In a previous posting I raised the question about when does a piece of technology become an educational technology?
One of the coolest pieces of technology today is the iPhone. Can it function as an educational technology?
Read the rest of this entry »
People have often argued that digital technologies change the role of teachers from (as it is commonly described) a “sage on the stage” to a “guide on the side.” Personally, I have my doubts about this, complicated somewhat by my recent experiences with GPS technologies.
Read the rest of this entry »
Did you know that any email sent to barackobama@Gmail.com goes to an Indian software developer! Strange but true!
I have been catching up on my reading of Slate and came across this gem of an article by Judith Shulevitz titled, The care and feeding of fiction. Shulevitz has written a quasi-review of James Wood’s new book How fiction works and makes we want to read the book itself. Of the many interesting ideas in the article is this wonderful quote that I just had to share:
There is only one recipe—to care a great deal for the cookery – Henry James
A statement that ought to apply to all that we do…
As an aside, it is clear from this essay by Woods that he has a “take no prisoners” style of writing. His take down of most magical realistic writing (which is calls hysterical realism), including Rushdie, Pynchon, DeLillo and Foster Wallace is a must read. This just makes me more confident that the book will be a wonderfully, idiosyncratic, engaging and intelligent read.
… but what if real people die?
Excellent article by William Saletan on Slate about a new breed of war-toys that blur the line between video games and real war. As the article says, “if looks and feels like a video game. But it kills real people.” As it turns out, the company that designed these new tools, Raytheon actually hired game developers to design how these weapons would work. The result is “a user-friendly array of throttles, switches, and thumb controls.”
Read the rest of this entry »
Check out Story of Stuff or watch the movie…
Read the rest of this entry »
Optical illusions are usually seen as being cool visual tricks, an intriguing way of peeking into how our brain works. They have rarely been considered to be functionally useful. Here is an exception: an optical illusion seen as a virtual speed bump! Check it out…
Just a link to online videos related to design. Check it out by clicking here
Relevant to CEP817 and CEP917 (and maybe even CEP818)
In the context of my previous posting, here is an article that provides “a brief historical summary of the research into forms of coercive persuasion, primarily sensory deprivation, conducted 35 to 50 years ago, in which psychologists, psychoanalysts, and psychiatrists worked for the CIA and the Pentagon to understand these techniques.” See pdf of Psychology and Research into Coercive Interrogation by Dr. Jeffrey Kaye.
Martin Seligman is one of the most eminent psychologists alive today. As his wikipedia page says, “He is well known for his work on the idea of “learned helplessness”, and more recently, for his contributions to leadership in the field of Positive Psychology.” He has served as the president of the American Psychological Association (the most significant psychological association in the country) and has written numerous bestsellers in the area of positive psychology (a field he helped establish).
I was therefore saddened to learn that his name was mentioned in Jane Mayer’s recent book “The dark side: The inside story of how the war on terror turned into a war on American ideals.” as being involved with the administration’s “enhanced interrogation” techniques [Full disclosure: I have not read Mayer’s book, and base this posting on reviews and other web based resources.] Read the rest of this entry »
I just created a personalDNA map for myself. Turns out I am a Benevolent Inventor… beats being a benevolent dictator I say! However, this posting is concerned not with what the survey found out about me but rather about what I learned about the survey. Read the rest of this entry »
In my summer classes I have the participants complete a video assignment on understanding. This year as always my students worked in groups over a week-and-a-half to select their topics, develop interview protocols, video tape people as they answered their questions, and then edit the footage into a tight 4-5 minute documentary. Here are the projects they created (I am still waiting on one): Read the rest of this entry »
Browsing through Nikita Prokhorov’s website (see this posting about Nikita’s new blog about the process of creating ambigrams) led me to a fascinating article about how symbols and the historical weight they can carry. Read the rest of this entry »
I received an email out of the blue from Nikita Prokhorov, a freelance graphic designer and assistant professor of graphic design from Connecticut. Nikita runs a blog devoted ambigrams, but in a different kind of way. As the email said, the blog is “devoted to the art and process behind ambigrams. It’s not meant just to showcase ambigram work, but rather explore each artist’s individual process & approach to ambigrams.” What a great idea. Read the rest of this entry »
Teachers College Record chooses a couple of articles each week to offer freely to visitors to its website. These are featured in their email newsletter (TCRecord this week), and goes out to thousands of people. Imagine my surprise when I opened my newsletter a few minutes ago. Turns out that the article chosen this week is none other than the 2006 piece written by Matt Koehler and myself, Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge: A Framework for Teacher Knowledge! That’s pretty cool.
No explanation required …
Read the rest of this entry »
My 12 year old son, Soham, has never been into music. An MP3 player I bought for him languishes somewhere in his room. So you can imagine my surprise when, a few months ago, he indicated an interest in a song, Louis Armstrong’s What a wonderful world. So this posting is for him, two very beautiful, yet very different renditions/representations of the same song, brought to you, thanks to YouTube.
Read the rest of this entry »
Re-Public: re•imagining democracy, an online journal focusing on innovative developments in contemporary political theory and practice, has a special issue devoted to Distributed Creativity and Design. This may be a useful resource for my Learning technology by design (CEP817), Creativity in teaching and learning (CEP818), Knowledge, media, design (CEP917) courses.
The NYTimes has a story today about how higher prices of gas are driving up the demand for online learning. This is a great example of “synergistic” effects between seemingly disparate events that could not have been easily anticipated - but seem to make perfect sense once they do occur. This is similar to the trend we are seeing at Michigan State as well. Our online master’s program is booming while our face to face, evening classes languish.
What was somewhat bothersome to read in the article were these statements by students that clearly seemed to imply that online was somehow inferior to the “real thing,” face to face. For instance, here’s one: “I don’t feel I get as much out of an online class as a campus course,” Ms. Miller said. “But I couldn’t afford any other decision.” Such sentiments are echoed by a couple of people in the article. Such sentiments are not new. I hear statements like the above quite often. I remember a higher-education delegation from Pakistan I met a few months ago - where the inferiority of online learning was just taken as a matter of fact. Read the rest of this entry »
Reuters story titled Technology reshapes America’s classrooms. Couple of quotes worth noting:
Read the rest of this entry »