blog, blog, blog

Still looking for my "voice", but did want to say a little about a book I recently read. It's by Frank Smith and it's titled The Book of Learning and Forgetting. Smith states that there are two perspectives on learning and forgetting. One is the "Classic View" which says that we learn effortlessly, without even knowing we're learning. We learn from the people around us that we identify with. We learn about things we're interested in. The other is the "Offical Theory of Learning" which basically says that learning is work and anything can be learned with enough effort put forth and enough control applied to the learner.

The book is really quite good and a very easy read. My favorite part is the discussion on measuring learning and comparing humans. Smith says that Hermann Ebbinghaus, a philosophy instructor at the University of Berlin in the 1880s came up with a scientific method for studying learning and forgetting. Here it is: "If you want to study how people learn without the involvement of interest and past experience - study how they learn nonsense." This theory gave us the learning curve and a guarantee of learning. It says, anyone can learn anything, provided they spend enough time. Learning is based on effort, so if something hasn't been learned then not enough work or time has been put in. So, essentially this psychological "scientific" theory of learning is all based on how people learn nonsense; it doesn't account for student interest or comprehension.

According to Smith, Ebbinghaus' theory was eagerly adopted by education for the following reasons: the people outside the classroom (politicians, experts, etc.) were captivated by a theory of learning that claimed to be scientific and to guarantee results, and this new "scientific" theory offered control. In the long run, this "official theory of learning" changed the teacher's role from one of collaborator and guide to the one in charge of work and a collector of scores.

I found that it explains a lot about why schools are like they are.

Conference session – Technology in Every Classroom

Consortium of College and University Media Centers 2007 Annual Conference

Conference session – Technology in Every Classroom
Presenter – Sue Clabaugh, University of Maryland/College Park

Sure, everyone wants technology in every classroom, but as this session detailed, it takes a strong institutional commitment, careful planning, and lots of collaboration. Dr. Sue Clabaugh talked about developing realistic plans for installing and supporting technology in general classrooms. Collaboration is important to reinforce that the general classrooms belong to everyone, so everyone has a stake in taking care of them. A variety of user input is necessary to make sure the technology installed is adequate, but not overpowering. Planning is also important, and the input from users coupled with standards and guidelines, and appropriate design principles lead to well defined technology plans. All planning must incorporate allowances for support personnel, equipment maintenance, realistic equipment replacement cycles, and a room upgrade review checklist. The presentation had great importance to me and my work duties. I thought it was loaded with timely and good information.

Conference session – Automating Classroom Recordings

Consortium of College and University Media Centers 2007 Annual Conference

Conference session – Automating Classroom Recordings
Presenter – Grover Saunders, JMU

This session covered JMU’s solution to bringing the recording of student speeches/presentations into the digital age. Previously, all recording of student presentations had been simplified from camcorders on tripods to wall-mounted PTZ cameras and ceiling microphones. This worked well, but the medium was VHS (albeit, a simple format) and not digital. With the phasing out of VCRs, many students had no way to play back their recordings. DVD recorders proved to be troublesome with the wide array of disc formats (DVD-R, DVD+R, DVD-RW, DVD+RW, etc), and the extra time needed to “finalize” the discs was a problem as well. Also, with every year the students became more and more accustomed to getting video from the Internet.
The solution was to utilize the current PTZ cameras and microphones and integrate them into a user friendly, all digital, web-based storage and delivery system. This was accomplished by adding a Mac mini, an analog to digital converter, and an external hard drive along with several inexpensive software tools. The Mac mini becomes the digital video recorder and software scripts are used to schedule and upload the recorded presentations to the JMU streaming server. Once encoded, the instructor is provided with links that can be renamed and embedded in the Blackboard learning management system.
The presentation was well received and generated a lively question/answer session.

Microsoft Surface

Ok, has anyone been keeping up with the Microsoft Surface computing technology? It was announced last spring, but as with anything Microsoft, the announcements usually have little to do with the actual product release. But from what I’ve read it’ll be going in some hotels, casinos, and retail stores next month.

Anyways, I was doing some research into this new device/product (after someone commented that my desk wouldn’t be a good place for such a device), and began wondering how education might benefit from it. For starters, check it out with Popular Mechanics.
http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/industry/4217348.html

I can see this being a nice collaboration tool and it does have a much more natural, intuitive input interface. Obviously, it’ll be awhile before it enters the educational field (i.e. when the price drops some), but it does seem to have more potential for group work than a typical PC. Anybody else have some ideas? Especially you “real” teachers in the class.

And, just for Rich, it’s basically just a really big iPhone built into a coffee table :)

Amused to Death

I like Pink Floyd. Their lead songwriter, Roger Waters, did several solo albums after leaving the band, one of which was titled “Amused to Death”. It’s very Floyd-like and typical of Water’s work. Anyhow, this album was loosely based on the premises put forward by Neil Postman in his 1985 book “Amusing Ourselves to Death”, which I read several years ago after being intrigued by Water’s music. The main thrust of the book is that “the medium is the metaphor” (a twist on Marshall McLuhan’s “the medium is the message”) and as such, it shapes our view of the truth. Postman says that the printed word is an assertion of opinion. One can agree or disagree or not decide at the moment, but the argument has been put forth. Postman says that the print medium inspires one to think about the argument and allows for a well informed public. Essentially that public discourse in a print medium culture is more meaningful and on target than public discourse in the age of show business (the subtitle of his book). Television, being the primary means of communication for the generation he wrote the book for, treats all topics as entertainment and thus public discourse on important issues no longer exists.
Television, regardless of how hard it tries to be otherwise, is just entertainment. His fear is similar to that of Huxley’s “Brave New World” in that we’ve voluntarily given up truth for entertainment. We have surrendered our rights in exchange for entertainment.
I’m currently reading another of Postman’s books, “Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology” and find his views on technology and the information age eerily accurate in many ways. From his book, pages 71-72:
“Technopoly is a state of culture. It is also a state of mind. It consists in the deificaiton of technology, which means that the culture seeks its authorization in technology, finds its satisfactions in technology, and takes its orders from technology. This requires the development of a new kind of social order, and of necessity leads to the rapid dissolution of much that is associated with traditional beliefs. Those who feel most comfortable in Technopoly are those who are convinced that technical progress is humanity's superhuman achievement and the instrument by which our most profound dilemmas may be solved. They also believe that information is an unmixed blessing, which through its continued and uncontrolled production and dissemination offers increased freedom, creativity, and peace of mind. The fact that information does none of these things -- but quite the opposite -- seems to change few opinions, for unwavering beliefs are an inevitable product of the structure of Technopoly. In particular, Technopoly flourishes when the defenses against information break down.”
With the rapid expansion of newer technologies and our increased dependence on technology, I think Postman has some valid arguments in “Technopoly”. Postman died in 2003, so I feel that he didn’t get to experience much of the web’s communication and collaboration side, but some of what I’ve gleaned from the book so far (and from combining/intermingling the web into television and applying his “treat all topics as entertainment” theory) I feel he would have predicted something like You Tube, and would not have viewed it as a good thing.
As I read more, I’ll continue to have something to blog about.

Using the Web for Cheating on School Work

I wonder if teachers should draw a line regarding student use of the web in helping with school work. With the web being such an amazing mass of information, do some teachers see using it as a form of cheating? Is it wrong of me as a parent to allow my daughter to utilize Google translator to help her with her Spanish homework (especially since I can’t)? In the not to distant future, I can envision handheld language translators that allow the user to input phrases in his/her native language, push a “translate” button and have the device either print out or “speak” the translated phrase. Would using such a device be cheating or just being smart?

Knowing where to access information to get the answers you seek seems as or even more important as memorizing facts to be retrieved at some later date. Wouldn’t it be more appropriated for schools to teach proper usage of the wealth of information available on line than to so heavily filter the information that students don’t get the real experience of the web?

When I was a kid, calculators had become affordable to the masses. Unfortunately, we were not allowed to use them in math class. They were seen as a way of cheating and a way around learning math. Today, students are required to have a scientific calculator and are encouraged to use it and taught proper techniques and methods of use. The calculator has become just another tool for the student to use to learn the lesson.

It seems inevitable that the same will happen with the web. As information devices get even smaller and wireless access becomes more ubiquitous, bringing the web to class will be no different than bringing a calculator. The student that knows how to find, sort, and evaluate the information needed will flourish, while those who don’t will likely miss completion deadlines due to information overload.

fanfiction and social networking via LiveJournal

A good friend of mine is really into fanfiction. I, being over 40, had of course never heard of it before I met her. Check here for a pretty good definition: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fan_fiction

She explained that there's an entire fandom world in cyberspace and that there are many different fandoms, with Harry Potter and Tolkein being among the top for fanfiction authors. Now, what might this have to do with social networking? Well, it turns out that for many budding authors a LiveJournal community is the place to be for socializing with those of like interests, advice with writing, opportunities for critiquing or editing others' fanfic writings, and certainly developing friendships.

From what little I've looked at, it appears that many fanfiction stories are adult themed, but the idea of using virtual communities to assess one's writings and to expose one's works to edits and critiques by many people is a great use of blogs/journals/social networking sites to improve one's writing.