number sources: via web browser, mobile phone, Smartphone, or email. This feature makes Ushahidi a powerful, online, rapid-response tool as it creates a living, changing map of an event from a collective, ground-level... - Howard Rheingold

Displaying a depiction of human eyes makes people act more honestly, generously? http://t.co/TiktTNiC8x - Howard Rheingold

RT @jmpcronin: @garystager @hrheingold Thank you for this conversation #Storify story "Defining Definitions" http://t.co/ZPrz3BHHAz #etmooc - Howard Rheingold

Wordpress version of my Posterous-based mini-course on crap detection http://t.co/iKwWvPeM - Howard Rheingold

"Mass collaboration differs from mass cooperation in that the creative acts taking place require the joint development of shared understandings. Conversely, group members involved in cooperation needn't engage in a joint negotiation of understanding - Howard Rheingold

"Chen designed a study — which he describes in detail in this blog post — to look at how language might affect individual’s ability to save for the future. According to his results, it does — big time. While “futured languages,” like English, distinguish between the past, present and future, “futureless languages,” like Chinese, use the same phrasing to describe the events of yesterday, today and tomorrow. Using vast inventories of data and meticulous analysis, Chen found that huge economic differences accompany this linguistic discrepancy. Futureless language speakers are 30 percent more likely to report having saved in any given year than futured language speakers. (This amounts to 25 percent more savings by retirement, if income is held constant.) Chen’s explanation: When we speak about the future as more distinct from the present, it feels more distant — and we’re less motivated to save money now in favor of monetary comfort years down the line. " - Howard Rheingold

"The Collaboration Game is a large multi-player board game which demonstrates how your operational results, customer satisfaction and staff capability are inextricably linked. Players learn how your project or organisation fits into a wider context and how your success, in a complex environment, demands collaboration between individuals, functions, departments and institutions. During the game, players gain a direct experience of how collaboration develops within a group - and how success is either reinforced or undermined by the way in which people communicate, make decisions and solve problems. Players learn that in order to be successful they must view the system from other people’s perspective, understand how different parts are connected and make collective decisions." - Howard Rheingold

Moved my public sphere in the internet age minicourse from Posterous to Wordpress http://t.co/vPYVA8Wg - Howard Rheingold

"The Collaboration Game is a business simulation designed to raise awareness of the competing priorities and interdependencies facing a typical organisation. In playing the game, team members experience how their individual and collective success is either reinforced or undermined by the way in which they collaborate. They learn that in order to be successful in the game, they must view the business from each other’s perspectives, understand the interdependencies, communicate across functions, collectively resolve issues and make “joined up” decisions. The game challenges many of the assumptions and “certainties” informed by traditional management thinking." - Howard Rheingold

"Large amounts of unverified and often contradictory information often appear on social media following natural disasters. Timely verification of this information can be crucial for coordinating relief efforts. Our goal is to enable and accelerate this verification process by developing Veri.ly, an online platform designed to collectively evaluate the credibility of rapidly crowdsourced evidence. In 2009, students at MIT identified the correct location of 10 red weather balloons hidden across the entire continental United States without ever leaving their laptops. They found these 10 ballons in just under 9 hours with very little prior preparation. Veri.ly leverages the successful approach used by MIT and applies it to the process of rapidly collecting and evaluating critical evidence during disasters. Instead of looking for weather balloons across an entire country in less than 9 hours, we hope Veri.ly will facilitate the crowdsourced collection of multimedia evidence for individual... - Howard Rheingold

"Finding a video that fits a specific lesson can be time-consuming. Creating your own screencasts gives you a video that aligns with your lesson objectives, and it can be a very rewarding experience. Moreover, you can reuse them for future classes. Screencasting is increasingly used to record PowerPoint presentations using preeminent software such as Camtasia Studio, which can enable an add-in to run the program from within PowerPoint.4 There are two general methods for creating an instructional screencast:" - Howard Rheingold

RT @dajbelshaw: Wow, great resources from @hrheingold's #etmooc session: http://t.co/RwIY6B11 - Howard Rheingold

RT @PatrickMeier: Crowdsourced Verification for Crisis Information http://t.co/ZqbZqMIe - Howard Rheingold