Meet the artist channelling Buckminster Fuller to create her graphic worlds | Art - Wallpaper*

Drink up striking colours and minimalist compositions in this solo exhibition by Sinta Tantra in London, as Wallpaper* reports.

Sinta Tantra’s floor installation at  Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery gives visitors a splash of the public and architectural spirit of her work.
Photo: Luca Piffaretti

The British-Balinese artist is using the space at Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery to explore her artistic journey, from public art to architectural interventions and works on canvas.

The exhibition title ‘Your Private Sky’ is lifted from a manuscript of the same name written by Buckminster Fuller, the American architect and polymath who inspired Tantra’s investigation into philosophy and the imagination by way of mathematics. It was in this text that Fuller outlined the design for his glass geodesic structure, relevant to Tantra for its ability to project and reflect. ‘The idea of “your private sky” expresses a twofold experience – a mode of thought that is both collective and individual. Blue-sky thinking, where visionary ideas can grow from simple musings,’ she says...

The second part of the exhibition features a floor installation, giving visitors a splash of the public and architectural spirit of her work. It’s a maximalist piece that absorbs its riders in graphic shapes and dazzling colours lifted from tropical motifs and nature.
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Source: Wallpaper*

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Mathematicians solve age-old spaghetti mystery | Mathematics - Science Daily

Summary: It's nearly impossible to break a dry spaghetti noodle into only two pieces. A new MIT study shows how and why it can be done.

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ScienceDaily reports, "If you happen to have a box of spaghetti in your pantry, try this experiment: Pull out a single spaghetti stick and hold it at both ends. Now bend it until it breaks. How many fragments did you make? If the answer is three or more, pull out another stick and try again. Can you break the noodle in two? If not, you're in very good company."

Photo: Courtesy of the researchers.

The spaghetti challenge has flummoxed even the likes of famed physicist Richard Feynman '39, who once spent a good portion of an evening breaking pasta and looking for a theoretical explanation for why the sticks refused to snap in two. 

Feynman's kitchen experiment remained unresolved until 2005, when physicists from France pieced together a theory to describe the forces at work when spaghetti -- and any long, thin rod -- is bent. They found that when a stick is bent evenly from both ends, it will break near the center, where it is most curved. This initial break triggers a "snap-back" effect and a bending wave, or vibration, that further fractures the stick. Their theory, which won the 2006 Ig Nobel Prize, seemed to solve Feynman's puzzle. But a question remained: Could spaghetti ever be coerced to break in two? 

The answer, according to a new MIT study, is yes -- with a twist. In a paper published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers report that they have found a way to break spaghetti in two, by both bending and twisting the dry noodles. They carried out experiments with hundreds of spaghetti sticks, bending and twisting them with an apparatus they built specifically for the task. The team found that if a stick is twisted past a certain critical degree, then slowly bent in half, it will, against all odds, break in two.

The researchers say the results may have applications beyond culinary curiosities, such as enhancing the understanding of crack formation and how to control fractures in other rod-like materials such as multifiber structures, engineered nanotubes, or even microtubules in cells.

"It will be interesting to see whether and how twist could similarly be used to control the fracture dynamics of two-dimensional and three-dimensional materials," says co-author Jörn Dunkel, associate professor of physical applied mathematics at MIT. "In any case, this has been a fun interdisciplinary project started and carried out by two brilliant and persistent students -- who probably don't want to see, break, or eat spaghetti for a while." 

The two students are Ronald Heisser '16, now a graduate student at Cornell University, and Vishal Patil, a mathematics graduate student in Dunkel's group at MIT. Their co-authors are Norbert Stoop, instructor of mathematics at MIT, and Emmanuel Villermaux of Université Aix Marseille. 
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Additional resources
Journal Reference:

1. Ronald H. Heisser, Vishal P. Patil, Norbert Stoop, Emmanuel Villermaux, Jörn Dunkel. Controlling fracture cascades through twisting and quenching. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2018; 201802831 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1802831115

Source: Science Daily

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Professor Pulse 2018 | Top Hat

No one knows more about the current state of higher education than professors, which is why we are proud to publish our annual Professor Pulse Report. 

Download the Free report

This year we surveyed nearly 2,000 faculty members across North America and asked them to weigh in on the current state of higher education.

Are you ready to find out how faculty really feel about the current state of higher ed? Download the report now to hear your peers' thoughts on everything from active learning, to the current U.S. administration's impact, to how they feel about their compensation and benefits.

Top Hat wtites in the introduction, "The teaching life is a complicated one, but there’s a lot to be learned by sharing your frustrations, solutions and insights with your peers in higher ed. The 2018 Professor Pulse Survey is here to do just that."
 
Since we started the Prof Pulse three years ago, over 30,000 educators from all over the world have weighed in, helping us to develop a publicly-shared snapshot of the current state of higher ed. Year after year the Prof Pulse has shown professors how their ideas about higher ed stack up against their peers.
 
For the 2018 edition, nearly 2,000 faculty members across North America weighed in on the higher ed industry today. 
Download the Free report

Additional resources
 

Bloom’s Taxonomy: The Ultimate Guide by Christine Persaud, Toronto-based editor and writer with more than 17 years of experience. 
Read this Ultimate Guide to gain a deep understanding of Bloom’s taxonomy, how it has evolved over the decades and how it can be effectively applied in the learning process to benefit both educators and learners.

Source: Top Hat

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A Real-World Writing Project Integrating Mobile Technology and Team-Based Learning | Course Design - Faculty Focus

Dr. Lindsay Doukopoulos, lecturer in Auburn University’s English Department argues, "Teaching first-semester freshmen presents some unique challenges. You are teaching them not only your subject, but also how to be college students." 

Photo: iStock

One of the best strategies I have found is to begin with a collaborative project that asks them to research their new home: the campus.

Outcomes
I designed this project for a composition course, but it can be adapted to any discipline because its primary outcomes are teaching students how to collaborate, think critically about their audience, develop 21^st-century literacy skills, and communicate effectively.

Components
Working in teams of five, students were tasked with creating one-hour themed walking tours of the Auburn University campus using Google Maps. Teams were responsible for collaborating to decide the audience, destinations, and design features of the map, whereas individuals composed the content that pops up when you click on a map point. Instead of an essay read only by me, teams submitted a URL to a custom Google Map that traces a walkable route through the campus with five destinations, each consisting of an informative article augmented by content from Auburn’s Digital Library.

To emphasize audience and raise the stakes, teams had to make their maps public and promote them through social media. Google Maps tracks page views, and teams competed throughout the semester to get the most (the winning team had more than 2,000 page views). Gamifying the assignment motivated teams to continue making edits after they received their grade, and the data rewarded the behavior.
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Recommended Reading

Photo: iStock

Classroom Management of an Online First-Year Experience Course by Kristi Garrett, Director of Instructional Design at Atlanta Technical College. 

Source: Faculty Focus 

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Flash to HTML5 E-learning Conversion: The 4 ‘R’s That Matter | E-books - CommLab India

Are Your E-learning Courses Ready for the Death of Flash? Access the New eBook for Insights on 4 Flash to HTML5 Conversion Strategies

Download Now

Flash is dying. Yes, it is. And the day is not too far away! With Flash going to phase out completely by 2020, it is high time organizations act on converting their legacy online training courses to HTML5.

A lot of decisions are to be taken to ensure the conversion is successful. From selecting the conversion strategy to picking the right tool and vendor, all pieces must come together to successfully extend the utility of Flash-based elearning courses. 

This eBook is a handy guide that’ll take organizations planning to migrate from Flash on a smooth transition path. Checklists and action plans – check all it has. 
Download Now 

Source: CommLab India

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Women’s Advancement: Still Being Denied | Reports & Insights - Korn Ferry Institute

"It’s another sign of how challenging—and frustrating—the workplace can be for women" explains Evelyn Orr, Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of the Korn Ferry Institute, Jane Stevenson, Global Leader for CEO Succession and Vice Chairman, Board & CEO Services and Kristin Mannion, Vice Chairman in our CEO and Board  Practice.

Photo: Korn Ferry Institute

Forty percent of women professionals say they’ve missed a promotion or an opportunity simply because they’re female, according to a new Korn Ferry study.

But whether they were denied due to an institutional baked-in bias or some wrongheaded opinions of individuals, the women surveyed, perhaps surprisingly, offered the same advice to one another for overcoming the challenge: Be assertive and build a strong professional network. “My best advice for women in the workplace is to be confident and passionate. If you want the job, be the job before you even receive the promotion,” says Jane Stevenson, global leader for CEO succession and vice chairman of Korn Ferry...

Many organizations are working to eliminate any institutional reasons women are denied advancement by using more quantifiable metrics in evaluating performance and leadership potential.
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Source: Korn Ferry Institute

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Programming languages to avoid learning in 2018 | Training and Development - IDG Connect

"Why you probably shouldn’t be learning Dart, Objective-C, or Coffeescript this year" inform Dan Swinhoe, Senior Staff Writer at IDG Connect.
 

Photo: IDG Connect

According to a recent HackerRank study, Go, Python, Scala, Kotlin, and Ruby are the top five languages programmers want to learn next. But which are the languages coders should not be looking to learn?

Codementor, a coding educating and marketplace platform, recently ranked which languages it claimed weren’t worth developers’ time anymore. The research was centered around three areas; community engagement, the job market, and growth in developers using it (and is not a critique on their usefulness or capabilities).
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Recommended Reading
 

Photo: IDG Connect

Which languages are developers planning to learn next? by Dan Swinhoe, Senior Staff Writer at IDG Connect.

Source: IDG Connect

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Six Questions That Can Help Guide Digital Transformation | Management - Knowledge@Wharton

Two MIT researchers offer a practical guide to digital transformation in their new book, ‘What’s Your Digital Business Model?’ 
 

What's Your Digital Business Model?:
Six Questions to Help You Build the Next-Generation Enterprise

Companies know they must transform to appeal to the digital customer, but they still struggle to find the best path forward, according to a book by MIT researchers Stephanie Woerner and Peter Weill. It’s not enough to tweak management practices that worked in the past, they note. What’s needed is a wholesale rethinking of the enterprise.

For example, a bank must look at itself as helping clients navigate life events, instead of merely being a place for transactions. “That small shift in thinking would mean a profound shift in almost every aspect of the business” and would be the firm’s best bet to fight off digital disruptors, they write. The authors offer a field-tested framework on how companies can digitally transform, based on a years-long study at the MIT Center for Information Systems Research.

Woerner joined the Knowledge@Wharton show on SiriusXM to talk about their book, What’s Your Digital Business Model? Six Questions to Help You Build the Next Generation Enterprise. 
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Source: Knowledge@Wharton

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Digital Promise, with help from Google, coaches teachers on tech | EdScoop News

The nonprofit's project will expand from 50 to 80 schools across five states next year, as EdScoop News reports.

Photo: Getty Images

Through a partnership with Google for Education, the education nonprofit Digital Promise seems to have found success in tackling what it says is among the foremost issues in education today — the "digital use divide."

Earlier this week, the two partners released a report outlining the results of the Dynamic Learning Project, a teacher-coaching program piloted in 50 low-income schools across Alabama, California, Pennsylvania, South Carolina and Texas last year. The report found that instructional coaching — the process of teaching the teacher — paid dividends for teachers who might have struggled to otherwise integrate technology into their classroom.

Each school was specially selected by Google and Digital Promise based on interest from faculty and the severity of its “digital use divide," or the skill of its faculty in utilizing the technology available to them...

With funding from Google for Education, the project sponsored 50 instructional technology coaches, or DLP coaches, for one year. The coaches — many of whom were previously employees at their respective schools prior to the project — essentially became resident technology experts that the schools otherwise would not have had the resources or ability to provide.

Teachers took advantage of the free expertise from the coaches, who themselves were mentored by Google throughout the year.
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Source: EdScoop News 

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Science Has Just Confirmed That If You're Not Outside Your Comfort Zone, You're Not Learning | Inc.

Jessica Stillman, freelance writer based in Cyprus summarizes, "Stability shuts down your brain's learning centers, new Yale research shows."

Photo: Inc.

Not knowing what's going to happen next is generally stressful. Uncertainty signals that you're unsure of your environment, your skills, or both. But uncertainty also signals the brain to kickstart learning, new Yale research published in the journal Neuron has found.

That means crazy, unstable situations might be uncomfortable, but they're also essential if you want to make the most of your brain.

Stability is a shut off switch for your brain.

If you want to maximize learning you need to make sure you're doing hard things 70 percent of the time, five-time entrepreneur Auren Hoffman has advised. It's tough to face the possibility of failure for such a huge chunk of your working life, but this new research confirms Hoffman is on to something. If you're not at least a little stressed about the outcome of what you're doing, your brain shuts down learning.

To figure this out scientists taught a group of monkeys to hit various targets for a reward of  tasty juice. Sometimes the odds of a particular target producing a sweet treat were fixed -- the monkeys consistently got a reward 80 percent of the time, say. Sometimes the target was more unpredictable -- the frequency with which it paid and the amount of juice the monkeys received varied...

How to add strategic instability to your life

How should we humans put this insight to use? There are, as I noted above, some occasions when a tapering off of learning is fine.
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Source: Inc.

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