insert creative blog title here » Education

Screencast #1

shelby — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 14:52:38 +0000

As part of my final project, I created 3 screencasts about Delicious and how tagging can be used as a learning tool.

2009-04-29_1931

2009-04-29_1947

2009-04-29_1958

A Culmination of Everything I’ve Ever Learned, in Essay Form

shelby — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 23:58:10 +0000

At the beginning of this semester, I didn’t know what to expect from the class, having received a description from my adviser that was vague at best. What I did not expect however, was a computer and internet oriented class that would completely change not only the way I viewed new media and the internet, but the way I viewed the classroom experience. I went in thinking that blogging was a ridiculous pastime for people who were obnoxiously desperate to be heard, (while some of those may exist) but I have learned that blogging is a chance to share experiences through a medium that literally has the ability to change the world. As I looked back over my past blogs, it was easy to see the progress I’ve made over the semester. In the beginning, my blog post were just a regurgitation of whatever I had read. But by the end, I’d learned not only how to read ☺ but also how to blog. My favorite blog was the Alien Education blog. It was the first time that I thought through the reason that the reading was assigned. I had read it, and I was originally frustrated because I couldn’t think of anything to write about. But when I took the time to evaluate, not what the story was about, but rather, why it was important that I read the story, I suddenly realized the significance. Blogging has become a way for me to clarify my thoughts. Even if they aren’t clear on my blog, writing them out certainly helps clarify them in my mind. I’ve done reader response journals and the like before, but they were rarely augmented by meaningful class discussion. Furthermore, I didn’t ever read anyone else’s journal. But blogging helped me not only map out my own ideas, but also listen to the ideas of other students as I read and commented on their blogs. I plan to continue blogging when I study abroad next semester, and hopefully as I continue my education in other venues.
However, I digress. The main point of this post is to talk about delicious. When I originally thought about my project, I had planned to incorporate dictionaries. However, when Dr. Campbell had a moment of insight (what you blog about is what you think about, brilliant!!) it became clear that delicious and tagging was the avenue I should go down. Because I tag everything. In the beginning of the semester, I was hesitant to tags sites because I was unsure if they were related. But Dr. C assured me it didn’t matter. Because there’s no such thing as random. While the thought process may seem random to the outsider, it always makes sense to the person who is thinking it. However we go down the path, we know the paths we took to get there. So nothing is random, and that means that whatever I chose to tag would be relevant. So while some of my tags ended up being related to new media, for example, The Media Lab, but other things were not (i.e. Robert Frost poetry).
As I experimented with delicious, I learned new things. I experimented with some of the options delicious presented, like creating blog posts of my tags. (That one never actually worked). Every time I stumbled across something new, I tagged it. I looked at other people’s blogs, and the blogs that they had linked to. I explored tags, tag clouds, wordels. Everything that I found I explored. It added up to a lot of hours doing essentially nothing, but in truth every page I found was something new I learned. Before this class I had never heard of half the things and people I know about now. That’s part of why this class was such a learning experiment.
Delicious was the place where I got to catalog all of my randomness. It was a library, of sorts, for all of my “books”. But instead of paperbacks, my library was full of websites. And the beauty of delicious was that all of my sites were connected. I could click on the tag “education” and find sites about Siftables and stupid grammar advice. Even though the two sites were seemingly unrelated, they both concerned education. I could look up other tags related to education, or just focus on my ten most popular tags. I could subscribe to other users bookmarks, including people in my class. And I could set up RSS feeds in my blog for specific bookmarks.
Delicious was a place to experiment with everything. But the best part about delicious wasn’t bookmarking sites or making tag clouds. The best part was tagging a website. Not very monumental to the unobservant, but it is really a learning moment. For example, when I first came across the Jon Udell blog, I maybe read the first post before I decided to tag it. My first instinct was to tag it as “blog” but delicious also recommends tags: your most popular tags, and the most common tags by other users. Here is where the learning occurs. After tagging it blog, I looked at the delicious suggested tags. They included, among other things, “programming, web2.0, screencast, and technology” At the time, I didn’t realize that Udell was such a technology guru, but after looking at his suggested tags, I did some more research. I looked up web2.0 and stumbled across, among others, Tim O’Reilly. From there, I expanded even more. I looked up my other web2.0 tags, and they included everything from tinyurl.com to Tim Berners-Lee’s TedTalk and WorldCat (which is actually a real library).
The beauty of delicious isn’t the organization and the bookmarks, thought they are a central feature. The beauty of delicious is its ability to serve as a learning tool. To help the user realize that education is more than textbooks and Baby Einstein CDs. Web2.0 is more than twitter and facebook.
Overall, this class has been a major learning experience. Ironically, it was only as a senior that I started to learn about how to learn. The saddest part is that I won’t really be able to apply this knowledge to very many more classes, but I suppose we’re always learning, so there’s still a chance to apply myself. Being in this class has given me a chance to evaluate not only how I learn, but how others learn as well, and how education should be changed to allow for the best learning possible.

Dreaming about Delicious

shelby — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 13:39:05 +0000

Last night delicous.com was in my dream, which, while decidedly odd, got me thinking about some things. I’ve been focused mainly on the moment of learning that comes when a site is tagged, but while looking at my delicious tags, I noticed that they are also all connected to each other by their shared tags. For example, I tagged two sites as “web2.0″. One was the Institute for the Future of the Book, and the other was LinkedIn.com, a social job networking site. Both are rightly tagged as web2.0, and yet, we tend to focus the definition of web2.0 as that thing which it is related to in the tag, rather than the whole definition. In other words, when I see the Insititute for the Future of the Book, and its tag, web2.0, I think about how web2.0 and If:book are related. I don’t think about social networking and web2.0 until I look at LinkedIn.com, but both are part of the total definition of web2.0. By looking at the tags as a whole, rather than just an individual site and its tags, we learn more about not only the site we tagged, but also the meaning of the tag itself.

Alien Education?

shelby — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 14:11:32 +0000

I started out this blog originally with just a summary of what we had read, but naturally, I found it hard to push out much further than that. So instead, I decided to ponder: why are we reading this story? Education has been a recurring theme in our class, and pushing the boundaries of modern education specifically. But this story isn’t about using computers or turtles or technology to teach. It’s a different method of learning, by immersing the learner in a superior culture. Dr. C and I talked about Bruner’s spiral curriculum, and that is what connected with me in this story. The idea that if one is immersed in all of the learning/curriculum, not just the basics. We won’t always know what’s going on, but it pushes the mind further, and allows us glimpses of ideas that might be above our heads at the time. Its not simplified, spoon-fed learning. Studies have shown that immersion is the best way to learn a new language, so it seems obvious that the way we best learn the most basic knowledge would be the best way to learn all other knowledge, but instead, the school system is so caught up in levels and grades and spelling tests that it fails to acknowledge that the best learning often occurs when no one is “teaching”.

The Delicious Library

shelby — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 15:50:52 +0000

So after talking with Dr. C about my project, I think I’ve finally got it. I’m going to explore taxonomy vs. folksonomy, specifically, tagging on delicious.com and how tagging organizes the web. Bush mentions in his essay the idea of sharing associative trails. To extend the metaphor, you took a walk in the woods and marked your trail. Now imagine that other people also walked in those same woods and marked the trail as well. You can then explore their trail and they can explore yours. Sharing the trail leads to new discovery and a learning journey. So naturally, you are wondering: how is social bookmarking a learning process? The learning I am referring to is not the journey on the trail, but something much more subtle and yet more powerful. I’m talking about the act of tagging. You may think it is simple, and in a way it is, but tagging is more than just a keyword, it is a connection, both a mental linking and a physical hyperlink. When you research and play on the internet, it is a matter of individual discovery. You are working alone, skipping along the trail by yourself, basket of berries in hand. But as soon as you decide to tag a website, other people become involved. One of the best features of delicious.com is the patterns in the trial. When you tag a website, delicious has a spot for you to write your own tag. A word that shows the significance or relevance of the website to you. But it also includes popular and recommended tags. These are more than just suggestions. These tags show the relevance and significance of that same website both to other people and to you. For example, you the blog of Jon Udell and decide to tag it “blog”. Then you look at the other tags that delicious suggests. You see technology, web2.0, blog, microsoft, programming, etc. Now the website becomes much more to you than just “blog”. You can see how other people view it; and can explore the idea what the blog is about, who Jon Udell is, what he does. You see web2.0 and think: we talked about that in class. You google web2.0 and the research process starts all over again. Then you tag a new site and new ideas form. It’s infinite and yet organized.

Turtles and Legos

shelby — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 04:38:44 +0000

So I am currently unable to find my book, though doubtless it will reappear conveniently sometime tomorrow. Consequently, for the moment, I am unable to read Papert’s essay. I have, however, done some research, so hopefully I won’t embarrass myself in class tomorrow. From what I understand, Papert, aside from creating a brilliant programming language, and a “turtle”, was an advocate of changing the educational system to include better ways of teaching and learning through developing software such as Turtle Geometry whereby children could learn by making rather than learn by doing. Papert believed that children were not inclined to be bad or good at math, but rather that the methods used to teach mathematics were not conducive to learning mathematics. In short, children were overcoming obstacles and managing to learn in spite of the system rather than actually being aided by it. In response, he created Turtle Geometry, a program that allowed children to create geometric shapes and plug in algorithms, etc, to modify the shapes.

Being naturally inclined to hate all things related to math, I was a little suspicious of this plan at first. How is creating a square that different from just looking at one? Is is different? And if so, how does that difference alter one’s perception of the square? But by applying the same logic to language, I began to understand how it might work. Reading a sentence in a language is never the same as forming your own. In the human mind, several things are going on at once that enable us to form our own unique sentences, which is why we often fumble or misspeak. However, these same processes are not occurring when one is reading. Yes, there is a degree of translation and understanding required, but to form a sentence is much more complicated and more conducive to language learning than just being able to read a sentence. Non fluent speakers can often read and understand sentences in a language, but when asked to construct a sentence, they often struggle and their sentences are full of mistakes. By applying this same logic to other learning processes, including the dreaded mathematics, it seems logical that self-creation is much more conducive to actual learning that merely reading about a subject.

Polio, White Men, and Web2.0

shelby — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 03:47:53 +0000

So today, in the hopes of securing three free passes for my Theater Props class, I went to see the play Iphigenia 2.0, written by Charles Wee. The play is a fusion of the ancient Euripides play Iphigenia, and a modern reworking that puts the play in a suspension of time between the Trojan War and the War in Iraq. While its an interesting concept, what is perhaps the most radical part of the play is the fact that it is posted freely online, and is meant to be reworked, rewritten and reclaimed by other theater producers and directors. Wee calls it the (Re)making Project and as soon as a read it I instantly recognized a sort of creative commons usage agreement, though not stated as such. Secondly, I was intrigued as I continued to read about Wee. He is at least 70 years old, and yet he is not only a creative thinker to the point of being child-like, he is also very up-to-date on new technology and Web2.0. It got me thinking about children and education which we were discussing the other day. Its rather refreshing to find one still in a state of child-like curiosity about both technology and art and the combination thereof. The idea that plays are not merely for the individual author, but for all to be inspired from, should be an example for all education. Education should not be about rereading what has already been written, but about taking something that has been written and being inspired by it, reworking and reshaping it so that it speaks to you. As a lover of literature, I feel that as readers, when spend too much time making a work “speak” to us. Yes, Shakespeare was brilliant. I too enjoy works by Austen, Joyce, etc., ect., blah blah vomit. I get it. Other people write great things, but one can’t be educated by forced inspiration from great works. Great works should be a source of inspiration for new, individual works that speak to the writer and to a new audience. By allowing his plays to serve as inspiration, not merely works of art, Mee is taking a step towards changing the way we view art, and eventually, hopefully, education.

Ted Talks…about Blocks

shelby — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 04:40:57 +0000

So last time I wrote about the need for open-ended education, without a pre-designed pathway. And today, while randomly searching TedTalks, I came across a video for a new type of computer called Siftables (watch the talk here). These small blocks are interactive mini-computers that can link to each other and can be controlled through everyday motions such as turning, flipping, pouring, etc. The brilliance of the idea is that it is the beginning of Nelson’s idea of computer oriented education. These blocks allow users to do math, reading, colors, music, and even allow one to create stories. And while they are “user-friendly”, it’s not in the sense of an iPod or a personal computer, but it’s easy because you use these computers as you would use any object in everyday life. For example, to mix colors, one takes two Siftables of whatever color, and pours them onto a blank Siftable to create a new mixed color. The beauty of the interface is that it is natural, not because we’ve learned about it, but because its something we already do. The program enhances our natural learning process, rather than teaching us about a program that will then teach us how to learn. All this makes me think that we might be beginning to realize the potential for computers to aid us in work and learning.

Please Keep all Hands Inside the Vehicle

shelby — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 16:29:16 +0000

Take a walk in the woods. You can either have a specific start and end point in mind and wander as you choose on the journey or you can follow the pre-marked trail. Part of the problem with education is the pre-marked trail. If we are all stuck on the same path, is there ever any learning? Part of the beauty of learning is going down the undiscovered paths. Is repetition learning? Granted, perhaps it is with learning cursive, but there is so much more to learn beyond repetition. Is there any way to have progress if we are all doing the same thing? Yet we can’t have an education system without any structure. There must be a starting and ending point for the learner, but we can’t set him on a straight path with no room to explore. “Motivate the user and let him lose in a wonderful place” (Nelson). Being forced onto a path in the woods robs one of the beauty of the experience, the beauty of being in the woods. The beauty of being in the woods is that one can explore.