Lean & AI

Lean is the hip thing in math these days, especially in connection with AI. That's all I know, but here's more: ‘It is incredible’: How AI is transforming mathematics

ToolUniverse

ToolUniverse is a unified ecosystem that transforms any large language model (LLM)—open or closed—into a powerful AI scientist. By standardizing how LLMs identify and call tools, it integrates over 600 scientific resources, including machine learning models, datasets, APIs, and analysis packages.

With its AI-Tool Interaction Protocol, ToolUniverse provides a common interface for seamless communication between LLMs and tools, ensuring compatibility across platforms such as GPT, Claude, Gemini, and open-source models.

More over here: ToolUniverse Documentation

How To Make Animated GIFs

Great video: How to Make Dataviz GIFs (4 Steps with Free Software)

1. Assemble the frames as slides in MS PPT.
2. Save each frame as an image (use JPG as it creates a white background).
3. Upload the JPGs to a free GIF website (e.g. Ezgif).
4. Share the animated GIF!

Or, make it natively in MS PPT = save as animated GIF! But this does not allow you to adjust the timings between the frames and transitions.

Sketchfab & Cannon Mountain

Sketchfab looks fun & calls itself "The leading platform for 3D & AR on the web". The free plan may be enough to get you started, but anything after that is $15 / month.

Here's an example: Cannon Mountain (New Hampshire)

AI For Science

Which AI model is best for scientific questions? Ai2SciArena offers a way to test & compare AI models in this context. And the results? See below!

• Try it here: Ai2SciArena
• More Information
• Nature, 10 July 2025

Blender & Canva

Sounds like Blender & Canva are taking over the 3D & 2D graphic design world - interesting! I'm not surprised to see Blender here, but Canva used to be considered an amateur tool. Read more about it here. 

The VOSviewer

From the website: VOSviewer is a software tool for constructing and visualizing bibliometric networks. These networks may for instance include journals, researchers, or individual publications, and they can be constructed based on citation, bibliographic coupling, co-citation, or co-authorship relations. VOSviewer also offers text mining functionality that can be used to construct and visualize co-occurrence networks of important terms extracted from a body of scientific literature.

Padlet!

Ah yes...we all used Padlet during COVID, but many of us (certainly me) have stopped using Padlet now that we are F2F again. But Padlet still works great, for example:

• Video Discussion Board where the students post one relevant video for a topic, for example ozone & global warming.
• Or, do the same with figures.
• There is also a Video Recorder where they could record a brief video of themselves talking into the camera.

Unfortunately, the free version of Padlet is limited to just 3 'padlets'...not sure how you could in-practice use that for daily teaching.

Visualize This: The FlowingData Guide to Design, Visualization, and Statistics (2nd Edition)

Visualize This: The FlowingData Guide to Design, Visualization, and Statistics 2nd Edition is out! The 1st Edition was great so go get the 2nd one.

RAWGraphs & Observable

Two interesting data viz options:

1. RAWGraphs is free and open-source = great!
2. Observable has a free pricing tier & looks similar to Datawrapper.

My personal take: stick with Google Sheets or MS Excel or choose a free and open-source product for your data viz.

Stats with R or Python!

Nerd alert: An Introduction to Statistical Learning is now available in two versions - one with applications in R and one with applications in Python. That's already pretty awesome & now add that both versions are free to download as a PDF!

What's the best font?

Here's an issues best avoided: stressing-out over fonts! The best advice for most of us is simpe: use a serif font for text and a sans-serif font for data, tables, chart labels, etc.

That being said: What’s your type? Try these tests to pick the perfect font for you from the Washington Post is a nice demonstration how changing the font impacts the way you read and write.

Socially-Relevant Stats Lessons

This could be useful: https://skewthescript.org/ap-stats-curriculum

Mentimeter

Mentimeter looks fun - basically a combination of Kahoot!, PowerPoint, and Padlet. The free version is very limited, but should be enough for a class when combined with a 'real' presentation software, especially when teaching online. The paid versions are too expensive for an educator.

Common Sense Education

Common Sense Education is a large non-profit 'dedicated to improving the lives of all kids and families by providing the trustworthy information, education, and independent voice they need to thrive in the 21st century.'

There are lot's of players in that space directly or indirectly promoting some kind of agenda, so be careful! That being said, they seem to offer good educational materials related to digital citizenship and Edtech.

Mapping with Datawrapper

Datawrapper is just great and now it is even easier to add data & make interactive web-based choropleth maps (see example below): Use our completely redesigned data upload for choropleth maps

The Traffic Simulation Game

Seen on Maps Mania: The Traffic Simulation Game

Download and then model traffic anywhere in the world: add bike lanes, sidewalks, etc. Not sure how it all works, but somehow OpenStreetMap is involved. 

OSS and OSH/OSHW

Here's a great paper and some of the associated resources - it's pretty cool what you can do nowadays with open-source software and hardware. That being said: I have seen too many crappy weather stations for one reason or another (see pic below) - making consistemt and high-quality environmental measurements is complex, especially in harsh environments.

• Chan et al. (2021): Low-cost electronic sensors for environmental research: Pitfalls and opportunities
• http://www.freestation.org/home
• King's College London Geocomputation on GitHub

Ice Tools

Here are a bunch of resources for glacier modeling:

• https://cryo-tools.org/
• https://www.grss-ieee.org/publications/remote-sensing-code-library/
• https://vhub.org/groups/ghub
• https://github.com/awesome-cryosphere/cryosphere-links

Sections in MS PPT

I'm not using MS PPT all that much these days, but here's a nice example of why MS PPT is still better than Google Slides: How to Organize PowerPoint Slides with "Sections"