The LAB-rynth of Science

LibraryThing!  I love it!  Best Item covered so far in the course!  Remember the opinions expressed in this blog not necessarily endorsed by the administrators of this course.  I have been looking for a way to organize the some 1000 books in my personal library.  I enrolled in the LibraryThing.  I organized 20 books in a matter of minutes using their ISBN numbers.  Considering how badly I type, what a boon! 

Okay, considering all my other blogs, when do I drop the other shoe?  The Zeitgeist was quite interesting or fascinating as Spock would say.  After looking at the Groups feature, I am almost persuaded to join one.  The Suggester feature great ands the unSuggester was a hoot! But if I have join the social network to use these aspect of the LibraryThing,  I probably won’t.

The contents of my personal library creates a personal profile.  I just don’t want people to know that much about me.  I actually find it astonishing just how much personal information someone will put on-line.  Data-mining is a reality of the Internet, often not for a good reason.  In this era of security cam spying, cookie trail following, and consumer profiling, I not going to add one more notch on somebody’s gun.

Actually, I found the K12 Online Conference an interesting method of gathering those of like-mind together in a cyber-space town meeting.   Was it a worthwhile experience?  Yes?  No?  Maybe!  As I looked at the 2006 conference, I did find that there are knowledgeable people who are striving to find ways to apply these rapidly expanding technologies in a meaningful way to the problems of education.  But the conference is dated.  Few blogs have been posted recently.  Also few of the posted sessions actually apply to my subject area.

I did look at several sessions.  Most dealt with broad issues rather than specific solutions.  For example, from the 2006 Conference session Personal Professional Development, “Planning the 21st Century School”.  The attendees were attempting to develop a pedagogy for Science Leadership Academy, a new inquiry-driven, project-based science and technology high school in Philadelphia.  The contributors called their approach School 2.0.  After watching the video, I saw or heard nothing that I would use in my class.  The whole approach was filled with education buzzwords with no real substance on what to teach or how to assess.  The video ends with one of the teachers pointing out that the problems with education was ill-defined and so technology could well be misapplied. 

Upon reading my adopted blogs, I may have misinterpreted this assignment.  I have posted to TechBabble and K12 Learning 2.0 comments on their forays into Internet 2.0.

But I still like the goals of the K12 Online Conference and the term School 2.0.  Signs! Signs! Everywhere Signs.  Blocking the Scenery; Blowing my Mind!

Flame! Intriguing, hypnotic, enticing, illusionary!  Despite the appearance of flame, it doesn’t really exist.  It is truly a fabrication of shadow and light.  Flame occurs because of the random jumping of electrons from one energy state to another, prompted by the influence of heat generated by the act of combustion.  Its patterns are dictated by the near chaotic behavior of turbulence.  I chose the metaphor of flame because of the concept of visual literacy introduced during this set of Things.  Frankly, I am quite disturbed by some of the potential pitfalls of visual literacy.  How to express my misgivings of this cyber maelstrom has caused me to actually stall out on my course work.  I have decided to work on a separate blog to be posted at the end of this course to examined just what has so raised these feelings of disquiet.  But I need to finish this assigned task.

As I said, for my slide show I have selected pictures of flames – intriguing, hypnotic, enticing, illusionary, etc.  Though I couldn’t get the musical work I wanted – Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire”, I am quite happy with the audio selection I have made.  The Internet today is so like flame; I hope that no one gets burnt.  Check it out at my wiki, Getting Down to the Nitty Gritty.

Will the flame of truth light my way in this brave new cyber world?

photo by farm3

I am far behind in my posts, but this pollen season has been especially bad for me.  It seems that by the time I get home, I have had so little energy that I couldn’t stir myself to do my course work.  Perhaps this catchup week will help.  So on to photo-sharing and Flickr.

I am familiar with Flickr.  It is very useful in storing photos for safe-keeping and sharing photos and other works on-line with family and friends.  I actually use Bubbleshare on my Ed-line page to show pictures I have taken of students doing lab activities.  My concern arises when these photos enter the cyber-world for anyone to cast an eye upon.  How narcissistic!  The need to seek the approval of strangers.  In his general lecture to the faculty, Mr. Ricardson stated that today’s student has a different view of privacy than earlier generations.  True, they are willing to share everything, whether they should or not.  The problem is this generation expects everyone else to share as well.  No, they don’t have the right to know everybody’s business.  The cult of instant celebritism has become far too invasive into American cult.  Can we press reset on the electronic phenomenon – probably not.  But that doesn’t mean I give up my right to my privacy.

There were a number of illustrations on how to use Flickr as a teaching tool.  I did view the video about the three young men presenting their report on sleep disorders.  I did examine the Four Side Sales Pitch.  And I did use Flickr to find my inserted image and images for my slide show for Thing 11.  First, I did find the video creative and assuming the lyrics were composed by the young men, imaginative.  Were I teaching video-graphic class or creative writing class, I would have been quite liberal in my grading.  As a science teacher (the topic was of a scientific nature, be it a soft science-psychology), I give it a C+, B- if I had my morning coffee.  Why? First, there is no citation given.  Where is the information coming from?  The video itself is both visually and auditorily distracting from the information being presented.  The gangsta posturing, video cutaway, and lack of clear enunciation that is characteristic of rap and hip-hop took away from what was suppose to be communicated (most notedly observed by the performance of the third young man in the video).  So, I’m a fogey!

The Four Side Sales Pitch was quite intriguing.  It actually prompted the naming of this blog.  ”If a picture paints a thousand words, then why can’t I paint you?  A picture cannot show the you I’ve come to know.”  This approach, which was referred to as visual literacy, would certainly appeal to this sound bite generation where faster communications caters to a diminishing attention span.  The concept of visual literacy has opened up for me so many educational concerns that I will discuss these at length in my next blog – “We didn’t light the fire”.  But I digress.  It was the second half of the lyric that I want to focus on.  Yes, a picture paints a thousand words, but what if the viewer sees the wrong thousand words.   Would such open-ended interpretation not lead to even more misunderstanding?  Would a student be able to use such a technique with the appropriate clarity and sophistication or even have the skill to do the interpretation?  And who would I be to say that this is an A or this is a D?

Tags and groups and folksonomy.  What a concept!  For my slide show I want to show examples of fire, so I search for flames.  I got pictures of flaming tongue (a plant), nebulae, sunsets, Flaming Lips and an occasional picture of a flame.   What’s wrong with this picture?  It’s that you can’t get the picture easily.   As I used Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-NoDerivs License (this grouping had the most pictures), I spent way too much time wading through the morass of the irrelevant to find what I wanted.  I can’t see the appeal.  Of course, Flickr has been criticized as a poor example of social tagging.  I can’t help but think of a biological analog of this chaotic, ever-expanding growth.  It’s called a cancer.  And cancers destory their hosts by overwhelming the hosts’ supportive systems. 

Let’s give do give a special party!  What a concept! (A catch phrase for IT folk I’ve noticed.  In his general presentation, Mr. Richardson used it approximately 17 times, but who’s counting)  But it is a dramatic, institution changing, revolution provoking concept.  Everyone has complete ownership of their own ideas!  And their ideas can not be changed without their permission.  No wonder that imams, commissars, bureaucrats, and other Herberts of their ilk are shaking in their respective sandals, hobnail boots, and Brooks Brother shoes.  The individual control of ideas well may put these folks out of business.  I’m inviting Mr. C. to my party.

My party is quite boring.  As I in my every day humdrum existence, I actually do very little Web surfing.  I don’t actually acquire information to use for my courses in this fashion.  Therefore, I don’t recall ever seeing the CC logo and therefore, never investgated its presence.   I haven’t utilized materials from the ‘net that did not come from a source that did not get me prior authorization for use.  Nor have put something out there for all the world to use.  Frankly, my creations really aren’t that interesting.  So this party hasn’t gone global.

Parties have a lot of chit-chat.  But claiming you have all the good gossip is very gauche.  Let’s fact it; plagiarism is a serious problem in education.  How many web sites will provide the student with a appropriate research paper for a fee or for free?  As educators, we must have students keep their academic integrity when asking the electronic genie to grant their wishes for information.  So I would suppose the CC could give the  research student more guidance as to what is and isn’t appropriate for acquiring information.  But will the line be more easily crossed?  Take from one is plagiarism; take from many is research.

I did buy all the party refreshments and favors.  Who owns my teaching materials?  I assume that these are material I create – worksheets, lab activities, PowerPoints, and the such like.  Well, according to the first video I watched.  But I did most of the work during my planning period while in the employ of my school.  Would that mean that my work belongs to the school?  Since I have no knowledge of the law involved here (yes, I really don’t know everything), I really can’t comment.  But were I move to another school, I would take my material with me.  I doubt Woodward would have a complaint.

Let’s liven this party up.  I did check out the CC Content Directories and did come up with a rather intriguing site, SciVee.  It has videos and podcasts that could be of interest and use in my classes.  I will examine this site a little closer in the near future.

So, if I do have my party on-line, I would want to protect my refreshments, party favorites, and my Jonni (hey, I’m not that liberal!).  And if someone took my Jonni from me at my party, I would cry.  Yes, I would utilize CC.

As the skeptic, the act of creating a wiki page was not at all difficult, though interpreting IT jargon took a bit of tinkering.  I did try to create a Voki, but it just didn’t want to appear on my Wiki page.  I guess I rubbed my genie the wrong way. 

Do I see myself actively participating in the hive mind?  I do now, passively, as part of this course’s requirements.  But I feel that if in the future I do, I will have to be shown the way by someone far more creative than I.  I still despair about the trend in science education away from active physical involvement in the lab.  Micro-chemistry, computer simulation, video media, all replace the messy, inconvenience, expensive true lab experience.  In Billy Joel’s song, “That Old Second Wind” from his album, The Bridge, he states the “mistakes are the only things you can truly call your own.”  So in the brave new cyber world, when do students really learn from their mistakes?  An oops can always be corrected by reset.

So, what does this bit of skepticism (even I detect the whiff of cynicism) have to do with the wiki?  In the hive mind, who takes responsibility for mistakes?

First to start, I have serious reservations about wikis and their ken – YouTube, Facebook, MySpace, and the such like.  Even in the videos on Thing 7, the potential misuse of this aspect of Internet 2.0 was voiced, mostly indirectly.  At the age I teach, kids can be quite vicious, especially to those don’t quite fit the perceived norm (flashback to my teenage year.  Ouch!  Quite painful!).

But beyond the possible abuse, it is the hive mind mentality that wikis engender that has me most concern.  Ann Rand would undoubtedly besides herself with this cyber collective dominating the individual (but then isn’t that what blogging all about).  In The Fountainhead, it is Howard Roark who must go to extremes to protect his right to be the individual.  Since the collective ultimately degenerates into the mediocre, will wiki become the tool of the mundane, the banality of the humdrum?  But as my self-appointed role as gadfly of Internet 2.0, I must ask these questions.

Will I personally use a wiki?  NO!  well, Maybe!  I’ll think about!  I have tried to think of a way to apply a wiki to the course I teach.  I have pondered its use, as say an examination review tool, for instance.  I teach a course that is characterised by hands-on activities by the individual.  Could a wiki be modified in such a way to accommodate this approach?  So many questions but then I’m back to “If I could keep time in a bottle . . .”

I did look through several of the listed wiki sites on Thing 7 page.  And I picked the three than most appealed to my inner nerd:  Dr. Reich Chemistry Wiki,  Code Blue,  Math12V Outcomes Portfolio .  As my assignment is to assess these wikis base on a set of criteria given in Thing 7,  I’m going to evaluate all three at once based on all three criteria.  Would I do anything different or better or did I find anything missing?  I not really qualified to make that determination since I’ve never wikied (is that a word?  Well, it is now.  Maybe it’s the millionth English word.)

I found Math12V Outcomes Portfolio the easiest to navigate due to is organization with Dr. Reich Chemistry Wiki the least organized.  The content of Dr. Reich Chemistry Wiki was of the most interest to me in that it is what I teach.  I liked the time line project.  I might give a real insight into just what students retain if done at the conclusion of a topic.  Also the video experiments were good, but you need a degree of pre-knowledge to really know what was going on.   Code Blue was just fun.  The posted sites would certainly interest the targeted age group.  And the approach of developing characters for the hospital gave creative minds free rein.  But the content of Math12V Outcomes Portfoliogave the user of the wiki the clearest notion of what was expected concerning the curriculum of the math courses. 

I’ m not really sure what the constructors of these wikis had in mind when determining learning outcomes.  Math12V Outcomes Portfolio was preparing for a regency test.   Code Blue and Dr. Reich Chemistry Wiki may have been extending learning opportunities outside of the classroom and provide review.

I also did a stretch thing as well.  I used Wikipedia to look the topic we are currently studying in class, reaction rates.  The article did cover the general factors affecting reaction rate.  However, the mathematics content was much more appropriate for an AP chem class or classes at the college level.

Let’s go back to the title of this blog.  The Borg were a collective mind and were always in search of new technology (Internet 2.0?).  The only use of those perceived lesser species were to service the Borg.  Will we, the teachers, the initiators of the wikis, be assimilated by our creations?  Is resistance futile?

And that’s how I see it!

“If I could keep time in a bottle . . .” as the lyric goes, might explain my experience with Thing 6.  I did as instructed.  Into my reader I put in news feeds, three actually.  Adding two more blogging sites, I included the blog pages of four of the attendees of this course.  Add for fun I tacked on The Daily JigSaw Puzzle, Answer.com and Dictionary.com.  Then I commenced to read and to read and to read.  Here is the outcome:

Day 1:  32 min.;  Day 2:  28 min.; Day 3 (big news day):  43 min.; Day 4:  26 min.  Day 5:  27 min.

What to make of all this expenditure of time?  First, news is addictive.  The ScienceDaily alone generates 70-80 articles daily.  As I have not checked the site in a week, it currently informs me that I currently have 885 unread articles.  Oh, dear! What have I missed? (Yeah, I know, but this a GP rated blog).   Second, how do I filter all this verbiage?  In Thing 5 blog, I referenced to a person with 186 RSS feeds.  If I takes me 30 to 45 minutes to pursue some 15 feeds, what time does this person speed to feed his 233 del.ilio.us. users?  “If I could keep time in a bottle . . .”

So why are these questions important?  We, as educators, must direct the use of this electronic genie.  And the consensus around the lunch table is that student already spend way too much time in front of the computer monitor as is.  So I must know how to give guidance especially in this area.  Open to suggestions!

 And that’s how I see it! 

This week we all open ourselves to an electronic flood of information.  It’s a good thing electrons are 100% recyclable.  In Egyptian mythology it is said that when Orisis gave writing to humanity, he was opposed by the Egyptian god of memory (whose name, ironically, escapes me;  I’ll call him Fred).  Fred complained to Orisis that with writing there would no longer be a need for memory.  As we move into this uncharted world of ever increasing information, what will we lose?  Will the time-saving device, as stated in the introductory video, actually steals our time away?  What will happen to refection when the new tidbits of information comes our way exponentially?   Will the capability to decern what average and below needs to be cut from good be blunted?   Time will tell.

I set up the Goggle reader as directed.  It was not as easy as it first seemed.  Not all had a convenient little tag to add to Google.  Considering how difficult it is for me to type, inserting a web address CORRECTLY is a bit of a challenge.  But I prevailed.

Before I focus on a particular item of interest, I like to comment on the selections we were given.  The first three, Students 2.0, Infinite Thinking Machine, Techlearning Blog, are what I think of as blogs, reflective and opinion directed.  The other two are news feeds.  I actually set up three NYT feeds and two from NPR.  Yes, they are science related.  I am the consummate nerd.  And I read something from every one (except for the Infinite Leaning machine; the site was down today).  In Student 2.0 a student  writes in a blog “Amateur Education” that public education is prison and the students are hard drives destined to be cramed with useless information.  Then there is  article in Techlearning by Vicki Davis who claims that writing a blog is akin to writing a banned book.  

Of the two news feeds, I found the NYT sites informative personally but somewhat limited in use in teaching my course.  I doubt if the average eighth grader would be moved to read an article on using oysters to remove water pollutants.  But I was in the NPR I think I found a good motivator for this generation of iPod people (Should you check the basement?)    Conditioned to a sound bite attention span, these podcasts could intrigue the student to investigate further.  I could post more “entertaining” ones on my Edline site.  For instance, how about a plastic polymer that changes color when wet.  A new slant on wet T-shirt constests?

One last observation.  At the beginning I posed a few questions about this electronic genie we’ve uncorked.  In the blog “What I Do” by David Jakes on Techlearning, he states, “To stay current, I process 186 RSS feeds. Much of that information, resources, and creative thought go into my del.icio.us account, where 233 other del.icio.us users tap into what I do.”  Do we really want to go there?

And that’s how I see it!

Note to self:  Scroll all the way down the page, dufus!  I, of course, missed this required blog, but last weekend was more than a little annoying.  Now I did say I would try to find something positive about each aspect of this course.  Well, last weekend I was positive I was going to throw my computer into Lake Peachtree (see Thing 3 blog for details).   Having set the scene, let’s look at what is most challenging to me. 

Aside from the fact that my learning tool box has been out use so long that the lid is rusted shut and I’ve lost the key to the lock, the most challenging aspect of this course is how to use the technology to my advantage.  Hey, I’ve in the computer age for a long time.  I had a Commodore 64 and a TRS-3.  I worked with Apples when they were still wormy.  I learned FORTRAN and Cobal.  I can C your BASIC and raise you Pascal.  I can even do a little machine language.  After all, I am the codger of the Middle School.  So why the hesitation?  I really feel there is just too much avaliable.  Where to begin?  What is the most useful?  And that constant nag, how to evaluate?

Those who know me recognize that I am an ever gushing fountain (mud pot?) of mostly useless information.  I love to learn from the arcane to the profane and every -ane in between.  I am confident that I will learned many skills from this course.   The application of those skills, and thus the effectiveness of my learning, may be interferred with by how I feel challenged by the course.

What want to do most is to help others make sense of all this rush of new technology.  That is the reason I am in teaching in the first place.  To do that successfully, I must come to terms with how to use the blog, wikis, podcasts, and all, to find the best use ot to determine if it is really useful at all.

 And that’s how I see it!