Whilst working on some other projects at school, I wanted to finally post this to a searchable resource that instructors and other educators can use. This is a combination of my most two recent posts at my own website at Edutechnorama…
In surfing for content to post to a variety of blogs this week, I came upon an interesting article that doesn’t necessarily relate to this week’s topics in any of my classes, but thought I would share anyway. (Besides, it’s my turn to present in my Recent Innovations in Ed Tech class this week)
Inside is an interesting reference on how technology is affecting instruction today. I like the fact that it focuses back on the teacher: (note that in the following quote, IT is referring to Information Technology and NOT Instructional Technology, but I think in the end it applies to both)
“IT is not a good substitute for good teaching. Good teachers are good with or without IT and students learn a great deal from them. Poor teachers are poor with or without IT and students learn little from them.”
Here’s the link: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/09/17/it
I’ve prided myself for a long time on being a liaison for technology and people who aren’t technologists or those who at the very least tolerate it. However I still would like to contribute to the web development community regardless of whether they are developing e-Learning or educational software interfaces or not. With that said, I would like to emphasize that my first degree was in software engineering, so I am an engineer at heart. Therefore I will proceed to get a little tech-y…
Good Morning All,
I’m writing a quick post to let all who read know that I will be ‘gone’ temporarily from the CTL as I will be completing the requirements for a Masters degree in the Ed Tech program at ASU on a sabbatical leave award. Everyone here has been very supportive of me doing this and I’m grateful for that. So grateful, in fact, that I couldn’t leave until the very last minute. Today is my last day here and I will be tying up some loose ends for a short while.
I will occasionally post a thing or two to the blogcast whilst I’m on leave as well as documenting my more routine educational experiences and findings at my other website, EduTechnorama. (I know it sounds goofy but I had to come up with something to call it)
I was the one who initially put together the streaming media guide in preparation for some media classes for MCC faculty taught by Richard Felnagle of the English Humanities department and myself. The guide is horrendously out of date, but the class itself was fun class to teach, and I learned a lot. I really enjoyed teaching it with Richard who delivers a great portion of his own instruction for his on campus and distance-learning students via our Helix Universal Server. (more…)
Melanie posted earlier about her favorite photo online storage and organizing sites. The CTL also has in the past offered workshops on how to obtain content for use with instructional projects that is legal and honors copyright law.
I’d like to quickly add a few to the list that I’ve found helpful over the past year or so.
My last post was serious so here’s another quick funny post to contrast it. On the way back from the Red Mountain campus yesterday I was having another good conversation with my ride, Charlie Levine. Right in the middle of it my right leg started feeling really hot for some reason. I felt bad because Charlie and I were having a good talk and during his part of the conversation I was fidgeting around in my seat and thinking to myself, “Why in the world is my leg on fire?!”. It took me about 3 minutes of discomfort to finally do something about it, and I discovered that a 9-volt battery that I had put in my pocket in preparation for some video work that morning was being shorted out by my key chain. (Which by the way creates a very hot set of keys.)
So here are my 9-volt battery safety tips:
After car-pooling with her to the MCC Red Mountain campus yesterday, Donna and I had a conversation that she encouraged me to write about in a blog post. So this one’s for you, Donna. 🙂
I’m currently enrolled in an educational psychology graduate class at ASU entitled “Fundamental Theories of Learning.” Tying it together with some of the technology skills and the environment I work in has been an excellent experience. In the class one of the papers we read was entitled “The Seven Sins of Memory” — based on the book of the same name written by Dr. Daniel L. Schacter from Harvard University.
In my opinion, one of the reasons that George Lucas’ earlier Star Wars film efforts were so successful is because they portrayed his vision of a ‘used future’–one where its inhabitants weren’t totally amazed at the fact they were traveling by light speed in space ships the size of Texas. They just used technology because it was there. What part of this are we employing today? Which teaching and technology trends are here to stay and won’t evolve or degenerate because the future is here and now and we just use it without geeking out about it?
James brought to my attention that the folks at Apple are up to their old (but good) tricks again. They’ve released a new version of their Boot Camp software that allows MS Windows to run on their hardware. Newly added is support for Windows Vista. I anticipate there will be a day when we will be so used to technology that it won’t matter THAT much what OS (Operating System) a computer has on it. We will just walk up to technology and begin interacting with it. Bad technology will devolve and good technology will progress…much like natural selection in ecology.
I’ve worked with Martin for almost 8 years now (gee I’m not that old), and when we shared office space and were working on some project together occassionally he’d slip into frustration with a growl that went something like “Arggh!!” — Just like a pirate. So anyway for lack of other material to post, and in honor of his style of getting things done under frustration at times, I ran his narrative blog post this week through the pirate talk translator: http://www.syddware.com/cgi-bin/pirate.pl
Read on to see how it sounds on paper…I can’t help but laugh 😀