Generative music is music that isn't traditionally composed. It's created by establishing patterns, randomness, and instructions to produce interesting sounds. Tero Parviainen's website, "How Generative Music Works: A Perspective" is a fun way to learn about the history of generative music and try generating some for yourself.
This is neat: "A free, one-hour online class anyone can take to learn everything they need to know about the eclipse. It’s part of a real college course at University of Colorado, Boulder taught by Prof. Douglas Duncan, a professional astronomer and director of the Fiske Planetarium."
Read the restA total eclipse is one of the most spectacular sights you can ever see! It looks like the end of the world may be at hand. There is a black hole in the sky where the sun should be. Pink flames of solar prominences and long silver streamers of the sun's corona stretch across the sky. It gets cold, and animals do strange things. People scream and shout and cheer, and remember the experience their whole life. But total eclipses are important scientifically as well. They let us see parts of the sun’s atmosphere that are otherwise invisible. A total eclipse presented the first chance to test Einstein’s prediction that matter can bend space – like near a black hole. The best total eclipse in the United States in 40 years happens August 21st, 2017.
This course has two primary goals:
1) to get you excited for the total solar eclipse coming in August 2017 and prepare you and your community to safely view it
2) to provide an inviting overview of the science of the sun and the physics of light
If you are most interested in preparing for the eclipse, you can hop right into Week 5! If you want the full course experience, and to get some fun scientific context for what you'll be seeing on August 21st, start with Week 1 and move through the course week by week!
When you encounter new information, here's a list of questions to ask yourself and others. It was produced by the Global Digital Citizen Foundation, "a non-profit organization dedicated to cultivating responsible, ethical, global citizens for a digital world."
I've been playing with Ableton Live's Learning Music website. It starts by showing you how to use an electronic drum kit, then moves to notes, chords, basslines, etc. You get to experiment on almost every page and see the structure of famous songs. A very cool learning resource! Read the rest
Looking through these books, I find myself wanting to shout out phrases I haven’t thought of in decades: the Triangular Trade! Crispus Attucks! Isthmus of Panama! Read the rest
Even if you've taken a lesson or two, this brisk run through the basics of musical chords probably will remind you of something you've long forgotten. Read the rest
Tofugu (where Carla is executive editor) interviewed Bao Nakashima, the 10 year old author of the hit Japanese book, Seeing, Knowing, Thinking.
Read the restQ. You said, "No need to read the air." What do you mean by that?
It literally means "Having a life that follows your honest feelings." Air is data, so I think we can leave it to artificial intelligence.
Q. What is your current study method?
If I had to give my study method a name, it might be "open-ended." Although it is like learning the concept of social interest in Adlerian psychology, I think my study method doesn't have a name yet.
Larry Scheckel was a high school physics and aerospace teacher for almost 40 years, and he wrote a book called Ask a Science Teacher: 250 Answers to Questions You’ve Always Had About How Everyday Stuff Really Works that answers common questions on a wide range of topics.
Why are we attracted to unhealthy foods? How does your heart pump? Why is chickenpox so much worse for adults than it is for kids? What is the lowest temperature known in nature? How does the moon affect the ocean tides? Why can't we create a perpetual motion device? Why don't school buses have seatbelts? What is quantum physics? Who or what built Stonehenge?
The answers (they are 1-3 pages long) are clearly written, and filled with fun insights and anecdotes. This is a fantastic book for a curious kid or an adult such as myself who likes to learn how the world works. Read the rest
Monocle interviewed Ed Cooke, the founder of the language learning site, Memrise.
During a three-month hospital stay when he was 18 years old, Ed Cooke studied memory techniques to overcome boredom. By the age of 23 he was a Grand Master of Memory, someone who can memorise 1,000 random digits in an hour and the order of a deck of cards in two minutes. Cooke is now the founder of a fast-growing start-up called Memrise, which allows people to learn a language quickly while also having fun. He outlines the value of a good memory and tells us how Memrise gained tens of millions of users. Read the rest
The Atomic Chemistry Set is a "modern chemistry set - 47 chemicals, glassware, lab apparatus, and insane chemical reactions." It looks great! Read the rest
See sample pages from this book at Wink.
Walking through the children’s section of any given book store, this book will immediately catch your eye. The front cover has gears sticking out the side, and if you turn them, you can see one of our main characters moving up and down on a wheel and axel system. Open the book, and you’ll be treated to even more interactive illustration done in the book’s playful art style.
The plot of the story follows two friends who live in a zoo, Sloth and Sengi. After many years of living there, they have decided to escape using some simple machines. Along the way, they encounter many problems (as you can imagine would occur when a sloth and a variety of elephant shrew attempt to scale a zoo enclosure). Each page outlines a different type of machinery and invites the reader to learn about how each system functions. When Sloth and Sengi try and use an inclined plane to escape, the narrator demonstrates why it takes less effort to climb up an inclined plane than straight over the vertical fence. Later on, this idea of the inclined plane returns when Sloth and Sengi try and use a screw to escape. Probably my favorite section of the book involves the section on levers. The author outlines how a lever functions with an effort, a fulcrum, and a load. You can construct a lever from cardboard cut-outs in the book, and then use it to try and fling Sloth and Sengi over the fence of their enclosure, usually with more success than our main characters. Read the rest
Skillshare is a terrific online learning community for creative people. It teaches you new skills through well-made videos with great production values. I've been using Skillshare to teach myself Adobe After Effects. All the videos feature people who are professionals in their field. I love this site.
I taught a couple of classes for Skillshare as part of its Month of Learning for January. One of my classes is about learning how to use the Arduino electronics prototyping platform and the other is about how to develop a maker mindset. You can use this link to sign up for my classes.
Bloxels lets kids design playable spaces using physical blocks on a grid—that can then be captured by a tablet device and translated into a real digital game. The creator, Pixel Press, says it's like "coding with Lego." Read the rest
