Being Heard or Being Herd(ed)? The Electability Question

Qlippin' With the Sun

At howstuffworks they have great articles and videos that show you - well - how stuff works. I decided to turn one of their videos on the University of Michigan Solar Car Team and their fantastic car into a Qlippit. The original is at HowStuffWorks University of Michigan Solar Car Team

For the Qlippit rendition, click this link
Solar Car Qlippit

or the player below

Birdz and Jazz

A lot of folks have asked for a simple way to mix audio with images. This is pretty simple - some birds, of various flavors, rather casually mixed with some outside jazz. Here's a sneak preview - coming soon to a QlipBoard near you.

A lot more folks have asked for a simple way to post a Qlippit to their blog with one click. This is a sneakier preview, I suppose - posted directly from QlipBoard to Blogger. This one was so easy, I didn't even have to talk!

Birdz and Jazz

On the Horns of a Black Swan

Innovation is kind of like the weather. Everyone talks about it, and most people who think they can predict it are really taking advantage of the fact that tomorrow's weather tends to be like today's.

Unfortunately, for most organizations, attempts to foster meaningful innovation are a lot like rain dances. There's a fair amount of noise and jumping about, but you better have your excuses ready for when the rain doesn't fall.

This Qlippit, On the Horns of a Black Swan takes a look at an alternative approach - everyday operational innovation as a foundation for consistent, but unpredictable, breakthroughs.

How to Make Multimedia Without a Camera

If you haven't checked out wikiHow, you should. It's full of all sorts of great how-tos. The only thing that would make them better would be if they were multimedia, and I don't just mean pictures and text. So I made this detailed, step-by-step how-to of my own, which I have put here three ways - as a link to the Qlippit at Qlip Media, as an embedded Flash movie, and as a link to the article I just wrote for wikiHow.

How to Make a Multimedia Communication in Minutes Without a Camera

A Recipe for Communication

There are many candidates for the role of central pillar of civilization. I vote for recipes. I love the arts of literature, architecture, music, sport and technological innovation, but more basic and more elevated than all are the culinary arts.

Here is a guest Qlippit, made by my wife, Barb, for this week's newsletter from Live Earth Farm, an endless source of fresh, local produce that we gratefully share with many others during the long growing season here in California. This Qlippit humbly carries the name of its subject - The Ultimate Omelette. Enjoy!

How to Make Videos for Education

Back in 1970, I was an A/V tech at Saguaro High School, one of those nerdy types that could tame the movie and filmstrip projectors (if you can remember this technology, then your joints probably ache a bit when you get up in the morning). Somewhere during the intervening decades, educational multimedia moved through videotape and onto DVDs. Now, it's all about video on the web, with sites like TeacherTube and Next Vista, and even YouTube on occasion, helping the educational community create and share multimedia.

The big difference now is that teachers are not just using multimedia, but making it. And it's not just the teachers, but the students who are getting in on the act through individual and group projects. Every technique is being explored - live scenes on camera, screen recording, slide shows, talking heads, whiteboards, writing and drawing on paper - you name it, they're trying it.

A dream of mine is that we at Qlip Media will be able to make a real contribution to education by letting everyone - teachers, students, parents, subject matter experts, publishers, whoever - make multimedia that really teaches. I started out my career intending to be a physics teacher, and I know firsthand how hard it is to get difficult concepts across, even face to face. So the idea of a technology that enables pretty much anyone to teach pretty much anything they know always seemed pretty farfetched to me. But it seems that we just might have found a way.

Of course, we won't know for sure until a bunch of people who aren't me make a bunch of Qlippits that teach what they know. The Qlippits below have been posted on TeacherTube and YouTube - one about the web world, one about the real world. Surely you have something to teach all of us. How about making a Qlippit and sharing it as a comment here, and putting it out there for teachers to share with each other and their students?

Follow these links to some educational Qlippits on TeacherTube

How to Set Up a Google Custom Search Engine



How Rainbows Work