Well, Me. My name is Shawn Day and I am a PhD student in the History Department at 
The tentative title for post this was how to get ahead by really trying, but I thought this might actually sounds a little too preachy. Without making this too much of a habit (stealing from another’s hard work), Dustin Wax has compiled a great set of suggestions on how to ‘Make this your best Semester Yet‘. I previously noted his excellent article on how to put a wiki to personal use and he has taken some time to assemble a set of thoughtful and powerful reminders on how to tackle the semester.
I draw particular attention to his suggestions to ‘know your professor’ and ’speak up’. These are oft overlooked aspects of the learning environment, but crucial ones. This list reminds us all (I have a student hat on myself as well as TA) that your education calls for strategy and operates at a variety of levels. Ones that I sure which someone highlighted for me at the outset, as opposed to having discover on my own. Even if only a couple of these remind or instruct, they can make a huge difference on your effectiveness this semester.
Today I had a wonderful discussion with Fernanda Viégas and Martin Wattenberg of IBM’s Visual Communications Lab. These are the fine folks behind the Many Eyes website that I blogged about a few months ago. Since launching their site, they have been hard at work bringing us new means of visualizing datasets and providing a social network for dataheads. My earlier article I spoke glowingly of the attention to detail that the site exhibited and wealth of charting opportunities offered. I also promised I would play more with the site.
In the last few months I have had an opportunity to just that.
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I am a big fan of wikis for note-taking, research material collation and organization. There are a wide variety of easy to use, free wiki services online and an increasing number of small footprint, simple standalone wikis. I probably should have blogged about this earlier and shared some of my experiences, but an excellent article by Dustin Wax at lifehack.org does a superb job of explaining the rationale and gives some great how to tips.
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Having just returned from one of my favourite cities in the world, I was fascinated to find a Paris Metro Virtual Experience. This media-rich site offers wonderful history of the Paris Metro and the opportunity to take a virtual tour with static images and rel-time soundtrack along a number of lines. Additionally, the author of the site has completed station by station architectural mosaics of particular lines. If you have ever had the opportunity to travel on the metro (arguably one of the most efficiently run systems in the world) this site may bring back some memories.
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