Michael Wesch Video

Watching any of the videos by Michael Wesch is exciting. I love them! They are very interesting to me because of the classes I’m currently taking, and because I work in an IT department at a school. By being in an education environment, I can see the way students prefer to learn and how instructors teach have changed over the years. In conversations I hear across campus, no longer are students talking about certain textbook or encyclopedias. Google, YouTube, and Wikipedia is now their sources of information.
In An anthropological introduction of YouTube ,Wesch’s says that “when media change, human relationships change”. I see that students no longer sit in the cafeteria reading a book, or just hanging out with friends, most are online with a laptop, netbook, or iPhone. All seeming to be disengaged from their current surroundings. I do realize they are not alone, but are in their virtual world, with their friends, whether it’s someone across the room or around the world. And, maybe it’s the person sitting right beside them. Who knows?
I could really relate to his term “contact collapse”. In doing my weekly videos, I just want to be invisible. I hope that my friends and family never find my videos. I know I don’t have to worry, but I’ve wondered what I would do if one of my went “viral”. I would be so embarrassed.
One of the main things that stood out in this video for me was the comment about Carl Sagan calling our planet Earth “The Pale Blue Dot…the only home we’ve ever known”. And I loved Wesch’s follow up poem, …that dot, that’s there, that’s somewhere else, that’s everybody, on the other side of that dot, is everyone you know, everyone you love, everyone you’ve ever heard of….billions of potential viewers…it’s a little glass dot, the eyes of the world” Wow! No wonder it’s so hard to make those weekly videos.

Video #3 My favorite Web 2.0 Tool

My daughter's laptop messed up a few days ago and I haven't been able to Skype them. I normally visit with my grandson at least a couple times a week via Skype. Being without it this week has made me realize how much I depend on it and love it. Watch my video to see how I really feel about Skype.

Wordle - Before and After

Just created a Wordle for one of my assignments. According to their website, "Wordle is a tool for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text". I used the URL from this blog to generate the text for my Wordle. You can see mine here on the Wordle website. Then, using the text from my resume, I create this one.

I had heard of wordles before this assignment. One of the VP's at my school asked me to help create one for her to use in a presentation she was doing. She gave me the text she wanted to use and said, "create it". I googled the word "wordle" and found their website, then was able to generate what she wanted. I felt good about doing this because she only gave me a two hour notice to get it done.

The challenge for this assignment, I think, has been to display the graphic within our Moodle forum, I was able to display mine, although it seems a little blurred.

Second Life

One of our assignments this week was to create an account in the virtual world of Second Life. Being a newbie in SL, I thought I would list some pros and cons as I know it, one week in.

Pros	Cons
Interesting place Great for meetings Great for connectivity and engagement in  DL classes	Its huge! Computer processor hog Overheats my laptop Rude people (avatars) The unknown Time consuming to learn Big learning curve Can be addicting

As you can see, I don’t know many of the good things about this program yet. I hope as the semester wears on, my opinion of this will change.

Our first class meeting in SL was challenging. However, I did get a few good laughs watching everyone’s avatar maneuver around.  The meeting also made me feel better about being in on online class. I actually was able to meet, see, and interact with my classmates.  I would like to get my avatar looking more like me. My hair is naturally curly and I can’t seem to accomplish that yet. Hopefully I’ll learn how beneficial SL is to education. Since we are having to invest so much time in learning this program, I hope it will be used in more than just this one class.

Google Image Labeler

I really enjoyed  the  video by Luis von Ahn. What a great idea he has to get all the images within Google labeled. I’m willing to help tag all those images for fun. I like the game and I like competition. This may cut down on my time playing solitaire. ;)

The idea of crowdsourcing to me is getting a group of people together to do some good old fashion brainstorming. My director reminds us all the time that “we are smarter together than we are individually” I have found that to be so true, because one person can’t know it all, or in a  case like this, can’t do it all.

We do use this method a lot in the IT department at my school. If we have a problem that one person can’t solve, or involves different areas of our network, we all gather to discuss the problem. By working together, we can solve the problem. It also works when we have a big project with a fast approaching deadline. Everyone, whether they have prior knowledge of the task  or not, chips in to help.  By doing a quick tutorial and a step-by-step instruction sheet, we can get the job done.

Explain Web 2.0 to your grandmother

What do you mean, explain Web 2.0 to Grandma. I AM GRANDMA!! And I know many grandma’s that are so tech savvy it’s scary. J Ok, just kidding….Now down to business.

“Web 2.0 refers to the transition from static HTML web pages to the new web of collaboration. In the days of Web 1.0, the average internet user was consumer only. Information distribution went one way, from the internet 'gurus' to the user. With Web 2.0 users are both consumers and producers of information. Web 2.0 is any type of web application that allows user interaction, sharing, and collaboration to generate content. This user-generated content replaces the author-generated content of more traditional websites. Web 2.0 allows users to give more feedback to the author of the website. User participation, dynamic content and increased standardization enhance and enrich the user’s experience. This interactive and enterprising process allows all users of Web 2.0 to share knowledge efficiently and effectively at a higher rate of speed. It allows a voice to all people who have access to the internet and is not constrained by economics or political systems. Web 2.0 somewhat levels the playing field between all its participants and subtly blurs the line between creator and contributor.”

Grandma,

Let me begin by explaining the Internet to you. It can be accessed by clicking on an icon on your computer desktop. Once the window opens, you will have access to the world. If you can imagine it, you can find it.

Like anything else the Internet is changing. Up until the last few years, accessing information on the Internet was like going to the library. You would find a book you want, take it home and read the information it contained. The words in that book never changed. This is called static. It will always remain the same. To learn something new about the subject you picked, you had to wait until the next book was published. Well, the Internet is no longer like that. New technology, called Web 2.0, allows the information you find to change constantly. This is called dynamic. Everyone that has access to the Internet can update the pages or information. Let’s compare it to books again. You no longer have to wait for the next book to come out, it’s like inserting more pages into the same book with updated information.

With this new technology, you can talk to your family and friends just like you would on the phone. This is called real-time. You must have Skype! We’ll get that set up shortly and I’ll show you how to use it. You no longer have to wait for new pictures of your grandchildren to be printed before you can see them. We’ll create you a Facebook and Flickr account so that we can “insert” or upload new pictures anytime we have new ones. We are no longer separated by distanced. We can see or talk to each other whenever we choose. What an amazing time we live in.

"Distance Learning Down Under"

I ran across an article by Evantheia Schibsted at http://www.edutopia.org/. She has written about the Alice Springs School of the Air (ASSOA) that has been providing educational opportunities to children in the Outback of Australia since 1951. This school was established by Adelaide Meithke. She used the RFDS’s two way radio network to put classroom lessons into distant rural homes. The radio network was used until 1995 when they began using computers and the Internet.

I was fascinated by the fact that Ms. Meithke saw the need for distance education long before we even knew it was possible. What a visionary! The article is worth reading. It can be found here.