Thursday, March 29, 2007

Scribd - They didn't study

As a teacher, this just cracked me up.

They have posted what seem to be real examples of students' answers on exams. If anyone was witty enough to make these up, cheers, but I think that they are real and you have to check it out

Tuesday, March 27, 2007

Picasa2 - a new look at an old program

I first used Picasa a couple of years ago (at least I think that it was that long ago). Google had just released it and I was interested in something to help be manage my growing image collections. At the time I found it nice, but too bulky to use. I removed it and didn't give it a second thought until recently.

Until you have had your head in the sand over the last year+, you have likely noticed that Google is making bold moves in providing numerous services online. These include email, word processing, spreadsheets, and calendaring not to mention acquisitions of services such as Blogger. Googles is now moving to integrate these more into suites, which is how I noticed an updated Picasa2. Google added it to a list of services that I saw when checking out my calendar. I was interested and decided to take a look. I have been very happy with the results.

Picasa2 is not just a client side application anymore. They have moved online, providing a social networking service like Flickr (not nearly a match yet), yet with 1GB of storage. Compare this with the 200 images that you get on Flickr for the free account and you'll be quite happy with that 1000's of images that you can get up for free. The storage upgrades are quite cheap as well. I don't think that this is a Flickr killer, nor is it the best free storage option out there, but it's very good and, most importantly, is somewhat integrated with Google applications and will likely be more so in the near future.

The Client-side application works rather well itself. It's a lot less clunky than the older version. The options are convenient, including the "Hide" option with password protection, are nice additions to the program. It also makes publishing to the Picasa2 website very easy. I really love the "collage" function. It will make a number of different collages based on chosen images. Here's one example.



The drawbacks are similar ones to previous versions. My biggest complaint is the speed of scrolling in the application. It's too darn slow, given the fact that I have well over 15,000 images. That drives me crazy. I could navigate using the folders menu on the left, but that's just not how I'm used to interacting with a window.

All-in-all, this is a great application combined with a nice online storage space. I look forward to using this more in the future.

Dan

Monday, March 26, 2007

Whip Learns to Golf

Even if you are not a golfer, take a look at this. Thanks to Bee for pointing this out.

This uses one person's experience with learning to play golf as a vehicle for discussing learning theory. It is a really interesting way to do this.

Confessions and plans for redemption

I like to see myself as a reflective practitioner (as many teachers likely do), but as with most people I tend to block out some of my inadequacies by basic justifications of what I can and cannot do.  Of course, these justifications are just me rationalizing not doing what I should be finding a way to do.

I have been teaching a computer-assisted language learning (CALL) class for a couple years now and I am constantly trying to persuade teachers (mostly American K-12 teachers) that no matter what their circumstances they can incorporate some use of technology into their classrooms.  While I am not blindly advocating technology for all situations, I do recommend that they use it when it can make a difference in student learning.  This often falls into the categories of social learning (interaction on the global scale), access to native speakers of the target language (we are language teachers though this could apply to those fluent speakers in a content area), availability of authentic content (newspapers, video, audio, and such), and the motivation of publication.  I, however, have fallen terribly short in my own practice.

Students in the CALL class are all over this, likely touching on each category throughout what they would likely describe as a grueling semester of technological and pedagogical assignments and activities that force them into unknown realms on a weekly basis.  I'm not worried as much about that class as I am the message that I send by not having more of this represented in my own teaching of language students (EFL in Korea).  As I convince one set of students that technology can be used in any class, I woefully underutilize it in my own classes because it is problematic and easier not to do it.

In some ways I might be a little too hard on myself.  I do utilize technology to an extent including: listening activities, online video, interactive quizzes, plenty of text on issues from culture to current events, blogs to provide extra information to some classes on content and/or language resources available on the Web.  While this seems substantial, it is not really the type of interactions that I encourage others to pursue.  These are really one-way activities.  I'm providing information to my students.  There is not impetus for them to communicate with me, other students, or anyone for that matter.

So, what do I need to do?

This is not a crisis that has struck me just now.  I've been pondering it for a while now.  I have begun a couple projects that attempt to get at this sort of interaction.  My presentation class (the recipient of most of my technology initiatives) is in the process of putting together a "picture story" using Microsoft's Picture Story 3.  I'm working out the specifics as we go, but this is generally what is happening. 

  1. They are choosing a topic as a class.  We have taken a couple of minutes discussing possibilities in a previous class and we'll have to decide on one this week. 
  2. The students will then write a script for the topic.  Depending on which it is they might have to collaborate or they may be able to write their own parts.  Regardless, the pieces will have to flow, so everyone is going to have to cooperate in some way. 
  3. Then they will find pictures (I've told them that we'll have to respect copyright, but they didn't really get that.  It will be a mini-lecture in the future).  These pictures should help tell the story that they want to tell and they need to be digital (I'm not scanning anything). 
  4. Then they'll have the opportunity to choose some theme music that will be used in the introduction, interim times, and the ending credits. 
  5. Then they will record their own parts using my digital recorder (I've got a condenser microphone for better results, though not perfect).  The idea is for these to be as perfect as possible.  We'll work on their pronunciation, rhythm, and delivery style in a way that is difficult when they are all preparing completely different presentations.
  6. Lastly, I will put this together using Photo Story 3.  I floated the idea of one of them doing them and got NO interest.  This is not a credit course.  I will have enough problems with everyone doing all of the above parts.

This is a term project (we have 7-week terms).  We have about 4 more weeks to complete it on top of other independent presentation projects that they have.  I'm hoping that by dividing up the work and spreading it out over a long period of time that it will be doable and enjoyable.

The point of this activity is multifold.  The first is for them to have an opportunity to have a polished product that they can point to and say, "look at this.  I did this."  It is difficult and often impossible for students to have presentations like this when working alone on a presentation.  Not to mention the difficulty in presenting in front of a group of people.  This project enables them to take a short text and perform it as well as they can away from a crowd and with as many retakes as they would like.  Notice there are also no pictures nor video of them.  This is an anonymous project that they can either choose to claim as their own or reject it completely with not hint that it is their work.  This is important for students of whom many are already accomplished professionals in their fields in a culture where people neither do nor speak until they are perfect at the performance of such tasks.

By now you may be saying, "Dan, it seems like this is pretty good."  You'd be right for one class.  This is only one class.  I have a number of others.  Shouldn't they be benefiting from the affordances of technology in their pursuit of language learning?  Of course they should and I do so little to promote this.  That is why I have decided on more projects that I might have to take control of in the beginning, but they should be self-sustaining after a while.

Most of my classes are "conversation" classes where this is a focus on oral interaction.  Anything beyond conversation would be met with scorn.  Korean students at this level have at least 10 or so years of English instruction under their belts.  This has been entirely (at least in the public schools from middle school on) grammar-based and focused on performance on English tests (grammar-focused, multiple-choice  or fill-in-the-blank, questions).  This has left little time for actually using the language in meaningful ways and this is where the language learning business comes in.  Teachers from English speaking countries are brought in to help student practice the language from birth to death (a representation of ages that attend language schools here in Korea).

This is where I come in.  I am part of that business that happens to have a big university name in their title to lend it more credence (as well as some degree titles :)

So, again, what can I do with these folks?  They have little interest in writing (online or in class).  They have little interest in reading.  They are only interested in listening and speaking to me.  However, there has be to more to language classes than this.  The one thing that I can get them to do (not reliably, but some of the time) is to do small tasks on their own time.  We can then use the products of these tasks in our conversations.  Their products can become the fodder for our discussions.  Those who do more work are better prepared and will, thus, be more visable in the discussions.  I'm hoping that the Korean academic competitiveness will come out in this situation.  Koreans, particularly those at my university, are extremely competitive in academics.  This has been burned into them from birth.  They have competed to attend the best middle schools, high schools, universities, and professions.  Medical doctors at this university represent those who won those competitions.

I picture most of these tasks being played out on a Wiki.  Not one for each class, but one for the entire program.  Each class can feed off of the work of the others.  Lower-proficiency learners' work can be edited by higher-proficiency learners.  Old students can continue to be part of the community through this wiki.  This both encourages them to continue their language studies, and also ties them to our program (I may be a teacher, but I have a mind for business as well).  All projects can be played out here to some extent.  This then forms a collective memory that can be mined and fed off of by current students (as well as anyone else looking in--another marketing opportunity).  Lessons and tutorials can be added or linked to the site providing assistance for both current students and others who find the site.

I will be starting this today with paper-based assignments that will be begun in class and then moved into the online spaces slowly.  I'll probably just touch the surface with this semester's classes, but the experiences that I gain from this group will benefit the next group.

Wish me luck and I appreciate feedback if you actually made it down this far.

Dan

Sunday, March 25, 2007

4 Corners Broadband: You Only Live Twice

This is an impressive documentary by the Australian Broadcasting Company on Second Life. It is easily the broadest, yet most in-depth look at Second Life that I've ever seen. It is a must see for anyone interested in this phenomenon.

They hit on so many different aspects of the service and the culture growing up around it, I'm just amazed.

* NOTICE - There are some adult themes in the documentary when they discuss adult content in the 3-D world.

Tuesday, March 20, 2007

Why Peer-Reviewed Publishing?

Recently I was asked why academics (or at least tenure committees) respect peer-reviewed publications over other high-quality articles published in non-peer reviewed spaces (journals, newsletters, blogs, wikis, etc.). I have been thinking about this quite a bit over the last couple years, considering that I have a career ahead of me (hopefully) involving tenure review. However, I neither believe that traditional "high-quality" journals should have the power that they do over evaluation of academic prowess nor do I believe that they are the best place way to disseminate information. So, which direction do I go?

As journal subscribers, we count on editors to censor to an extent. We want articles that are on topic (as per the focus of the journal) as well as articles that meet generally agreed upon standards as far as method and presentation. These are generally accepted based upon the readership (they vote with their subscriptions). Publication/submission requirements change over time as the readership changes. This filtering for content and format results in publications that are easier to read in that readers know what to expect in both content and form. I like this. It allows me to quickly process many articles in a short amount of time

However, I don't agree that we should judge the value of an article by the journal in which it is published. While, I see this as a natural tendency for humans to identify with the familiar, I think that we need to be broken from this habit (or safe zone). For example, if I see that an article was published in TESOL Quarterly, I know that, in my experience, articles in this journal are generally of high quality. So, I'll assume that this one will meet my standards for quality. Whether it does or not will have to wait until I actually read it. This is where the real problem occurs. Most people will assume that the article is of high quality because it appears in the journal. Most often, they simply don't know how to judge high vs low quality (a somewhat subjective judgment) therefore they leave the decision up to the editors/reviewers. I would include many faculty in this criticism. They point to articles in specific journals when trying to strengthen their arguments that aren't much more than editorials. They take these statements of opinion as fact and pass it on to their students without disclaimer (or training) for them to make up their own minds.

So, now we are stuck in a vicious circle. Academics are required to publish in these journals and they are judged by the "quality" of the journal in which they publish. Those who don't want to go in this direction are driven out of the field, thus only those who tow the line remain.

I'd love to see an academic version of Digg (http://digg.com) in place of refereed journals. Let those in the field (everyone in the field) determine the quality of a piece of writing and take in out of the hands of a few. This would get research out to the public faster and with less editorial interference than the current system.

Add to this the ability to create collaborative documents that can be edited beyond publication and you get a system of ranking and improving on publications that goes far beyond the current , slow, closed system.

What do you think?

1984 Apple Ad parody for Obamo against Clinton

I'm not making a political statement here. I don't have anyone in mind for my next vote. What I see here is a really creative mashup video that I had to share.

They took the 1984 Apple ad and mashed it up with a (or some) Hillary Clinton speech. The result is a powerful political commentary that could have very well been carried out by a couple kids down the street but has the quality of a Madison Avenue commercial.

Sunday, March 18, 2007

Virtual worlds set for shake-up

I find this very easy to believe. I think that virtual worlds have come of age. There was a lot of this hype with MUDs and MOOs in the 90's, but lack of authentic interaction (don't lecture me on the authenic language aspect) killed these spaces.

Realistic spaces like Second Life and World of Warcraft realistic spaces (with a great deal of fantasy) that enable users to interact in very authentic ways including rudamentary body language that will likely get better over time. Also, what I see as a missing piece of the puzzle, voice, is being beta tested in Second Life right now. These systems are only bound to get better, especially with the backing of large media companies.

Saturday, March 17, 2007

Asian Universities Switch to English - Newsweek: International Editions - MSNBC.com

Great article on a phenomenon that is going on here in Korea. This is something that has hit Seoul National University (SNU) particularly hard in recent years. SNU has traditionally been the top university in the country, but it is getting heavy competition from other top universities in the country, which could explain why they weren't mentioned once in this article.

SNU is also instituting English-only classes in many of its programs. The problems with this system are varied. As pointed out in the article, these courses are rather weak given that neither the students nor the professors (on average) have a solid grasp of English. Another significant issue is that many of these courses have a policy that if ANY foreigner (non-Korean) is enrolled, the lectures will be in English. This is an attempt to attract more foreign students and, thus, improve their international status. The problem is that when you only offer classes in English on demand, professors never get a chance to practice conducting the class in English and the materials (those not already in English) need to be translated.

Lastly, it must be said that simply conducting classes in English isn't going to improve education at these universities. While these universities are populated with some of the best students in the country (based on exam scores), the style of teaching is largely a stand and deliver approach. I'm I saying that this isn't the dominant paradigm at Hardvard, no. I am saying that these schools aren't going to get ahead of the game by playing by the same rules.

English is not a measure of an effective school and until these universities realize this, students will continue to flock abroad.

Sunday, March 11, 2007

Ira Glass on Storytelling

Ira Glass on Storytelling

Saturday, March 10, 2007

International Symposium on Learning 2006 - Day 2 - Part 2

Day 2 - International Symposium on Learning 2006 part II

Friday, December 01, 2006

10:08 AM

 

International Symposium on Learning 2006 sponsored by KAST

 

http://learning.kast.or.kr/

 

Yoshihiko Nakamura

University of Tokyo

 

What do Humanoids Learn from Humans?

 

IRT Foundation for Man and Aged Society (project) to research a broad range of areas involving robotics

 

Humanoid - human-like (resemblance) robots.

 

Discussed the modeling of humanoids by looking at the human anatomy. In particular, the framework of bones, joints, ligaments, and muscles.

 

This is interesting, but where is the learning science connection? When do we talk about learning? If I wanted to build a humanoid, I would be loving this, but this isn't really about what humanoids learn from humans, it's about what robot designers learn from the human body.

 

 

 

 

International Symposium on Learning 2006 - Day 2 - Part 1

Day 2 - International Symposium on Learning 2006

Thursday, November 30, 2006

4:38 PM

 

International Symposium on Learning 2006 sponsored by KAST

 

http://learning.kast.or.kr/

 

Raja Chatila - Learning Robots: From spatial cognition to skill acquisition

LAAS-CNRS

Toulouse, France

Raja.Chatila@laas.fr

 

What is a cognitive robot?

o        Integration of perception, decision, and action

o        Learning concepts and interpreting the environment

o        Deliberation and decision-making

o        Learning new skills

o        Communication, interaction, and language

 

Robot companion - European Project COGNIRON

http://www.cogniron.org

 

Learning Requirements:

o        Objects

·         Multi-sensory, 3D, object modeling and recognition; from view-based to object based

o        Space

·         Maps, regions, concepts. Appearance, geometrical, topological labled models, landmarks

o        Situations

·         Spatial and temporal relationships

 

Spatial mapping requires a combination of object and topographical processing.

This involves incremental mapping that the robot learns over time.

 

Beyond spatial toward communication. Really talking about a sort of communicative competence. Takes signals from the environment and interprets them to devise appropriate responses.

 

Object modeling. First you need to recognize items in the environment. This requires constant processing of environmental data, including the use of 2D tracking and 3D representations.

 

A lot of training is required. This is similar to training voice recognition or even handwriting recognition. They started it with videos of people doing a series of actions. This is then interpreted by the robot via a 3D representation of the human.

 

Move to autonomous learning.

Learning concepts to learning skills

o        Open-ended

o        Common representations

o        Process guided by utility

o        Incremental learning

 

Interesting building of temporal knowledge. The robot stores information "maps" about an object from multiple perceptual angles. These maps are then combined to enable the robot to recognize the object at any angle.

 

Multiple object recognitions can be combined to recognize groups (scenes) of objects. This is similar to chunking in language learning. Learning to group items for easier production, or in this case recognition.

 

Provided a cognitive chart at the end, which would have been an hour discussion in its own right. I wish that he could have spent more time on it giving this audience.

 

Take away - Learning about ones environment is really a precursor to interacting with humans in any sort of naturalist way. To an extent, this is entirely possible at this point, but will require a lot of work. Also, autonomy is still a ways off, but it's as much of a question of time/information as it is about technology. The building of communal knowledge.

 

International Symposium on Learning

 

Day 1

Thursday, Nov 30, 2006, 11:14 AM

Hotel Grand International - Seoul, South Korea

Here are some notes that I took on my tablet using MS ONENOTE.  That might explain that terrible appearance because these are all based on MS handwriting recognition.

International Symposium on Learning 2006 sponsored by KAST

1st speaker = Daeyeol Lee

Neural mechanism of reinforcement learning and decision making

* Monkey video

-sound of brain activity with different movements/decisions

* Matching pennies-studied via game theory (ie, Nash in beautiful mind)

-No behavior is random

-Animal must randomize choices, otherwise computer will play off of strategy. This is the reinforcement model

* Dors-lateral prefrontal cortex-association with learning behaviors

IX Essentially, it seems that fewer neurons fire after repeated trials

* Sondheim-seems a little like and" no duh" town Supp J conclusion

This could indicate that once connections are made, future decisions

require less of a load on the brain.

Conclusion – Seems like a “no duh” conclusion.

Overall, a great speaker. He really made the topic interesting and engaged the audience. Interesting research.

Amy Poremba -Learning and Memory in the Auditory System

Testing auditory signals and learning behaviors In rabbits.

* what is the brain doing during learning

-removed brain segments to isolate areas necessary for learning

if tone is accompanied by shock received in animal's foot.

* Sensory modalities are used at the same time (auditory/verbal)

* environmental attributes can effect learning. I wish that this would

have been clarified better throughout the presentation.

panel discussion

Operant Conditioning (evident in previous speakers work)

-law of effect - the response is a function of its consequences.

-theory of mind. ability to build models and guess whet others are dtp thinking.

this into is the used to predict actions and counter-measures

can be taken.

-Moves from Operant Conditioning to more of a Cognitivist theory of a processing model.

-Operant Conditioning cannot explain the thought process in game theory

Would it make a difference if the experiments were done with 2 monkeys as opposed to I monkey Vs./ computer?

-Yes, but this will take awhile to do.

Can your research explain decision making? (improve. decisions-making)

Is there a universal learning process?

There are many Similarities in animal models.

She essentially stated the operant conditioning has a major place in learning.

Friday, March 9, 2007

A Quick 30 Writing Tips for the Start of an Academic Career

Thanks to Curt Bonk for this tips. If there's anyone out there that knows what's up, he does.

Monday, March 5, 2007

Podcasting through del.icio.us

Sometimes you have to get beat over the head to get the idea. Today, I had one of these moments.

People often ask me about podcasting and I've continually given advice that puts them through hoops to get a podcast up and going. There are services out there that make it rather easy to podcast, but all services have their limitations, whether it be content, storage, cost, advertising, and so forth.

Most of these people want to podcast for their classes and they aren't concerned with a snappy interface or "face" of the project. They are very practical. They want to get the audio out there to their students.

One podcast that I listen to occasionally is an edtech podcast (I'm not even sure of the name), but you can access their files from their del.icio.us account (http://del.icio.us/edtechlive/mp3). I've been looking at that for months but I never put it all together. All I have to do is tag links to MP3s in my del.icio.us account in a way that groups them logically, then add the feed to my iTunes....tah dah! Podcast.

Now for the cool part. They don't have to be my files. They can be any MP3 file out there that I think is interesting. I can provide (push) this content to my students without them going to a website (pull) to retreive it.

I can do this from my blog by simply providing the del.icio.us feed and therefore connect my postings to the podcast. I can bypass the blog altogether and simple fill out the comments section in del.icio.us to describe each file.

I wish that someone had told me this before. Though, they might have and I just wasn't ready to understand it until now. This, however, is going to change the way that I talk about podcasting with my students and anyone else who will listen.

To start this yourself, sign up for a del.icio.us account now at http://del.icio.us

Sunday, March 4, 2007

KTF's Video Calling Service Takes Off

Dare I dream? Will I finally get a video phone? Oh, so close.

I've thought that this would be possible for years, but I don't think that phone companies saw a benefit for them. They might have noticed that people want to do everything on their phones and a video calling service is only logical.

Japan (at least in Tokyo) has had this for years. I remember reading about it with a significant amount of jealousy. I also know that the US carriers are going to do this any time soon unless Skype succeeds to open up the wireless carriers to 3rd party hardware/software developers.

Ah, but now I'm just rambling. I'll sit back a minute and dream about my first video call.......

Friday, March 2, 2007

Teens Can Multitask, But What Are Costs? - washingtonpost.com

I think that this is potentially a major issue that we will have to consider when using more open systems in education. For example, how to I ensure that my students are "on task" in Second Life when they could be doing 10 other things online.

This is true of classroom-based and distance courses. If I'm online discussing topics with students I want them to "listen" to what I and other students are saying. If they are off on other channels, they are simply going to miss it. There is no true "multitasking". Something is always hurting. I, for one, have always studied with the TV on. It's a terrible habit, but I've been doing with since I started school. I have trouble studying without it. However, I KNOW that I'm not studying as well (as efficiently) with it on.

So, can you multitask? Sure. Is it as effective as focusing on one task and completing it before you do another? Likely not.

Like the researcher in the article says, it's all about depth. Shallow activities (checking out Web pages, listening/wathcing TV, checking email/blogs/rss, and so forth) can be done more efficiently in many cases. Web pages take time to load and other things take time to process. During that time to you can flip through another email.

Deeper activities, like reading a academic article require much more attention and depth of processing. You are not just gathering bits of information in these activities. You are gather information, comparing it to what you already know, judging whether it's worth keeping or not, deciding how it applies to the rest of your learning, filing away relevant aspects for future use.

If you can do that effectively and efficienty while managing chats, TV, and so forth you are amazing....and really too good to be true.