A teacher's guide to Internet pedagogy The Internet is rapidly becoming a necessary and natural part of the way we access information. The Wired Professor provides instructors with the necessary skills and intellectual framework for effectively working with and understanding this new tool and medium. Written for teachers with limited experience on the Internet, The Wired Professor is a collegial, hands-on guide on how to build and manage instruction-based web pages and sites. In addition to practical tips, this book incorporates discussions on a variety of topics from the history of networks, publishing, and computers to hotly debated issues such as the pedagogical challenges posed by computer-aided instruction and distance learning. These discussions are geared to the non-computer savvy reader and written with an eye to allow instructors to maximize use of the Internet as a creative medium, a research resource of unparalleled dimension, and a community building tool. The Wired Professor comes with a companion web site that contains additional material, such as discussions on design and links to the resources discussed in the book. Companion web site URL: http://www.nyupress.nyu.edu/professor.html

When it comes to science, too often people say "I just don't have the brains for it"--and leave it at that. Why is science so intimidating, and why do people let themselves feel this way? What makes one person a scientist and another disinclined even to learn how to read graphs? The idea that scientists are people who wear lab coats and are somehow smarter than the rest of us is a common, yet dangerous, misconception that puts science on an intimidating pedestal. How did science become so divorced from everyday experience? In Eureka, science popularizer Chad Orzel argues that even the people who are most forthright about hating science are doing science, often without even knowing it. Orzel shows that science is central to the human experience: every human can think like a scientist, and regularly does so in the course of everyday activities. The common misconception is that science is a body of (boring, abstract, often mathematical) facts. In truth, science is a process: Looking at the world, Thinking about what makes it work, Testing your mental model by comparing it to reality, and Telling others about your results--all things that people do daily. By revealing the connection between the everyday activities that people do--solving crossword puzzles, playing sports, or even watching mystery shows on television--and the processes used to make great scientific discoveries, Eureka shows that this process is one everybody uses regularly, and something that anyone can do.

A book which explains the latest research into how the brain works, providing practical tips for training your brain to promote success in all areas of your life.

Some of the most creative artists from today’s maker scene discuss their process, workspaces and more in this inspiring guide to tinkering. The Art of Tinkering is an unprecedented celebration of what it means to tinker: to take things apart, explore tools and materials, and build wondrous, wild art that’s part science, part technology, and entirely creative. Join 150+ makers as they share the stories behind their beautiful and bold work—then do some tinkering yourself! This collection of exhibits, artwork, and projects explores a whole new way to learn, in which people expand their knowledge through making and doing, working with readily available materials, getting their hands dirty, collaborating with others, and problem-solving in the most fun sense of the word. Each artist featured in The Art of Tinkering shares their process and the backstory behind their work. Whether it’s dicussing their favorite tools (who knew toenail clippers could be so handy?) or offering a glimpse of their workspaces (you’d be amazed how many electronics tools you can pack into a pantry!), the stories, lessons, and tips in The Art of Tinkering offer a fascinating portrait of today’s maker scene. Artists include: Scott Weaver, Arthur Ganson, Moxie, Tim Hunkin, AnnMarie Thomas, Ranjit Bhatnajar and Jie Qi.

Two experts on the information economy explore the true economic value of technology and innovation. A wave of business innovation is driving the productivity resurgence in the U.S. economy. In Wired for Innovation, Erik Brynjolfsson and Adam Saunders describe how information technology directly or indirectly created this productivity explosion, reversing decades of slow growth. They argue that the companies with the highest level of returns to their technology investment are doing more than just buying technology; they are inventing new forms of organizational capital to become digital organizations. These innovations include a cluster of organizational and business-process changes, including broader sharing of information, decentralized decision-making, linking pay and promotions to performance, pruning of non-core products and processes, and greater investments in training and education. Innovation continues through booms and busts. This book provides an essential guide for policy makers and economists who need to understand how information technology is transforming the economy and how it will create value in the coming decade.

"[An] anthropological reckoning with the most powerful tribe in the world today, computer programmers--where they come from, how they think, what makes for greatness in their world, and what should give us pause"--

How to understand a media environment in crisis, and how to make things better by approaching information ecologically. Our media environment is in crisis. Polarization is rampant. Polluted information floods social media. Even our best efforts to help clean up can backfire, sending toxins roaring across the landscape. In You Are Here, Whitney Phillips and Ryan Milner offer strategies for navigating increasingly treacherous information flows. Using ecological metaphors, they emphasize how our individual me is entwined within a much larger we, and how everyone fits within an ever-shifting network map.

The Wired Tower: Perspectives on the Impact of the Internet on Higher Education brings together leading thinkers and doers to assess the new realities of the Internet in higher education. Edited by Blackboard, Incorporated Chairman Matthew Pittinsky, the book identifies key drivers of technology-related change, five transformative Internet-based learning practices most likely to succeed and explores every facet of Internet-related change. The book also includes original contributions from Neil Postman (The End of Education) and Arthur Levine, President, Columbia University Teacher's College.

This collection looks at the post–network television industry’s heady experiments with new forms of interactive storytelling—or wired TV—that took place from 2005 to 2010 as the networks responded to the introduction of broadband into the majority of homes and the proliferation of popular, participatory Web 2.0 companies like Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter. Contributors address a wide range of issues, from the networks’ sporadic efforts to engage fans using transmedia storytelling to the production inefficiencies that continue to dog network television to the impact of multimedia convergence and multinational, corporate conglomeration on entrepreneurial creativity. With essays from such top scholars as Henry Jenkins, John T. Caldwell, and Jonathan Gray and from new and exciting voices emerging in this field, Wired TV elucidates the myriad new digital threats and the equal number of digital opportunities that have become part and parcel of today’s post-network era. Readers will quickly recognize the familiar television franchises on which the contributors focus— including Lost, The Office, Entourage, Battlestar Gallactica, The L Word, and Heroes—in order to reveal their impact on an industry in transition. While it is not easy for vast bureaucracies to change course, executives from key network divisions engaged in an unprecedented period of innovation and collaboration with four important groups: members of the Hollywood creative community who wanted to expand television’s storytelling worlds and marketing capabilities by incorporating social media; members of the Silicon Valley tech community who were keen to rethink television distribution for the digital era; members of the Madison Avenue advertising community who were eager to rethink ad-supported content; and fans who were enthusiastic and willing to use social media story extensions to proselytize on behalf of a favorite network series. In the aftermath of the lengthy Writers Guild of America strike of 2007/2008, the networks clamped down on such collaborations and began to reclaim control over their operations, locking themselves back into an aging system of interconnected bureaucracies, entrenched hierarchies, and traditional partners from the past. What’s next for the future of the television industry? Stay tuned—or at least online. Contributors: Vincent Brook, Will Brooker, John T. Caldwell, M. J. Clarke, Jonathan Gray, Henry Jenkins, Derek Johnson, Robert V. Kozinets, Denise Mann, Katynka Z. Martínez, and Julie Levin Russo

In this passionately argued overview, a longtime activist-scholar takes readers through the changing landscape of academic freedom. From the aftermath of September 11th to the new frontier of blogging, Robert O'Neil examines the tension between institutional and individual interests. Many cases boil down to a hotly contested question: who has the right to decide what is taught in the classroom? O'Neil shows how courts increasingly restrict professorial judgment, and how the feeble protection of what is posted on the Internet and written in email makes academics more vulnerable than ever. Even more provocatively, O'Neil argues, the newest threats to academic freedom come not from government, but from the private sector. Corporations increasingly sponsor and control university-based research, while self-appointed watchdogs systematically harass individual teachers on websites and blogs. Most troubling, these threats to academic freedom are nearly immune from legal recourse. Insisting that new concepts of academic freedom, and new strategies for maintaining it are needed, O'Neil urges academics to work together--and across rigid and simplistic divisions between left and right.