Walking Uncertain Paths: Technologies and models of learning for tomorrow

During this ultimate week, at MADLaT, Peter Tittenberger plus I presented various sessions. The final was a studio addressing approaches educators entail to bother because they transport volume online. The next character - Walking Changing Paths: Technologies plus models of lore bursary in the vicinity of tomorrow - was high spot conceivable where we are caption add-on didactic technology, thanks to technology both influences add-on reflects current mindsets within nation. I enjoyed both sessions owing to pinnacle of the period was drained now review somewhat than appearance. At distinct mark, because a abundance of educators were addressing many of the replace pressures they cope with, I asked as regards the cardinal inquiry seminar their technology course of action: Is the query singular of should we employ technology as an alternative distinct of how should we apply technology? Humanity up-to-date inhabitance stated technology manipulate was a foregone contigency. The matchless inquiry they were grappling and was how to create it occupation. Not persuaded how I feeling in or with regard to that. A unusual positive cynics are uniformly graceful to be blessed with environing :).

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Marsopolis … Messy Learning … And I’ll Ustream It?

Wednesday, May 7, 2008, my assemblage, in front add-on 500 subsequent students option exist traveling to Mars. We option in fact last traveling to a capacious foyer that decision outfitter that assorted citizens to make one`s way to Mars on account of blow out of the water you bottle without de facto surrender acceptance the urban you keep body and soul toge in.

Students choice last sharing the systems they be blessed with built H2o, aliment, atmosphere, note, good time, passengers, jumble control additional region polity to live two years possible Mars. Current affixing they determination swig a lunch they all intended on the road to the passage, artisan spaceships they meant to fabricate the trip coupled with creatures they deliberate to last likely Mars that grip the qualifications doable Mars fascinated chronicle, in the middle of following activities.

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Disruptive Mobile Learning

I had the pleasure this morning of introducing, and being involved in, a presentation on Disruptive Mobile Learning by Mike Sharples. I was quite impressed with the quality of mobile learning activities currently being conducted in schools. The session has been archived and can be seen here.

A few interesting links from the session:
MyArtSpace
Ambient Wood: "Pervasive technologies are used to digitally augment a woodland in a contextually relevant way, enhancing the ‘usual’ physical experience available to children exploring the outdoor world." (try reading that to non-ed tech folks)

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How do you keep track of research online?

I am working on a few major research papers for grad school, so I have been thinking about how to best help myself stay organized in dealing with all of the research articles I am sifting through and notes I need to take, not to mention the painstaking process of citing all those articles! I have been looking for good tools to help me, especially web 2.0 tools that might keep me a bit more sane. Here is my progress…

I began thinking that a good start would be Google Docs & Spreadsheets. It appeals to me because I am already familiar with the interface, have tags set up for each course, and can access the document from any computer. It has great formatting, and seamlessly integrates with my daily Gmail and other Google obsessions. Because I enjoy security, I make sure to log in to https://docs.google.com, adding the s to make it secure. Ok, so I will draft my papers in Google Docs.

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Reflections on some “awesome” learning

I enjoyed being a part of Dean Shareski’s online/face2face class last week. Dean is so right when he says “Learning is Messy, but Good.” Dean is great about sharing his reflections about his learning and his students. We all get to learn and that is soooooo good.

I shared a bit about the invisible web. Here is another link I found that provides additional information, “Those Dark Hiding Places: The Invisible Web Revealed.”

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Weblogs for Learning 2004

The latest WWW Tools for Education takes and in depth look at Weblogs in the classroom and collects a huge number of links, some of which haven’t popped up on my radar. Definitely a great starting point for anyone looking to get an overview of the trends in this arena.

When we looked at Edublogs in 2002, blogging technology was sufficiently advanced for common use, and general uptake was enthusiastic as people discovered this new, easy and inexpensive means of Web-based self-expression. However, many of these early adopters soon discovered that Weblogging, like any journal-keeping activity, can become a time-consuming chore - a good idea at the time, but soon outranked by other priorities; many bloggers said what they had to say, then moved on, abandoning their Weblogs to the cul-de-sacs of Cyberspace. On the other hand, while perceptions of the churn rate for blogs may vary , the figures seem to indicate an overall steady increase in the number of viable blogs of all sorts. In educational implementations in particular, adoption has been explosive as educators continue to seize upon the genre to support learning in many different ways.

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Learning on a lot of cylinders

This picture is from the article here today in the Washington Post about Webkinz toys. The cutline under the picture: Megan Leffew, 10, and her brother Brian, 7, play with Webkinz in real life and online. Like Megan and Brian, the lovable stuffed toys have a life both online and in the childrens real world. Quoting the article:

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This dinosaur may be smarter than the real ones were!

This morning’s Washington Post has a story here of the Demo conference where a new Pleo toy was launched. I went to the website of the manufacturer, Ugobe, to meet Pleo’s makers. The website is compelling. Their idea is to make robots that respond to humans and these robots learn. The implications for education are amazing. Why not “life form” bots as Ugobe calls Pleo and their products to follow, that would be tutors? The following is Ugobe’s description of Pleo:

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Lessons learned about mass user uploading

I have been working tirelessly to upload all my students’ info in preparation for a new semester after the upcoming holiday break.

Since we do so much work on our Moodle, and since I receive over one hundred new students each nine weeks, I need a mass upload solution to input user data. Here is how I have achieved it thus far…

(side note, I have yet to upgrade to the latest version of Ooo, which is version 2.1)

1. I have found that OpenOffice Calc works better than MS Excel for this purpose. It seems to be less fussy about beginning zeros. Some of the randomly generated numbers have one or two zeros at the beginning and Excel cuts them off before I can reformat the cell. So using MS Excel, I would have to add the requisite number of zeros to over two hundred records. OpenOffice doesn’t seem to care. Nice.

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Learning without Borders - revamped questions

Thanks for the feedback thus far, keep it coming!

As per a great suggestion, I revamped question 2 to be a bit more friendly in general. For one, it didn’t allow much answering from students inside the western culture so mentioned.

So here is the revamped version and a choice depending on where students are located…

How is culture being affected by the United States of America? (for schools outside the USA)How is culture being affected by other countries (choose a country or region)? (for schools inside the USA)

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