Here is a free web-based graphing tool from the National Center for Educational Statistics. It’s called Create A Graph.
Pick at graph type: bar, line, area, XY, pie
Enter your data
Provide labels and select fonts/sizes
Preview
Print or Save to a file
There are many file formats available: PDF, SVG, PNG, JPG, EMF and EPS.
One of my students is using this site to introduce elementary students to graphing concepts. It is a nice alternative to Excel, especially with younger students.
I have heard about this since I was a kid. The story as I heard it was that Indiana tried to declare pi equal to three. It turns out they actually wanted pi to be equal to 3.2.
Wired ran the story last week on the 111 year anniversary of the legislation that (luckily) did not make it to a final vote in the senate after being passed in the house.
House 246 was sent on to the state Senate and was on the verge of passage when everyone’s bacon was serendipitously saved by C.A. Waldo, a Purdue mathematics professor who happened to be in the Statehouse on another matter. Shown the bill and offered an introduction to the genius whose theory it was, Waldo declined, saying he already knew enough crazy people.
If only we could have someone like Waldo around when our federal government tries to create a law involving technology.
Last week at the eTech Ohio Conference, I attended John Schinker’s presentation. He had told me ahead of time that he would be talking about the online community of edtech people that has boosted his overall quality of “edtech life” in the last year.
I found out he has become quite involved with EdTechTalk and is one of the hosts of the EdTechTalkWeekly podcast. John said I should join for the live chat on Sunday nights at 7pm. I did that tonight. It was very worthwhile. I was able to listen to the live podcast and watch the chat complete with URLs. The speed round of URLs has something for everyone. Tonight there was even an interesting guest speaker.
I plan to join them next week.
Not wanting to be left out of the rage called “twitter”, I am now setup.
Thanks to my good friend, John, for pointing out this text on page 11 of the eTech Ohio 2008 conference guide book.
Here we have another attempt at making copyright law more than it is. Copyright law in this country is defined by the United States government and there are clear limitations on any copyright owner’s exclusive rights. It’s called Fair Use and it not only applies to “purely educational” use, but also:
for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research
So I may use an except of a copyright protected work without permission (as I have with the electronically scanned insert above) to make comments (as I am now) about that copyright protected work.
A copyright owner cannot redefine copyright law by stating extra limitations in a book, audio or video recording. Here is a great story chronicling the efforts of the NFL to takedown a video posted by Wendy Seltzer. Wendy recorded the disclaimer by the NFL where they state:
This telecast is copyrighted by the NFL for the private use of our audience, and any other use of this telecast or of any pictures, descriptions or accounts of the game without the NFL’s consent is prohibited
Wendy then posted the video on YouTube so she could have a discussion with her online class (fair use – teaching). The NFL tried to have the video taken offline, but failed to do so.
More than anything else, I wish the copyright notice in eTech’s material could promote something like CreativeCommons. This would make it much easier for educators to use the work without worrying about breaking the law (I am uncertain of the exact meaning of “purely educational purposes”) and commercial use could be restricted with a CC-noncommercial license.
