Ready for your istudents?

[Retrieved from apple.com]

We always think about how to integrate technologies into classrooms. However, technologies are not cheap. I visited a teacher today in her elementary school building. She was unpacking 120 brand new ipods provided to the school through a grant. These ipods will be used for students to learn a foreign language such as Chinese, Spanish.

Whoever saw the ipods lining up on the desk couldn’t help saying, “Cool. It is such a cool thing.” Yes, technologies are always cool. They appear in front of us with beautiful faces, multi-functioning skills and creative ideas.

With ipods, students can do podcasting or share their video clips during the process of learning a foreign language, thus to be further motivated to learn. Imagine playing a dialogue of their own or a situational video clip of students using the language. It brings so much interest and fun during the process. No doubt, the use of ipods can help students learn a language. Then podcasts can be shared and reused again and again for all kinds of purposes: listening, imitating, presentation, etc.

Ipods are more like toys to students nowadays, so how to use it is not a problem. These students will be great istudents, knowing how to make dialogues and videos.

While thinking how I would use ipods to help with the learning of a foreign language, a thought came to my mind. Here is the technology, an expensive one, waiting to be used for the learning of a language, or speaking, to be more specific.

Will it achieve the effect we are expecting? Is the money worth on this? It is hard to tell because a student might learn the skill to make podcast and use it for other purposes later. That is something we cannot measure.

Can we achieve the same goal without using expensive technologies? We can. We can ask students to draw comic strips to make their own dialogues. We can ask students to act out their dialogue. Traditional methods still work, however, new technologies just look better and attractive. In real life, I prefer my LCD monitor screen to my old bulky CRT monitor. They both work, but the difference is the LCD monitor is more beautiful and leaves much space on the desk. However, they do the same job. So is it worth the money to change the old monitor to a thin and flat monitor?

Will the use of ipods become similar to having a LCD monitor? We don’t know yet. But I do see the beautiful part of it: students learn from their own dialogues more effectively. To make a great podcast, students tend to practice more and speak the language better. These istudents may have the interest of using this technology for future use, which is a great thing if they can put the skill into use.

Maybe we should so some analysis on the result of using a technology before investing money. To help with istudents, we need to be iteachers first, so that we can evaluate the practical effectiveness of the technology.

I am very interested to see what role ipods are going to play in the process of learning a foreign language in the elementary school. To be or not to be, let’s test it.

Social Networking

When I was searching for websites and blogs for the IDT assignment, I saw a term Web 2.0. What is Web 2.0? Isn’t there just one web that we are using – World Wide Web? No doubt, google is one of the best tools to get this figured out. According to wikipedia.com, Web 2.0 “refers to a perceived second generation of web-based communities and hosted services — such as social-networking sites, wikis and folksonomies — which aim to facilitate collaboration and sharing between users”. I am definitely surrounded by more new terms, so I just line these terms up and try to figure out one at a time.

Social network sounds familiar. I came across this website called classroom 2.0(http://classroom20.ning.com/), which is a social-networking site. It is a good website for the educators who want to share their ideas and questions in the field of technology in learning. The subscribers have the same interest and they respond to each other about ideas, suggestions, discoveries, experiments, etc. for one purpose – to improve learning and teaching using technologies.

Wikipedia gives the definition: “A social network is a social structure made of nodes (which are generally individuals or organizations) that are tied by one or more specific types of relations, such as values, visions, idea, financial exchange, friends, kinship, dislike, conflict, trade, web links, sexual relations, disease transmission (epidemiology), or airline routes.”

How is social networking doing? Is it popular nowadays? I read the study results from a company called comScore on social networking (http://www.comscore.com/press/release.asp?press=1555). It is a very intersting result, which shows the social networking is definitely “going global”. It has given a huge impact on lots of people’s lives. The study lists several major social networking sites and compare their development in the past year. MySpace is probably one of the hottest sites we hear often. According to comScore’s data, it has expanded by 72% during the past year. How about others (retrieved from site mentioned above): Facebook – 270%; Hi5 – 56%; Bebo – 172%; Tagged – 774%. Some of these are new, but they are growing at an amazing speed, even though MySpace has a big number for its unique visitors.

This is the trend. People all over the world are using Internet as a perfect tool to build this social network. With the help of a computer, they can exchange and share anything with the people who have the same interest. It has probably become lots of people’s habit to do a little bit social networking every day. As is mentioned in the study, these social networking sites have their own populations in specific regions, either in Europe, Asia or North America, etc. The tie between the site and the population is “cultural relevance.” However, it will be interesting to see if the cultural barrier will be crossed and people from all over the world will get closer (Ivins, 2007).

Social networking is the trend and you can feel the power around us.

Knowledge, skills and attitudes needed to succeed in blogging

What kind of knowledge, skills and attitudes are needed to be successful in the area of blogging?

The IT 6750 class had a discussion on this topic.

Knowledge: terminology - widgets; know you audience- who are you talking to? have a focus/purpose

Skills: establish a voice; writing skill, blogging discourse; multimedia production presentation; social interaction skills-facilitate, moderate conversation; critical thinking-synthesize, evaluate info; web navigation 

Attitudes: patience and perseverance; self-directed learner, self-motivator; open to constructive criticism; reflective learner; commitment-do I want this? enthusiasm, passion, caring; social networking – pro/con; 

This might be helpful for whoever out there wants to be successful in the area of blogging.

A cool picture to help me think further

(Retrieved Sept. 12 from http://photo.net/photodb/photo?photo_id=2775878)

More Thoughts on Reports

I read the Team Elementary’s report and here came my thoughts.

I like the way the group did with the history part.  It looks clear and is easy to follow.  Through the history of the field, I can see the development of the instructional design and technology in the second half of the 20th century. 

Technology often seems to develop very fast at the beginning and then slows down a little bit since it is already at a higher level.  I still recall using a computer (MMX 133 MHz) with 16 MB memory in 1998 and was very happy about how fast it saved my documents.  If you played computer games at that time, you know how happy you would be seeing the saving bar going that fast.  Now almost ten years later, the look of the computer doesn’t change much (except for the monitor), but it is way fast now.  From MMX to Pentium II, to Pentium III, to Pentium IV, the change (in regards to speed to run the programs) seemed huge.  Now we have Duo Core and the computer doesn’t seem to run super fast.  Of course, files and programs are getting bigger at the same time and they take up more space and memory to run. 

With the appearance of the surface computer designed by Microsoft, I wonder if the instructional design in the near future will partially lean towards to the use of this technology.  It is a multi-touch technology and is particularly useful in the educational field.  It brings more interactivities and makes people feel closer with what they are learning. 

Of course, the broad use of the surface computer depends on its further improvement and covering range in the field.  People will see how efficient and instructive it is for the purpose of learning and teaching.  If it is going in that direction, we may see a big change in the field of instructional design. 

This is probably why we learn about the current trends.  We follow the trends and see further.  I am very curious and looking forward to a new page in the history of the field.

Thoughts on Reports

I just read the Team Mathematics’ report on Induction to the Field.  It is a learning experience for me to read others’ reports. My group focused on ADDIE (Analysis, design, development, implementation, and evaluate) as one of the instructional design models. After reading your report, I was curious to see what is the relationship between your models (Behaviorism, Cognitivism, and Prescriptive Design) and ours. I did some research and realized that there are so many different modesl out there. They serve different instructional designers’ needs and purpose within a context.

Martin Ryder, “a technologist by trade, somewhat of a luddite by conviction, a teacher, and a learner” from UC Denver, has this web page listing all the models as reference (http://carbon.cudenver.edu/~mryder/itc_data/idmodels.html). The list mentions modern models including Behaviorist, Cognitivist, Prescriptive Models, so ADDIE is under Prescriptive Models. There are also postmodern phenomenological models. It is definitely a good reference for us if we want to know more about these models.

Induction to the Field report

induction_to_the_field_6750_roberts_silli_song.doc

Here is our group’s (Nate Roberts, Paul Silli) report.  Enjoy! 

Confucius says,”Even when walking in a party of no more than three I can always be certain of learning from those I am with.”

Is it a blog or website?

Brent and I are talking about this www.rottentomatoes.com.  I never thought of it as a blog until I saw that Forbes.com listed it as the best movie blog.  Brent thought of it as a website rather than a real blog.  However, there is one column called “the Vine” on this website that actually bloggers can creat their networking and groups to send entries about their opinions and they comment on the opinions as members.  Here is a link you can check out:  http://www.rottentomatoes.com/vine/journal_view.php?journalid=100003909&view=public

Now my question is: Do we call such a website a blog as well since it includes an area where members do blogging or just a website with blogging area?   

Have you heard of surface computing?

[Picture retrieved Sept.1, 2007 from www.microsoft.com] 

Microsoft has recently released its new technology – surface computer (www.microsoft.com/surface or http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid932579976?bclid=932553050&bctid=933742930).  It is basically a 30-inch tabletop display without the use of keyboard and mouse.  To lots of people, it is just like magic.  You put a wireless digital camera on the surface and all the pictures just come out.  You can resize the picture by moving your fingers or flip it by gesturing.  With a wireless cellphone on the surface, you can just send the picture by moving it towards the cellphone.  No cables or extra devices are needed at all!  All this is due to the multi-touch technology developed for this cool “coffee table.”

Is it going to change this digital world?  Yes.  Is it going to change our lives?  Definitely.  While we are enjoying a nice computer - one tower, one keyboard, one mouse and one monitor, this single surface tabletop is going to change lots of things around us.  As an educator, I can see it being used in classrooms.  Students do not need big backpacks any more.  They carry a portable device with all the information and put it right onto the surface equipped in the classroom.  They can take lesson notes and just send it right into the device when it is time to leave.  Students can work on the same project at the same time.  All they need to do is to move their fingers on the surface.  Teachers’ lesson plans can be more colorful: video, interactive games, photos, etc., all presented on the top.  With a gentle tag on the screen, the task is done.  All the transferring of information is within a flash of moment. 

The surface computer, with no doubt, will be widely used in many areas.  Could you imagine controlling your TV programs with a tabletop?  Could you imagine your kitchen table changed into an information table?  I still recall the excitement the first time I touched a computer even if the screen was just showing letters in one color – green.  Now we can feel the high-end technology closer. 

The surface computer is a cool product of technology and it has its fancy sides, but it cannot completely replace the current computer yet.  I like the feeling of hitting my keys on the keyboard while sending email to my friends and I wonder how the surface computer can get it done.  Without any doubt, the surface computer will grab many people’s attention.  I am looking forward to seeing it coming in near future in our lives and would like to try it.  The business who first uses this technology might put a note beside this computer, “Please wash your hands before using it.”  With that, I have no problem.