Teetering on the fence

I found the readings for this week pretty interesting. For someone new to the field of education, I am glad to see there clearly are oppositional theorists firmly entrenched in their respective ideologies. As far as I know, differing ideas lead to collaboration which leads to progress (in a perfect world). Unfortunately, clashing opinions in the real world often lead to stoicism, ignorance, and agoraphobia. But I'll leave that alone for now.

To add to our discussion, I found this article by Norm Friesn, an Instructional Technology professor at Athabasca University, in Alberta, Canada. Friesn offers three strong objections to current trends in the design and implementation of learning objects.

His first objection sites the lack of a clear definition for what constitutes a learning object. With so many vague, esoteric definitions for learning objects, legitimate research into their efficacy is virtually impossible, Friesn asserts.

The two other objections cite organizations like the IEEE Learning Technologies Standards Committee and ADL for taking a militaristic approach to standardization and homogeneity. According to Friesn, learning objectives vary with context. Who knew?

In pondering all of these readings as a whole, the only consistency lies in the focus on sound pedagogy and Dewey and all that. It seems to me that cheap digital technology is here. It's in education. It's in socialization. Pretty soon it will be in your refrigerator, your car, and behind your ear (or in your wrist, if you prefer). There's no use fighting it.

-Peace, Love, Gap...I mean...er...oh, whatever

Customer Service

Redesigned signage at the Customer Service desk in the Squirrel Hill branch of the Carnegie Library; From the Information Architecture Institute conference "User Interfaces for Physical Spaces"

civil disobedience

I found this article pretty comical. It describes the plight of an open source user in the UK who installed Linux on a newly purchased Dell laptop and requested a refund for his unused copy of Windows XP.

Ironically, Dell only took 2 days to issue a refund for about $100. The refund showed up on the guy's credit card statement as "goodwill unspecified."

-tee hee

Positioning myself in front of the computer

I have pretty much finished the skeleton for my information architecture website. This has proven to be a fascinating endeavor for me. My investigation into IA gave me a lot to think about in terms of delivering a website as a final project. I have spent more time on developing a site plan and hand-coding the CSS and html than I have on filling in the pages with the content I have learned.

However, the site can be found here. I will continue to add content as the weekend rolls on.

-salud y dinero

random musical notes

The other day I was listening to some music by Edward the Bear, the band I used to play in. I heard a cover we did of David Bowie's China Girl and thought I'd share it. I apologize for the audio quality, but click the concert poster if you want a listen.

presentations galore

Mary's FlashDance

• I enjoyed looking at TILT. It made me feel a little better about the unsuccessful attempt I made at designing a training module using Flash. The animation and interactivity were functional, yet not very involved and probably wasn't that difficult to create once the content was developed. However, I think we pointed out in discussion the fact that the TILT tutorial probably isn't that great at building knowledge in users.
  

Michael's Corporate Empire

• I liked this look at e-learning. It definitely made me re-evaluate some ideas I have had about the functionality of corporate training. I had really only looked at the positive sides: low cost, quick uptake, ability to be done during down time at work. But the large scale dispersion of this training style probably has overlooked the contextual delivery of the training content. I had really been thinking I may like to go into corporate ID, but now I'm not so sure.
  

Ted's Copyright Conundrum

• Great job Ted. This was a topic I have always found pretty fascinating. My initial interest came from reading numerous adverts for Creative Commons in Adbusters magazine and Kalle Lasn's book, Culture Jam. As a dj and videographer I had to think a lot about what was fair use of music and visual media, but I didn't have a really sound understanding of what fair use actually was. So I just assumed if I was using it, it was probably fair. But I do think the idea of 98 years of copyrighted Mickey is pretty absurd.

Jade's Broken Social Scene

• When I first heard about MySpace a year or so ago I was pretty confounded. I hadn't really been privy to Friendster or any of the older SNCs. It's amazing to see how quickly these communities have teetered over the tipping point and how quickly the idea has spawned other similar ideas. The concept of being able to develop a virtual identity that won't be held to the same rigors one's real identity faces daily just seems comforting. It isn't really surprising that people, especially young people have gravitated to SNC as a social outlet because they have a safety net.
  
• I read something related today in the NYTimes. Apparently, major advertising corporations are beginning to use consumer created videos as advertisements in hopes to ride the bull we now know as reality TV. The appeal of reality TV is simple: people enjoy seeing people like themselves triumphing and tribulating (if that's not a word, it should be) on TV. It makes them feel better about being average. In the same vein, if someone sees an advertisement akin to a YouTube video, it makes them feel as though they could be just as successful with their own home movies.
  

The new Big Blue

The tech field is pretty well dominated by liberals and conspiracy theorists (i.e., terrorists). This article points out what the recent tipping-over-and-shaking-out of the senate/house may mean for strangely partisan issues like net neutrality and digital copyright.

It definitely makes you wonder who really is in control: the government, or the myriad corporations that fund it?

-sounding off

Textbooks vs Software Modules - a battle to the death

Press, Larry. A Modular, Web-based Introductory Programming (2003).

This article describes a comparison between two introductory computer programming courses, one based on lectures and a text book, the other utilizes online lectures and series of short training modules encapsulating the content of the text. After delivering the course via online software modules for 2 semesters, the PI could not find any significant difference in the accumulated knowledge of the students. The author spends a good deal of time describing the design of the software modules and intimates the modules better captured the attention of the students due to brevity.

In light of last week's discussion of legitimate fields of study for online education, I think this is an excellent example of subjects learn-able in an online format. Computer programming (in my limited knowledge) requires a basic understanding of key concepts, rote under understanding of syntax, and an ability to apply knowledge in varying contexts. This type of learning does not necessitate an instructor standing by with all the answers. As far as I can tell, all computer knowledge requires active resourceful thinking on the part of the learner. Basic programming should not be an exception.

just a reminder

This Tuesday is going to be an interesting day at the polls. Don't miss out.

Socio-political networking

This article describes the process Valerie Ervin, an aspiring city council member in Montgomery, went through to secure her seat. She negotiated with potential campaign managers who proposed to secure the younger voters by launching a campaign across MySpace, Facebook, and YouTube. Ironnically, the campaign managers can't even offer their own votes being that they are only 17 years old. But they do speak SNC quite fluently.