Susan Smith Nash's Blog, page 18

Some of Today’s Most Profitable Quadcopter Drone Uses

Drones, in particular, quadcopters, are quickly becoming the standard way to obtain high-quality images and other data for areas that have been hard or expensive to access. There are many quadcopter on the market, and their capabilities are unfolding rapidly, and companies such as WingsLand offer a wide array of capabilities, ranging from a mini-quadcopter that can fold up and fit in one's pocket

Big Data and Deep Learning: Industry Downturn Means Uptick in New Analytics

Permian Basin operators are drilling deep and long — laterals — in order to recover more of the region’s crude and natural gas.
They’re also going deep — as in deep learning — as part of those efforts.
High-tech advances such as big data, deep learning and artificial intelligence are increasingly finding their ways into upstream exploration and production operations. For example, Exxon Mobil Corp

Interview with Abbas Manjee, Kiddom: Innovators in e-learning Series

Welcome to an interview with Abbas Manjee, Kiddom. Kiddom is a new platform that helps teachers pinpoint their students' needs and to track the impact of their teaching adaptations. It's a performance-based approach to teaching, but without the pain.

1.  What is your name and your relationship to e-learning?

Name: Abbas Manjee
Role: Chief Academic Officer
Relationship to e-learning: Before

I Fly High On Fire-Scorched Wings: Companies Re-Invent Themselves in the Delaware Basin

The Delaware Basin is the habitat of the fire-scorched Oil Phoenix,
which rises from the ashes of a 3-year oil industry meltdown that has
savaged companies that have held acreage, operations, and infrastructure
in the costly resources plays of Colorado, Texas, Pennsylvania, North
Dakota, and more.



The mythical Phoenix (image credit: wikipedia)

It is also the place where companies that

Tools and Tips for Creating Group Presentations for an Online Course or Distributed Projects

Creating presentations does not have to be a terrifying experience, and your presentation does not have to be long or detailed to be effective. The key is to be able to define your objective very clearly and to know exactly why you are making the presentation in the first place. What do you want to accomplish?

Then, as you organize your content, be sure to arrange it in a sequence that is

New Methods for Generating Heat -- Do They Work? Here's One ...

Oil wells often confront the problem of "gumming up the works" -- it can be due to paraffin buildup (waxy goo in the pipes) or the fact that the oil itself is like tar (low gravity) and does not flow unless it's heated up.

We know heat is the answer.

 But -- where's the cheap heat?
Where's the heater?
How can we apply heat where it matters?

Here's a suggestion -- Hot Pipes!

Pyrophase ..

Corn of the Mind: Creating Value in a Post-Work Robot World

Drone Review and Reality Check: Capabilities, Flight Times, Costs, Best Brands - Interview with Michael Nash

Separating drone realities from drone hype is critical in an area that is seeing rapid development of technology, applications, and a legal framework that supports more uses of drones. Welcome to an interview with Michael Nash, Mechanical Engineering Ph.D. candidate with extensive experience in robotics (including drones).  In this interview, Nash provides a reality check as he details the

Rubrics As Full-Process Compositional Power Tools

Start, rather than end, with the rubric?
A rubric can be used in the invention phase of writing, not just in assessments.  It is just a matter of perspective, and whether or not you’re willing to create a rubric that piques the imagination and triggers a series of ideas of how to structure and build the essay or other piece of discourse.

The ideal rubric can be both a “triggering rubric” and a

Composition Invention Strategies: Power for the Paper You Must Write

There are many ways to kick off the writing process.  Some of the best approaches involve simply listing ideas or free-writing without any kind of censoring or restrictive thought. The key is to start the flow of ideas and to discover everything you can about what you want to learn about the topic, what you want your audience to do, what kind of discursive outcome (rhetorical situation) do you