This post from Lifehacker:

Editor: Say hello to fellow tech writer and Lifehacker reader The How-To Geek, who was kind enough to pull together some of best Windows Vista power tweaks here on Lifehacker today.
Whether it’s the nagging prompts or the irritating notifications, Windows Vista’s default settings can grate on your nerves… which doesn’t help you be the productive person you want to be. A few simple tweaks can cut down on the irritation and drastically alter your views on Vista. Let’s take a look at some of the best ways to tame the Vista beast and make it a less naggy operating system to work on…

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Those crazy academics.

This posting from Boing Boing:

The Improbable Researchers are a group of scientists who collect and conduct research to provoke both laughter and thought. They publish a bi-monthly magazine, “Annals of Improbable Research;” they award the coveted ” Ig Nobel Prizes;” and they oversee the exclusive and ridiculous Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Scientists (“for scientists who have, or believe they have, luxuriant flowing hair”).

They launch an online series of offbeat videos this week, and like all they do, these ‘net shorts are an amalgam of science, technology, and history with Monty-Python-esque irreverence.

In the Researchers’ own words:

Each collection – each episode – is about three minutes long, composed of bits and pieces and people from the magazine Annals of Improbable Research, from Ig Nobel Prize lectures and ceremonies and other live events, and from many other sources. We have been collecting this material for almost twenty years.

This in from Open Culture:

Ira Glass, host of the beloved radio show This American Life, offers a helpful reminder that excellence doesn’t come automatically. (See video below.) It takes work, years of it. And he revisits some of his early radio work in order to prove it.

The Glass video has been added to our YouTube playlist. (Thanks to Kottke.org for pointing this out.) Meanwhile, you can find This American Life and other podcasts like it in our Ideas & Culture Podcast Collection.

This posting from Open Culture:

In case you missed it, a new piece in the Atlantic Monthly “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” raises some questions about whether the internet is changing the way we think. Or, to paraphrase, is it tinkering with our brains, remapping the neural circuitry, reprogramming our memory, shortening our concentration, making it harder to read books and long articles, etc. Anecdotes confirming this trend abound. But now there’s new scientific research that seems to back it up. Have a read.

In the meantime, if you want some internet content that will unquestionably make you smarter, check our list of 225 Free Courses from Great Universities.

via The Wired Campus

BBC Schools

This site from the BBC has some great ideas for K-12 education.

Be sure to see the Questionaut. It’s fascinating!

<img src="http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/images/promos/4_11/ks2_questionaut.jpg"

Embedded PDF files take a long time to display in a web browser. This is caused by the browser launching Acrobat Player inside your browser window.

Placing a Word file into a web page can cause its problems. Mac users have the document download to their desktop. Some users may not have a way to view Word documents.

There is an alternative to posting your documents in Blackboard or web page. Be sure to check out the example below. Try all the nifty features like page turning and zoom.

Scribd is a technology that makes it easy to share documents online. You can think of Scribd as a big online library where everyone can publish original content, including you! You can also make your documents private for only your students to see.

What kinds of things can I do with Scribd?

Scribd is full of cool and interesting features that will transform how you work with documents on the web!
Upload documents in many different formats, including Adobe PDF, Microsoft Word, Adobe PDF, plain text, HTML, PowerPoint, Excel, OpenOffice, JPEG, and more!
Embed your documents in a blog, Facebook profile, or other external website with your fonts, images, and formatting fully intact
Host a document at Scribd with its own unique URL
Unlimited storage – upload as many documents as you like
Your choice of one of four uploaders that best suits your needs
Keep certain documents private or share with a limited number of friends
Automatically convert published content into PDF, Word, and plain text
Retain full document copyright or make your documents available under Creative Commons licenses

Scribd

BB6-Quickstart – Upload a Document to Scribd

Read this document on Scribd: BB6-Quickstart

Google Docs offers Presentation as a part of its free web based applications. You can publish your document and embed them in your Blackboard. This is a great alternative to PowerPoint since the player is embed in the Bb page.

Here’s what you can do with presentations:

* Import existing presentations in .ppt and .pps file types.
* Export your presentations using the Save as PDF and Save as PPT features from the File menu.
* Edit your presentations using our simple WYSIWYG editor.
* Insert images and videos, and format your slides to fit your preferences.
* Share and edit presentations with your friends and coworkers.
* Allow real-time viewing of presentations, online, from separate remote locations.
* Publish and embed your presentations in a website, allowing access to a wide audience.

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