Author: David Wees (page 94 of 98)

October 18, 2009 / 4 Comments

Definition of Cyber-culture

Cyber culture is the set of social expectations, etiquette, history and language used by the collection of people active on the World Wide Web. Just as the non-cyber world is separated into cliques and countries, the cyber world is separated into taxonomies and web spheres. The countries of the world are partially represented in cyberspace by the country domains, but more than ever people are less connected by language and locale and more by common interest. The importance of this cyber-culture to educational technology is that it is the ground upon which we should build our e-learning frameworks as it is rapidly becoming common ground for every connected person in the world.

Electronic mannerisms and customs have developed over the years the WWW has been around and now using the WWW carries with its own language, and its own cultural references. If you have ever chatted online about having your site ‘Dugg’ or sent a tweet to a friend, you have participated in the subculture of the web.

Every culture has its own language, and cyber-culture is not the exception to this rule. Not only does a rich vocabulary exist, parts of the cyber-language used on the web have their own syntax and grammatical structure. In fact the number of words is so great, an online dictionary, Netlingo.com, has sprung up to keep track of them.

Cyber-culture has its own areas of social interaction, and its structure is very much like that of the old market towns of Medieval Europe. The markets are represented by Ebay.com and Amazon.com and other analogous sites. The money lenders do business in the online banking world; social connections between people are represented by popular websites such as Facebook.com and Twitter.com.

Cyber society is divided into social status groups, where one’s ability to communicate online elevates your status, however these social status groups by and large follow the same groups which exist outside of cyber-space. An additional division in this online society is by topic, with a lot of the discussion forums mimicking (or in some cases replacing) real life discussions about what are often very important issues.

Over the years cyber culture has been changing rapidly. This is partially because the browsers and website are capable of so much more rich media than in the past, and partially because the internet is becoming ubiquitous in mainstream offline society. Everyone in the real world has to have a connection to the cyber-world we have constructed. Businesses can mark their success by the strength of their online brand. Some trends in use of the internet show that internet users have been decreasing in age, and that the ways these younger use the internet are much different than their parents.

It is not entirely clear where cyber-culture is headed, although it is clear it is here to stay. Will it under-go another upheaval when some new form of rich media becomes available online? Only time will tell; but the evolution will be determined by us.

October 2, 2009 / 1 Comment

Really interesting conversation on #edchat on Twitter

I participated for the first time a couple of days ago in this #edchat phenomena happening on Twitter. Basically the idea is, everyone heads to the search page on Twitter and starts having a conversation through Twitter using the hashtag #edchat. The resulting conversation is recorded and has many people who can listen in on the conversation, and everyone is free to jump in if they want.

The Wordle (created on http://www.wordle.net) below is the result of our conversation topic – motivating students.

The reason why we used Twitter for our conversation is less obvious I suppose. We could have had a similar conversation using forum software or one giant chat, but both of these have drawbacks. First, a forum is an asynchronous form of communication with significant delay between comments. Twitter is a much faster mode of communication, and the ability to refresh to see more results in the search engine makes using Twitter closer to a real conversation speed. Twitter beats a chat application largely because you can follow the participants of the Twitter chat after the conversation, and a permanent(ish) record of the conversation continues to exist on Twitter for other people to find (and possible join!).

This conversation was fun and engaging and involved over 110 participants and over 800 comments made. That’s pretty impressive, and definitely shows me that Twitter is a very useful tool for personal professional development and collaboration. When was the last time you had such an organized conversation with so many people?

July 31, 2009 / 0 Comments

Second Media Project

I created this project using a variety of different tools. I started by brainstorming with my wife some ideas about what I could do, and she helped me out by creating a sample story board. I liked a lot of her ideas and incorporated them into my final production.

The cartoons in the video were created using Bitstrips.com, a very cool site where you can create custom comics. Very easy to use and lots of flexibility, although I had to edit a couple of the comics using the GIMP photo editor.

The music I downloaded from Jamendo.com, which allows you to listen to music for free, and download many clips. I don’t know if any major artists are on it or not, but I’ve found some great music here, and even better, licensed under a creative commons license.

There is a clip from the first Star Trek movie I’ve included. I think this will be okay in terms of copyright under a fair use for education clause. It isn’t that long, and totally not necessary, but I thought including it might spice up my otherwise slightly dry video.

You can watch it below!

July 6, 2009 / 0 Comments

Using Bitstrips.com to work on my MP2

I’m working on my second media production and have decided on a topic related to cybernetics, and the future of learning. If you read the comics below, I think the idea is pretty clear.

The plan is to link these together, along with some relevant images and create a video from it. I think I’ll add some voice-over this time and some futuristic sounding music. Video to follow in a further post. I’ve converted these slides into a Prezi presentation which you can check out below.

June 15, 2009 / 0 Comments

First media assignment

Below is a copy of my media assignment for ETEC 531. I was working on something much better using Adobe Premier Pro CS4 but at the last minute couldn’t get past some weird export errors. Very frustrated, I decided to redo the project using Microsoft Photostory 3, which is incredibly easy to use. Unfortunately ease of use usually translates into inability to make real customization, and that certainly occurs here. Wish I had more time to work on this, but it’s due today!

Note that the photos from this video are from Wikipedia Commons (and are licensed in the public domain) and the music is from http://jamendo.com (which is licensed under a Creative Commons license).

May 9, 2009 / 0 Comments

Multiple blogs, good or bad?

So I’ve started two new courses this semester which will bring my total number of courses taken as part of my Masters of Educational Technology degree up to 6. If taking two courses works out well, and I don’t end up estranged from my family, I’ll probably do the same both semesters next year, and finish off my degree quickly.

In any case, one of these courses is requiring us to set up a blog on the UBC web servers, which some of the students in the course have objected to, given that a lot of us already have external web hosts with our own blogs, and wish to gather our stuff together, rather than spreading it out. I’ve already got three blogs, why should I start another?

This situation caused me to reflect on my own practices, and to look at why I have multiple blogs, and whether a blog which only used for a short term, for a single course, is really useful.

I have 3 blogs right now. Obviously one of them is this blog which you are reading. It’s intended for generating discussion around my professional practices as an educator, and as part of my professional portfolio. Write down what you think as a professional, and if people agree with it, you get recognition. It’s not a lot of recognition, but it helps and I am sure it is part of the reason I’m employed full-time next year in what seems like a difficult market for teachers, British Columbia.

Another one of my blogs is for my coding experiments and work. It’s meant to be a record of what I have learned since I started my foray into web programming 4 years ago. It hasn’t been updated in a couple of months, largely because I haven’t been doing any programming recently. I go through fits and spurts, which you can do when it’s a hobby and not your profession. I’ve actually started to get some work as a result of this blog, in the language with which I have the least experience, which is interesting.

I also have had a blog associated with my school which is expressly for disseminating information to my students, and to give my students a bit of playground with which to create their own summaries of what is happening in class. I have no idea if anyone outside of my class is reading this blog, mostly because I’ve disabled anonymous comments on the blog. It isn’t really meant to be a public discourse with the whole world, although it is publically visible.

Each of these blogs has its own purpose. They live separately from each other because of this. People who are interested in what I think about education aren’t necessarily going to care about my programming or summaries of high school mathematics lessons. The same is true of the other two blogs.

Since I have so many blogs already, I don’t really want to start a new one just for this course. It’s a lot to keep track of and keep updated. So my plan is to create the blog as requested, update it for this course (the next 13 weeks) and then migrate all of the content over to this blog and remove the course blog once it’s no longer necessary. Sounds like a plan?

April 17, 2009 / 0 Comments

Geogebra Open Presentation writing

Google Docs has a really cool feature I’d like to try out. The idea is that I have a presentation on Geogebra that I would like to host. There was a lot of interest before, and unfortunately I had to cancel, but I’d like to try again. I’m not a Geogebra expert however, just an enthusiastic intermediate level user. I’d like to create a presentation for beginners to use, but don’t want to miss anything important.

That’s where you come in, if you are interested. The idea is, I’ve created a presentation, which you can access at:

http://docs.google.com/Presentation?id=dhkzc87c_7g8r8cz83

You can contact me through an online form at https://davidwees.com/contact and ask for permission to edit the presentation, and I’ll send you an invitation. You’ll have to start by creating an account at http://docs.google.com, but that’s pretty easy to do. Once you have the invitation, you can edit/add to/delete from the presentation. I’ve started with a basic structure, but there’s obviously lots of room for improvement.

Here is what we have so far:

April 5, 2009 / 0 Comments

Summary of ETEC 533

So my ETEC 533 course has wrapped up, and it ended up being very enjoyable, although a lot of work. We have just finished our group assignment which includes an online portion, and an essay which justifies the choices we made in creating our online resource.

In this course we started by reviewing the theory behind using technology to when teaching mathematics and science. We came to similar conclusions as in my other courses in the MET program,which is that basically teaching the technology should not be the goal when using it to teach other subject areas, and that one has to have a good lesson and justification for using the technology in order to make it work. We also noted that most teachers lack the training they need to effectively use the technology they are increasingly provided.

Our next unit involved looking at three different types of technology enhanced learning experiences. We tried out the Jasper series of videos, in which real-life problems are presented using video technology, which an advanced queuing system. We were also shown the Web-based Inquiry Science Environment (WISE) system developed at the California University at Berkeley, which provides a framework for creating lessons and interactive activities online. The final activity of this unit allowed us to explore My World, formerly called WorldWatcher, which allows students to analyze real-life geographic data.

The last unit of the course saw us look at a variety of different learning technologies, including visualization software (like Geometer’s Sketchpad), networked communities (like Second Life and a virtual field science lab), and finally hand-held technologies (like mobile phones and data probes attached to graphing calculators).

Two common threads through-out the course were the need for advance preparation for all of these technologies, and the wider world that is made available in the classroom through the use of these technologies. Many of these technologies are expensive, and so only the richest of schools can afford to use many different technologies in their classrooms, and so part of this course is about deciding which technology suits the situation and the specific curricula being developed.

A third thread was the ability these technologies often provide social affordances in the learning of the students, and for constructivist learning principles to be applied. Using this learning principle does not require much tailoring of the technologies we looked at in this course.

In general this course was very useful and interesting. It was a lot of work, and I can’t say it was made any easier by the passing away of my father mid-course, or the operation I ended up needing to have at the end of the course, OR the full back-up I had to do which deleted the original version of this essay. Despite all of those personal problems, I still think I learned a lot from this course, and was introduced to a lot of resources, some of which I hope to use again in my own teaching.

April 3, 2009 / 0 Comments

What about using hand-held devices in education?

iPhone in Education - http://apple.com As Dede, C., Salzman, M.C., Loften, R.B., Sprague, D. (1999) suggest, hand held devices can be powerful tools for education, when used appropriately. Dede, et. al. (1999) indicate that the devices allow for subjects to be "immersed" in the learning, be provided with "spatial…[and]…multisensory" cues, be motivated by the use of the technology, and finally feel "[a] sense of presence in a shared virtual environment" (Loftin, 1997).

However, the use of hand-held devices has yet to see any significant impact in secondary schools, at least as far as my personal experience goes, except in a small section of the curriculum. This is partially due to a lack of funding in education, particularly for technologies which lack a proven track record at the secondary school level, and partially because of ignorance on the part of many senior educators as to the capabilities of the hand-held devices.

Two obvious exceptions to this minimal use, which are widely used across the affluent world, are graphing calculators and digital data collectors. In my teaching experience, the school without graphing calculators is becoming very rare. The use of digital data collectors has become so wide-spread that there is an entire physics modeling curriculum devoted to their use out of the University of Arizona (Hestenes, D., Jackson, J., 2003).

Devices which have multiple uses, and are generally considered ‘entertainment devices’ are seeing much less use in classrooms. In this category, I include cellphones, music devices, personal organizers, and other analogous devices. The reasons for this are, I think, obvious. Simply put, educators have enough problems with classroom management these days without introducing another element of difficulty, and so many schools have banned the use of these types of devices, a notable example being the New York City department of education (Clark, A.S., 2006).

The educational value of the second of these type of devices is still being investigated. Dede, et. al. (1999) argue that when used appropriately, these types of devices can have a tremendous impact on the learning of students, but that when used inappropriately, are little more than distraction devices.

Time will tell if these devices end up having a wide-spread use in education, but my personal suspicion is that they will join the ranks of the other media devices which have been used in schools (radios, etc…) and most schools will not use these devices to their whole potential.

References:
Clark, A.S. (2006) School Cell Phone Ban Causes Uproar. Associated Press. retrieved on April 3rd from http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/05/12/national/main1616330.shtml

Dede, C., Salzman, M.C., Loften, R.B., Sprague, D. (1999). Multisensory Immersion as a Modeling Environment for Learning Complex Scientific Concepts. Computer Modeling and Simulation in Science Education

Hestenes, D., Jackson, J. (2003). A Critical Role for Physicists in K-12 Science Education Reform. Arizona State University.

Loftin, R.B. (1997). Hands Across the Atlantic. IEEE Computer Graphics & Applications 17 (2), 78-79.

March 31, 2009 / 0 Comments

Networked communities and E-learning Opportunities in Mathematics and Science

How can a networked community could be embedded in the design of authentic learning experiences in math or science?

Part of my ETEC 533 course is to examine networked communities, such as Second Life (as an example of a multipersion world simulation), using resources such as PBS Nova Adventures (which provides the ability to hold virtual field trips), and Western’s Integrated Laboratory Network (which allows students to complete a variety of lab experiments online). What these different systems have in common is that they provide a simulation of a real-life learning experience, accessed through the internet.

One immediate question I have is, do these networked communities have any value? This question is relevant because before one can decide on the "How" one really needs to engage the "Why" question.

It is hotly debated for example whether Second Life is in fact a useful teaching tool¹. Having explored Second Life myself, it seems to me that with proper preparation (read here a LOT of time) one could construct a number of simulations for this faux-world that students could explore. One could easily represent socio-dynamics and economics using Second Life, but as for Mathematical applications, I think these might be few and far between, and end up being contrived. There are a number of science communities formed within the Second Life platform, which from a cursory inspection seem to have educational value. Our instructor had us run through a tour of an astronomical observatory, and although I’ve seen better simulations of the solar system, the ability to communicate live with other students about the simulation probably makes this a valuable learning experience.

The discussion in class of the Integrated Laboratory Network (ILN) brought up some useful points. The first point, brought up by Nancy was that the fact that the lab time needed to be booked ahead of time meant she really felt like she had to be prepared. A number of other students in my class agreed with this point, and it would be interesting to see if this effect would happen in a high school settings since of course the preparation would involving learning. Another valid point, brought up by Ian, was that the simulation felt more like "following a recipe instead of doing science", suggesting that the experiment wasn’t as valuable as a result. Another student, Tris, reflected that at his school the design portion of a lab was an extremely important part of the experimental process. My thought was that the use of this equipment physically would be extremely unlikely at the high school level and that if a student created an experiment which required highly specialized equipment, an ILN might be the only way to do it.

As for the simulated field trips, one of the greatest values I can see here is the ability to "explore" a location which is otherwise inaccessible. I can imagine a time in the not-too-distance future where students would be able to book time using a highly durable robot, and explore Antarctica or Mars, both of which are places that are either extremely expensive or improbable places to visit. Already there are excellent video field trips of many places in our world which are highly fascinating and learning rich experiences. One obvious flaw with a virtual field trip is the lack of a tactile experience. Without taste, smell and touch, the experience would be sensory deprived.

Of these three examples, it seems that only Second Life has a true social learning aspect built into its design. An ILN or a virtual field trip really lacks that social context which benefits the learning for so many of our students. It will be fascinating when computer processing becomes powerful enough to allow for multiple users to experience a virtually life-like simulation of a place caught on camera only. When this happens, and if the people can communicate during the experience, then social learning affordances will be relevant to this type of learning.

Now suppose we wanted to design an actual classroom learning experience which would use one of these tools. The easiest to do this for would be the ILN, since it has been specifically designed to be an instructional aid for laboratory science. One would have students design detailed experiments, and then have a wide variety of different tools available to them to complete their experiments, through the use of the Integrated Laboratory Network. Students would have to discuss their experiments ahead of time and reflect on their experiments afterward to allow for a social context for the activity.

To use the Second Life platform effectively, I think that a simulation could be constructed for the students to access, and then students would be given free reign to experiment within the science simulation (the orbiting of the planets seems like a good example for instance) and discuss their discoveries. One would lack much control over the specific information learned by any particular student, but it could be a valuable learning experience, particularly for the students who need help visualizing three dimensional objects.

The virtual field trips would allow for hostile locations to be examined by students. For example one could use footage of an exploration of the deep sea bed and show students how even in an hostile environment, life thrives. This would make for an excellent learning opportunity in a biology classroom.

None of the resources we have been shown looks like it would be useful for a mathematics classroom without an enormous amount of preparation. One could imagine that one could show a highly specialized simulation of a concept which involves a fair bit of mathematics, but it seems to me that any such simulations would be too contrived to be useful learning activities.

It is clear that there are uses of these networked communities within education, and even within science education there are opportunities for powerful learning to occur through these communities. One doesn’t have to look very hard to find examples of things in science worth learning which are for various reasons completely inaccessible for students (imagine setting up a virtual black hole for students to look at for instance). For this reason alone, I think these network communities are worth exploring, but I think that the inclusion of community needs to be stronger in most of these online systems (Second Life excluded) as this will allow for a strengthening of the learning opportunities available.

References:

Aldritch, C. (2006) Second Life is Not a Teaching Tool, accessed from http://learningcircuits.blogspot.com/2006/11/second-life-is-not-teaching-tool.html on March 31st, 2009.
Cancilla, D. A., Albon, S. P. (In Press) Moving the Laboratory Online: Challenges and Options, Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks.