Class Three

June 11, 2012

Class Notes...
'Did You Know 4.0' Video
- Campaigning between McCain and Obama
- Obama used social networking
- Social networking is starting to take dominance now
- YouTube videos getting over a million hits
- Vomiting material on the web
- People putting up ads
- Musicians are now saying to politicians they don't want their music associated with their campaigns
- Social media now: they change the way it looks to suit their purpose
- Sony is now developing a chip

Book "Feed" and talks about what happens if our society goes totally technological

- Google is not allowed to operate in China: they feel that Google is trying to control too much of the information
- Irony: coming from a communist country
- Google operation is weird because they run by this motto of "do no evil"
- But what they are actually doing is evil and they follow your search terms and changing your
search terms according to what you search
- Side boards of advertising changes
- Advertising is based on your interest
- Your emails in Google are not private because they are trying to figure out how you speak
- They are trying to figure voice
- Trying to piece together the way we request things and talk

- Siri on the iPhone

- One of the hardest things for kids is what you put out on the internet today lives with you forever
- Twitter is totally open to everyone if your account is not set to private

- Conversation amongst teachers about how much is out there

PowerPoint Presentation
Technology and Learning
- We retain what we want when it comes to information
- The survival of the newspaper will not necessarily continue in paper form
- People going online to read newspapers
- In 2009 Twitter took off
- Plane landed in the Hudson: there was no news people there, but people were taking pictures and Tweeting their information that were actually standing there
- Where the future is going and being plugged in?
- 2045 the year the man becomes immortal: we are going to become part of the computer
- Virtual reality has been something that has been talked about for years

Do you have a sense of what information is?
- Many think that zeros and ones or streams of zeros and one is just data
- Information is processed data (not raw), organized, communicated, and useful

Communication Model
- Encoder channel, decoder
- Most of use cellphones now
- It's not as simple anymore (encoder, channel, decoder)
- Filters into everything we do with technology: why we have to be careful how we present it to our learners
- Information and Technology Become One
- A process that involves transference or communication
- The channel or format is important
- Observes that coding and decoding is a strong element between the sender and receiver
- Suggest that there might be problems associated with that process that causes some loss as noise

The Blending of Both
- Where is the information: is it in the mind of the sender or receiver?
- Both
- Or somewhere else?
- Does it have to be in a mind? Can it be in a machine?
- Can information be machine generated?
- Yes, but still put in by humans
- Is it still information if no ons sees or reads the information?
- Or if all human memory has forgotten the supposed information?
- Computer that played on Jeopardy, Watson: had trouble processing puns and emotions

Bloom's Taxonomy
- We used to look at it in terms of verbs, but now we look at it in terms of nouns
- All the words we used are associated with technology

Technology Changes Our Worlds
- Examples: Toy Story 1 came out in 2009, Google clip with Toy Story characters in 2010, difference between Toy Story 1 and Toy Story 3 is 3D and Google, Futurama spoof on the iPhone and Apple
- How did the computer change the classroom?
- How was it used in the beginning? Now?
- What about technology in general - what is its impact on the classroom?
- How do we create bridges of learning for our students?

Wordle
- Can actually drop a whole paper into it
- Another program is similar: Tagxedo

iGoogle
- Can set it up as a classroom account

Wikis
- The idea behind is that you are creating a webpage
- Like the idea of Wikipedia
- A collaborative took
- Can be found in multitude of areas
- Based on HTML language
- Using PBWorks for class assignment
- Click on education
- Get started
- Basic

Wikis...
http://pbworks.com/
I will immediately say that I loved this activity. I think what I loved most about it was the true sense of customization. I disliked iGoogle because of the lack of customization. But with Wikis you are given a blank page to do what you please. My topic of cows sounds like a rather silly one, but I do have a certain adoration for cows and I think a student in elementary school a Wikis page like this would be perfect. I included, what I believe is enough media (pictures, videos, and links) to keep a student of elementary school age engaged. If you want to view it you'll need to be a PBworks member and search for 'moogoesthecow.'

This could definitely be used in the classroom. What comes to mind is having students use this as a platform for research projects. My student who is finishing up 5th grade this year had to complete several non-fiction projects on topics of his choice. He did one on alligators, Dale Earnhardt Junior., and one on tornados. Every one of his research projects was put into a boring PowerPoint. He then had to stand up in front of his class and present them, read through what is exactly written on the slides, as the teacher clicked through them. He’d briefly talk about the pictures and why he put them there. Then he’d receive a grade and that was that. Project complete. But With Wikis each student could create their own frontpage and however many pages they want filled with content on their topic. The students then would be able to view each other’s Wikis page, post comments on what they liked or didn’t like. Additionally the students could develop a one-page questionnaire based on their topic and have it be given to their peers. The student would then have to navigate through each other’s peers Wikis page in order to complete the questionnaire. Wikis would give students a sense of ‘coolness’ because they would be developing their own information webpage. They can put as many pictures and as many interactive items on it as they desire. 

There are several benefits. The first is Wikis gives you a blank canvas to start on. There are the options of positioning texts and pictures in any orientation (left, center, right). You can also choose your type of text (type and size) and font color. It lets you add in pictures from either the internet or your own personal library. You can add in movies and links. I truly cannot think of any drawbacks to Wikis, but then again I loved it, so why would I say bad things about it?