Too Much Technology, Not Enough Time

I spent the weekend with Erica working on our final project.

We looked at different web 2.0 tools which would make our site intersting and engaging. We had an idea of what we wanted to do but we didn't know how to implement it. So we spent the time before the weekend searching for things that we thought would work best. After going in circles, we found that there are a lot of good things to use but need a lot of invested dollars to make it work. For us starving students, it wasn't going to work. Scraping together what we had to use for free, we talked through different scenarios of how things would work. After a lot of sitting, drinking tea and coffee, and listening to infomercials on the TV, we finally had it.

I will leave the details to our presentation but the purpose of this weeks blog entry is that I realized something. Technology can be a great thing and can be a bad thing depending on how it's used. There is so much stuff out there but not enough time to try everything. When using technology, I think it is best to sample and play with a handful of items. There will always be something better out there but maybe for what you want to accomplish, what you have can serve fine. You also do not want to use too many tools in a single lesson plan. This might confuse the students. Using new technology is useful but just make sure it's not taking away from the main goal of the lesson you are teaching.

Jonestown - 30 Years Later

I was only 4 when this tragedy took place. Growing up, I had heard of this horrible thing but I really didn't know much about it. Today, November 18, 2008 marks 30 years since the Jonestown Massacre happened and technology has allowed this story to be passed along to hopefully remind and teach people that this should never have taken place.

My boyfriend had me watch a documentary with him on MSNBC. It was called "Witness to Jonestown." He had asked me if I knew about this story. I nodded and said "Wasn't it about some cult that committed suicide?" He nodded back and told me that there was much more to the story. He had seen a similar documentary on another channel so we sat together and watched this one. After an hour I felt kind of sick. I couldn't believe that this could have happened in my lifetime. We talked about what we had just seen for a bit then went online to further our knowledge. I was able to pull up tons of information. There were articles from newspapers, magazines, an audio recording of the last moments, and some video which was shot also before everything happened. I was in shock!

I felt that the story would have been lost in time without the detail that was kept using modern technologies. Having this be a reminder of the horror of this happening, I hope it will continue to educate people to the truthfulness of how this came to be and how to ensure it doesn't happen ever again.

Stupid Vacuum Cleaner

The book chapter we were asked to read from "The Design of Everyday Things" was very interesting. It went over a bunch of design pointers how they are used. Some considered criteria are accordance, constraints, mappings, feedback, visibility, and
conceptual model.

Looking around the everyday things I interacts with, I found one particular item that I wanted to share. This item would be the newly bought Eureka Vacuum Cleaner that was purchased by my company for our production office. At first glance I was quite happy as we didn't have one in the past. The dirt on the carpet was pretty gross, so having such an item brought joy to me.

Taking it out of the box, there were a bunch of pieces that needed to be assembled. The main body of the vacuum looked pretty similar to any other vaccum. The problem was that this niffty vaccum was a compact all in one. The tubes and connectors all somehow fit onto the small body and it was up to me to figure out how it was assembled. The visability of the inital item was ok but to where the attachments went, it fails for sure. As I was putting things together, one of the attachments didn't fit. It looked like it should go in one spot but as I tried to put it there, the plastic holder snapped in half. I would say that affordance was pretty poor as well. The plastic holder looked like it was designed to hold everything and be sturdy but it didn't last long for it to break. Great going.. I just broke our new vaccum. The mental model I had of how the thing should work and be put together was drastically different. Everything designed on this particular vaccum had only one way for it to go on and one way to go off. Finally I kind of had it put together. I found the power button and woooooom, the sound it made gave me good feedback that it was indeed on. The mapping of the controls worked as it should... the floor type adjuctment was set so that up meant think and down meant bare. As I pushed the vaccum forward it went forward and so fourth. The floor was finally cleaned but I still could not figure out how to get it back to how it was supposed to be assembled. The picture you see is basically the unit as it lives in the back of the room today... stupid vaccum.

Working on Success

Last week we were greeted by a guest speaker, Eugene Lee, the CEO of Socialtext. He talked about his experiences in the workplace and personally. I thought that his talk was very interesting as he is a wonderful speaker. His down to earth manner really took me back as it is not what I pictured as I typical CEO. He touched on a few things of importance which mainly was about the thinking process. He left his prior jobs because he wanted to do something meaningful which in part makes him happy. I think this is a valuable lesson although how realistic is it for everyone to follow this guidline? I think that everyone does in their own way.

I had a chance to listen to Ethan's podcast. If you haven't listened to it, I highly recommend it. The phrase that really stuck in my head was "Embrace your amatureness." This was a quote from the Symphony chapter in A Whole New Mind. We will be exploring this with our group project so I won't go into it here.

The 5 frame stories so far have all been wonderful. We were asked to nominate one for our favorite. It's been hard as earch one has it's certain sparkle. Everyone is so creative. The right brian is truely being worked out.

No Podcast, But How About a Movie?

There will not be an episode of Connect @ 830 this week but in it's place we will have some other multimedia. Let's start with this week's assignment shall we?

This week we were to create a 5-10 picture slide show to convey a story. Here is what I came up with.




We also did some reading in the Eduction for a Digital World. This week we took a look at Social Media for Adult Online Learners and Educators. I thought that the gist of this chapter fell within the lines of it's not the technology itself but how you use it. There are a lot of technologies out there that have been sitting and unused. The example given in the chapter was blogs. Since 1995 web logs were used but it wasn't until 2000 that the tool exploded. Now having the tool, how do you promote usage? There is a difference between adult and children learning. So what is it? Kids tend to learn for the sake of learning. Adults have a lot of variables like time and money and motivation. It will be the usage of proper learning theories to engage the adult learner.

The second chapter was titled "Online Collaboration: An Overview." This chapter basically defined the terms collaboration and cooperation and talked about the differences. It's a matter of sharing material and coming up with ideas that can be changed. I find that a collaboration is much more like something that is evolving. A cooperation is more like a partnership. Since the coined term of "web 2.0" I have found myself collaborating much more without even knowing it. Using tools and websites like facebook and google docs seem already taken for granted. It's just the way we work to make things more efficient. But taking a step back, it's all about collaborating and user created content. It will be interesting to see what the next stage of learning will be.

Since we did a silent slide show this week, I thought I would share something with sound and movement. Here is one of my short films entitled "Faded Reality." See if you can figure out the story and enjoy.



Connect @ 830 will continue next week. See you then!

Podcast - Episode 05 (Live)

Erica makes her debut

This week Erica reviews the following

- Using Elluminate - 21st Century Technologies for a 21st Century Class
- Leslie Rule from KQED

Be sure to leave comments for Erica as well as respond to this weeks question after listening to the podcast.

Here is also the link for Google Chrome as presented by Yana.

Google Chrome:
http://www.google.com/chrome

Podcast - Episode 06 (Live)

What happened to episode 05? This episode will be live soon so be sure and stay tuned. It will be Erica Chan's Connect @ 830 Debut! In the meantime here is part 1 of the double feature week!

A Whole New Mind

This week we look at the first 3 chapters of Daniel H. Pink's book "A Whole New Mind" We will explore the following:

- Right Brain Rising
- Abundance, Asia, and Automation
- High Concept, High Touch

Be sure and leave some feedback after listening to the show. Enjoy everyone! ^_^