Wikipedia?

I appreciate where we ended up in class.  A part of me was asking why we were talking about this because I always felt that this was never a novel issue, but one that I had learned to traverse in middle school while doing research.

Also, the way to evaluate website authenticity with who, what, when, where, and why seems to reinforce my thoughts mentioned before about this issue not being a novel one.  This seems to be an example where old principles hold up even with the introduction of new technology!

Plus, am I the only one who is always never satisfied with what is found in Wikipedia?  Once I find any sort of interesting bit, I want to know more about it.  Thus, it allows for the development of inquisitive-ness.... maybe.  But, it certainly did for me.

Quick Follow up on the twitter question.

So from the comments and questions raised there from my previous post, I decided to take things into my own hands and see what I could find.

I found this article on CNN talking about how at Johns Hopkins, they were actually following tweets to track the flu that hit hard earlier this year.

As mentioned in the article, this completely circumvents the issue of "lag" from getting reports from hospitals from across the country where the CDC gives out 2 week old information in its monthly Flu-reports.

This use of twitter in research actually makes a lot of sense.  The issue with tweets is that they're limited to 140 characters, so there really is a limit to the amount of content via tweet.  But its value could be when analyzed in volume.  The small size of each post allows for one to go about a larger number of tweets as compared to reading full articles.  Also, when something is viewed in volume, researchers are hoping to find trends and correlations.  Twitter has already taken advantage of this aspect of its mass use via Hashtags.  Hashtagging allows for the organization of information so that "trends" could be followed.

If this is the case, I can very easily see a new job being developed in PR departments where someone is following current trends to work that into their companies.  To me, it seems like the skills required to do that sort of a job would be very strong organizational skills, and an understanding of the technology.  Could this be the a development of a "twitter librarian?"

Now this is only one article and one example of how twitter is being used, but I mean if I was able to find that in 5 minutes, I'm certain this is something that is happening more often.  This actually got me pretty excited as this seems to be an example of how being creative can really give you something from... well not quite nothing, but 140 characters.

ch. 5

This chapter reminded me of an article I read in Wired magazine about a year ago.  Since then it has been something on my mind.  Is this really a novel issue or is it just something that we deal with everytime there is a major change in medium?  It seems like the ability to differentiate between a bogus source and a credible one is contingent upon the individual's prior understanding.  If students do not know about what they searching for, they will not be able to disregard some sources that have no credibility.

This is the very same issue that bioinformatics deal with.  While the engineers and the programmers write the scripts that are necessary to parse through the huge amount of information coded in RNA sequences, it is the biologists who know what the sequences mean biologically, and thus tell the engineers what they are looking for.  This is also an example of how one can get around this issue: collaborating with others in your community.  What are some other ways we can show students that there are non technological ways to solve issues that arise from using technology?

Also, understanding how search engines work has helped me in my endeavors in the bioinformatics lab.  Where we used BLAST (Basic Local Alignment Search Tool) to analyze sequences, it definitely helped to understand that when you were doing a google search, you werent searching for full sentences or phrases, but rather, for the computer, all it saw was a sequence of characters.

This makes one wonder.  Twitter seems to have made its mark and it appears that it is here to stay (seeing as the mass media has bought into it, and all newscasters, reporters, and journalists have their twitter handles shown on the news and in articles), when will it be okay to start citing twitter for research papers, and how do you teach how to differentiate between a valuable tweet as compared to one that is not as valuable?

02/14/13 reflections.

The lesson today was interesting.  It was all very reminiscent of High School psychology, where our lessons were divided up into different perspectives (biological, psychodynamic, etc), and the two I am somewhat familiar with were the cognitive and the behaviorist.

I also had no idea how "young" the constructivist theory was.  I had just done reading about it the other day in one of my other classes (EDU 7297 with Prof. Thomas) so I was somewhat familiar with it, but it definitely makes more sense now after the discussion about it in the classroom setting.

It is interesting to note that those three theories of education are very much co-current.  Certainly makes me think about different ways to approach teaching.

I must admit, I might need a refresher course about negative reinforcement.  It still is a bit dicey, but I am confident that I'll have a firmer grasp on it once I start reviewing it.

Bill Gates on Education

So Bill Gates was on Reddit answering questions of the general Reddit community earlier today (2/11/12).  Reddit is "a social news and entertainment website where registered users submit content in the form of either a link or a text ("self") post" (-Wikipedia).  Essentially, Bill Gates said he was going to be fielding questions at a specific time from the online community and did so.

One of the questions he took the time to respond to was someone who asked a specific question about technology and math education.  Considering this man was a trailblazer of the digital era, and has since focused his efforts on his philanthropy (including funding for Education), I really was interested in what he had to say on the subject.

Also, Bill Gates' response to a student who wrote to him for class in 2001 (and his advice specifically talks about education and technology?!)

For those who are interested, here is the link to the full AMA (Ask Me Anything). 

also, he currently uses a Perceptive Pixel (which apparently is a massive Windows 8 Touch Whiteboard).
...
because I know I was not the only one who wanted to know.

A Rude Awakening (Chapter 3 Reflections)

This being my first semester in the Education program, I have to admit, I think I am a bit naive when it comes to teaching.  As was probably evident in some of my responses in the classroom, I am definitely more familiar with the philosophy of education than real world practices.  Thus, the end of last class and this chapter was a definite rude awakening of sorts.

This chapter definitely introduced some more real world considerations into the classroom.  on that note, i'm really glad we had the lesson we had on thursday.  The concept of being a designer, and learning the tools to be able to really do that, that is exactly why I wanted to get back to school in the first place.  That lesson seemed really appropriate considering the material in the reading this week.

1.  Should we consider testing on digital interfaces now (assuming the ability to do so)?

2.  How difficult is it to actually implement different technologies into the classrooms?  With all of the standards and what not, how difficult is it to really change these things?  For example, there is a HUGE gap between technology and the law, as so much of the law is dealing with precedence.  Also, the validity of the new technology is a huge factor.  These can be arguments against change in the classroom, and thus, I couldnt help but wonder how difficult change of that sort would be in the classroom setting

3.  We keep talking about the overlap of pedagogical, content, and technological content.  There are sometimes when we are faced with technical difficulties.  Should you be prepared to carry out your lesson should a technical difficulty arise?  Could you be prepared?  Do you handle the content knowledge in a different way because you have technology available?

Response to the first readings (Ch. 1 and 2)

I may be a bit biased about this, but as someone who is hoping to teach biology, I cant help but see technology and the classroom going hand in hand.  This is especially true because of my experience of working in a Bioinformatics lab where most of our work was done by writing scripts for programs and utilizing databases to compare RNA sequences of different bacteria that ran thousands of sequences.

This being the case after reading the chapters i guess I am a bit curious as to what the text meant by becoming an E-teacher.  It sounds like just by using technology in our processes makes us e teachers?  While I could see that one could help usher in the new era of technology via the "lead by example" route, is that enough?  

Also, as specific subject teachers, is it our duty to be teaching specific technology?  I mean I could see us incorporating technology our lesson plans, and showing classes examples of how technology is utilized in their field of study (i.e. BLAST in biology, photoshop for designers, etc).  Even at the university level, we only really got to learn to perform techniques used in contemporary biology labs in lab classes.  How do we divide the time committed to content vs. technique?  Can it be argued that technique should be content taught in the classroom?

Also, the section in chapter 2 about creativity caught my attention.  I've always viewed technology to be like learning a new language, another way to do things, and thus, I suppose in art terms, a different medium.  This section in the text makes it seem like utilizing technology actually changes the creative process in individuals.  The text even went so far as to questioning redefining creativity?  Im not sure that I can really agree with that.  That would be like saying that without technology, some people who are artists would not be artists?  The process of creating something new is still the same.  The tools at your disposal now may be different than what was there even 5 years ago.  This is why we have the youtube generation, where anybody can post anything they create online.    Two of my roomates in college were dancers, and that is how I came about this ted talk, but the sharing of ideas has revolutionized the way that we share information and that barriers are broken down, but can we honestly say that the creativity needs to be redefined?

02/07 reflections

 If I am a designer (as an educator) who am I designing for?
-designing for a better world/ global community
What am I designing?
Designing a part of the basic foundation in a safe envi.
What is the final product for the design?
better world via production of innovators?


Teach them well and let them lead the way


 one of the "hats" of the teacher is that of the instructional designer.
when this hat is on, you are only concerned with the production of lessons via the PIE model
Plan->
Implement->
Evaluate and edit. ^^^
repeat.

The biggest take away from this lesson is probably the understanding of what role technology has in terms of the instructional designer.
Content knowledge, pedagogical knowledge, and technological knowledge intersecting is where we strive to be.

I also appreciate the fact that by being an instructional designer, it stresses creativity.  Also, by admitting to striving to the intersection, we MUST get over the fact that technology is here.  We just have to get used to it, and use it to help us.

All the world is a twitter?

Kudos to this English teacher for using Twitter in the classroom.  They had students fix NFL athletes' tweets.