Online Presentations

I really injoyed the presentations in class last week.  I think each one of them put Pink's 6 senses (Design-Story-Symphony-Empathy-Play-Meaning) to a good use.  

However, I still have my doubts about Illuminate.  Maybe I need faster Internet, but it seems like it's too clunky.  What are the alternatives?  GoToMeeting?

Note to self:  Explore voicethread some more, looks like it is a powerful presentation tool.

Love my glass teapot

This teapot is one of the things I love to use every day.

First of all it has a clean modern look.

It has an infuser that makes cleaning easy.

The top doesn't fall off when you pour the tea.  The spout (or nose in Russian :) is shaped so the tea does not drip and comes out in a predictable fashion. It is made out of tempered glass, and it keeps the tea hot for a long time.

And best of all, you can watch the beautiful color of your tea and know when it is ready.

Innovative Thinking

Listening to Forum on NPR - Neuroscientist Greg Bern joins us to discuss the human brain and innovative thinking. He says our brains normally constrain original thought. How do innovators buck the brain's lazy habits to eventually overturn conventional thinking? Bern's latest book is "Iconoclast: A Neuroscientist Reveals How to Think Differently."

Podcast will be here soon: http://www.kqed.org/epArchive/R810281000

Adult Learners and Financial Crisis

With all the financial crisis information overload, I realized that I don't have a good understanding of the economics history of the US, since I never studied it in depth. To stay in the spirit of what we preach in the ITEC 830 class, I downloaded podcasts of the 10 lectures on History of the US Economy by Stanford professor of Economics Timothy Taylor. It is fascinating to see the parallels between now and the first decades of the 20's Century, but it is even more so, to be able to learn from one of the best lecturers on the subject, while on a Greyhound bus or an airplane! I highly recommend it. I got my lectures from the Teaching Company, but I bet they are also available on Stanford's website.

A Whole New Mind - Part One

I didn’t get a chance to blog last week, but I enjoyed reading D. Pink book “A Whole New Mind”. The book is well written, relevant and very timely, I wish more recommended textbooks were like that.

In the first three chapters D. Pink defines the Conceptual Age and explains its causes and characteristics (Abundance, Asia, and Automation). He also gives an interesting overview of what he calls L-Directed and R-Directed way of thinking and lays a foundation needed to understand how these concepts linked together will affect the future of education. His ideas resonate very strongly with what I have seen first hand, working in the high-tech industry and seeing how it has been affected by these changes during the past decade. Similar thoughts have affected my decision to join the ITEC program, and D. Pink makes me feel good about my decision.

I have recommended this book to several people already, and I think every teacher should read it to understand the priorities of educating for the 21st Century. That said, I think the danger we are facing in the US, on the other hand, is that “core subjects” will be even more neglected in the process. We should not ignore the L-Directed skills only because Asia is already ahead on them, so no reason to even try. The salaries and the standard of living in Asia and other developing countries will continue to rise, so eventually outsourcing is not going to be the most cost effective solution for every problem. On the other hand, American children will continue to face fierce competition for the best education from their peers from abroad. So far, while I applaud the innovation of American education, I still turn to Russian tutors for math and science.

Check out this video

Where was Yana last week?

I went to Boston to visit my son who is a freshman at Tufts University.






















And then I took a bus to New York where I met with my classmates from High School. I haven't seen one of them for almost 25 years! I also visited Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, recommended by D. Pink in his book The Whole New Mind.

Redefining Fieldtrips with Locative Media

I have read about location based services and technologies before, but Leslie's presentation on locative media really opened my eyes to many opportunities of these emerging technologies for education. Of course, most learning is happening in the classroom, but who doesn't like field trips! I have to admit that on these trips I always enjoyed being a part of the group, but I could see how in the near future we could be seeing students listening to their personal iPhones, instead of a teacher or a guide. However, even traditional field trips could be so much more productive and memorable, if students are researching and producing content that is available right there, on location. This instructional media would be especially useful, when personal opinion of the content creator adds value, as in my example with campus tours, where it is important to hear it from the current student, not just from the admissions office or from the marketing brochure. My son's school is located in the Presidio, it is now a National park with great historical significance. I immediately thought how students of the school could research the history of their school surroundings and create virtual guided tours of the area. Turns out their technology teachers already met with Leslie and taking this forward.

Leslie’s site is www.locative-media.org

Google Chrome - Presentation Oct 9, 2008

A fresh take on the browser
People are spending an increasing amount of time online, and they're doing things never imagined when the web first appeared about 15 years ago.[...]
We realized that the web had evolved from mainly simple text pages to rich, interactive applications and that we needed to completely rethink the browser. What we really needed was not just a browser, but also a modern platform for web pages and applications, and that's what we set out to build.

- Meet the Developers:


- Top 5 Features:
1) One box for search and navigation URL
2) Thumbnails on Homepage
3) One click Bookmarking
4) Dynamic Tabs
5) Web Application shortcuts

- 4 S's: Speed - Stability - Security - Simplicity

- Incognito mode
- Open Source

- Become an expert via Google Chrome comics

All training materials from Google pass the ITEC 830 test!

Click here to download Google Chrome.

Published via Google Chrome

Learning for the 21st Century

Learning for the 21st Century report provides the most comprehensive guidelines for the school education reform. It defines reasons that explain why the change is needed at this time, lists key elements of the 21st century learning and includes steps that are necessary to make this transition in education a reality.

Dr Curt Bonk, guest speaker on Web 2.0 in ITEC 830

Dr. Curt Bonk from Indiana University was our guest speaker during the last week’s class. I had prior experience with teleconferencing, and I have seen lectures over the web, but this was the first time I was present at the two-way distance class (where the guest speaker could see the audience). It is amazing, but this was no different than a normal lecture, except it is harder to stay focused for a long time for some reason (90+ minutes).

Dr. Bonk echoed the key points that were already addressed by George Siemens and John Seeley Brown, but he took it further by trying to make a projection for the future of Web 2.0 technologies and the effects it will have on the world of higher education. But it also raises a few questions.
Today, one the great powers of the Web is that it allows participants from all over the world listen to the whole courses from Stanford or MIT. You could even download the podcast and listen to it while driving or jogging. Does it mean the degrees from those institutions be less of a commodity in the future?
Another great aspect of the Web 2.0 is that (as Tim O’Reilly put it) “it embraces the power of the web to harness collective intelligence”. Some argue, however, that by allowing non-experts to generate content via blogs, etc. it lowers its quality (e.g. journalism, research, encyclopedia, etc). According to this point of view, the algorithms that are used by the search engines like Google, are only making things worse. Essentially, Web 2.0 promotes the law of the crowd. On top of that, because we are free to choose our sources, people are risking to end up locked in a bubble of information that is low quality. These issues are already being addressed by the major mass media companies, news sites and magazines. Those same issues are relevant when Dr Bonk is asking about digital scholarships. I believe that this is an area where a lot needs to be done. We already see how the rating system, for example, changed the world of e-commerce. You could also check the instructor’s evaluations from your living room before signing up for the traditional class today. I am certain, that this is going to be even more valuable for the digital learning. In fact, if distance learning allows larger number of students from all over the word to take a class at the same time, sophisticated data mining could be used to find courses that suit your learning style, desired depth, prior level of knowledge. These ratings might be a lot more useful than those used for college rankings in US News and World Report.

Flat World Classroom Project

The Flat World Classroom project is a brilliant way to introduce children to the concepts of The World is Flat book by Tomas Friedman’s by using the collaborative power of the Web 2.0 technologies.

One set of the instructional objectives is based on ideas from the book and as represented by project topics or scenarios:

- How the www changed the world
- Globalization and Outsourcing
- How digital technology enhances productivity
- Freedom of information sharing
- wireless connectivity, etc.

The other set allows students to learn Web technologies that made those new world developments possible. These technologies are

- Wiki
- Digital Storytelling
- Social Networking (Ning)
- Workflow Software
- Search engines
and more

Adults working in the field that has been affected by the globalization might be able to relate to the revolutionary ideas of this book based on their experience.
Participation in this global project gives students a unique learning experience that doesn’t just illustrate the ideas presented in the book, but actually brings these ideas to life for them.

By allowing the students around the world to collaborate on ideas, create content, upload and share it, discuss and learn this project breaks the stereotypes of the “classroom learning”. No wonder this project became famous and made it back into the new edition of the Thomas Friedman's book!

Value of Community Discussion Forums

This week reading is the Emerging Technologies in E-Learning (part 1 of the ebook called Education for a Digital World). This chapter reiterated for me the transformations brought about by the Web 2.0 that we are witnessing today:

content recipient –> content creator
commerce –> people
instructor -> facilitator

I agree that the term e-learning will go away with time, just like the term e-commerce. E-learning and emerging technologies of today will become main stream and will be naturally used as learning tools when appropriate.

I have taken several classes at SFSU that incorporated different web technologies: blogs, wikis, ilearn, illuminate. From this experience, I feel that we do not use the discussion forums enough. We get a comment here and there but never a full discussion. I am not sure if ilean is a good platform for that, individual blogs are not either. I actively participate in several communities and posts on a hot topic bring very interesting multi-threaded discussions collecting hundreds of posts within a day. I really enjoy reading the comments; they bring a lot of interesting points and facilitate re-thinking.

Got Style?

I really enjoyed Common Craft video tutorials, and went to their company website to research more. It is a two people, husband and wife company working out of their home in Seattle. Neither one of them has a ID background. I think they found a unique presentation style that works great with this media and audience. It got me thinking, do I have what it takes to develop my own teaching style? Do you have one? Did it come with experience or just happened right away?

Connectivism - am I connected to the pipe?

I hope that our collective connectivism pipe (or network with your collective wisdom) will help me process (cognitively, as individual :) all that I have heard and read from George Siemens during the week.

I can relate and agree with his key ideas, such as that the rapid growth of knowledge and changes in technology revolutionize the ways we acquire the information. The connections to networks that continuously acquire new knowledge and our capacity to learn more become very important aspect of the learning process in the digital age.

However, I am still not sure about “more important than our current state of knowing”. Doesn’t one’s ability to process the new information (content of the pipe) depend on the individual’s prior knowledge? Being connected to a network seems valuable for me only when I am able to understand what they are talking about and yes, interested, motivated and able to acquire that new knowledge as an individual. At that point my individual learning would occur.
Otherwise, at best I would just be basing my action on somebody else’s knowledge or combined knowledge of the community without learning much myself.

Let me illustrate:
Let’s assume I need to buy a new digital camera. I have little or no prior knowledge of how digital camera works and what characteristics make it a better camera. But I am connected to the network where experienced digital photographers review all new models and forum participants are rated by their peers. I would probably skip all the details and read some quick summary recommendations, look at the ratings and choose a particular camera. I completed the action, but did not learn much. All learning about the new models happened outside of me, so I will have to go back the next time to read more reviews. What do you think?

Connected AND Focused?

Since our class last week I tried several different tools that we’ve talked about. I was already familiar with iLearn/Moodle. I have my personal blog on livejournal and now I have one for this class on Blogger. I joined myITEC on Ning( I was familiar with Ning, because I host a network for my high school class there), I added my blog to our ITEC 830 Netvibes page and also created my iGoogle.

Now I am so well connected, that at times it seems that I am not very productive because of it. Has anyone figured this out yet? Any good tips and habits that allow you to stay tuned, but focused?

Week one - Web 2.0

Back to school. This is most likely my last semester in ITEC and my last class in the program. Wouldn't it be nice to combine the understanding of emerging technologies in education with everything I've learned so far?

We started by breaking into groups and discussing the Web 2.0 concept. Our group saw the role of Web 2.0 as transforming the way we use the Web: from resource to collaborative environment, from consumer of information to active contributor of the content.

I still remember how I went through this transformation myself. I first created my account on livejournal, but did not contribute anything for a while, just reading, treating it as a resource. Now I have my own blog, have several long distance friends, participate in community discussions, get most of my news about Ukraine in Russia, and even volunteer as a translator for a news web site from time to time.

We also watched a video called Web 2.0 The Machine is Us/ing Us