In the Palm of Your Hands

I saw this briefly on the news the other morning while I was bustling around getting around for work and I thought to myself, man I need to check that out. Well I am sure glad I remembered to do so - which by itself is accomplishment to celebrate!

The news segment was reporting on the global patterns of Great White Sharks and how a team was gaining new insights into said research through tracking devices. That alone is interesting to me but what I discovered next was just awesome.

The website is OCEARCH.org and the "team" is a non-profit organization founded by Chris Fischer. From the 'About Us' section:

"...OCEARCH enables leading researchers and institutions to generate previously unattainable data on the movement, biology and health of sharks to protect their future while enhancing public safety and education." 

And...

"OCEARCH is a leader in open source research, sharing data in near-real time for free through the Global Shark Tracker, enabling students and the public to learn alongside PhDs. The Landry’s-developed STEM Education Curriculum, based on the Global Shark Tracker and Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), is being launched for grades 6-8 in the fall of 2013 nationwide. "

So not only are they gathering data that was previously unattainable but they are sharing it with the world for analysis as it happens and providing curriculum ideas for educators! What an amazing time to be on the planet.

STEM educators, and educators in general, take a minute check out the site / the curriculum then spend a few more minutes creatively thinking about how a resource such as this could find a way into your world.

Stay Positive.

Rollout Form for GCS Faculty

Sometimes You Can Blame Google

I was home for lunch yesterday when Jennifer asked me what she was doing wrong because Google Drive was not allowing her to successful create a new Sheet. I sat down to take a look while she clicked through the normal process and sure enough, failure. The only indication was :

Google App that has lost Internet connectivity

Something was causing the connection to drop! We opened up another tab and surfed to a few websites to confirm that the Internet connection was indeed alive and well. The next thing we did gets to the heart of this post and illustrates something we all should be aware of, the Google Apps Status Dashboard. 

The Google Apps Status dashboard solved the mystery as there was indeed an orange dot representing a service disruption at that specific day / time. 

The colored dots are clickable and give more details as to the nature of the problem and status of the solution. 

So the next time you think you might be crazy due to the way a Google service is behavior, or misbehaving as the case may be swing by the Apps Status Dashboard. It may just save a lot of time and frustration! 

Stay Positive!

The Future is Now!

I wanted to share this promotional video we made to spotlight the growing digital initiative at GCS! It is an exciting time to be a Pirate! Go Big Blue!