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READ ME FIRST!  IDEAS ON HOW TO USE THIS PADLET

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READ ME FIRST!  IDEAS ON HOW TO USE THIS PADLET

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Look for articles that grab you. Read them!

Look for questions that get you thinking.

Find someone to talk to about what you're reading or thinking

"Remake" this padlet! (Look in the upper right corner of your screen.

Use your own "remade" padlet to post your thoughts, ideas, reflections, and questions.

Think of questions that interest you, and do your own further research.

Post your findings and thoughts on your padlet.

What about doing your own drawings, voice recordings, or videos?

Share your padlet with friends, classmates, and colleagues.

Whatever you do, make sure your use of padlet adheres to padlet's content policy

Tweet us!

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HAVEN'T PLAYED CURRICULUM FOR THE FUTURE YET?

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HAVEN'T PLAYED CURRICULUM FOR THE FUTURE YET?

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What are you waiting for?

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"A strangely addictive game that gets you thinking differently about education"

Curriculum for the Future: The Digital Game is designed to generate thought-provoking conversations about learning and curriculum today and in the future. It's a fun way to think about complex ideas and it's great for playing with a group of people who care about what we will learn in the future. Players get to choose a curriculum and juggle multiple points of view as they try to convince a panel of citizens.

Visit the Curriculum for the future microsite to learn more about the game

VISIT MICROSITE

PLAY ONLINE NOW

Download the app for your iPad or Tablet:

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Curriculum for the Future: The digital game

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"A strangely addictive game that gets you thinking differently about education" Curriculum for the Future: The Digital Game is designed to generate thought-provoking conversations about learning and curriculum today and in the future. It's a fun way to think about complex ideas and it's great for playing with a group of people who care about what we will learn in the future.

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PLAYED THE CURRICULUM FOR THE FUTURE GAME? Now use the links on this padlet to keep feeding your braaaiiins

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PLAYED THE CURRICULUM FOR THE FUTURE GAME? Now use the links on this padlet to keep feeding your braaaiiins

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There are no right answers here, but there's a lot to consider!

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Progenitor X: A game about science and zombies

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Progenitor X: A game about science and zombies

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Progenitor X is a narrative-driven, turn-based, puzzle-solving game where the player will learn about the relationships between cells, tissues, and organs.

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GLS - The Best Gaming Product Recommendations For 2018

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The Best Gaming Product Recommendations For 2018

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Why are apocalyptic visions of the future so common in our films, books, games, and television?

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Why are apocalyptic visions of the future so common in our films, books, games, and television?

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Why do people often imagine the future will be scary and dangerous? Do you think this is really what the future will be like?

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Zombies and Minecraft make good enrolment tools for Media Design School

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Zombies and Minecraft make good enrolment tools for Media Design School

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Idealog has been covering the most interesting people, businesses and issues from the fields of innovation, design, technology and urban development for over 12 years. And we're asking for your support so we can keep telling those stories, inspire more entrepreneurs to start their own businesses and keep pushing New Zealand forward. Give over $5 a month and you will not only be supporting New Zealand innovation, but you'll also receive a print subscription, an Idealog t-shirt and a copy of the new book by David Downs and Dr. Michelle Dickinson, No. 8 Recharged (while stocks last).

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Zombies and Minecraft make good enrolment tools for Media Design School

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Idealog has been covering the most interesting people, businesses and issues from the fields of innovation, design, technology and urban development for over 12 years. And we're asking for your support so we can keep telling those stories, inspire more entrepreneurs to start their own businesses and keep pushing New Zealand forward.

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Zombie Science: Zombie Institute for Theoretical Studies

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Zombie Science: Zombie Institute for Theoretical Studies

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The website for the world's leading Zombieism research facility.

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Vaping is very popular nowadays since it is considered to be a healthier alternative to smoking tobacco products. This has given birth to various devices that are aiming to give you the best vaping experience ever. However, with the huge number of vaping devices that you can find on the market, it could be extremely challenging to choose one.

Vape Mod

As a beginner, you might be wondering what a vape mod really is. Simply put, this is a modified version of the electronic cigarette. Additional parts are attached, and these significantly improve the features of the device. If you are aiming to have a thicker vapor or perhaps a stronger taste of the flavor, then a vape mod is definitely the answer to your cravings. This will also allow you to inhale the vapor a lot easier.

How To Choose The Best Vape Mod

So, how would you know which one is the perfect vape for you? How could you ensure that you will get the most value for your money? Let us take a look at the important factors that you should consider when choosing the best vape mod.

Power

If you intend to use your vape mod for long hours, then might as well buy something that is powerful; one that will allow long vaping sessions without the need to recharge too soon. With this, it is essential that you consider the battery. It would be best to go for a customized battery since its power is fully enhanced.

Display

Another factor that you should look into is the display. This is very important as this is where you can see almost all the essential info that you need to know about your device. These include the volts, ohms, as well as the battery life and watts. With all these details available, it will be a lot easier for you to know when to adjust the settings of your vape mod to your satisfaction.

Design

Vape mods come in different designs. You can also find them in various colors, so you can pick one that suits your preference. It is highly recommended though that you buy one that is stylish and of high-quality at the same time. Before you order a vape mod online, make sure that you compare the different units first....

Technology has brought numerous positive and negative changes to us. When handled properly, you will be able to get the best out of it. Let us talk about online shopping. Have you tried it? You are better if not. You do not have to walk out of the house to get your favorite vegetables, clothes anymore. You can order online and have them delivered at your doorstep. This article will give you some amazing advantages of online shopping.

Shop online

Can do it from home

At the comfort of your sofa or bed, you can be able to buy all you want. All you need is a computer, internet access and there you go. Identify sites like eBay, Alibaba, Aliexpress and much more with online sellers. Patience is key here, search for the item you want and numerous suggestions will be pop. Search for the cheapest seller, read customer reviews and see how years they have been dong the business.

Delivery

One thing that excites me about online shopping is their delivery terms. Your item will be sent to your preferred collection point. Some will even do door to door delivery. If you are miles away, they will ask you for the postal address where your product will be sent. In search of the supplier to buy from, get those with free shipping. Yes, it means exactly what you are thinking, they will send the parcel to you free of charge. You will pay not a single cent for shipping.

Cheap

Compared to physical stores, it is cheaper to buy stuff online. At times they give crazy offers and discounts on bulk purchases. Take advantage of that. If you are buying them for sale, it is your opportunity to make great profits from the offers given. Purchase different colors and sizes in large amounts so that you will be able to reach all your customers....

It is not easy to get the right electronics as many people think. You need to be more careful if you are buying it online. You will get good quality online at cheap prices, but the search has to be taken serious. Make sure that the electrical compatibility is same as the ones in your country. Electronics are expensive I am convinced you do not want to joke with your money. To get more tips on how to buy electronics online, read on.

Buy electronics

Know what you want

Be sure of exactly what you want. For electronics, have your mind made up on color, size, and year of manufacture and so on. Ask the seller for what you want by submitting a list. To make sure that the features of the item you are about to buy is exactly what you want, let them send you a picture of the manual where the item features are listed down.

References

Ask from friends and family who might have bought electronics online for referrals. If the supplier send them exactly what they wanted you might be lucky to get what you want. Good reputation and great services is what makes customers refer others to a seller. Unless tastes vary, all other aspects of sales will be perfect with the seller.

Payments terms

You have to agree on when to make the payments. Some sellers what payments to be done before shipping while others will be patient to get paid after delivery. Others will ask for a down payment. If you agree to pay on delivery please do so, for the case of down payment, pay the balance immediately the goods arrive.

Warranty

Always ask for warranty on electronics. The warranty note must be sent together with the item. The seller must have signed and remained with a piece. This protects you in case the item is faulty or does not work as expected. You can either get a refund or an exchange of the same. Terms and conditions of warranty must be stated as well....

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Vaping is very popular nowadays since it is considered to be a healthier alternative to smoking tobacco products. This has given birth to various devices that are aiming to give you the best vaping experience ever. However, with the huge number of vaping devices that you can find on the market, it could be extremely challenging to choose one.

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Zombie simulator lets you plan your own apocalypse

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Zombie simulator lets you plan your own apocalypse

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The team took a classic epidemic model called SIR, in which people are either susceptible to, infected by or recovering from a disease – then they added a zombie twist.

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(Image: ZihniIoglu Kamil/SIPA/REX)

It began in Chicago. One by one, other cities fell. As the dead began to sweep across the nation, only those in the most remote locations remained safe. Soon, just a few desperate souls would remain alive.

That's what happened when I started my very own zombie outbreak, thanks to a model examining how an undead plague might ravage the United States. You can try it for yourself here.

Alexi Alemi of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, and his colleagues began developing the model, which uses tools from disease modelling, as a class project after reading the novel World War Z. They aren't the first researchers to turn their hand to zombie maths - there's even a whole book on the subject - but Alemi wanted to up the challenge by using US census population data. "It felt like a natural challenge to simulate a 'realistic' zombie outbreak," he says.

The team took a classic epidemic model called SIR, in which people are either susceptible to, infected by or recovering from a disease - then they added a zombie twist. "For normal diseases you either get better on your own, or you might die," says Alemi. "Zombies don't get better, nor do they die, so the only way you can get rid of a zombie is for a human to actively kill it."

28 Days Later

This change meant the outcome of the model depended on a single parameter&colon; the ratio between bites and kills. This is a measure of how effective humans are at fighting off zombie attacks. From studying films like Shaun of the Dead, they decided the most realistic bite-to-kill value was 0.8 - in other words, zombies are around 25 per cent more likely to bite humans than humans are to kill zombies - but in the online simulator you can tweak that value.

With the basic model in hand, the team turned to how the infection might spread geographically. They created a grid over a map of the US and populated each cell in the grid with a certain number of humans, taken from the population of the 2010 census.

Running the simulation, they found that it didn't seem to matter where the outbreak started. From most locations it took around a month - or 28 Days Later - for most of the US to succumb to the plague, but some remote areas of Montana and Nevada remained zombie free even four months later . Alemi will present the results at the American Physical Society meeting in San Antonio, Texas, on Thursday.

Fortunately, zombies are fictional, but the research could also help people modelling real diseases. It turns out the equations in the zombie version of SIR are actually easier to solve than the real thing, so lessons learned from creating the model may translate back to real-world research, says Alemi.

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Zombie simulator lets you plan your own apocalypse

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It began in Chicago. One by one, other cities fell. As the dead began to sweep across the nation, only those in the most remote locations remained safe. Soon, just a few desperate souls would remain alive. That's what happened when I started my very own zombie outbreak, thanks to a model examining how an undead plague might ravage the United States.

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Have you checked to make sure YOU aren't a zombie? How can you tell?

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Have you checked to make sure YOU aren't a zombie? How can you tell?

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Are we just afraid that we might be the real zombies?

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Are we just afraid that we might be the real zombies?

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What do zombies represent in the 21st century collective psyche?

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What do zombies represent in the 21st century collective psyche?

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What do the monsters we imagine tell us about how we see ourselves, how we see our world?

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Books expose the rise of the emotionless zombies

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Books expose the rise of the emotionless zombies

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FEARS of the world being taken over by unfeeling zombies might not be that far fetched. Our books indicate that English speakers are becoming less emotional.

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Fears of the world being taken over by unfeeling zombies might not be totally far fetched. Our books indicate that English speakers are becoming less emotional.

Alberto Acerbi at the University of Bristol, UK, and colleagues calculated the frequency of words associated with six major emotions - anger, disgust, fear, sadness, surprise and joy in the 5 million English-language books digitised by Google Books.

They found the use of emotionally charged words declined over the 20th century, but there was a relative upswing of fear-related words from 1980.

Several historical periods clearly popped out. During the second world war, the incidence of sad words peaked, whereas times of prosperity, such as the roaring twenties and the swinging sixties, saw a high prevalence of words related to joy.

The data also show that within this general emotional decline, books written in American English were more emotional than those written in British English. This divergence began in the 1960s, a time when the UK was still recovering from the war while America was experiencing economic growth.

But do the trends really reflect the mood of the population or are they simply a proxy for the kind of books people like to read or trends in publishing? Because the data doesn't account for how well the books sold, and because the changes in mood seen seem to correspond with political and economic events, Acerbi is confident that data "reflect a genuine cultural change".

Doing similar analyses with social media can reveal how people feel about recent events but books are better for gauging long-term changes in psyche, he adds.

Journal reference&colon; PLoS One, doi.org/kwq

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Books expose the rise of the emotionless zombies

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Fears of the world being taken over by unfeeling zombies might not be totally far fetched. Our books indicate that English speakers are becoming less emotional. Alberto Acerbi at the University of Bristol, UK, and colleagues calculated the frequency of words associated with six major emotions - anger, disgust, fear, sadness, surprise and joy in the 5 million English-language books digitised by Google Books.

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We are zombies rewriting our mental history to feel in control

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We are zombies rewriting our mental history to feel in control

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Think you're really in control of your own decisions? Think again, zombie...

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Design Pics Inc/REX/Shutterstock

Bad news for believers in clairvoyance. Our brains appear to rewrite history so that the choices we make after an event seem to precede it. In other words, we add loops to our mental timeline that let us feel we can predict things that in reality have already happened.

Adam Bear and Paul Bloom at Yale University conducted some simple tests on volunteers. In one experiment, subjects looked at white circles and silently guessed which one would turn red. Once one circle had changed colour, they reported whether or not they had predicted correctly.

Over many trials, their reported accuracy was significantly better than the 20 per cent expected by chance, indicating that the volunteers either had psychic abilities or had unwittingly played a mental trick on themselves.

The researchers' study design helped explain what was really going on. They placed different delays between the white circles' appearance and one of the circles turning red, ranging from 50 milliseconds to one second. Participants' reported accuracy was highest - surpassing 30 per cent - when the delays were shortest.

That's what you would expect if the appearance of the red circle was actually influencing decisions still in progress. This suggests it's unlikely that the subjects were merely lying about their predictive abilities to impress the researchers.

The mechanism behind this behaviour is still unclear. It's possible, the researchers suggest, that we perceive the order of events correctly - one circle changes colour before we have actually made our prediction - but then we subconsciously swap the sequence in our memories so the prediction seems to come first. Such a switcheroo could be motivated by a desire to feel in control of our lives.

It's not a trick

Another possibility, one Bear prefers, is that we misperceive the order of events in the moment due to inherent limitations in perceptual processing. To put it another way, our brain isn't trying to trick us into believing we are in control - just that it struggles to process a rapid sequence of events in the correct order.

Such findings may also imply that many of the choices we believe we make only appear to be signs of free will after the fact.

Everyday examples of this "postdictive illusion of choice" abound. You only think that you consciously decided to scratch an itch, make a deft football play, or blurt out an insult, when really you're just taking credit for reflexive actions.

More extreme examples of this fiction include the way some people with schizophrenia suffer delusions of control. Understanding the illusion could point towards treatments.

"The question now is whether that fiction extends to bigger decisions - whom to marry, where to go to college, and so on," says Thalia Wheatley, a psychologist at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire. "Is life best considered a collection of small-scale decisions or is there a role for our conscious selves to play?"

Whatever the effect's mechanism or scope, this research highlights the fictions we tell ourselves about free will. "We are essentially zombie agents most of the time," Bear says, "under the illusion that we're always aware of why we're doing what we're doing."

Journal reference: Psychological Science, in press

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We are zombies rewriting our mental history to feel in control

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Bad news for believers in clairvoyance. Our brains appear to rewrite history so that the choices we make after an event seem to precede it. In other words, we add loops to our mental timeline that let us feel we can predict things that in reality have already happened.

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Zombie Scholars Academy: A Problem-Based Exploration of Science, Literature, and Leadership

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Zombie Scholars Academy: A Problem-Based Exploration of Science, Literature, and Leadership

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The Civilizational Significance of Zombies

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The Civilizational Significance of Zombies

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When large numbers of the living start dressing up as the undead, they are announcing a true cultural phenomenon. It may seem like a fad, but zombies matter--not just in the sociology of pop culture but in how we collectively orient ourselves toward the future of civilization itself.

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When large numbers of the living start dressing up as the undead, they are announcing a true cultural phenomenon. It may seem like a fad, but zombies matter--not just in the sociology of pop culture but in how we collectively orient ourselves toward the future of civilization itself.

Pondering the zombie apocalypse is a form of shared emotional preparation--a collective therapy--for facing bad things to come. It is also, ironically, society's only working pathway to real-world, worst-case strategic analysis. And as Americans, in particular, it is our clearest window into our own dark side--and at the same time, a potential key to national renewal.

Related Story
Emerging Infectious Diseases, Better Public Health Outcomes, and Zombies
The civilizational significance of zombies is there in all cultural treatments, AMC's The Walking Dead being a revelation among them. But only Max Brooks's World War Z elevates zombies to high literature. Yes, high: like Tolstoy's War and Peace, or Graves's I Claudius, or Orwell's 1984. It is a history with the full sweep of a grand narrative directly addressing every one of life's big questions.

World War Z fulfills its literary promise on all three civilizational levels. As collective therapy, it shows how we will find a way to keep hoping, and to celebrate just being alive. As worst-case strategic analysis, it reveals the human future that is coming but we still cannot yet bear to face. As a window into the soul, it offers America two paths: one into darkness and extinction, the other into greatness beyond anything we have yet achieved. Brad Pitt and Hollywood's movie of the novel may not matter in the end, and it may not sing like the book. But it should still try, because zombies do matter.

Collective Therapy
How did we humans manage to get this far? We have been on the rocks several times. Anthropologists call these events bottlenecks. The worst of these came 150,000 years ago at Pinnacle Point in South Africa. There, the last remnants of humanity, a few ragged bands of us, fought off extinction by climate change. We survived, so scientists tell, by learning to eat shellfish.

New thinking tells us that consciousness itself is an evolutionary adaptation, and it is easy to see how being self-aware helped us survive.

But consciousness also can limit what we see. It allows us, even encourages us, to live in denial of the biggest new threats. For ruling establishments especially, the pressure to keep people oblivious can be all the more acute because admitting to big danger directly threatens legitimacy. Regimes only want "threats" that keep the money coming and the people in check.

Hence, at the beginning of World War Z, the big plague is on its way but the U.S. administration is in full, on-message denial. As the thinly veiled Karl Rove tells it:

What, you would rather we told people the truth? That it wasn't a new strain of rabies but a mysterious uber-plague that reanimated the dead? Can you imagine the panic that would have happened: the protest, the riots, the billions in damage to private property? Can you imagine all those wet-pants senators who would have brought the government to a standstill ... can you imagine the damage it would have done to that administration's political capital?

Does this mean consciousness actually works against our ability to prepare for the Big One? No, because there is a safety valve that elites cannot control. It is called literature.

Deliciously, he does so through the vehicle of zombies, in a way George Romero never attempted once in the 40 years of his Living Dead franchise.

So when the U.S. military tries to stop the undead onslaught at the end of the "great panic," it chooses to fight the war it likes, and make the enemy fight the way we like. The result is the extravagant debacle called the "Battle of Yonkers," where the American Way of War is crushed in open battle:

Perfect name, "Shock and Awe"! But What if the enemy can't be shocked and awed? Not just won't, but biologically can't! That's what happened that day outside New York City, that's the failure that almost lost us the whole damn war. Yonkers was supposed to be the day we restored confidence to the American people, instead we practically told them to kiss their ass goodbye.

After 9/11, our state fought the war it desired, and has since refused to face how and what it has lost. Brooks shows us how this leads to the near-extinction of humanity. His moral: Just because we choose a war, fight it the way we want, lose it, and then move on like nothing happened, does not mean that such strategic narcissism will not, someday, have terrible consequences.

The zombie virus makes us fight the war they want, and critical time is lost while we struggle to make the necessary recognition. Only the prospect of extinction opens our eyes.

What better way to get our attention? Nothing clears the mind better than fighting on Sun Tzu's "death ground." And we have been there, at Pinnacle Point, during the Black Death, and in World War II. We don't need zombies to tell us this, but zombies are there to remind us when nothing else can.

Destiny's Choice
For we "exceptional" Americans, Brooks offers a final literary service, like Tolstoy to his Russia: The gift of prospective national renewal. World War Z shows us nothing less than how a corrupted nation can find itself again and redeem humanity.

Like Tolstoy, the main purpose of World War Z is the celebration and reinforcement of collective meaning and belief. Tolstoy was building a narrative of Russian identity that would transcend the venality and ruling impoverishments of his time. He hoped it would show the way to something true and beautiful for all Russians.

Max Brooks does this for us in World War Z, offering a believable path to reclaiming ourselves. For Americans this path has always been about sacrifice and the rediscovery of civic virtue. At novel's end, those remaining Americans, whose way of life is now back to something like 1920, are yet better Americans for their privation and sacrifice.

But most important, the Americans in World War Z have cast off their former narcissism, today's it's-all-about-me mentality. The faux elective wars and their remorseless cheerleading too are over.

But how do we get there? Here Brooks reminds us that there is no escaping American altruism. Yes, nations have interests, and we can boast endlessly about being the world's last best hope. But in the end we have to really come through. America saves the world. Period. If America does not--if someday it cannot--then there will be no salvation. Truth is seldom so stark as to offer only one path:

The lies of the past were gone now and the truth was everywhere, shambling down their streets, crashing through their doors, clawing at their throats ... The truth was that we were standing at what might be the twilight of our species ...

At the decisive moment there is a United Nations conference in Honolulu, aboard the hulk of the old carrier U.S.S. Saratoga. The president of the United States rises to offer humanity its mission, and its necessary future:

The living dead had taken more from us than land and loved ones. They'd robbed us of our confidence as the planet's dominant life-form. We were a shaken, broken species, driven to the edge of extinction ... Was this the legacy we would leave to our children? What kind of world would they rebuild? Would they rebuild at all? And what if that future saw another rise of the living dead? Would our descendents rise to meet them in battle, or simply crumple in meek surrender and accept what they believe to be their inevitable extinction? For this reason alone, we had to reclaim our planet. We had prove to ourselves that we could do it, and leave that proof as this war's greatest monument.

When the final vote is taken, and when "for us, our countries, our children the choice had been made: attack"--we see clearly not only the narrative Americans yearn for, but also the nation we need to be.

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The Civilizational Significance of Zombies

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When large numbers of the living start dressing up as the undead, they are announcing a true cultural phenomenon. It may seem like a fad, but zombies matter--not just in the sociology of pop culture but in how we collectively orient ourselves toward the future of civilization itself.

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This teacher built a curriculum project around zombies...

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You read that correctly: Zombie-Based Learning. When I started learning about it, my inner geek squealed with joy. I've always loved zombies. I've watched all the movies and even read the original Walking Dead Comics before it became a hit series in the classroom.

One Teacher's Curriculum

Geography has always been a learning target for social studies teachers, and David Hunter, who teaches at Bellevue, Washington's Big Picture School, decided to create a curriculum using Kickstarter as its funding source. He sought to make geography relevant through engaging scenarios and stories with a zombie theme tying it all together. The whole curriculum is standards-based and includes over 70 lessons where students must "consider how to duck the undead invasion, secure their supplies and, eventually, rebuild society" through a variety of activities, worksheets and discussions.

Mr. Hunter's story was featured on an NPR affiliate if you would like to read more. In addition, he has made available one of the comics he created which serve as the textbook for the curriculum. Mr. Hunter created this work in order to engage students, and I believe we can use the topic of zombies to explore further curriculum areas.

English and Language Arts

While much of the world of zombies is portrayed in comics and films, ELA teachers can use these various texts to engage students in learning important reading standards. Even the Common Core calls for reading a variety of texts and comparing and contrasting those texts (such as a film and a comic). These stories feature compelling, complex characters under extreme situations that many of us can identify with. Students could analyze the various features of the comic/graphic novel genre, or engage in character analysis. Consider using these zombie-based materials as scaffolding for more complex texts.

Science

Many in the zombie community (did I just write that?) believe that people become zombies due to a virus, and many of the films and literature echo this as a possible method of transmission. This being the case, students could investigate the subject of viruses and bacteria using zombies as the disease being passed. They might come up with scientific methods for eradicating the disease or simply mitigating its effect. They might even hypothesize the biology behind zombies. Again, the topic of zombies is an entry point to engage students in learning significant content.

Math

Related to the science component of zombies, many diseases increase at an exponential rate. Students could analyze different population centers and predict its spread using exponential functions. They could determine when everyone is infected and map the spread using the math data they calculate, or even explore rate of decay. Students could also investigate what happens when a certain number of people are vaccinated to help prevent the spread.

These are some ideas I have either implemented as part of a PBL project or believe might be a good entry point for zombie-based learning across the curriculum. What are your ideas for zombie-based learning to teach content and 21st century skills? (And if anyone could instructionally integrate Michael Jackson's "Thriller" video, that would be awesome!)

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Zombie-Based Learning -- "Braaaaaaains!" | Edutopia

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You read that correctly: Zombie-Based Learning. When I started learning about it, my inner geek squealed with joy. I've always loved zombies. I've watched all the movies and even read the original Walking Dead Comics before it became a hit series in the classroom.