Deb's Diary

Day 7

2011-03-01T20:24:00.000-08:00

Sunday, February 27, was the last day of the conference. Some of us were assigned to juror the projects designed by the teachers/adults according to a rubric that had been developed for that purpose. We had just a short amount of time to score the projects in order to determine the top three, and then we met in pairs to talk to each individual team about their projects.

The closing ceremony was planned by a team of students. The top teams of students and of teachers presented their projects and videos, and students gave testimonials about their experiences at the conference. There were thank you’s and farewells all around, and at 12:30 p.m. everyone dispersed.

After a quick lunch, our UNI group reunited with Vincent, our charismatic tour guide from earlier in the week. He took us to a teahouse where a young woman introduced us to the Chinese custom of brewing and drinking tea. Most of the group then went to the Pearl Market for some more bartering/shopping, but since the Temple of Heaven was right across the street, Jennie Kies and I decided to go there instead.

We learned that this area is larger than the Forbidden City, and it is where the emperor and his entourage would go to pray, fast, and sacrifice to Heaven. On this Sunday afternoon, however, the walkways were filled with people smoking and playing poker and Chinese chess. From one area we heard what sounded like a choir singing and Vincent told us later that they were singing an old army song. You can listen to it too—watch the video at the bottom of this post (that's my fearless roomate Jennie waving at the end). It doesn’t sound like the Chinese music that you would expect to hear, does it?

At dusk, we were taken on rickshaws through a hutong---an area of narrow streets, alleys, low homes and courtyards forming neighborhoods of common people in the oldest, central part of the city. We stopped to see the Bell and Drum Towers which are at opposite ends of a plaza, and our guide explained the symbolism of the doorways to the homes. For example, if a home has four beams sticking out above the entrance, then a wealthy family lived there at one time--probably someone who worked for the government, since those were and still are some of the richest people in China. If there were only one or two beams, then they were not so wealthy.

Today, people of all economic levels live in hutongs because they enjoy the community life. The homes have electricity but no bathrooms, so the people who live there use public toilets and showers. Our guide took us inside a home in the hutong where we had tea with a retired gentleman who told us about his life and his home. He is the fourth generation to live in that home.

We finished the evening with a meal at a traditional Chinese restaurant. I’ve figured out how Chinese stay so trim—restaurants give you only one little plate to put your food on and you have to work so hard to get it in your mouth with just two little chopsticks. In this particular restaurant, the plate was smaller than a cup saucer, so I had to fill it up multiple times before my hunger pangs went away. The food was good, but I’m ready to go back to eating Western food with a fork again.

Day 6

2011-02-27T07:46:00.000-08:00

There were two surprises this morning: one was that it snowed during the night, and the other was that the Chinese government caused the snow--they seeded the clouds last night. I didn’t believe it at first, but those at the conference who live in Beijing said it’s not unusual, and that they had heard the snow cannons during the night.

The Flat Classroom Conference is in full swing, and the teams are working on their projects. This conference is unusual in a lot of ways, but one of the most significant is that it engages both students and teachers in active learning. As Vicki Davis describes it, at most conferences teachers talk about students and about active learning; here they are actually doing it. Another way it is unusual is that the project teams are very diverse and English is not the native language of many of the participants. That adds an extra challenge, but it’s beautiful to see teams overcoming obstacles and working together in spite of their differences.

My Survey Monkey experience came in handy this morning when setting up surveys for conference participants to select three student projects to move to the finals. The last upgrade to Survey Monkey included the ability to embed a form into a webpage, so I added an html widget to a conference wiki page and pasted the code from Survey Monkey into the widget. It worked well and we didn’t need to use Plan B which would have meant resorting to sticky notes.

It was a pleasant surprise to meet Central College alum Cheryl Moen at the conference (see photo). She’s a teacher at BISS now, but grew up in Pella and her dad is retired Central professor Al Moen. It’s a small world!

Farah Kashef and I walked to a nearby Pizza Hut for supper tonight and ordered a pizza. The one we got wasn’t the same one that we had ordered, but we were hungry enough that we ate it anyway. Farah told our waiter that she didn’t want ice in her drink, and instead he brought her a plate with ketchup on it. We’ve learned just to go with the flow, though---if our English sounds as strange to them as their Chinese sounds to us, it’s no wonder things get confused!

Day 5

2011-02-26T07:11:00.000-08:00

The Flat Classroom Conference officially kicked off this morning, and the day was a blur. The variety of people and places represented is remarkable, and everyone is excited to be here and is eager to learn from each other. The eight of us UNI students, nicknamed “Panthers” after the college’s mascot, are assigned as facilitators for various sessions throughout the day and to help in any way as needs arise. This morning I assisted Madeleine Brookes as she taught a session about Wikispaces and another one on Shamblespad and Preview.

After lunch we gave our presentation on Instructional Design Using the ADDIE Model. It’s not an especially riveting subject, so we tried to jazz it up by telling an original fairy tale and then relating the ADDIE steps to particular parts of the story. Dr. Z concluded the presentation and the grand finale was giving everyone in the audience a little rubber duck (made in China, of course) to help them remember the model.

Tonight buses took all the adult attendees to the Grand Mansion Restaurant for the conference dinner and social event. It was a beautiful restaurant and an incredible 15-course meal. Cynthia Sarver from SUNY Cortland and I sat at the same table as Adrian from Taylor’s School of Hotel Management in Malaysia. He speaks Chinese, so he could explain what we were eating, along with other interesting tidbits such as the fact that K-Pop is all the rage in Asia these days—Korean pop/rap singers. The meal started with sliced beef tongue with dipping sauce and black fungus (mushrooms) that looked just like the "roast beef" my mom put on the sandwich in my school lunchbox many years ago. The meal ended with some dessert-like dishes, including a white fungus soup that looked like a clear gel with a few peach bits in it.

Following the meal was an amazing array of entertainers: Chinese opera, bian lian (face-changing masks), Kung Fu, acrobatics, spinning plates/balancing act, pop singer, erhu music, and a few others I can’t remember. I wish I had brought my camera with me because it’s unlikely I’ll ever see all those things at one time in such unique surroundings ever again!

Day 4: The Great Wall

2011-02-25T07:24:00.000-08:00

The wind picked up during the night and chased the smog away, so we woke up this morning to sunshine and a clear sky—what a refreshing sight! Now that we can see out of our hotel window on the 21st floor, we get a hint of how large this city really is---there are skyscrapers as far as the eye can see in every direction.

The good weather was a special blessing because this was the day we visited the Great Wall of China. It was a pre-conference outing so motor coaches took us to Mutianu, a small town at the base of the mountain range. We took the ski lift up to the Great Wall, had a wonderful time exploring the ancient walkways and guard towers which overlook Mongolia to the north, and took the toboggan back down.

The sense of history was almost palpable as we looked out over the craggy mountains and climbed rock stairs worn smooth from centuries of use. Just the thought of touching something built in the 5th century BC (yes, that’s Before Christ!) is amazing. It’s easy to understand why it is one of the Seven Wonders of the World.

We had a delicious family-style lunch at the Schoolhouse Restaurant in Mutianu. It used to be a school that has been converted into a restaurant and glass-blowing studio. A short distance away was a Subway, which looked so out of place in the rural village.

This evening we met at BISS for a conference debriefing with the organizers and also practiced tomorrow’s instructional design presentation. It had way too many rough edges, so we put in a late night back at the hotel getting our ducks in a row. Vicki Davis also wants us to help with Web 2.0 Kung Fu tomorrow—each person taking 3 minutes to demonstrate a useful Web 2.0 tool in one of the conference sessions.

Our sightseeing days are waning and the conference, which is the real reason we came here, is beginning.

Day 3

2011-02-24T00:49:00.000-08:00

We toured the Western Academy of Beijing on Wednesday--a 1,500-student international school attended by students who hold foreign passports. It’s a progressive school with a 1:1 computer program, and we were able to visit with the technology director as well as the elementary and secondary technology integrators.

We visited a 10th-grade web design class, stepped into the food technology lab (home economics kitchen for those of us who recognize that term) where students were making healthy breakfast foods, and toured the Tri-Caster control room which controls the electronic scoreboard and cameras/microphones located in various venues. They find streaming athletic events, fine arts performances, etc. to be very much appreciated by the students’ families.

This was the third day in a row when students were not able to go outside to play because of the smog. We’ve noticed that even though there is a visible yellow ball in the sky so we know the sun is shining, it seems to be perpetually foggy and gray outside. Some people wear masks to avoid breathing in the smog. Ray, one of the teachers at WAB, said that later this year the grey air will turn to red because of sandstorms from the Gobi Desert, or it will turn white when the wind blows the fluff off the numerous poplar trees. In the meantime, there’s continuous smog from all the factories in this industrial city---“the physical manifestation of $1.99 Wal-Mart.”

We had lunch at a French restaurant in the Lido area, and enjoyed lingering over our delectable dessert. I’ve noticed that we’re usually the noisiest group in the restaurant and hope we’re not irritating the quiet Chinese with our boisterous banter.

Late this afternoon we met Dr. Zeitz, Julie Lindsay, Vicki Davis and other conference presenters such as Bernajean Porter at Beijing International School for a briefing on the conference plans and our role in it. They are all incredibly gifted and gracious individuals who are passionate about what they are doing. Interestingly, Bernajean is originally from Avoca, Iowa.

All the organizers and presenters went out to supper together afterwards and tried things like sweet and sour fish (see photo) and tofu noodles with sweet pea greens coated with a sauce that made my tongue numb (Szechuan peppercorns, which just might be a suitable substitute for novocaine)—another remarkable experience because it’s not often that we Iowans sit around a table with people from Iran, Shanghai, New Zealand, Japan, and China!

Day 2: Marathon Sightseeing

2011-02-23T06:35:00.000-08:00

Tuesday we probably came close to setting a world record for sightseeing.

Our first stop was Tiananmen Square, the world’s largest city center according to our guide. We entered through the South Gate and walked to the north side where Chairman Mao watches over the plaza. He has lots of help---serious-looking uniformed guards were in abundance. We were obviously a novelty; people from all over China come to see their seat of government, and from their curious stares it was obvious that they don’t see Americans very often—or maybe they were just awestruck by Brandi’s dreadlocks and Carrie’s ear and nose rings.

From there we walked north into the Forbidden City, where emperors lived from 1420 to 1923, and people like us would never have even dreamed to visit. It's huge and full of symbolism and history. A short video clip showing one of the courtyards inside the Forbidden City is embedded below.

We had lunch in as authentic a Chinese restaurant as you can get, and then wandered through Houhai, a traditional hutong area full of little shops. The first shop we saw had a Starbucks logo on the front, which looked a little out of place on a building that looked like it was a couple of hundred years old.

From there we went to the Lama Temple, built in 1694, where there were several Buddhas, the largest of which holds the world’s record for the largest Buddha made from a single sandlewood tree. People were bowing in front of the idols and burning incense, with tourists like us wandering through and watching them and the Tibetan monks curiously.

From there we went to the Pearl Market where vendors in several floors of booths sell everything imaginable and you have to bargain for a decent price. For those of us who don’t like to haggle over prices, it was uncomfortable to be stalked by aggressive vendors, but I soon got good at saying buyae xie xie or “boo shay-shay” (no, thank you) forcefully.

We had Peking Duck with all the trimmings for our evening meal, in a small restaurant in an old part of the city. Our guide showed us the proper way to eat Peking duck---wrapping small slices in a thin tortilla-like pancake along with some dark sauce and thin strips of onion and cucumber.

Our evening’s entertainment was the Chinese Opera, an interesting mix of mime, acting, acrobatics, and strange falsetto singing. It’s one of those events where I’m glad I experienced it---but once was enough.

We're here! Day 1

2011-02-21T07:11:00.000-08:00

When people warned me that it was a long flight to Beijing, they weren’t kidding. Our group of ten left the Cedar Rapids airport at 7 a.m. Friday, spent the morning in Chicago and climbed aboard a 777 around 1 p.m. Friday. Fourteen hours, three meals and several short naps later we arrived in Beijing. Unfortunately, the economy seats were the same size as those on a regular airplane, which meant there was no room to get comfortable for a good sound sleep.

The best part of the trip was being able to track our progress from the video monitor mounted in the back of the seat ahead of me. The map showed the location of the plane, the altitude, temperature, speed, flight time, etc. My boss had told me that we would be flying over the North Pole and I didn’t believe him, but he was right—we went straight north from Chicago, over Thunder Bay and Siberia. We flew just west of the North Pole, where the air temperature was -92F!

The Beijing Airport is huge—it is the largest airport in Asia, built or remodeled in 2008 for the Olympics. Flat Classroom Conference co-founder Julie Lindsay and her husband John met us at the airport, and we met Steve Madsen at the hotel. It took a little while to get checked in at the Zhejiang Hotel—there’s a severe language barrier to contend with—and then we went directly to the Chinese Acrobat Show. It was amazing, but I must admit to nodding off now and then in spite of the noise and action. Looking around, though, I wasn’t the only drowsy one in the group. Vicki Davis brought a group of seven students and another teacher with her from Camilla, Georgia, and they were looking pretty droopy too. The 14-hour time difference is taking its toll.

Today, Monday, was our first full day in this country. I ate things at the hotel’s continental breakfast that I’d never seen before but most things were surprisingly tasty. We then left with the Georgia group for a tour of the Sacred Road and the Ming Tombs. The long walk down the plaza flanked by larger-than-life sculptures made for great photo ops--unlike historical sites in the US, there were no ropes or warnings barring us from touching or climbing on the sculptures. The area will be even more beautiful when spring arrives and the grass and trees wake up from their winter hibernation.

We had lunch in a private room in a restaurant, practiced our chopstick skills and experienced restroom facilities quite different from those in the US. We then toured THIS School (Tsinghua International School), which is in its second year of operation. Martha Ortiz, the secondary school director, did a wonderful job of explaining things and showing us around the school. It’s an English-speaking school with mainly Chinese students whose parents want to prepare them for higher education in the United States. Classes are quite small and the teachers use a constructivist approach with mainly project-based learning.

THIS is small, progressive K-12 government school; on the same grounds is a 3000-student more traditional high school. We toured a portion of that school and stepped into a classroom briefly. The 40-student class was led by a petite young woman who didn’t look that much older than her students. This school is associated with Tsinghua University and is attended by the children of the faculty and staff who work at the university.

This evening we took in the Kung Fu Show at the Red Theater, which was very enjoyable. Our tour guide, Vincent, is a charming 26-year-old with excellent English, and we’re enjoying learning more about China from him. He is an exception to China’s one-child standard since he has twin older sisters.

Since we had no specific plans for supper, I walked to a nearby McDonalds. The menu was more limited here but it was pretty confusing with only pictures to go by. The clerk took one look at my confused face and pulled out a Chinese/English menu from behind the counter. I have a new appreciation for signs, menus, labels, etc. that are in more than one language—it’s a very considerate thing to do for visitors like us!

Zaijian

2011-02-12T15:00:00.000-08:00

Preparations continue as the day of departure approaches. One week from now our group will be in the air, perhaps somewhere over Russia en route to Beijing.

Today was not that exotic, though, unless you call a trip to Walmart exotic. On my shopping list were items such as an international power adapter, travel-sized toiletries and a small calculator to stick in my purse--my mental math isn't good enough to convert Chinese Yuan (CNY) to dollars on the fly. However, I might not need my calculator too often if I remember that 100 Yuan is about $15.

Today the exchange rate is $1 = 6.67 yuan, which is a little higher than it was a few days ago. China uses both coin and paper currency, and the paper currency is different colors depending on the denomination. For example, the 1 yuan bill is green while the 5 is purple. The 1 yuan coin has a chrysanthemum engraved on it and the jiao has an orchid (10 jiao = 1 yuan). There is also a coin for 5 jiao which pictures a lotus.

Speaking of money, a classmate recommended that we notify our bank and credit card company that we will be traveling to China so that our transactions will not be flagged as potentially fraudulent. That's still on my to-do list.

Last night I attended a Chinese New Year celebration at Central College in which the students who have studied abroad in Hangzhou, China, organized activities and showed highlights of their experience. Although Hangzhou is on the eastern edge of China, the students had traveled inland to Beijing on one of their excursions. They showed photos of many of the same places that our group hopes to visit such as the Great Wall, the Forbidden City, the Ming Tombs, and Tiananmen Square. They also visited Xi'an and saw the terracotta army, which is too far away from Beijing for us to visit but would be a fascinating site to see someday.

One of the activities at the event was a Q&A about China. The students asked these questions of the audience to test our knowledge (answers are at the bottom of this post):

Should you expect a fortune cookie at the end of your meal in a restaurant in China?
Which direction is considered good luck for a gate to face in China?
What color is considered lucky in China?
China is the __ (1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th) largest country in the world by area.
China is the __ (1st, 2nd, 34d, 4th) largest country in the world by population.
Approximately how long is the flight to China (air time)?
What are the main religions in China?
What is the capital of China?
Who is the head of state in China right now?
In December 2009, how many US students did President Obama propose to study abroad in China during the next four years?

Today's Chinese vocabulary word is "zaijian," which means goodbye. It is pronounced sigh-jin.

I ran across these Chinese proverbs that are worth remembering: "After three days without reading, talk becomes flavorless" and "Learning is a treasure that will follow its owner everywhere." This trip to China will be a learning experience that I will carry with me the rest of my life.

Answers: 1) No, that's an American custom; 2) South; 3) Red; 4) 4th; 5) 1st; 6) 14 hours; 7) Confucianism, Daoism, Buddhism; 8) Beijing; 9) Hu Jintao, since 2003; 10) 100,000

Xie xie

2011-01-31T21:07:00.000-08:00

Flipping the calendar to February means that our trip to Beijing is only 18 days away and anticipation is growing! The more I learn about China, the more I realize how totally different it is from the United States.

For starters, its history goes back many centuries, and the United States is an infant by comparison. Its languages bear absolutely no resemblance to the West Germanic languages that I am familiar with such as English and Dutch. Did you know that Mandarin Chinese is the most natively spoken language in the world, followed by Spanish and English?

Chinese characters and sounds are so foreign to me that the only way to learn the phrases is to memorize the pronunciation. Today I learned "thank you" which is pronounced xie xie (sheh-sheh).

Those of us who are going on the trip are researching some of the major tourist attractions in Beijing, so I spent some time tonight learning about Chinese opera. I think I can safely say that there is no corollary in the U.S. and that it is probably an acquired taste. Check out this example:

This description on the West-meet-East website describes Chinese opera well and explains why it would be interesting for us Westerners to experience it: "Chinese opera has little in common with Western opera, and the screeching falsetto of the singers, the loud clacking of the clappers and the noisy banging of drums and cymbals can sound strange to Western ears. But it is the costumes, variety of facial expressions, the actors' eye expressions and martial arts movements that mostly attract Western audiences."

On a side note, I happened across what is probably the Chinese equivalent of an old wives' tale: a Chinese Gender Chart. According to the chart, my daughter's baby which is due March 1 will be a girl. We'll see...

Other preparations for the trip include working collaboratively with my classmates and professors on the presentation we will be giving at the Flat Classroom Conference. We've met several times via Adobe Connect, Skype, and Google Chat to analyze, design and develop our joint project, and will continue to do so until it is time to implement and evaluate it. In a way, we're using the ADDIE model to produce a presentation about ADDIE.

Xie xie to Dr. Z and the University of Northern Iowa for the opportunity to experience China firsthand!

Ni hao!

2011-01-15T12:36:00.000-08:00

In about a month, I'll be going with a small group of fellow students and professors from UNI to Beijing, China. We will be participating as instructional technologists in the Flat Classroom Conference for part of the time, but there will also be time to tour some educational institutions and see some of the attractions of the area.

None of us can speak Mandarin Chinese (or any flavor of Chinese, for that matter), but we want to learn some common phrases so that we won't be completely helpless while we're there. I came across a helpful website that can help us reach that goal: Digital Dialects. I'm going to try to learn some of the words in the categories called Phrases & greetings and Phrases & greetings 2. There are lots of other websites that can help us accomplish the same thing, but this one looked less intimidating and even kind of fun.

By the way, the image above is Chinese characters for "ni hao" (NEE-how) which means hi or hello. According to the Urban Dictionary where I found the graphic, if you add "ma" to the end (as in "ni hao ma") it means How are you doing today? -- probably in the same way that we sometimes greet each other with an informal "how ya doin'?" instead of saying hello.

Fellow traveler Brandi Day is finding Google translate very helpful. Type in an English word or phrase and then you can listen to the audio translation and view the Chinese characters.

From K-12 to Higher Ed

2010-06-17T23:52:00.000-07:00

Since the majority of my classmates are K-12 teachers, it's understandable that most of our class discussions and projects are geared toward the K-12 environment. However, much of what we've learned is also applicable to higher ed.

The first things that come to mind are social bookmarking and personal learning networks. My blog post of June 12 talked about the need to get more efficient at organizing web resources. Lo and behold, the next day Dr. Z and Lois Lindell showed us around Diigo and how to use iGoogle in conjunction with customized RSS feeds to set up a Personal Learning Network. Using those tools to also tap into library resources will come in handy down the road.

Faculty members at my institution, especially those who are actively involved in research, would benefit from setting up a PLN too. They could in turn show their students, who might be lured away from Facebook long enough to learn about an easy way to aggregate information from the web.

VoiceThread could be a useful and interesting tool for faculty to use with their students, such as those in the Modern Languages Department. There are some good examples of using VoiceThread at the college level here, and excellent how-to resources here.

Although Second Life is an amazing place, I think that its learning curve would be too steep. I'll keep my eyes and ears open for opportunities to introduce it as a possibility, though.

When I'm able to come up for air after these two weeks on campus are over, I'll take some time to reflect further on what we've learned in this class that is transferrable to my work in higher ed.

Photo source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/hmk/2741404653/sizes/s/#cc_license

The end of the beginning

2010-06-16T21:44:00.000-07:00

There are only two days left of the Emerging Instructional Technologies class, which means that the end of the first class in the two-year Instructional Technology graduate program is in sight.

This particular course will be over soon, but I hope that the friendships taking root this week will continue to grow. Our final project team (see photo) was working so well together today that it was just plain fun. Another classmate and I have so much in common that we must have been twins separated at birth.

Earlier this week Dr. Leigh Zeitz invited our cohort over for a barbecue in his backyard, which was a very gracious gesture. It was nice to meet some of the other faculty members there from whom we will be learning in the months to come.

It's a privilege to be a part of this learning community!

The main thing

2010-06-15T05:07:00.000-07:00

If the first day of the face-to-face portion of the Emerging Instructional Technologies class is any indication of what the next two years are going to be like, bring it on! What more could a person want than a roomful of educators and educator-support-people who love technology and are eager to learn more from an enthusiastic, connected professor?

Well, I can think of a few things that a person could want, such as a dorm room that has live network connectivity and a bathroom that doesn't require you to punch in a numeric code to enter. But that's beside the point.

It makes me sad to hear teachers talk about their desire to use some of the Web 2.0 technologies in their classrooms but being stymied by strict computer and network policies. Those policies prevent access to some websites or prevent the installation of browser plug-ins or other applications.

On the other hand, I've witnessed the mayhem that happens when viruses, malware, spyware, etc. infect a computer or a network, or when a computer slows to a crawl because it's loaded down with junk that eat up the system resources. It's not pretty. And when those things happen, it's usually not the end user who has to clean up the mess.

Still, those of us who work in the information technology areas of educational institutions must remember to keep the main thing the main thing. The mission of the institution is to educate students, and the technology resources must support that mission, not hinder it. This blog post by David Pogue, the technology columnist for the New York Times who could double as a stand-up comedian hits the nail on the head.

Network security is extremely important, but there are ways to minimize the risk by using software tools and methods that didn't exist a few years ago. Note that I said "minimize"---there is no such thing as a guarantee regardless of how strict the policies are.

Teachers, go have a heart-to-heart talk with your IT department and explain to them the potential educational benefits of what you’d like to do. Let them know that you are now more savvy and conscious of suspicious e-mail messages than you were in previous years. Promise to backup your important files elsewhere so that if your computer does fall victim to some nefarious plot, they are welcome to wipe its hard drive clean.

IT directors and network managers, listen to the teachers, provide appropriate warnings and predictions, and do what you can behind the scenes to protect them without crippling them. The next generation of 21st century learners will reap the benefits.

Photo source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/arthur-caranta/2906069843/sizes/s/ licensed under Creative Commons

Adding up the virtual miles

2010-06-10T22:10:00.000-07:00

I wish my computer had an odometer. Then I would know for certain how many virtual miles I've travelled around the Internet. I do know, though, that I've logged more virtual windshield time and seen more virtual landscapes these past few months than I have in the last few years combined.

When I go on a physical trip, I use my camera to snap photos along the way so I can remember where I've been and what I saw. In doing research on the web, I need something like a camera too. Too often I find an outstanding website or blog and think, "Oh, I'll remember where I found that" and later search high and low for it without success.

When the web was still a toddler, my list of favorite websites fit on a sticky note. Then I graduated to using bookmarks in a web browser, and then to organizing bookmarks into folders. Now those URL collection spots have expanded to include a wiki and blog, Google Reader and iGoogle, which may further evolve into a Personal Learning Network. I wonder, though, as I do more research on the web, if I should use some tools like Diigo, iCyte, Zotero or Evernote. Does anybody have a recommendation?

Just as my own URL lists have grown exponentially over time, so too has the amount of information on the Internet. In spite of powerful search engines and carefully selected search terms, it's still a shot in the dark sometimes to find exactly what I'm looking for. Just as the world's information has outgrown the card catalog, is it now outgrowing the capabilities of the search engines as we know them?

That's the premise of this fascinating video by Kate Ray, which gives us a peek at what may be the next generation of information exchange: Web 3.0, a.k.a. Semantic Web. The Semantic Web will look at relationships between pieces of information and use those relationships to build context. Since context gives meaning, the result might be among other things more intelligent search results.

It sounds quite esoteric to me, but the idea is intriguing. And the sound effect at the end of the video made me wonder if, in a few short years, we'll look back at the Internet as it is today and remark about how unintelligent it was.

Walking the Talk

2010-05-30T15:19:00.000-07:00

"Thinking is now distributed across minds, tools and media, groups of people, and space and time." --Chris Dede in "Web 2.0: Helping Reinvent Education"

Yesterday I re-read the Dede journal article entitled "Enabling Distributed Learning Communities Via Emerging Technologies" Part One and Part Two. I read it more carefully this time and soon realized that the characteristics that describe a distributed learning community also describe our class: diversity of expertise, advancing collective knowledge and skills, learning how to learn, and sharing what is learned.

I don't know why I didn't realize before that Dr. Z isn't simply teaching an online course, he's shepherding us into a distributed learning community.

This course is fascinating, challenging, and very different from any course I've ever taken, and not just because it's an on-line course. Dr. Z's teaching strategies guide us in the direction we need to go but then we are encouraged to roam and discover and synthesize and contribute. Our classroom is the whole virtual world, not a room with four walls and a textbook with a finite number of pages and a multiple-choice quiz at the end of the chapter. It's exhilarating and exhausting.

As the Dede article describes, a learning community "is a radical departure from the traditional view of schooling, with its emphasis on individual knowledge and performance..." That explains why this course is taking us out of our comfort zones, as Bill, Cathy and Gabe have described---Dr. Z is trying to get us to "unlearn the beliefs, values, assumptions and cultures underlying schools' standard operating practices." He's nudging us away from "passive assimilation of information to active construction of knowledge." He's serving as a facilitator and interpreter, commissioning us to mine "knowledge sources embedded in real-world settings."

He's "walking the talk" so that we can do the same.

Plan B

2010-05-29T16:01:00.000-07:00

No matter how advanced our computers are, how fast our Internet connections are or how much we use and understand today's technology, an act of God can still trump it all.

This past Tuesday evening our group met on-line again to continue work on our domain element presentation. The clouds outside were dark, the air was still, and spotty storms were predicted for this area. Sure enough, during our meeting there was lightning nearby, the power went out and I was abruptly disconnected from the meeting. Although the electricity came back on almost immediately, our Internet service did not. I felt helpless and a little fearful---the last time this happened it took 4 days before our Internet service was restored. Thankfully, this time we were back online by midday on Wednesday.

These two incidents, however, make me wonder about the wisdom of relying solely on the Internet for information, communication, document storage, running applications, etc. The trend toward cloud computing means that more resources and services are being moved online. What happens if access to that cloud is taken away for a significant amount of time, either by an act of God or through human error or terror?

Anyone who teaches with technology knows that they should always have a Plan B. If our households, schools, and institutions increasingly rely on the Internet, what should be our Plan B?

The opposite experience

2010-05-23T19:03:00.000-07:00

This past Thurday evening the three of us assigned to the copyright/ethics key element in the Media Planning and Production course met online to plan our presentation. We used Adobe Connect and it worked beautifully---the opposite of my earlier experience. We were able to see each other via webcams and used the chat feature, the shared whiteboard and shared application features for our brainstorming session. The audio was very clear, like a 3-way telephone call.

This technology allowed us to hold a very productive meeting and get to know each other a little bit more while never leaving our own homes. Without this technology, we would have had to set up a face-to-face meeting or a conference call or resort to an asynchronous method of communication such as e-mail or discussion board. What a great resource!

Musings about the class videoconference on May 17

2010-05-19T20:14:00.000-07:00

This past Monday night our Emerging Technologies class met via Adobe Connect for the purpose of getting to know each other a little bit more, to discuss the readings, and to experience firsthand a virtual classroom complete with audio and video.

I had tested my computer ahead of time and expected the session to go smoothly but it turned out to be an exercise in frustration. The audio was extremely choppy and sometimes the sequence of the conversation was even mixed up---I would hear a classmate answer a question before I heard the professor ask it. Often it seemed that people were talking at the same time, making the conversation unintelligible.

I was in a hotel room connected wirelessly to the Internet and suspect that there was not enough bandwidth available. So I'll give Adobe Connect the benefit of the doubt and hope that the next session will go more smoothly.

I've used Elluminate's virtual classroom and have found the moderator's ability to selectively turn on/off participants' microphones is very useful. In a large group, having a moderator, aka "traffic cop," is a necessity.

In spite of this rocky start, I have no doubt that this type of technology will become even more mainstream as high-speed Internet service becomes part of each home's utilities alongside electricity, sewer, water and gas.