Skip to main content

Home/ beyondwebct/ Group items tagged write

Rss Feed Group items tagged

Chenwen Hong

Wiki Project Aims to Document the World's Public Art - Wired Campus - The Chronicle of ... - 0 views

  • But they don’t just write new articles, they also tag pre-existing entries
    • Chenwen Hong
       
      Thus this project not only exemplifies "the mob rule" by contrubuting knowledge, but it also embodies the hyperconnectivity by tagging those already exusting articles. This act of tagging instantaneously bring together the students at Indianna-Purdue with those who share the same concern over public art.
  •  
    A Wiki project to digitize public art--Wikipedia Saves Public Art-- was started by Jennifer Geigel Mikulay, an assistant professor at Indiana-Purdue, together with Richard McCoy, an assistant conservator at the Indianapolis Museum of Art. 40 articles are added and another 912 already existing articles tagged.
  •  
    This Wiki project is the best example of what Mark Pesce emphasized in his talk: "a project of the mob, for the mob, and by the mob."
suzanne ondrus

Social Media in Africa, Part 2: Mobile Innovations - ReadWriteWeb - 1 views

  • social media technology conference PICNIC2008
  • conference featured prolific social entrepreneurs and technology developers from around the world who offered insight into various projects from the African continent.
  • Africa is unique in that it seems to have bypassed the same era of community infrastructure building that has occurred in developed nations around the world.
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • most of the technologies that currently permeate Africa aren't terrestrial. There are very few telephone lines, but mobile penetration is higher than any other region in the world.
  • Instead, internet connectivity is distributed nearly entirely by satellite.
  • The developers who are coming up with solutions in the continent, the ones who are writing software or hacking hardware, are creating for some of the harshest environments and use-cases in the world. If it works in Africa, it will work anywhere."
    • suzanne ondrus
       
      The word "developers" could also be "capitalists." Again, I don't see why cell phones are so expensive in Benin & Burkina Faso!!
  • Perhaps this thought is what motivated Google to invest in O3B Networks earlier this month. O3B Networks is an ambitious attempt to bring three billion people in the developing world (mainly in parts of Asia and Africa) online by launching sixteen inexpensive, low-orbit satellites. The potential benefits for Google are obvious. This is three billion new internet users, who will more than likely use Google to search, and who will potentially click-through Adsense links and use other Google products. An indicator that Google may be anticipating as much is their move into Africa last year. They've since opened offices and hired people in both South Africa and Kenya with plans to eventually operate out of all sub-Saharan African countries.
  • At the end of 2007 there were over 280 million mobile phone subscribers in Africa, representing a penetration rate of 30.4% Africa has become the fastest growing mobile market in the world with mobile penetration in the region ranging from 30% to 100% from country to country. Fastest growing markets are in Nigeria, South Africa and Egypt
  • The Democratic Republic of Congo, population 60 million, has 10,000 fixed telephones but more than a million mobile phone subscribers. In Chad, the fifth-least developed country, mobile phone usage jumped from 10,000 to 200,000 in three years.
  • Micro-payments and Mobile Banking
  • Mobile News Reporting
Barbara Lindsey

Learning Spaces | EDUCAUSE - 0 views

  • Net Gen students are facile at multitasking
    • Barbara Lindsey
       
      The research shows that no one can multitask effectively... See John Medina and Brain Rules, for example.
  • Workers anticipated having a single profession for the duration of their working lives. Education was based on a factory-like, "one size fits all" model. Talent was developed by weeding out those who could not do well in a monochromatic learning environment.
    • Barbara Lindsey
       
      Also part and parcel of hegemonic educational practices which served to reinforce the existing social and economic paradigm.
  • Knowing now means using a well-organized set of facts to find new information and to solve novel problems. In 1900, learning consisted largely of memorization; today it relies chiefly on understanding.
  • ...25 more annotations...
  • learners construct knowledge by understanding new information building on their current understanding and expertise. Constructivism contradicts the idea that learning is the transmission of content to a passive receiver. Instead, it views learning as an active process, always based on the learner's current understanding or intellectual paradigm. Knowledge is constructed by assimilating new information into the learner's knowledge paradigm. A learner does not come to a classroom or a course Web site with a mind that is a tabula rasa, a blank slate. Each learner arrives at a learning "site" with some preexisting level of understanding.
  • Learning science research also highlights the importance of learner engagement, or as the American Psychological Association describes it, intentional learning.1 This means that learners must have a "metaperspective" from which to view and assess their own learning, which is often referred to as metacognition.2 An active learning environment provides the opportunity to assess one's own learning, enabling learners to make decisions about the course, as well as reflect on and assess their progress. In the past, the measure of learning was the final grade (a summative measure). But a final grade is merely a measure of the student's performance on tests. It does not measure the learning that did—or did not—take place. To encourage learning, summative testing or assessments must be combined with formative assessments. Formative assessment is not directly associated with the final grade; it helps learners understand their learning and make decisions about next steps based on that understanding.
  • research indicating that learning is encouraged when it includes social components such as debate or direct engagement with peers and experts. Learning is strengthened through social interactions, interpersonal relations, and communication with others.
  • Research indicates that learners need to be active with respect to their own learning process and assessment. Net Gen students' goal and achievement orientation comes into play here: that achievement focus can be directed toward quizzes and exercises that assist learners in evaluating their progress toward learning goals.
  • Obviously not all forms of learning must be social or team-based. In a variety of learning contexts, individual work is important. It may well be that Net Gen students' strengths are also their weaknesses. The expectation for fast-paced, rapidly shifting interaction coupled with a relatively short attention span may be counterproductive in many learning contexts. Repetition and steady, patient practice—key to some forms of mastery—may prove difficult for Net Gen students. Designing courses for them necessitates balancing these strengths and weaknesses.
  • We should not neglect the informal for the formal, or assume that Net Gen students somehow will figure out the virtual space on their own. We should connect what happens in the classroom with what happens in informal and virtual spaces.
  • Simply installing wireless access points and fresh carpeting isn't enough if done in isolation; such improvements pay real dividends only if they are in concert with the institution's overall teaching and learning objectives. It is the vision that generates the design principles that will, in turn, be used to make key decisions about how learning spaces are configured.
  • The vision and design principles should emphasize the options students have as active participants in the learning process. Design principles should include terms such as analyze, create, criticize, debate, present, and classify—all directed at what the space enables the students to do. For example, students should be able to present materials to the class. Outside class, they should have access to applications and materials that directly support analysis of data, text, and other media. Forums for discussion and critical debate, both real and virtual, are key to encouraging learning and will be looked for by Net Gen students.
  • Learning spaces should accommodate the use of as many kinds of materials as possible and enable the display of and access to those materials by all participants. Learning space needs to provide the participants—instructors and students alike—with interactive tools that enable exploration, probing, and examination. This might include a robust set of applications installed on the computer that controls the room's displays, as well as a set of communication tools. Since the process of examination and debate leads to discovery and the construction of new knowledge, it could be important to equip spaces with devices that can capture classroom discussion and debate, which can be distributed to all participants for future reference and study.
  • the end of the class meeting marks a transition from one learning mode to another.
  • This lecture hall is of relatively recent vintage; its seats and paired tables make it much easier to deploy and use her "tools," which include printouts of the day's reading, as well as a small laptop computer. Her fellow students are doing likewise. Each of them is using some device to access the course's Web site—some with laptops, others with tablet computers, still others with handheld computers. Using wireless connections, they all access the course's Web site and navigate to the site's "voting" page.
  • a "magic wand," a radio-frequency controller that enables her to operate her computer—as well as many of the classroom's functions—wirelessly, from any point in the room. She can capture anything she writes on the blackboard and make it available to her students on the course Web site. Freed from needing to take extensive notes, the students are able to participate more fully in the class discussion. Finally, the professor is carrying a small recorder that captures her lecture, digitizes the audio, and uploads it to the course Web site for the students to review when they prepare for finals.
  • Sandra launches the classroom's screen sharing application. Within a few seconds, her computer's screen is projected on the room's main screen. The class discussion focuses on this diagram, and the professor, using a virtual pencil, is able to make notes on the diagram. The diagram and notes are captured and placed on the class Web site for review.
  • Soon the debate gets stuck; the students can't resolve the issue. The professor goes to the podium, types briefly, and then asks the students to go to a URL to see a question and to choose the answer they feel is correct. The students access the Web page from laptops, handhelds, or wireless IP-based phones. In two minutes they have completed the poll and submitted their responses. The results are quickly tabulated and displayed. The wide diversity of opinion surprises everyone. The professor reframes the issue, without giving the answer, and the students continue to discuss it. She repeats the poll; this time there is more agreement among the students, enabling her to move the discussion forward.
    • Barbara Lindsey
       
      Could you see being able to do this? Would this work for you?
  • She goes to the podium computer and clicks on a few links, and soon a videoconferencing session is displayed on the right-hand screen. She has arranged to have a colleague of hers "drop in" on the class to discuss a point that is in the colleague's particular area of expertise. The class has a conversation with the expert, who is at large research institution more than 500 miles away. Students listen to the expert's comments and are able to pose questions using one of the three cordless microphones available to the class. On the left-hand screen, the visiting professor shows some images and charts that help explain the concepts under discussion.
  • the other students in her class have signed up for most of the slots, conferring with friends using chat programs to ensure that they sign up for the same lab slots.
  • The discussion pocket is the college's term for a small, curved space with a table and bench to accommodate a meeting of four or five people. Found outside the newer classrooms, they are handy for informal, spontaneous discussions. Sandra's group moves into the pocket and for the next 15 minutes continue their "spill over" discussion of the class.
    • Barbara Lindsey
       
      How does this change perceptions of when and where learning begins and ends?
  • hey are able to have an audio chat; Sandra's friend is in her dorm room, and Sandra is in a remote corner of the library where conversation will not disturb others. As their discussion progresses, they go to the course's Web site and launch the virtual whiteboard to diagram some concepts. They develop a conceptual diagram—drawing, erasing, and revising it until they agree the diagram is correct. They both download a copy. Sandra volunteers to work on polishing the diagram and will leave a copy of the final diagram in her share folder in her online portfolio "locker
  • The underlying theme remains the same, however: cultivating learning practices consistent with learning theory and aligned with the habits and expectations of Net Gen students
  • For most higher education institutions, the lecture hall will not disappear; the challenge is to develop a new generation of lecture hall, one that enables Net Gen students and faculty to engage in enlivened, more interactive experiences. If the lecture hall is integrated with other spaces—physically as well as virtually—it will enable participants to sustain the momentum from the class session into other learning contexts. The goal is not to do away with the traditional classroom, but rather to reinvent and to integrate it with the other learning spaces, moving toward a single learning environment.
  • Learning theory is central to any consideration of learning spaces; colleges and universities cannot afford to invest in "fads" tailored to the Net Gen student that might not meet the needs of the next generation.
  • For example, start with the Net Gen students' focus on goals and achievement. That achievement orientation ties to learning theory's emphasis on metacognition, where learners assess their progress and make active decisions to achieve learning goals. Learning space design could support this by providing contact with people who can provide feedback: tutors, consultants, and faculty. This could, in turn, be supported in the IT environment by making formative self-tests available, as well as an online portfolio, which would afford students the opportunity to assess their overall academic progress.
  • As institutions create an anywhere, anytime IT infrastructure, opportunities arise to tear down silos and replace them with a more ubiquitous learning environment. Using laptops and other networked devices, students and faculty are increasingly able to carry their entire working environment with them. To capitalize on this, campus organizations must work collaboratively to create a more integrated work environment for the students and faculty, one that better serves the mobile Net Gen students as well as a faculty faced with the initial influx of these students into their ranks
  • One of the key variables is the institution itself. Learning spaces are institutional in scope—their implementation involves the institution's culture, tradition, and mission.
  • The starting point for rethinking learning spaces to support Net Gen students begins with an underlying vision for the learning activities these spaces should support. This vision should be informed by learning theory, as well as by recognition of the characteristics of the students and faculty who use these spaces.
Barbara Lindsey

Cognitive Surplus: The Great Spare-Time Revolution | Magazine - 0 views

  • Somehow, watching television became a part-time job for every citizen in the developed world. But once we stop thinking of all that time as individual minutes to be whiled away and start thinking of it as a social asset that can be harnessed, it all looks very different. The buildup of this free time among the world’s educated population—maybe a trillion hours per year—is a new resource. It’s what I refer to as the cognitive surplus.
  • Shirky:
  • Pink: A surplus that post-TV media—blogs, wikis, and Twitter—can tap for other, often more valuable, uses.
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • he very nature of these new technologies fosters social connection—creating, contributing, sharing. When someone buys a TV, the number of consumers goes up by one, but the number of producers stays the same. When someone buys a computer or mobile phone, the number of consumers and producers both increase by one. This lets ordinary citizens, who’ve previously been locked out, pool their free time for activities they like and care about. So instead of that free time seeping away in front of the television set, the cognitive surplus is going to be poured into everything from goofy enterprises like lolcats, where people stick captions on cat photos, to serious political activities like Ushahidi.com, where people report human rights abuses.
  • All the time that people devote to Wikipedia—which that guy considered weird and wasteful—is really a tiny portion of our worldwide cognitive surplus. It’s less than one-tenth of 1 percent of the total.
  • Our third drive—our intrinsic motivation—can be even more powerful.
  • Shirky: Right—because television crowded out other forms of social engagement. Look, behavior is motivation filtered through opportunity. So if you see people behaving in new ways, like with Wikipedia and whatnot, it’s very unlikely that their motivations have changed, because human nature doesn’t change that quickly. It’s quite likely that the opportunities have changed.
  • When we lacked the ability to efficiently connect and collaborate with each other, that intrinsic motivation often didn’t surface. So we assumed that productive, public activities revolved around extrinsic motivation and external rewards. And we assumed that all rewards were substitutable for all other rewards. So I can pay you more or I can praise you or I can put a Lucite brick on your desk and it all works the same way.
  • When Deci took people who enjoyed solving complicated puzzles for fun and began paying them if they did the puzzles, they no longer wanted to play with those puzzles during their free time. And the science is overwhelming that for creative, conceptual tasks, those if-then rewards rarely work and often do harm.
  • Pink: Yes, often these outside motivators can give us less of what we want and more of what we don’t want. Think about that study of Israeli day care centers, which we both write about. When day care centers fined parents for being late to pick up their kids, the result was that more parents ended up coming late. People no longer felt a social obligation to behave well. Shirky: If you assume bad faith from the average participant, you’ll probably get it. In social media, the design principle that has worked remarkably well is to treat good faith as the normal case and to regard defections from that as essentially a special case to be solved.
  • Shirky: Well, organizations that are founded to solve problems end up committed to the preservation of the problems. So Trentway-Wagar, an Ontario-based bus company, sues PickupPal, an online ride-sharing service, because T-W isn’t committed to solving transportation problems. It’s committed to solving transportation problems with buses. In the media world, Britannica is now committed to making reference works that can’t easily be referred to, and the music industry is now distributing music that can’t easily be shared because new ways of distributing music undermine the old business model.
    • Barbara Lindsey
       
      Does the same hold true for education?
  •  
    Pink and Shirky talk about the shift in technology-enabled human interaction.
Barbara Lindsey

News: The Web of Babel - Inside Higher Ed - 0 views

  • Some adventurous professors have used Twitter as a teaching tool for at least a few years. At a presentation at Educause in 2009, W. Gardner Campbell, director of the academy of teaching and learning at Baylor University, extolled the virtues of allowing students to pose questions to the professor and each other — an important part of the thinking and learning process — without having to raise their hands to do so immediately and aloud. And in November, a group of professors published a scientific paper suggesting that bringing Twitter into the learning process might boost student engagement and performance.
  • But while Lomicka and her tech-forward peers are not advocating that every college go the way of Chapel Hill, they are finding out that some relatively novel teaching technologies that are used by academics of all stripes, such as Twitter and iTunes U, are particularly useful for teaching languages.
  • At Emory University, language instructional content is far and away the biggest export of its public repository on iTunes U, where visitors from around the world have downloaded more than 10 million files since Emory opened the site in 2007.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • Language content makes up about 95 percent of the downloads from the Emory iTunes U site.
  • the most popular content is audio and video files that were originally developed not for a general audience, but by professors as supplements to college-level coursework,
  • Because language demonstrations often require audio and sometimes video components (e.g., tutorials on how to write in a character-based alphabet), and students often like to practice while on the move, iTunes is in many ways an ideal vehicle for language-based instructional content.
  • what we do offer is an online supplement that enhances what happens both in the classroom and in foreign study in the culture — and it is always there as a resource for our students, because it’s online.”
Barbara Lindsey

All Things Education: Research Papers vs Blogs: Defending "Antiquated" Teaching from 21... - 1 views

  •  
    Poss fall 2011 syllabus
Barbara Lindsey

a brief philosophy of "anti-teaching" | Savage Minds - 0 views

  • But while the sheer numbers of students are a burden in one sense, there is also tremendous potential. Think of the knowledge and life experience that is in that single room, if only I could find a way to harness it! I wanted the students to be fully engaged, talking to one another, grappling with interesting questions, and exploring any and all resources to find answers (and more questions). I wanted them to really get a strong sense of the importance of what we discuss in cultural anthropology. I wanted them to expand their empathy, to actually try to experience the life-worlds of others. Above all, I wanted them to recognize their own importance in helping to shape an increasingly globally interconnected world society.
  • The creativity of the students in creating their cultures subverts any simple monocausal determinism (just as human creativity does in the real world). Environmental determinism is just one theory on the table as students try to create a reasonably realistic culture that could exist within their given environment. To add realism, students are required to provide comparisons to real life cultures at every step along the way, justifying why they have chosen to construct their culture in one way rather than another (sometimes creating elaborate histories to explain some unique characteristic). Three weeks before the end of the semester, all groups have completed their culture and submit a final ethnography to me. I read these over, and begin planning the main event: the world simulation.
  • World Simulation. Students are asked to imagine the world in the classroom. We create a map that mimics the geographical, environmental, and biological diversity of our real world. The map is laid onto a map of the classroom, and students are asked to imagine themselves living in the environment that maps onto them. The class is divided into 15-20 groups of about 12-20 students in each group. Each group is challenged to create their own cultures to survive in their own unique environments.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • To Orange, I will show an actual example of a map in my next full post and explain more about the parameters that are given and what the students fill in themselves. You raise a much more important question though, about the necessity of simplifying in order for the simulation to work. This aspect of the simulation almost led me to abandon the whole thing as I started to think it through and plan for it. Instead I found two ways to deal with it: 1. I challenge my students to tell me where the simulation is oversimplified and make their own case for how the simulation should change for the next time it is performed. This way they are not simply accepting our imaginary world “as is” and are instead actively thinking about how the real world works and how we may have misrepresented it in our simulation. (Even if the simulation fails miserably, it has succeeded in getting students to think about how the world works!) 2. I encourage the students to use the simplification as a canvas on which they can build and/or interpret complexity. In a lecture format I only have so much time to cover the effects of colonization – perhaps 50 minutes – not enough to really explore all of the different facets. In the World Simulation I can encourage each student to think about how colonization would affect their culture in multiple ways and at multiple levels (e.g. infrastructure, social structure, superstructure). Sometimes this is to complex to be incorporated into the simulation, but they are asked to do a reflection paper immediately following the simulation in which they write their own “cultural history.” This written format allows them to explore some complexities they might not have had the time or means to express in the simulation.
Barbara Lindsey

Heart and Voice: A Digital Storytelling Journey - National Writing Project - 0 views

  •  
    Heart and Voice: A Digital Storytelling Journey
« First ‹ Previous 81 - 93 of 93
Showing 20 items per page