Remote Graphic Capture for Vanderbilt Center for Teaching

Mind map created remotely from Dallas and projected live in Nashville during the workshop.

This workshop for university faculty and staff featured many tools for physical and virtual facilitators and educators, including remote graphic capture and presentation on group  facilitation and graphic recording by Alphachimp Studio Inc.

From the Vanderbilt Center for Teaching (CFT):

Our brains are wired to rapidly make sense of and remember visual input. Visualizations in the form of diagrams, charts, drawings, pictures, and a variety of other ways can help students understand complex information. A well-designed visual image can yield a much more powerful and memorable learning experience than a mere verbal or textual description.

On Wednesday, March 17th the CFT hosted  Show and Tell: Integrating Visual Thinking in Your Teaching in order to begin dialogue about how we might tap into our students’ ability to think visually when teaching.

To see the results and access the list of visual methods, tools, books and resources from the workshop, visit: http://bit.ly/viz-teach

Alphachimp Gets Down in Dubai

Streets of Dubai from Alphachimp Studio on Vimeo.

Whilst on assignment in the United Arab Emirates, team members take an adventurous day trip to haggle for brand name knock-offs, peruse backstreet markets, and convince a taxi driver to make a speedy stop at the world's tallest building.

[view the same footage sans music here.]

The Elephant and the Rider

Nonprofit Management and Making Change: Chip Heath

Great podcast on how to switch behaviors when change is hard from Social Innovation Conversations.

Those in nonprofit management constantly adapt to move their organizations forward.

In this audio lecture sponsored by the Stanford Center for Social Innovation, Chip Heath, Stanford professor and coauthor of the book Switch, provides a framework for change.

He demonstrates in case studies that three principles are involved in successful change, whether it be on the personal or societal front:

1. Convince the driver.
2. Motivate the elephant.
3. Shape the path.

Leaders in nonprofit management are called to attune to these principles when tackling change situations.

And Heath calls out examples from cleaning coach Flylady to unlocking secrets to protect kids in Vietnam from malnutrition.

Messiest Home: What the Heck?

This is my wife's worst nightmare: specifically, that I will cram our home so full of live monkeys and tools that a make-over show will arrive with cameras and snarky professional organizers to mock us.

Host of Clean House: Search for the Messiest Home in the Country, Ms. Niecy, arrives with her crew at The Monkey House.

If it is any consolation, they only let the little one sleep in the bed.

The 100th Chimp at Tacugama

Tompey arrives in the late evening at Tacugama

Bala Amarasekaran abandoned his original career as an accountant to establish Tacugama Chimpanzee Sanctuary in 1995. Together with the Government of Sierra Leone, he is working to secure the welfare and future of chimpanzees in Sierra Leone. Sadly 100 – Tacugama: The 100th chimp was rescued two days ago! A tiny girl. Hardly 1 year old. Arrived dehydrated, weak, with deep scars under her neck and hips caused by the ropes cutting through the poor girl’s flesh….and I have seen those “helpless”, “all lost” eyes many times before! An employer of the Sierra Rutile mines felt sorry for the baby and had bought it from a hunter. The little girl was called “Tompey” Learn more and how to help >>

MONTHLY: Feed a chimp: $20.00/mo

ONE TIME DONATIONS:
Adopt a Chimp: Guardian ($149.00)
Adopt a Chimp: Sponsor ($79.00)
Tacugama 2010 Calendar ($20.00) 

NPR : RADIOLAB : ANIMAL MINDS

Credit: Photo by Kelly CarmodyWhat do animals think? Feel? Believe? Why do we care? Well, most of us do. We really do.

WNYC - Radiolab: Animal Minds (April 02, 2010):

ANIMAL MINDS When we gaze into the eyes of our beloved pets, can we ever really know what they might be thinking? Is it naive to assume they're experiencing something close to human emotions? Or, on the contrary, is it ridiculous to assume that they AREN'T feeling something like that? In this hour of Radiolab, we explore what science can say about what goes on in the minds of animals.

FastCompany: Where the Jobs Will Be in 2018

Infographic of the Day

As part of a series looking at employment trends for the coming decade, NPR has created an interactive chart summarizing their findings.

Steve 'Woz' Wozniak on the Future of Computing: It's Human

From Fast Company's blog: 

When Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak drops by the office for a visit, it's guaranteed to generate at least one video-worthy moment, like the one below. He was visiting to pitch Fusion-io, a company that's engineered a solid-state storage solution that could radically alter the server farm landscape. (We're currently testing a Fusion-io product, but it's been slow going since, oddly, the hardware isn't compatible with Mac.)