Embedded is my Flikr Slideshow. The theme is Info-Graphics that actually impart information while remaining aesthetically meaningful. I've tried to highlight on several slides why I think they work. All slides were used under the "some rights reserved" tags that asked for attribution of the photos. All of them can be found along with owner under the Social Info-Graphics photo stream.
Thursday, November 12, 2009
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Thing 10: A Nation Turns its Lonely Eyes to Flikr
After a brief hiatus that can only be explained by sloth rather than illness (this time anyway) I have returned from the netherworlds to explore the wonderful world of www.flikr.com. I knew I was going to be in trouble on this one. Caroline helpfully pointed out that even math teachers could find a lot of interesting things. Unfortunately Caroline underestimated the entire world's (including many math teachers) deep loathing of statistics and statisticians. Tellingly my first explorations looking to find tags related to statistics, normal distributions, bell curves, probabilities, standard deviations, standard errors, and other terms was met with a heaping helping of nothing.
Fortunately the whole world loves colorful info-graphics! After all, if they didn't how would U.S.A. Today even stay in business? I tend to find informational graphics to be fascinating and often aesthetically meaningful (and as the child of a Ph.D. in Art History mother I am quite prepared to defend this rigorously). When done well information graphics can be, well, beautiful. And Flikr provided some excellent examples that were available under creative commons. You'll see the whole bit in my shortly to be posted thing 11. But under CC licensing I was able to find one of my favorites. The following info-map displays lexical usage of generic terms for soda by county, all the way from Coke to Pop to "other" (seriously what's wrong with you western North Carolina? Pick a term for crying out loud). Fun and informative.
P.S. Click on the picture and enlarge your screen to see detail.
Fortunately the whole world loves colorful info-graphics! After all, if they didn't how would U.S.A. Today even stay in business? I tend to find informational graphics to be fascinating and often aesthetically meaningful (and as the child of a Ph.D. in Art History mother I am quite prepared to defend this rigorously). When done well information graphics can be, well, beautiful. And Flikr provided some excellent examples that were available under creative commons. You'll see the whole bit in my shortly to be posted thing 11. But under CC licensing I was able to find one of my favorites. The following info-map displays lexical usage of generic terms for soda by county, all the way from Coke to Pop to "other" (seriously what's wrong with you western North Carolina? Pick a term for crying out loud). Fun and informative.
P.S. Click on the picture and enlarge your screen to see detail.
Friday, October 30, 2009
Thing 9: The Tragedy of the Commons
While I didn't learn any cool new web applications I found the discussion of copyright and fair use to be extremely illuminating and worthwhile. I think like most people I knew the basics of the idea, but the law is so murky and confusing (and often self-contradictory) that I often simply ignored the issue and just tried very hard to not do something to get sued. Unfortunately if you don't know what you're getting sued for... Anyway, Caroline's resources were very helpful and while the Disney video got annoying after a while (I now hear Buzz Lightyear bellow out "Copy!" every time I read or write the word copyright) it was VERY cool and well done. I don't think I've ever used "someone has too much time on their hands" as a compliment, but there you go. Additionally, Creative Commons was something I had heard of but never really knew what was. It is outstanding to actually know what it is AND have a website to refer to. On to the assignment.
Have you noticed the CC logo on any websites you visit? Did you wonder what it meant? No, but I'm not particularly observant (ask my wife!). I had heard of the term but didn't really know what it referred to.
Do you think CC will impact the way students learn and create projects? How?
Yes, it very well could. Assuming teachers know about and encourage use of CC. I think that fact that CC gives teachers confidence that the materials on the site are available for use and won't get them in trouble it could open up a lot of doors for creativity and engagement with the broader culture for students.
Do you use digital images, audio or video clips from the web in your teaching (or professional practice)? Occasionally. I don't teach, but I give a lot of multi-media PowerPoint presentations through the year and I use a lot of (probably copyrighted) pictures/music. My strategy before this was simply not to make eye contact with Caroline if she was in the audience, but now I feel I have the confidence to determine if what I am doing is fair use (not to mention using Creative Commons to find material).
Do you ever share content on the web? Not really. As an introverted curmudgeon I've never created a blog (before this), participated on message boards, facebook, diigo, or any other online communities. Now that I know a little more about them I'm happy to have an understanding of sharing content on the web is in case I choose to use them.
Who owns the materials that you produce for teaching / professional development purposes? Probably other people. I rip most of what I get from personal CD collections, itunes, or (primarily) google image searches. That was in the past of course. Now I'm on the side of angels Unites States Copyright Office! Really!
What are some potential negatives for using CC?
One that occurred to me was that even within CC there appeared (based on the materials I looked through) to be different levels of what the creators had given permission for. Given for the tendency for humanity to always grossly oversimplify anything subtle or complicated I could see people slip into bad habits and assume (well its on CC so it must be available for use?) without reading the fine print, as it were.
Have you noticed the CC logo on any websites you visit? Did you wonder what it meant? No, but I'm not particularly observant (ask my wife!). I had heard of the term but didn't really know what it referred to.
Do you think CC will impact the way students learn and create projects? How?
Yes, it very well could. Assuming teachers know about and encourage use of CC. I think that fact that CC gives teachers confidence that the materials on the site are available for use and won't get them in trouble it could open up a lot of doors for creativity and engagement with the broader culture for students.
Do you use digital images, audio or video clips from the web in your teaching (or professional practice)? Occasionally. I don't teach, but I give a lot of multi-media PowerPoint presentations through the year and I use a lot of (probably copyrighted) pictures/music. My strategy before this was simply not to make eye contact with Caroline if she was in the audience, but now I feel I have the confidence to determine if what I am doing is fair use (not to mention using Creative Commons to find material).
Do you ever share content on the web? Not really. As an introverted curmudgeon I've never created a blog (before this), participated on message boards, facebook, diigo, or any other online communities. Now that I know a little more about them I'm happy to have an understanding of sharing content on the web is in case I choose to use them.
Who owns the materials that you produce for teaching / professional development purposes? Probably other people. I rip most of what I get from personal CD collections, itunes, or (primarily) google image searches. That was in the past of course. Now I'm on the side of angels Unites States Copyright Office! Really!
What are some potential negatives for using CC?
One that occurred to me was that even within CC there appeared (based on the materials I looked through) to be different levels of what the creators had given permission for. Given for the tendency for humanity to always grossly oversimplify anything subtle or complicated I could see people slip into bad habits and assume (well its on CC so it must be available for use?) without reading the fine print, as it were.
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Thing 8: All the Cool Kids have a Wiki
In accordance with Thing 8 I now have a nook on the 23 things Sandbox Wiki. You can find it here (Scroll to the bottom). Read it and enjoy! Marvel at my ability to summarize my life in a mere 3 sentences! Gasp at my horrible taste in music, movies, and books! Wait in breathless anticipation for the wonders I will soon post in the Web 2.0: Garden of Earthly Delights! The Sandinistas Wiki nook, more exclamation points per capita than any other Wiki!
Friday, October 16, 2009
Thing 7: Death Rides a Pale Otter
It's been a while since I've updated my blog, mostly because I've was laid up on my back for about two weeks with swine flu/Pneumonia. But all of that is in the past. So back to the wonderful, terrifying world of Web 2.0. This week is Wiki's and I have to suggest a bit of skepticism about the enterprise that I had at the outset. I was familiar with some Wiki's, particularly Wikipedia which I use copiously. But in general my experience with Wiki's had been, less than (to me) impressive. Our curriculum department runs numerous Wiki's and to be honest (sorry Caroline) they had seemed to me at best to be a place where you could store a lot of documents, but they really had not made much of an impression on me.
I should probably explain WHY this was as the rest of the post is going to be me explaining why I was surprised how much I liked the Educational Wiki's on the 23 things page. By nature I am an introvert and a non-joiner. I don't typically join groups and I am probably an individualist to the point of unhealthiness at times. I don't join groups or clubs and when words like "collaborate" and "community" are thrown around like they are intrinsic goods my eyes tend to glaze over (for those of you into Myers-Briggs I am a hard INTJ which should explain a lot). This is a long way of saying that dispositionally the ability to share and collaborate isn't intrinsically a high priority for me unless it LEADS to something. That was the ledge that really allowed me to get into the Wiki's I looked at.
What impressed me most was the degree to which these Wiki's allowed the mustering of multiple Web 2.0 operations towards a single goal. Take for example the Educational Origami page that Caroline recommended. The page in many ways features the best elements of a blog, a message board, and a Diigo page into one seamless whole. You could literally spend hours perusing multiple elements of web 2.0 applications. The organization takes some getting used to but once I oriented myself I found it amazing how much was in the Wiki. I am not surprised Caroline finds this page so relevant for her job. I wish their was a wiki like this for assessment.
The next Wiki I checked out was the Civil War "Follow Me" Wiki. I picked this one because my wife (who is a kindergarten teacher) has a similar program she runs with her class where each child gets to take the class stuffed monkey (Walton) home with them and then has to write a short paper on what they did and provide photos. The "follow me" Wiki's are in many ways just a fun extension of this. On this Wiki a sixth grade student from Pennsylvania who is a civil war buff. As she travels around to battlefields she takes her Teddy Bear "Sallie Ann" with her. A helpful map shows all of the sites visited and links to places to learn more about them. A really simple concept applied in a neat way. This really seems like a way to tap into kids unique curiosity and creativity.
The concept behind the Civil War Wiki was very simple. On the more complex end was the Flat Classroom Project, the Wiki of numerous high school students around the globe organized around Thomas Friedman's "The World is Flat" book and concept. The Wiki is notable to me in the way it literally instantiates Friedman's hypothesis. Students from as far flung areas as Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Georgia, Montana, Texas, & Australia all collaborate with one another. The idea of linking up individuals from across the globe is interesting, but what actually made it relevant to me was the degree to which the schools/students were working toward a singular goal, that of increasing communication between diverse students through web 2.0 technology. Given how long the site had been in place (at least 3 years by my count) it was impressive how much had been generated by the students involved.
Much as with Diigo, I was surprised at the degree I found myself liking the Wiki's in general. I don't know if I could say I am totally enamored (some of the Wiki's I looked at still seemed to much of a self-contained "how cool is it I made a wiki" rather than something that was actually useful. But the many examples of Wikis that did just that have swayed me that this is a medium that has a valuable role in the 21st century classroom. Now if you'll excuse me I have to get back to yelling at the kids to get off of my lawn. There that felt better.
I should probably explain WHY this was as the rest of the post is going to be me explaining why I was surprised how much I liked the Educational Wiki's on the 23 things page. By nature I am an introvert and a non-joiner. I don't typically join groups and I am probably an individualist to the point of unhealthiness at times. I don't join groups or clubs and when words like "collaborate" and "community" are thrown around like they are intrinsic goods my eyes tend to glaze over (for those of you into Myers-Briggs I am a hard INTJ which should explain a lot). This is a long way of saying that dispositionally the ability to share and collaborate isn't intrinsically a high priority for me unless it LEADS to something. That was the ledge that really allowed me to get into the Wiki's I looked at.
What impressed me most was the degree to which these Wiki's allowed the mustering of multiple Web 2.0 operations towards a single goal. Take for example the Educational Origami page that Caroline recommended. The page in many ways features the best elements of a blog, a message board, and a Diigo page into one seamless whole. You could literally spend hours perusing multiple elements of web 2.0 applications. The organization takes some getting used to but once I oriented myself I found it amazing how much was in the Wiki. I am not surprised Caroline finds this page so relevant for her job. I wish their was a wiki like this for assessment.
The next Wiki I checked out was the Civil War "Follow Me" Wiki. I picked this one because my wife (who is a kindergarten teacher) has a similar program she runs with her class where each child gets to take the class stuffed monkey (Walton) home with them and then has to write a short paper on what they did and provide photos. The "follow me" Wiki's are in many ways just a fun extension of this. On this Wiki a sixth grade student from Pennsylvania who is a civil war buff. As she travels around to battlefields she takes her Teddy Bear "Sallie Ann" with her. A helpful map shows all of the sites visited and links to places to learn more about them. A really simple concept applied in a neat way. This really seems like a way to tap into kids unique curiosity and creativity.
The concept behind the Civil War Wiki was very simple. On the more complex end was the Flat Classroom Project, the Wiki of numerous high school students around the globe organized around Thomas Friedman's "The World is Flat" book and concept. The Wiki is notable to me in the way it literally instantiates Friedman's hypothesis. Students from as far flung areas as Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Georgia, Montana, Texas, & Australia all collaborate with one another. The idea of linking up individuals from across the globe is interesting, but what actually made it relevant to me was the degree to which the schools/students were working toward a singular goal, that of increasing communication between diverse students through web 2.0 technology. Given how long the site had been in place (at least 3 years by my count) it was impressive how much had been generated by the students involved.
Much as with Diigo, I was surprised at the degree I found myself liking the Wiki's in general. I don't know if I could say I am totally enamored (some of the Wiki's I looked at still seemed to much of a self-contained "how cool is it I made a wiki" rather than something that was actually useful. But the many examples of Wikis that did just that have swayed me that this is a medium that has a valuable role in the 21st century classroom. Now if you'll excuse me I have to get back to yelling at the kids to get off of my lawn. There that felt better.
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Thing 6: Or How I Learned to stop Worrying and Love the Diigo
My first experiences with Diigo were not promising. I found it a barren, rocky land where my bookmarks could find no purchase. The layouts were poor, the instructions confusing, and for the life of me I could not figure out how to bookmark anything. I considered rending my clothes and despairing in dust and ashes. Then Caroline helpfully pointed out that I was actually on the site www.digg.com rather than Diigo. Once again my selective dyslexia betrayed me. After I actually found the correct site I began to see what the fuss was all about. And now you can see my super-fabulous museum of awesomeness on these here internets at the following site: http://www.diigo.com/user/psychodawg2000.
So now that I actually have a Diigo site and a chance to play around a bit I'll give my thoughts and the implications. First, i really like the site. I had been using google bookmarks as my primary online bookmarking site and while it was fine, it really couldn't touch the features and interactivity of diigo. The best feature for me is the ability to search for common tags or to browse the bookmarks of people who have saved common websites. This is critical because a lot of the websites I use for work are a bit, shall we say, esoteric. Websites on statistical analysis, databases of ed research, etc. As these are often hosted on university websites or otherwise obscure they often elude the Boolean engines of google and other search platforms. Being able to actually work through the bookmarks of people with similar interests and careers was immeasurably helpful. Within about 15 minutes of browsing I had bookmarked 5 new websites on stats that I had not been aware of. Very cool.
In a way, Diigo seems to operate like one of the classic research tricks anyone in the sciences is taught in grad school. Namely, if you are interested in a subject area, find a recent journal article. Work backwards through the references, find those articles, and then work through their references. Within a few hours you can pretty much have the entire corpus of that particular research field. Perhaps more interestingly, the Diigo model pretty accurately reflects the working of the brain's neural associational networks and the general model of memory. One memory datum (think tag) and it is associated with other bits of memory (think other users with the same tags and then the users who share their tags) and in the end those networks of associations are what create memory and consciousness. It's no wonder some philosophers are actively considering the question of whether the Internet itself could ever achieve consciousness.
That high falutin' thinking aside I did find some downsides. While I think Caroline is exactly correct in that having as many tags as possible is the key to making Diigo an effective social bookmarking tool, the sheer volume of how many bookmarks many individuals I visited had makes even multiple tags difficult to operate. When the user has 3,500 bookmarks (as some I visited had) even if they are providing 5-6 tags per bookmark it becomes tedious to slog trough 250 links per tag. I think I'd like to keep mine a bit more streamlined. Some users appear to simply bookmark anything they find remotely interesting. I think this detracts from the ability to communicate effectively the difference between a high quality and low quality link. In a way I guess this comes down to whether you wish Diigo to be a tool for you, or as a platform for social bookmarking. If you prefer the former 3,000 bookmarks is probably inevitable. If the latter, quality is (I think) preferable to quantity. To each their own.
Some things I have yet to have a chance to fully explore. Later today I'm going to upload some (I think) relevant bookmarks to our 23 things group and I'd like to find some like minded groups to join. I also have yet to find a use for the annotations feature (although this is probably a function of my staggering laziness rather than the utility of the annotations feature itself). I have to say I have been pleasantly surprised by Diigo. I imagine this will be a major tool I use for as long as we are all around. Which according to the Mayan Calendar is three more years. Maseltov!
So now that I actually have a Diigo site and a chance to play around a bit I'll give my thoughts and the implications. First, i really like the site. I had been using google bookmarks as my primary online bookmarking site and while it was fine, it really couldn't touch the features and interactivity of diigo. The best feature for me is the ability to search for common tags or to browse the bookmarks of people who have saved common websites. This is critical because a lot of the websites I use for work are a bit, shall we say, esoteric. Websites on statistical analysis, databases of ed research, etc. As these are often hosted on university websites or otherwise obscure they often elude the Boolean engines of google and other search platforms. Being able to actually work through the bookmarks of people with similar interests and careers was immeasurably helpful. Within about 15 minutes of browsing I had bookmarked 5 new websites on stats that I had not been aware of. Very cool.
In a way, Diigo seems to operate like one of the classic research tricks anyone in the sciences is taught in grad school. Namely, if you are interested in a subject area, find a recent journal article. Work backwards through the references, find those articles, and then work through their references. Within a few hours you can pretty much have the entire corpus of that particular research field. Perhaps more interestingly, the Diigo model pretty accurately reflects the working of the brain's neural associational networks and the general model of memory. One memory datum (think tag) and it is associated with other bits of memory (think other users with the same tags and then the users who share their tags) and in the end those networks of associations are what create memory and consciousness. It's no wonder some philosophers are actively considering the question of whether the Internet itself could ever achieve consciousness.
That high falutin' thinking aside I did find some downsides. While I think Caroline is exactly correct in that having as many tags as possible is the key to making Diigo an effective social bookmarking tool, the sheer volume of how many bookmarks many individuals I visited had makes even multiple tags difficult to operate. When the user has 3,500 bookmarks (as some I visited had) even if they are providing 5-6 tags per bookmark it becomes tedious to slog trough 250 links per tag. I think I'd like to keep mine a bit more streamlined. Some users appear to simply bookmark anything they find remotely interesting. I think this detracts from the ability to communicate effectively the difference between a high quality and low quality link. In a way I guess this comes down to whether you wish Diigo to be a tool for you, or as a platform for social bookmarking. If you prefer the former 3,000 bookmarks is probably inevitable. If the latter, quality is (I think) preferable to quantity. To each their own.
Some things I have yet to have a chance to fully explore. Later today I'm going to upload some (I think) relevant bookmarks to our 23 things group and I'd like to find some like minded groups to join. I also have yet to find a use for the annotations feature (although this is probably a function of my staggering laziness rather than the utility of the annotations feature itself). I have to say I have been pleasantly surprised by Diigo. I imagine this will be a major tool I use for as long as we are all around. Which according to the Mayan Calendar is three more years. Maseltov!
Monday, September 14, 2009
Things 2, 3, 4...well you get the picture
I suppose a more rigid mind would expect (nay demand) that each thing in 2 - 5 have its own blog post. However I decided to apply my ability to synthesize information (Bloom's Taxonomy! Holla at ya boy!) and combine them into one epic post. In essence I don't think this is unreasonable as all three deal with the overarching concept of using blogs in education and feeding them through RSS Feeds into reader applications. Many things in this class will be new and foreign to me and thus cause me to curl up into the fetal position murmuring quietly to myself (which I normally do 3-4 times a day anyway). But in this case we have hit an application that I have been using for a long while so this should simply be an overview of what I already do.
I love blogs. I don't necessarily love blogging, but I love reading blogs. I subscribe to about 80 blogs on my google reader account organized in various categories. Here's a screenshot I took this morning of my account so you can see how they are organized.
I have my blogs organized into 9 discrete categories. I do subscribe to several blogs in the educational and educational psychology realm. Which can be seen below.
Among the sites I read regularly are Edutopia, Curriculum Matters, the SPED law blog, the flypaper (the in-house blog of the educational think tank the Fordham Foundation), and several blogs pertaining to psychological assessment. All of them are occasionally interesting, often brilliant, but most of time pure grade A filler with little utility. The beauty of Google Reader (and it is of course not the only application that will do this) is how easily and quickly it lets you filter through to find the wheat among the chaff.
I will say I have found precious few blogs that really fit my needs, and I certainly have looked. Their are any number of hundreds of blogs dealing with teaching, instructional strategies, and other global education topics. This is both appropriate and heartening. But I have struggled to find blogs that deal with my particular intersection of interests and skills, that being assessment, educational policy, educational research, and statistical analysis. Given that their appears to be a vacuum I may have to take my web 2.0 skills and simply fill that void myself with the ultimate testing/stats/research/education blog. After all, with those topics their must be literally TENS of people yearning to read that. Of course blogging is by nature a bit narcissistic (not that there is anything wrong with that) so perhaps that isn't a problem. So I'll leave you with the axiom of the day.
Blogging: Giving outlet to the voices in your head 24/7
I love blogs. I don't necessarily love blogging, but I love reading blogs. I subscribe to about 80 blogs on my google reader account organized in various categories. Here's a screenshot I took this morning of my account so you can see how they are organized.
I have my blogs organized into 9 discrete categories. I do subscribe to several blogs in the educational and educational psychology realm. Which can be seen below.
Among the sites I read regularly are Edutopia, Curriculum Matters, the SPED law blog, the flypaper (the in-house blog of the educational think tank the Fordham Foundation), and several blogs pertaining to psychological assessment. All of them are occasionally interesting, often brilliant, but most of time pure grade A filler with little utility. The beauty of Google Reader (and it is of course not the only application that will do this) is how easily and quickly it lets you filter through to find the wheat among the chaff.
I will say I have found precious few blogs that really fit my needs, and I certainly have looked. Their are any number of hundreds of blogs dealing with teaching, instructional strategies, and other global education topics. This is both appropriate and heartening. But I have struggled to find blogs that deal with my particular intersection of interests and skills, that being assessment, educational policy, educational research, and statistical analysis. Given that their appears to be a vacuum I may have to take my web 2.0 skills and simply fill that void myself with the ultimate testing/stats/research/education blog. After all, with those topics their must be literally TENS of people yearning to read that. Of course blogging is by nature a bit narcissistic (not that there is anything wrong with that) so perhaps that isn't a problem. So I'll leave you with the axiom of the day.
Blogging: Giving outlet to the voices in your head 24/7
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)