Wikiversity

Wikiversity was new to me.  Before this course I had never heard of it.  After exploring the Web 2.0 course for a bit, I see a lot of similarities between that course and ours.  Both seem to require a lot of motivation on the side of the student and require them to be self motivated. 

The Wikiversity course does seem to be more limited in its courses.  There isn't a simple way for students to communicate and I"m not sure where faculty feedback comes in.  Still, it's a nice self-paced way to become familiar with a topic you don't have much experience with.

Delicious

Here's the link to my delicious account.

I'm not sure what to think about delicious and other social bookmark sites.  It seems like these sites provide a good selection of links that are well organized, but they're not something I go to when I need to find something.  I'm not sure what they offer that is better than Google.

With that said, I think they would be a great way to create an annotated bibliography and share that with other people.

On Wikipedia

First, the profile link.

I'm very impressed with the community that Wikipedia seems to be fostering.  I always assumed that people only made changes to articles and then moved on, checking back periodically to see if their changes stuck. 

Seeing that Wikipedia allows users to create profiles, customize them, and then share them with the world.  Even allowing editors to communicate back and forth is a new and welcome change.  It seems that Wikipedia is attempting to create a community among their editors, which in turn will build a sense of community.

Logo

Here's my new logo.  I used logosnap.com to create it.  The site was very simple and it is free, but they do ask for money a lot, not that I can blame them.

Wordle

This is the Wordle from my Moodle introduction.  It's telling that school is so large, seeing as I spend most of my day in one or working for one.

Here is the Wordle from the cover letter of the last job I applied for.  It's for a instructional technologist position at a local college.  I'll find out soon if I got it or not.





Wordle is nice because it's so simple.  It easily shows what words are the most important in your speech/article/etc.  I do one with the text from the State of the Union address with my students.  We look at the largest words and use that to determine their importance.  It leads to a great class discussion.

Video #2

Here's my second video:

I treated this video more like a blog than an introduction.  I waxed philosophical on some privacy concerns I have with sites like Facebook.

Here's the article I referenced.  In the video I said it was one year, but it was actually 3.  Times flies when you're having fun, right?

Dear Grandma

*My Grandmother passed away a few years ago, but while she was alive she worked for NASA and helped design the lunar rover.  That's the basis of this post.*

Remember when you were placed on the team that would help design the lunar rover?  The facility was centered in Long Island, NY, but none of the engineers lived there.  Everyone had to pack up their lives and move, some from as far away as California.

Now imagine no one was able to move.  How would you have communicated with everyone?  You could use the phone, but that would make it impossible to show diagrams.  You could have used the postal service, but then you would have to wait days for your letters to arrive and then even longer to get a response.  And even then you could only communicate with one person at a time, which could easily lead to a breakdown of communication.  What a waste of time and resources.

Now imagine that there was a system that allowed to you share those plans wirelessly with the entire team at the same time.  Imagine that each engineer could make a change, which would be reflected immediately for everyone to see.  Imagine a phone system that allowed you to talk with the entire team while those changes were being made.  You would have the benefit of discussing problems and solving them together, instantly.

That is Web 2.0.  It is a system that allows people from all around the world to share ideas and pictures and conversations with as many people, or as little, as they would like.  It removes the need to relocate dozens of people.  It would allow you to talk with other scientists from around the world  to improve your design.  It would let you stay in your small Pennsylvania town without having to move to NY.

Now think about its other applications.  It would be easier to talk with your grandchildren and see long lost high school friends.  It would let you rediscover those old movies you loved to watch, and it would even provide some background information you may not have known.

improp2.0

Here's my free writing:

"Web 2.0 is a group of technologies that allows for great collaboration and sharing over the internet.  It has social, business, and educational implications and uses."

Like most people, I type much faster than I write.

Crowdsourcing

When I first watched this video I thought of the Hitchhiker's Guide the Galaxy.  In it, there is a race of people that are tying to figure out the answer to "life, the universe, and everything."  The build a massive computer and wait millions of years, only to find the answer is 42.  Distraught, they now have to find the question.  Here's the scene from the movie:

The book continues and the reader is ultimately shown that this ancient race builds a supercomputer to find the question - Earth, and all of the people on it, make up that computer.  Did Douglass Adams foreshadow crowdsourcing in 1978 when he first wrote the Hitchhiker's Guide?

Crowdsourcing is one of the greatest innovations of Web 2.0.  Finally having the technology that allows millions of people to make incremental changes to a product will only make that product better (in the long run).  Wikipedia is a prime example.  Allowing anyone to change an article ensures that it is complete and accurate.  A science textbook can't change with current theories and a history book can't include newly unearthed primary documents - but Wikipedia can.  Of course vandalism is an issue, but negative changes are only there for a few minutes before someone else notices and changes them.  Mistakes in a printed work are there forever.

Then there is the video, which showed how Luis von Ahn saw a problem - specifically the poor image labeling on the web - and devised a way to improve it.  Instead of building a team of people to go through each of the millions of pictures on the web, he built a game that allowed everyone to do it.  He was also clever enough to do it in a way that made people want to play.  He appealed to their competitive nature and completed a task that would have taken a dozen people just as many years to complete.

Crowdsourcing is the wave of the future and I'm excited to see how it can be leveraged to make sweeping changes to the world.

Seasons and Moon Phases

After watching the video showing other students answering the question we were asked to answer I didn't feel so bad.  Seeing a bunch of Harvard grads get the same questions wrong I did showed me that it's hard to get people to give up what they believe to be true their entire life, even if their beliefs are flat out wrong.

I think Web 2.0 can help people retain the correct information by giving them better access to experts and teaching tools.  Looking at the models the teacher was working with and hearing her explanation does not seem to be as effective a teaching tool as a NASA produced video.  If students had questions they could email actual astronomers to have it explained a different way.  Sometimes hearing a different person explain the same thing is all it takes to make it sink in.

However, many people believe the first thing they read on the internet and hold it as gospel, so the teacher would still have to teach students to verify their information.  I was working on a project about ancient India with my students last week and one student said that the Indians were the first to invent flying machines.  After looking at his source, he was reading a blog by a UFO-ologist who was arguing that ancient aliens had visited India and left one of their UFOs behind.

Digital Ethnography

As someone who has been teaching nearly 10 years I've had the opportunity to watch technology take a larger and larger role in the classroom.  When I first started teaching I still had to confiscate hand written notes.  I would deter kids from passing these notes by blacking out all identifying names, grading it for grammar, and then posting it on my wall.  I usually only had 2 or 3 notes to grade before people started wising up.  Today cell phones are so cheap that all of my students have one and use them to pass their notes, and they're so fast I usually can't catch them doing it.  I even have students who can send a text without ever looking at the screen.

I am constantly reminded that I have to teach students to use technology that hasn't been invented yet.   iPads are becoming commonplace in many high schools and universities, yet they didn't exist when I went through college.  What did my teachers teach me that made me able to use one?

Even though they didn't teach me specifically how to uses these devices, they did give me a skill set which will allow me to figure them out and use them effectively.  I learned how to use a mouse to manipulate things on a screen, which then turned into using a stylus, which then became using my finger.  I learned how to type with both hands so typing with just my thumbs was never difficult.  I learned how wired networks worked, so figuring out how wireless ones are set up was not a major obstacle.

What I got from these videos by Dr. Wesch is that schools today need to teach skills as much as they need to teach facts.  Standing up at the chalkboard and writing things down for the students to then write down only teaches facts and does not teach skills.  However, having students research their facts and then post them on a class webpage, as was discussed in the seminar, not only taught those students the facts, but allowed them to learn some skills as well. 

Having those students think about formatting and decoration in addition to the content gives them the skills to produce web content, which may be the primary method of communication in 10 years, especially if the large tech companies have everything moved over to the "cloud" by then.

One blog that I read a lot is the Blue Skunk Blog by Doug Johnson.  He works with librarians through many public schools and helps them introduce technology into the classrooms.  In addition to discussing technology he also waxes philosophical on copyright, school bureaucracy, and teaching in general.  I always make sure to catch on his blog when I have a free moment.

http://doug-johnson.squarespace.com/

Help Wanted

Alamance-Burlington School System is looking to hire a Web 2.0 administrator.  Qualified applicants will have experience in interactive technologies including, but not limited to, blogging, Moodle/Gaggle, and social networking.  Understanding how to properly use these technologies in an educational setting is required.  Applicants will understand and adhere to all legal and ethical guidelines to create a safe online environment for our students.  Please email hireme@abss.edu for information and to apply.