Keeping Up with the Technologies

What do you recommend that a colleague do to keep up with changes that relate to emerging technologies?

Perhaps the most important thing I learned from this class, ETEC 647 Emerging Technologies, is that technology will continue to evolve.  It is truly a beast that cannot be completely understood or tamed.  Even if I understood all of it today (impossible!), tomorrow it will have improved, taken on a new form, merged with other facets of life, and taken on a new purpose.  It could be exciting or it could be frustrating to keep up with this technology business.

So it is very important that we, the technology leaders, the users, all of us, stay flexible and be willing to evolve with the technology.  I mean, to evolve in the way we use technology and integrate it into our lives.  Tamarkin & Educase (2010) states that "it will be more important to be able to evolve with technology to contribute in a meaningful way to the institution and its mission." 

So how would one go about keeping up with new and emerging technologies?  Well, the honest answer is: you can't.  It's not possible.

Ok, another chance.  :)  For now, my two recommendations would be Google Reader and Twitter.  Be patient with them, learn to use them well, carefully select who you will follow and whose feeds you will read.  Take time to learn from them and it pays off handsomely.  I've talked about my use of Twitter in a previous post.  I have used Google Reader for a short while, but it is a wonderful place to organize and collect my favorite reads.  Here's a snapshot of one of my accounts (yes, I have a few Google accounts *guilty*).

This class examined very  relevant emerging technologies that would impact education in the near future, such as social media, augmented reality, and mobile devices.  Other large issues looming on the horizon are cloud computing and  open source movement, and many others.  How do we keep up?  Let us not give up:  after all, the technology is for us, we are not for technology.  Remind me not to watch Matrix. LOL.

As Steve Jobs once said, I need to remind myself and my colleagues to "Stay hungry, stay foolish!" -- hungry for continued learning and foolish to explore new, emerging frontiers of technology.

Thank you, Dr. Bert, for taking us on an exciting journey this semester.  As a teacher, I love hearing: "I learned a lot."  As your student, I say from my heart: I learned a lot!   Thanks to you too, Frank.

Tamarkin, M. and 2010 EDUCAUSE Evolving Technologies Committee. (2010 November/December). You 3.0: The Most Important Evolving Technology, EDUCAUSE Review, 45 (6). Retrieved from http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ERM1061.pdf

Twitter Story

It began with cautious baby steps last semester. Dr. Grace Lin wanted her ETEC442 to use Twitter for extra credit (for us) and for an experiement (for her). I couldn't understand why anyone would want to aimlessly broadcast the minutiae of his/her life in 140 words. But with a little guidance from Dr. Lin, I soon came to understand the value of Twitter. The "group chat" for the class was helpful and by following the right twitters I was kept up-to-date on the news, technology, and eduation. I soon started tweeting and re-tweeting about helpful tools I came across or interesting articles I'd read. It was nice to know that I could share the knowledge rather than just keeping it all for myself. Of course, the tweeting was even better when I got responses from Dr. Lin or other classmates. I even felt a little sad when the Twitter experiment was over, but forgot about it as life got busy.

The last ETEC 647 assignment, to microblog using Twitter while attending the TCC 2011 conference, was a chance to appreciate Twitter in a different way. For ETEC 442, we tweeted whenever and about whatever. This time our focus was narrow: pre-determined time period, topic, and group of people to follow. Looking back, I think I would not have gottten as much out of the online conference if it hadn't been accompanied by the microblogging activities in the background. I enjoyed the learning so much more because I knew that there were others who were also learning and sharing at the same time. I enjoyed the "meaningful information" as well as the casual conversations that were being exchanged. It was like going to a conference with a group of friends! (Lest you think that I'm a social creature -- I'm not; but maybe I am a social learner.)

I have been using TweetDeck (a third party Twitter interface) for a while and find it a lot more friendly and helpful than the Twitter page itself. Here's a screenshot of the full screen TweetDeck (you can reduce it to any number of columns you want).

Notice the circled buttons under the message window? TweetDeck has great features like "Auto URL shortening: on," language translation, and frequently used hashtags.

Here's one funny story: When I was adding "Mentions" column a few days ago, I noticed that someone had mentioned me as a provider of news on Augmented Reality (see the far right column). So I scanned @Perugini's tweets and links, and determined that he likes to keep up with AR developments. So I followed him. Guess what -- now I'm getting a number of tweets in Italian and I have no idea what they say! :) But his English tweets are useful.

I also added #edtech in 2nd column of TweetDeck to see what I would get. Lots of helpful links to Ed Tech information, but almost too much! I now know how to keep up with information and technology if I want to. IF I want to. Sometimes too much of a good thing can be too much. Maybe I should just stick with my selected group of friends. :)

TCC 2011 and Microblogging

Last week was an intense week of learning and new experiences.  Attending an online conference was a phenomenal experience, hearing so many speakers and topics was almost dizzy, and microblogging via Twitter while attending the conference was a fun and unique experience.  Now we are writing a report to reflect on all of that.  As part of the assignment, I created a storyboard using Storify, a new tool in its beta version:

Game-Based Learning

"Almost everything in life is like a game...we are always trying to 'game the system,'" said Dr. Bert Kimura at the beginning of our last synchronous class session.  That is so true.  We are born with instincts to compete, to win, and to extract the best deal (that's me).  It seems more pronounced in males.  That's why our culture spends so much time and money on sports of all kinds, from little league to kupuna league, and from being a pint-sized pitcher to being a devoted fan of professional sports. 

I personally have difficulty jumping on the bandwagon of game-based learning in education, but it seems like another  reality that can be carefully exploited for good.  A teacher should not use a game merely to stuff a lesson into a form of a game.  If it is carefully designed and integrated into teaching with clear objectives, keeping it challenging and rewarding, I can see that it will enhance learning. (http://serc.carleton.edu/introgeo/games/index.html)  

My reservations about games, especially video games, comes from personal experience of having raised three children.  We bought them a video game console when they were 8, 10, and 12.  They all enjoyed gaming but our two daughters loved reading books more and still love reading.  Our son on the other hand, immediately fell in love with the visual stimulation of gaming.  He is a decent student (a Regent Scholar at Manoa), but once he expressed to me his regret of not having spent enough time reading as a child.  Reading teaches love of words, love of learning, patience, the quiet soul-searching, the forbearance, and so many intangibles that can easily be pushed aside next to the shiny, noisy, heart-throbbing, engaging video games.  Especially for boys.  My fear is that game-based learning could push aside the more important task of teaching our students to read, to spend time communing with black words on white pages, to build all the character that they will need to become adults of tomorrow.

The Ethics of Wikileaks

It's been a few weeks since we had to think about Internet security, ethics, and Wikileaks in this class.  But recently I asked my CS Ethics class to view two TED Talks videos, one of Julian Assange of Wikileaks and the other of Wael Ghonim, the Google executive who triggered the Egyptian revolution by starting a Facebook page.  I asked them to compare and contrast the two videos and summarize their thoughts.  I was so thrilled to see them engaging in the current issues, attempting to divine the fine but uncertain line between the ethical and the illegal, but really thinking for themselves.  I have to share this post from Joshua:

"In many ways, the goals of Wael Ghonim and Julian Assange were the same - free people by giving them information. In the case of Julian Assange, he created and used wikileaks to expose the secrets of governments that he believed kept people from being free. On the other hand, Wael Ghonim's facebook page allowed people to share information that each of them had, the fact that they were all discontent with the status quo. I think this illustrates the largest difference between their approaches. Wikileaks put Assange as the arbiter of what should or shouldn't be released, whereas Ghonim merely facilitated the exchange of information. This is further borne out by the fact that where Assange was adulated by the crowd as a "hero", Ghonim said 'there were no heroes, because everyone was a hero.'"  I say amen to that.

Augmented Reality in the News

Happened upon this news about augmented reality research at the University of Washington in Seattle.

That's right.  They are working on contact lenses with embedded computer chips and graphical displays!  (SeattlePI.com)  "Terminator view" video on that site is quite appropriate.

Second Life Part 3

Based on my previous experience on college campuses late at night, I was apprehensive about going to another university site but I was required to visit UC Davis' Hallucination Island for our assignment.  It turns out, that this visit was more objective and impersonal, yet educational and effective.  It helped me to understand how the hallucinations might cause erratic or violent behavior in schizophrenic patients. I was not disturbed by this as I was disturbed by “real people” in other worlds whom without inhibition expressed violence and indecency.  

After visits to various sites in Second Life, and interacting with my teammates and with strangers, I'm concluding that Second Life has fairly high level of social presence.  What is social presence?

Social presence theory was first founded by Short, Williams, and Christie in 1976,¹ and has since come to mean "the perception that one is communicating with real people rather than with inanimate object."  Since the emergence of digital learning environment, social presence is also seen as "the ability of individuals to collaborate effectively through technology, even when they are located in different locations and time frames."²  Steve Wheeler of University of Plymouth states that "...social presence is an important feature of any successful learning activity, particularly within digital learning environments... when social presence is low, group members feel disconnected and group dynamics suffer.  Conversely, when social presence is high, members should feel more engaged and involved in group processes."³ 

For this assignment, our primary objective was to explore and gain some sense of the level of social presence in Second Life.  The secondary objective was to compare Second Life to the more traditional online experience such as Elluminate, Blackboard, and Laulima with respect to the level of social presence.   

I'm guessing that it's the social presence in Second Life that made me feel connected to my teammates as well as feeling apprehensive of strange strangers.

 

As a digital learning environment (DLE), Second Life offers visual layer and virtual reality which other traditional DLE tools do not.  With the presence of virtual world landscape, structures, objects, and people, the illusion of reality allows human minds to "manufacture feelings of connection and interaction, even when separated by distance." That is a remarkably powerful aspect of virtual world such as Second Life.

So why isn't Second Life used more as a teaching tool or as a digital classroom?  I venture to guess that it must be due to the challenges of building a virtual world tailored to each lesson, as well as the challenges of becoming an adept user.  It took me some time to become a functional citizen of Second Life, and I'm still not moving around with ease.  I can't even imagine how long it might take me to learn to build a world.  I also noticed that my quad-core processor occasionally warns of Second Life's high CPU usage.  This might mean that participants need to have powerful machines to make the SL experience relatively comfortable.  That could be a serious limitation.

¹Short, J.A., Williams, E., & Christie, B. (1976). The social psychology of telecommunications. New York: John Wiley & Sons.

²Sarbaugh-Thompson, Marjorie and Martha Feldman 1998. “Electronic Mail and Organizational Communication:  Does Saying ‘Hi’ Really Matter, Organization Sciences, 9(6), pp. 685-698.  

³Wheeler, Steve (November 2005), "Creating Social Presence in Digital Learning Environments: A Presence of Mind?", TAFE Conference, Queensland, Australia