| Class 11, Chapter 9: Assessing Constructive Learning and Problem Solving with Technology |
[Jun. 14th, 2006|12:18 pm] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | At home | ] |
| [ | mood |
| | determined | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots- still... | ] |
Ok, I’m going to take a great big sigh of relief for having read this entire textbook… I never thought it could be done (although this wasn’t exactly a huge textbook or a difficult read). I think that the ideas presented in the textbook were so refreshing and interesting that it made reading it a breeze. I also must say that if there were evaluation deities, the rubric or “Rubric” would be one of if not the greatest of the evaluation gods. I would put him somewhere up there with Zeus.
Seriously though, having a rubric in front of you while working on an assignment really helps with organizing how you do you’re work and to a greater extent helps you ensure that you do everything required. So in not only being a great tool to help you problem solve how you organize and conceive of your assignment/ present it your evaluator, it’s also makes things easy for the evaluator. The parts of the project that are important are in the rubric, so the evaluator only has to find those parts within the assignment. Then the evaluation is done by looking at the individual scale that each section of the rubric has, and circling, checking or marking where the assignment fits in. It’s so simple, easy, righteous, just, pure… do you get where the whole deity thing is coming from?
The best part about the rubric though comes from the making of it. A good rubric is a collaborative project in and of itself, and all parts of it need to be gone over with a fine toothed comb (or at least with a whole bunch of different people). The people involved in the making of the rubric should also be the people who are being evaluated through the rubric. That way they can’t say, “Hey that rubric’s sooo unfair!” because they made it, and they would essentially be saying that they themselves are unfair. So now the difficult thing to figure out is whether or not “Rubric” god of evaluation is good, because he is a product of the human’s mind.
http://www.wbr.com/player/flaminglips/lips_player.html
Some cool music... check out track 3!
And yes of course, a robot fish. It seems they won't be satisfied until they have complete dominion of the whole world including the ocean.... unless it's a fresh water robot... I don't know. What do you make of this? http://cellar.org/iotd.php?threadid=9322 This is the link to the page where I found the picture... geez it's kinda scary looking though. |
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| Class 10, Chapter 7: Learning by Exploring Microworlds and Virtual Realities |
[Jun. 14th, 2006|12:10 pm] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | At Home | ] |
| [ | mood |
| |  bouncy | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots | ] |
Alright, there’s definitely some cool stuff in chapter 7 on microworlds such as Math Cats and the traffic simulator. Both these programs are interesting to look at (from the picture that I have as an example) visually, and I can see how they can teach some basic concepts. Even the interactive physics program is somewhat interesting, but as for developmentally appropriate, I don’t know. Perhaps it’s just me, but for a textbook that was published in 2003 I would expect that there are better programs out there to serve as examples of what can be used as a microworld that can be explored by children. A lot of these programs seem to be difficult to understand, and seem to have a lot of information available that wouldn’t be applied by the children making it excess information.
Don’t get me wrong though, I really like the basic concepts that the chapter presents, continuing with the theme of problem solving as a form of meaningful learning. I also was very fascinated with the process of OWL and I really think that peer mentoring is a key component to meaningful learning. When you’re mentoring, you’re problem solving as well as helping out another individual. There’s a lot of satisfaction to be gained from that. I think for me, I just need to see these other programs in action with children using them. I suppose that I’m very much Thomas the doubter (maybe I’d set my hopes up a little too high), where if I see it work I’ll believe that it does. If these other programs were to work as well as the OWL program then
I must admit that I was pretty excited about the section on VR (Virtual Realities), and even though I was introduced to some pretty cool technologies that I hadn’t really heard of (such as CAVE, where an entire room is converted into an interactive digital space (it made me think of the holodeck on Star Trek)) I think that I was hoping for more. I thought that by now, VR technologies would have grown into something more, but this stuff has been around since the late 90’s making it almost a decade old. What happened to technology growing at an incredible rate? I heard that Jason has been working on a VR project and I’d really like to see what that looks like.
"I, Robot Chef
Ayano Sato, center, an employee of Honda, and three-year-old Koh Katagiri watch Honda's humanoid robot Asimo making a rice cake at Honda's Tokyo headquarters yesterday."
I think I would make my Robot Asimo create a pineapple upside down cake... or maybe that's pushing the envelope a little too far. Anyways, it's a robot, it should be able to make something a little more complicated than rice cake! |
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| Class 9, Chapter 6, Hypermedia |
[Jun. 14th, 2006|10:17 am] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | At Home | ] |
| [ | mood |
| |  anxious | ] |
| [ | music |
| | The Sound of a Large Fan | ] |
From my experience with the world of technology, hypermedia is probably the most common of technologies used in the world today. Which of course is no surprise considering how vast the internet is and how many people are regularly using it, browsing through the online hypermedia that is web pages.
I also have to admit that making web pages can definitely be a positive design experience that encourages learning through problem solving, but one of the examples of hypermedia in the text that we read (chapter 6, The StorySpace example) seem a little outdated. I suppose that it is age appropriate and that’s why it made it into the text. I’m wondering though if there were a slew of other hypermedia programs to choose from and for some reason StorySpace stuck out as the supreme example of children’s programming. I would like to know what made it stick out or if it just happened to be one of the only examples to choose from.
I do agree with the text though in that constructing hypermedia is a more meaningful way of learning than just examining hypermedia to learn information. I also agree that building hypermedia is a much better way of learning than multimedia presentations. I feel that multimedia was interesting at first, but now that it’s been used for quite some time I kind of find multimedia a little bit boring. In fact I somewhat look forward to just straight-up lectures…. Who am I kidding! I hate lectures in all forms, I much prefer doing assignments and learning on my own, I find I actually learn more.
All of this hypermedia and web page design is reminding me of my first web page design project. It was in my grade 12 computer class and I was assigned with the rest of the class to make a web page on anything at all. I harkened back to my childhood and remembered all those long car trips where my parents would put me to sleep by playing John Denver’s greatest hits. So I decided to make a page that was in honour of John Denver and of course the very next day after I was done, he died violently in a plane crash. Let’s just say that I don’t make web pages lightly any more and you should probably stay on my good side.
Didn't you know that AIBO is man's new best friend? He's probably the worlds coolest robot dog that you can actually buy from Sony for a sweet well spent 2 thousand dollars ;) |
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| Class 8, Children as photographers.... |
[Jun. 5th, 2006|01:18 pm] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | At Home | ] |
| [ | mood |
| |  content | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Joni Mitchell- Greatest Hits | ] |
The document we were asked to read for this class (8) was quite fascinating. Although photography isn’t a huge interest for me I did find the dialogue on how children of different ages take photographs in different ways pretty neat. Also how children look at photography from a very different point of view than their parents do (or the children’s views on what they think they’re parents views on photography are). It seems to me that the way children use cameras and the way they see photography matches up quite well with what I’ve learned about child development. By this I mean that the younger children seem to be more egocentric, taking pictures of items they own and mostly staying within their homes. Whereas the older the child gets the less egocentric they seem with 15 year olds taking the most pictures of social groups outside the home. This matches up well with what I’ve learned in my ECE courses. Another thing from this study that I found very interesting was how 11 year olds were particularly fascinated with taking pictures of animals and the landscape. This definitely matches up with my observations of the interests of 11 year olds in the child care centre where I work.
What I would of liked to see differently from this study, or in a follow up study, would be how children of different ages interact with a more high-tech digital camera. I’m curious to see what kinds of pictures a child will take when they aren’t limited by how many pictures they can take and they can see what pictures they’re taking. I’m wondering if it would change their views or ways in which they use the cameras. Especially seeing as how a lot of the children when interviewed on whether they would change the picture that they took, many (especially the older ones) exclaimed that they would change the angle or the position the subject was in. I also wonder if the digital pictures would be more exhibition quality than the shots taken using a Kodak easyshot.
All in all though, it was definitely a great study that looks at a topic which I believe requires further studying. Picture taking for children has the potential to be a great way to complement a more sophisticated curriculum in schools around the world.
The 6 Million Dollar Man is on his way... maybe even sooner than we think!
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| Class 7, Social Hacking Article |
[Jun. 5th, 2006|11:43 am] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | At Home | ] |
| [ | mood |
| | busy | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Ben Harper- Both Sides of the Gun | ] |
Alright time to play a desperate game of “Ketchup”. As anyone who’s checking the dates on my live journal posts can tell (or anybody in my group looking to comment on my posts), I have fallen far behind. With that said I will move ahead and post what needs to be posted. Even though I have fallen behind on my posts it doesn’t mean I’ve been neglecting my reading (as should be apparent in my group MSN chats on them), I suppose I just got a little busy or preoccupied. The document we were asked to read for this class, which was co-written by our professor, really opened my eyes to the more common form of hacking: Social Hacking.
The document outlines how hackers will gather information from all over the internet on a particular person. Using that information the hacker will be able to paint a picture of that person’s identity, and then depending on how malicious that hacker is, he/she could steal that person’s identity and do really horrible things with it. Most hackers will just mess with a person or do things that are generally harmless… and the long/short of it is that social hacking is really a social problem and not a technical problem. It doesn’t matter how strong your computers defenses are, a social hacker gathers information from other areas and depending on how skilled they are they can paint a fairly accurate picture of you and me without needing to actually break into your computer. It also needs to be said that social hackers don’t necessarily gather information by only using technology, some could resort to sifting through garbage or watching you do your daily routine, and the fact of the matter is that for this very reason social hacking has been around long before computers were even available. Computers just happen to make the job easier (or so it seems) because the information is more readily available on the public domain.
I feel that social hacking has been around for a long time and will continue to be around for a much longer time. I don’t see society changing so much that people won’t be interested in watching other people any longer. In fact watching other people is usually looked at in a positive way. We watch our children grow up and our families change. We watch people as we sit at restaurants and when we walk through the mall. Even though it’s a more superficial kind of watching, it’s still somewhat the same in that we make judgments on those people that we watch go by. We see a mother with a screaming child and many of us will think, “Wow, what an awful mother!” or, “She obviously doesn’t know what she’s doing.” Both those judgments are based on very little information and could very well be wrong. Social hacking is just a more intense form of people watching and depending on the person doing it bad things could come out of it.
Being scared of an evil social hacker is the same as being scared of the demented man who’s watching you in the mall. Both of them could and might have the means of hurting you, but living in fear of them makes absolutely no sense.
RoboSaurus is Huge! I don't quite know how functional it is, but could you imagine trying to battle an army of robosauruses.... Yikes!
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| Class 6, Chapter 4, Building Technology-Supported Learning Communities on the Internet |
[May. 17th, 2006|06:18 pm] |
Another very long chapter, but it still managed to hold my attention which is cool. I was able to partially ignore the crazy thunder and lightning storm that was raging outside (I have a pretty sweet view of these storms) and my cats that were freaking out inside in order to finish the reading.
Communities are definitely all over the internet and yes a lot of them are very inappropriate. I myself have actually been a part of a MUD (multiuser domain) community back when I was in high school. It was based on the Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan and those who were involved made characters based on the people in Robert Jordan’s books and went on adventures together. I remember that being a part of the game forced me to be very creative with my writing as those who played with me were very descriptive with their own (just like Robert Jordan…). It was a very good exercise in creative writing, as you’re not only writing for yourself but are also collaborating with others on how a story is going to proceed. As for any other educational advantages, I can’t really see any for that particular MUD. I can see that type of online environment becoming more popular with further development.
Online communities are definitely the way to go for now though, and I’m amazed at the many different types of communities that have arisen over the years. I haven’t ever actually posted comments online to any community before, but I have browsed conversations that would help me with my fish tank, or if I want to see reviews on a product I’ll look on usenet and usually there are many opinions there that will help me in being a good consumer. It looks like something I would like to get into though (although my wife thinks I’m on the computer too much already) as I’ve had a good experience so far with the Wiki and LiveJournal.
I can see children benefiting from communities that are set up between schools. I was really impressed with the mural project and the amount of collaboration that happened between two very different groups that lived so far apart. I would really like to see more of that in schools.
I also have to admit that online communities that communicate in an asynchronous manner do provide more opportunity for those communicators who require more time to organize their thoughts. This is something that you don’t get in a classroom and it opens the doors of communication to so many people who aren’t able to get a word in edgewise.
I'm still not sure what this is... check this site if you want to find out: http://www.engadget.com |
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| Chapter 3, Class 5, Learning From the Internet: Information to Knowledge Through Inquiry |
[May. 16th, 2006|09:27 pm] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | At Home | ] |
| [ | mood |
| | busy | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Radiohead- OK Computer | ] |
This chapter is very large and very informative on many topics such as how and why the internet came about; proper ways of searching for information on the internet; and ways of how classrooms (generally mid-grade school) can use the internet in place of lectures. The first couple of sections all seemed like good information to me and I pretty much accepted it at face value. I learned a couple of things such as the actual meaning of “url” Universal Resource Locator, and how different countries had there own codes. I actually kind of already knew about that, I just hadn’t actually fully thought about it before. Another item I thought very fascinating was the whole Internet2 that governments, industries and academia are working on. The whole idea of having access to a virtual laboratory is almost mind blowing, just the whole idea of moving that much information is insane.
Video conferencing is another cool thing that you can do with the internet and that I do with my family quite a bit, although like many of these technologies it still has lot’s of room to grow.
One of the really cool bits that was highlighted was the whole having children use pda’s that are connected wirelessly to a database/internet that they can use for the “Geney” project (where they take care of little aliens that they can breed together to make an alien that can return to it’s home planet). I believe these devices are labeled as WILDs or wireless internet learning devices. I can already see children using devices (the tamagatchi fad) that aren’t as educational in purpose and have less meaning than what the “Geney” project entails, but they are crazy interested in.
Creating WebQuests is something that I would like to actually check out. I’ve a slight understanding of what it entail’s but I think I need to look a little more closely at this process. It looks like it’s a web phenomenon that really caught on and has grown a lot… I’m surprised I haven’t really heard of it before!
The whole “Virtual Travel” section really piqued my interest though. Following an explorer through the Amazon jungle or up Mount Everest or wherever he/she may go sounds very exciting for me… I might even pay money to do that. I’m sure that’s something that children can really be interested in and learn lots from.
Now isn't this guy just awe inspiring... or maybe scary... I don't know!
What do you think? |
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| Problem Solving is Meaningful Learning, (chapter 2) |
[May. 14th, 2006|09:11 pm] |
Maybe this makes me lame, but I'm having a really bad tendency (or maybe it's a good tendency) of completely agreeing with what's being said in this textbook. Problem solving is something that I (and I think everyone) can relate to, as I do it all the time. All of my greatest accomplishments have been the result of one form of problem solving or another. I believe that the more ill-structured the problem type is, the more pride and meaning you will get out of the solution that you come up with. With that said I'm not surprised that designing problems come up as being one of the (if not the) most ill-structured of all problem types as for me the things that have the most meaning in my life (or are the most memorable) are things that I've designed. For example of all the projects I did in high-school one that sticks out for me is when I tried to design a magnetically run monorail in my physics class. I didn’t actually succeed at the task, but I spent many hours trying to make the right set-up work and finding the best types of magnets to use and the best way to glue them together. Regardless, out of five years of high-school, I remember this project better than any math problem involving a formula, or any important historical dates that I had to memorize. From this point of view I can totally see the need to bring more problems into the schoolroom that are meaningful and allow students to feel like they’re solving the world’s problems. Hey, I thought that I was totally solving all the worlds’ transportation problems. In my head, all the roads were going to be replaced with gigantic magnetic strips that pod like vehicles were just going to zip by on using little to no fuel. I felt like a genius, and whenever I stumbled upon something that could slow me down, I would work really hard to overcome the obstacle. I am really looking forward to exploring different design problems within the next chapters, and how we can best introduce these problems to children.
Now here's the kicker of all robots!
Robo-Erectus (RE) is a low-cost autonomous humanoid robot being developed at ARICC (the Advanced Robotics and Intelligent Control Centre) in the School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Singapore Polytechnic.
The current challenge for the Robo-Erectus project is to develop a team of low-cost soccer-playing humanoid robots that are capable of walking, turning, crouching, and kicking a football past a goalkeeper into the goal. (http://www.robo-erectus.org/) |
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| Weblogs and collaborative web publishing as learning spaces (class 3 readings) |
[May. 12th, 2006|10:51 am] |
My eyes have been opened. Up until now I had only seen blogs as a fun way of posting your own thoughts on the web, and maybe communicating with your friends if you live far away. I hadn't quite looked at all the educational possibilites that using web blogs as a tool for open discussion presented. I also was blown away by how using these tools effectively (wiki, blogging) can completely change the way we educate in the future or now. As this quote from the reading states:
"The process of reading about a skill and then taking a standardized test relating to that skill has replaced the process of exercising a skill and gaining proficiency." (Halavais, pg 9)
We actually used to learn and teach in a practical way where the students were involved in their learning and it meant something to them. Somewhere along the line it became appropriate to just read about a skill and take a test that everyone else is also taking to see if you're any good at that skill. What happened to the fact that we're all individuals and we learn differently from one another. I don't think a standardized test ever actually gives you a perfect understanding of a students skill level. Personally I believe standardized testing to be more trouble than what it's worth. As well the focus of standardized testing in schools seems to be how well a student is doing for the teacher or the institution, which can be intimidating as well as unempowering. Whereas creating something that a wider audience, such as your peers and community, will see has more meaning for a student and the comments/discussion that arise from that creation become, I believe, a more natural form of evaluation of a student/persons understanding.
As before here's another robot... I think it's really cute, it's description is below the picture.
This MIT bot, named Toddler, was unveiled in early 2005. Its trick: Using a small computer brain, Toddler learns new types of terrain and, within about 600 steps, teaches itself how to walk. (http://www.livescience.com/) |
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| (no subject) |
[May. 8th, 2006|12:35 pm] |
Alright here goes. My take on chapter uno is as such. There are many different theories on learning and they cover looking at learning as a biological process to looking at learning as a chaotic entity. What we need to take from this is that many if not all of these theories are valid and a part of the vast continuum which is human learning. Our focus though is on discovering what meaningful learning is and making that the focus of how we teach children.
The chapter splits meaningful learning into five different attributes that to me, seem to work really well together. The five attributes are that meaningful learning is active, intentional, constructive, authentic & cooperative. I personally don't see anything wrong with this division and after reading all the parts I can't help but agree with all that is said. Does this mean I'm not critical enough?
My favourite part of this chapter though comes after the heading of how technology affects learning. This section talks about how the role of technology has changed over the years and most importantly of how it should be used today. Technology has been used extensively to convey information by using television programs and various computer programs that just give you information. This chapter explains that technology should be used as a tool for learning and that teachers should promote and support this kind of exploratory learning.
I'm very interested to learn more about how children are using technology as a tool today and what forms this technology comes in.
I've decided that after every journal post I will insert a robot picture just because I think they're neat and even if it is unrelated. And isn't this guy just great! I like the purpleness of it. Looks kind of like a robot lumberjack. Actually I think I'll call it "The Lumberbot"
Cheers,
Christian
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