Confused

I just got back from a holiday party at Dr. Puttlitz's house. It seems that every day I feel different about what I want to do with my life. I keep having this thought that being a university professor would be great: I just wish that I had a topic that really interested me for research. Oh well. I bet it will come.

Sweet Video

I don't feel like the milk in this video, but I still think it is great!

Tired Love

This is my Digital Story project for EDUC 331. I decided to move away from the theme of education, and instead explore my own development during college. This video focuses on the spring of 2006: my study abroad experience in Prague, Czech Republic.

Ashes and Snow

Gregory Colbert is amazing. This is probably the most beautiful short-film I have ever seen. I had trouble embedding the video from TED's website (www.ted.com), so I just uploaded it.

The Thing - Final Installment

Here he is! Glorious, I must say. I think Doug and I probably saw five to six hundred kids come through the yard over the course of the night. We went through $150 in candy alone! Crazy kids. Anyhow, the video is a little dark, but I am sure you get the idea. Good work Doug, and thanks to Hailey and her husband for letting us set up shop at their beautiful home.

Blog 8: Chapter 7 Review

I have always been skeptical of distance learning services. Perhaps it is the lack of social interaction, perhaps it is the oddity of sitting at one's computer for hours at a time, or perhaps it is just the predatory vibe one gets from watching distance educators' daytime TV commercials. It seems that distance learning removes some of the aspects of personal responsibility present in other learning modalities; anonymity is just a little too accessible.

While it is hard to argue with research, I do not agree with Roblyer's assertion that distance education is "just as effective" as traditional education. I do not understand how she can make this statement in the same breath as admitting that distance education can have severe consequences regarding social development.

However, I do understand that distance education has a place. I think the older a person is, or the more responsibilities they have in life, the more pertinent distance education becomes. For a single mom wanting to get out of a career rut, an organization like University of Phoenix is a great choice, but for a 15 year old embarrassed about their acne distance education should not be an option.

The Thing, Version 2.0

Here is the newest update on "The Thing" for Halloween 2007. I am pretty excited about how he is coming along. The microcontroller program that controls his movements is a little unnatural right now, but that will just take a little bit of time messing around with the code and maybe changing up the way his ankles work. This has been a lot of hard work so far! Enjoy!

Photograph Critique

I love photography. Might I say it again: I love photography. If you look on the right-hand side of my blog you will see a few of my favorite pictures from photo.net (great website). For this assignment, I used Creative Commons' search feature to find an image of interest on Flickr, and I ended up with this:
















I found this image, titled "Soft Moon/4" by "lorZ" very interesting for several reasons. When I first encountered the image, my reaction was "What the heck is that?" This piqued my interest, and hence I spent a while looking at the image. Any photograph that can hold my attention for more than a few seconds is worth it's digital weight in my book.

For me, this is a very sensual photograph. The bed is a "sacred" place for many people, and the way this photograph is framed evokes the need to see/experience more. The viewer wants to know what is on the bed, in the bed, and what has happened there. Why is this place worthy of such recognition? Why have the sheets been stripped leaving the bed bare? Anyhow, great image!

Digital Storytelling

Surprisingly, I had a very difficult time coming up with a topic for this assignment. The hardest part of this exercise was thinking of something pertinent to my content area that could be presented in a classroom setting. At first I was totally enthusiastic about doing a presentation on my study abroad experience, but I didn't feel that would meet project requirements. I started thinking about some of the experiences that I have had in my life with digital storytelling presentations when I realized that Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" is a great example of a 2 hour digital story! I have always been passionate about climate change, and so I thought it would be great to do my story on that subject. What follows is my preliminary outline for my digital story:

Halloween Excitement

So, for the last four years there has been a big part of my life missing. Back in high school the beginning of October was always met with the smell of sawdust and the racket of hammers. For five years in a row a group of my closest friends and I built a haunted house every Halloween. Well, college snuffed that out pretty quick, but now it is back with vengeance! This year we will be building an 8 foot monster that will raise up and scare all the kiddos while holding out the candy and making spooky sounds. Here is a sweet prototype without all the glitz and glamor of the final project. Enjoy:

Blog 4: Instructional Software

Whoops! It looks as though I mistook my blog on interesting software integration for blog 4! Well, here is the real blog 4 in all its majesty:

I was very interested in MIT's Scratch Project when we discussed it in class, so I decided to do my instructional software review on this great piece of software. Scratch is essentially a graphic-oriented programming language that makes programming accessible to youngsters and adults alike. Easy to understand booleans are placed in a logical order in order to make fun videos, games, tutorials, and just plain bizzare stuff!

Pros:
Structurally, the Scratch software seems very solid. Incessant button pushing and inane actions did not seem to have any adverse effect on the program itself. Most buttons are intuitive, and task flow is fairly fluid. However, while fairly straight-forward for a 22 year old engineer, I think this software may prove difficult for most students below the 9th grade.

Flexibility and creativity options are limitless! With this software students will have the opportunity to make almost any programming idea a reality. Lots of color/sounds/images make this ideal for nurturing the creative processes.

Students not only control everything about programming, but also the pace that they will program at. Several online tutorials will surely prove invaluable to any instructor desiring to get his/her class started with this software.

Because this software is essentially a "blank slate" instructors need not worry about screening for gender/race bias or the relevancy of content.

Every piece of the software seems to have purpose...no distracting images or videos. In order to have fun with Scratch, you have to make the game!

One thing that really surprised me about this software was its striking resemblance to National Instruments' LabView software. LabView is an extremely complex (and expensive) piece of software that lets the user construct software programs to aquire and analyze data from any number of sensors. The Scratch Project's software and LabView resemble one another is the drag-and-drop manner in which the program is written. Rather than learning all the confusing semantics and syntax invloved with a language like C++, Scratch and LabView allow the user to simply drag and drop their program to perfection!

Typical logic unit for a scratch program:















Typical logic flow chart for a LabView program:











Cons:
There is very little structure or guidance in the Scratch software. Some students may be confused by the overwhelming task of learning how to program.

The software is not set up to "teach" programming, but rather to provide an easy to use interface for the learner. Therefore, this is not so much a "teaching tool" as it is a "tool." Calculators can not teach someone how to do math, but they sure can make it easier!

The amazing amount of freedom provided by Scratch may lead some students to construct lude, inappropriate, or violent games/activities.

Learning curves may be drastically different for different students. It would be a shame for some students to have entire programs written and others to still be struggling with the meaning of booleans. Working in groups may help to alleviate this problem.

The Jist:
Scratch is an excellent piece of software to help students become aquainted with programming. Scratch is relatively easy-to-use, bulletproof, fun, and flexible. However, instructors must be aware that some students may not take easily to programming, steep learning curves, and that students may decide to create programs that are not school-appropriate.

Blog 5: Educator Using Software in Innovative Ways

It takes almost two full years of college-level engineering education before one ever gets to use a software program to help design a real device. However, software packages that help to predict product performance including finite element analysis, solid modeling, fluid dynamic analysis, and circuit simulators are an essential part of any 21st century engineer's toolbox. For this reason, I would like to write a short shout out to a teacher at my old high school who is currently using a piece of software to help her AP physics class design their final project.

When I was told that I was going to be able to make a trebuchet for credit, I could not have been more excited:



"Just give me a saw, wood, and steel so I can make that rock fly!" Little did I know that I was going to have to do analysis before I got to actually start swinging a hammer. Truth be told, I knew nothing about trebuchets or how to make sure mine would throw the rock into the football field rather than my face. I am sure my physics teacher was more than aware of this fact as well, and this is why she set us up with a little piece of software that let us adjust mass, lever arm length, and sling length in order to optimize virtual performance.

My time spent in the laboratory was invaluable not only in that it helped me to build the best trebuchet in the class (yes!), but it also taught me quite a few things about how simulation software does not always tell the "truth." Not blindly trusting what the computer spits out at you is a lesson that even some veteran engineers struggle with. I have always thought this was a great activity that promoted learning on many levels, and I would suggest that any science/technology teacher incorporate some sort of simulation software that leads to design choices into their curriculum.

Blog 3: Innovative and Successful Practices

Recently, I visited a variety of websites focused on innovative and successful teaching tools for helping the 21st century learner do what they should do best: learn. While none stood out as a shining beacon of educational insight, I did find all these sites to be MUCH more useful than the educational associations in blog 2:

Everyone knows that finding a quick, concise, and centralized resource for teaching tools is the Holy Grail of educational technology searches. While having never touched the lips of Christ, LearnNC does has an awesome little searchbar that makes even the most obscure topic easy find. I was able to quickly find several resources to help teach momentum, energy, forces, E&M, light, and many other physics topics to high school students.

Tired of worrying about copyright laws (see Blog 2)? Well mosey on over to T.H.E. Jounal where you will find useful links to free databases of clipart as well as a slew of other useful resources such as technology of special needs students, hardware for the most techno-savy geeks, and even an opinion section where you can rant about how awesome your newest Second Life character is.

Jeez, I m so tyurd of tryin to find gud dadabasus of websites wher I can find usful teechin tools! Gud thing there is Blue Web'n!

We made if, finally! CSU is officially on CNN.com, albeit for dropping the F-bomb in large font on the Collegian's opinion page, but hey, at least we are famous. If you would like to read about this and more student news items just visit turnerlearning.org and follow the link to the CNN news page! Turner Learning, likely a subsidiary of the Turner Broadcasting super-corp, provides student-oriented news and even some student-user generated content.

Wow, clicking on all these links and getting shot all around the internet is making me tired (not to mention sick of closing pop-up ads). I sure wish there was a service where someone could just compile all the websites that a pertinent to my assignment in one easy-to-use interface. Then I could just click my way right through my lesson without having to worry about my browser wondering to ESPN.com or any other mind-numbing uber-site. What is that you say? Tackstar, operated by 4teachers, offers just such a service? I am ecstatic!

Tom Snyder, who could perhaps be related to me as my great grandfather's name is Snyder, and his company Tom Snyder Productions has put together a nice group of software to help student and adult (teacher) learners. For a nominal fee you can order all kinds of educational software ranging from science simulations to geography drill and testers. Software seems legit due to the thumbs up they have received from Teacher's Choice award, to the Technology & Learning Award of Excellence, to the Software & Information Industry Association's prestigious Codie Award, but I wish they had a demo!

If you get all the software you can handle from Tom and the gang, but you are still having a hankering for a little hardware (and who doesn't have a little camera lust now and then), head over to Software Express. I know, the name seems misleading, but in addition to sweet hardware, Software Express does carry quite a few educational software programs. However, rather than producing their own software, it would seem the SE is just a distributor of educational software/hardware (kind of like an Amazon for teachers). So, if you are looking for some sweet techno-shiz check them out.

The Colorado Department of Education's website is down?! I am shocked an appalled. I will have to visit some other time, but having had extensive experience with .co.us websites, I can almost guarantee I will be riveted to the point of napping.

FREE? What could not be good about FREE? Has the government finally used a few million of the trillions of dollars tax payers pump into it and amassed a useful compilation of well thought-out and useful resources for it's droves of underpaid teachers? Of course not. But FREE does provide links to outside educational websites, and a lot of them. In fact, this is probably the best organized resource I have found so far to find and review educational websites on a large variety of topics (all of which, coincidentally, seem to have some sort of relevance to topics covered on standardized testing...). So, while not quite what I expected, FREE is still a great resource for educational websites on science, math, history, and language arts.

Finding Information on Teaching with Technology

So Colleen Dunning, Ashley Hudson, and I busted out some mad searching for online resouces to teach high school students about DNA. We were interested in whether or not there were good technology-based resources out there for making understanding and visualizing DNA easier. Here is a smattering of what we found:

From Google searches:

NobelPrize.org has a great little game for teaching students about DNA replication. All you have to do is grab the adenine, guanine, cytosine, or thymine and stick it on the appropriate sister molecule. Don't mutuate the gene though or else fluffy might have three eyes. Once you make it through the replication stage, you can use simple principles of genetics to discern what species the DNA you just replicated came from.

From Forum Replies on Classroom 2.0:

Nick McCarty-Daniels from Classroom2.0 replied with a nice resource from Scholastic.com. WebQuest: What's the Big Deal About DNA lets teachers use resources from the American Museum of Natural History to teach students about DNA. Included is a nifty worksheet that lets students summarize what they have learned about DNA from the webpage and associated link. Also, it seems like this material is only Some Rights Reserved, so print away!


Jcalvert from Classroom2.0 replied with another resource from the JMOL library. JMOL is a resource database of quite a few organic and inorganic molecules pertinent to the study of chemistry and biology. Unfortunately JMOL did not have a model of DNA, but it could still be used to teach about the structure of other important molecules.

Blog 2: Copyright

Wow, I did not realize how serious (and convoluted) copyright law as it pertains to the classroom is. When copyright laws were first instated no one could have fathomed a world-economy based almost entirely off of intellectual property. Hence, most copyright laws are fairly new, and there are always new loopholes and hoops for lawmakers to jump through in order to catch up with emerging technologies. This constant augmentation of copyright law makes understanding (an abiding) it extremely difficult.

In the past, I was always under the impression that copywritten media such as film, music, and images could be reproduced for the classroom so long as they were not exchanged for money or services. However, according to the website www.edu-cyberpg.com, strict copyright laws apply to almost any form of media (written or otherwise) unless specifically noted otherwise. For example, if a teacher desired to screen a film in a class they would only be allowed to show "up to 10 percent of the total or three minutes, whichever is less." This is very hard to believe having grown up in a school system where movies were a regular part of any pre-holiday class period.

There is some good news though. It seems that under the "fair use" rules for replication of copywritten materials there is some leeway for teachers and educators. As long as one abides by several rules governing "fair use," teachers can legally get away with re-producing a limited amount of televised/radio/internet media.

One area where copyright law seems to be especially pertinent to school teachers is photocopying worksheets/pages out of texts. This is fairly understandable as it severely hurts publishing companies if their customers are replicating materials meant for sale. However, with strained time schedules and minuscule budgets it becomes very obvious why teachers fall back on photocopies of handouts and examples.

I was happy to find in this world of apparent greed and legal mire associated with intellectual property, Creative Commons (http://creativecommons.org) has begun to offer "Some Rights Reserved" services that will allow people to more readily share their IP with those who need it most. It seems like Creative Commons has their hands in everything from internet radio to the Iraq War blogosphere to allowing photographers to modify metadata in order to share their photographs!

Blog 1: Associations

Hey! So here are some riviting reviews on my latest visits to the web-o-sphere. I tried to spend a while on each of the following websites and give them a thorough run-through and evaluation:

1) http://www.aace.org/ - Seems like the Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education has quite a few things going on, but they are not very good at conveying that information in their website! Ironic for an organization based entirely upon increasing proficiency in technology. Seems like the main resources available from AACE (with membership)are access to databases of articles pertinent to educators and international conferences on subject areas concerning computing in the classroom.


2) http://www.aect.org/ - Another members-oriented website, the Association for Educational Communications and Technology seeks to "provide international leadership by promoting scholarship and best practices in the creation, use, and management of technologies for effective teaching and learning in a wide range of settings." This website was very text-oriented, bland, and difficult to navigate. Again, it seems that the main benefits of affiliation with this organization are conference opportunities, publications, and online journal access. After a while following links on the site I was fairly confused as to the purpose of the organization other than gaining and retaining members.


3) http://www.iste.org/ - Hooray, this website immediately made me feel comfortable and engaged; I even signed up for their RSS feed! While offering the typical gamut of membership perks and publications, the thing that I noticed that set ISTE apart was their active participation in reviewing and approving materials for students and educators through theISTE NETS Seal of Alignment. "It’s your assurance that a product or service has demonstrated alignment with ISTE’s National Educational Technology Standards (NETS)." Additionally, ISTE offers a unique publication on IT safety!

4) www.ITEA.org - Oh no! My mind! So bored...must overcome urge to exit website! ITEA, or The International Test and Evaluation Association (ITEA), is "a not-for-profit educational organization founded in 1980 to further the exchange of technical information in the field of test and evaluation." While nearly impossible to glean information on what services ITEA might actually provide for its members, most of their conferences seem focused on a more college-level engineering/science crowd than a secondary school educator. The best part is the "Tech Tips." In additon to being fairly enigmatic in how they might relate to testing they often do not even link to a webpage that will provide any information on said "Tech Tip." After some more consideration I am starting to think that I was perhaps led astray and that this website is actually used by professionals who are interested in testing equipment and technology, not students. However, the site is confusing enough that I may never know.


So there you have it: a veritable tome of wisdom on a sampling of websites related to technology and education.

Oh travel, how I miss you!

There are few things in this life that I can say I am truly passionate about, but one of them is travel! Last summer I spent three months living out of a backpack and visiting roughly 15 countries in Europe and Asia. I have never had a better time in my life than just riding the trains and eating bread and Nutella for weeks at a time.

Let me tell you a few secrets about traveling:


1) Rick Steves books are the BEST travel books on the market!

2) Don't take yourself too seriously.

3) Don't talk about politics.

4) Eat local food...even if it seems gross :)

5) Talk to locals.

6) Be humble.

7) Be patient.

8) Soak it up because it will be over too quickly.

9) Try to learn about yourself.

10) Bring coins for the toilets!

Anyhow, there are a few jewels that will hopefully serve you in you next backpacking trip aroud the world!

Just a Test

I wonder if this is working?