Tedtalk: Jan Chipchase Our Cell Phones, Ourselves

Jan Chipchase, a human behavioral researcher who works for Nokia travels around the world in search of behavioral patterns that will inform the design of products we don't even know we want - yet. He said the three most important things we carry are keys, money and cell phones which relates to Maslow's heirarchy - survival of ourselves and loved ones. Chipchase stated that the mobile phone has the ability to transcend space and time, and it is universally appreciated. It is personal, private, and convenient. He spoke about how illiterate people use cell phones as a bank to send money home to their villages. Despite all the resources and sophistication, people in the streets innovate and use the phones is ways that meet their needs. The cell phone is creating a connected world where everything is intertwined.The designers are looking at these innovations, and incorporating that information into the everchanging mobile phone. Chipchase said that learning to listen is the most important part of studying people and their behavior.

This talk was extremely interesting to me. I am too involved in my own job and every little problem of everyday that I actually opened my head to think about the world and how huge, wonderful, and diverse it is. The fact that technology is evolving so rapidly because of the street (all the people in the world) is far out.

TedTalk: Jeff Han:Unveiling the genius of multi-touch interface design

Jeff Han showed a high resolution multi-touch computer screen that may be the beginning of the end of the point and click mouse. He began with a simple lava lamp then turned it into a virtual photo-editing tabletop, where he moved photos across the screen with his fingers. He was able to enlarge photos with just touching them in certain ways. He said that by using this multi-touch, multi-user screen, there is no need to conform to a physical device, the device comforms to us. These interface-free computer displays are able to zoom in and out on a Google map just by pinching two fingers together. I enjoyed the creative applications where he was able to create shapes, move them around, draw shapes and interact with them by touching them. It will be exciting to see these new computer technologies in the future. Here is a webpage about Jeff Han's multi-touch interaction research which says that the technique is force-sensitive, and provides unprecedented resolution and scalability, allowing us to create sophisticated multi-point widgets for applications large enough to accomodate both hands and multiple users. It also shows a video demo of multi-touch interaction experiments. The music, "Who Am I?" is haunting with a great beat by Peter Kruder, Peace Orchestra 1999 :http://cs.nyu.edu/~jhan/ftirtouch

Individual Research Project Summary Internet and the Classroom

My research Project was Internet and the Classroom. When technology tools are integrated into the K-12 and university classrooms, learning can be extended in powerful ways. The internet and multimedia provides students and teachers with access to up-to-date information, ways to collaborate with students, teachers, and experts around the world, and opportunities for expressing understanding via images, sound, and text.

The effective use of technology can help change the current educational paradigm from teacher-centered instruction to student-centered instruction. The new paradigm includes multi-sensory stimulation, collaborative work, information exchange, active, inquiry based learning in an authentic, real world context.

Technology is transforming education. Teachers have access to more information, more ways to interact and collaborate, more approaches to instruction than ever before. Combining the boom in instructional technology and constructivism, teachers are providing students with activities like the webquest, virtual field trips, and online activities that require research and evaluation of digital information.

A framework for improving student achievement called Understanding by Design (UbD) helps teachers clarify learning goals, devise assessments, and craft effective and engaging learning activities.

The following technology tools are ways that educators are using technology in classrooms: The Smart Board which is an interactive whiteboard linked to a computer where users write directly on the whiteboard and see their writing displayed on the computer's monitor. A Student Response System is a tool used to promote active learning in the classroom. Students respond to questions posed by the instructor using a small handheld that looks like a TV remote control. The use of digital cameras in the classroom can enhance the leaning environment as a writing prompt, to illustrate the steps in a procedure, to record a field trip, to create class books, to capture classroom activities for newsletter, webpage, and student portfolios. Weblogs are used as collaborative spaces where students read stories then use a blog to answer questions and create meaningful content for audiences wider than just a teacher and a small group of peers. They learn to negotiate knowledge in real and relevant ways, preparing then for the connected work they will find once they graduate.

Technology is here to stay and teachers need to provide the children of the 21st century with a technology rich classroom with best teaching practices for optimal student learning.

Blog 12b TED Talk Pilobolus: A performance merging dance and biology

I was mesmerized by the two dancers who performed the sensuous duet, Symbiosis. The music, recorded by the Kronos Quartet is a compilation of works including " God Music" from Black Angels by George Crumb. They intertwined themselves to become one being throughout the performance. Drawing inspiration from biology the dance troupe has named themselves Pilobolus, a fungus that thrives in cow dung. The dancers, Otis Cook and Jennifer Macavinta each came together, then separated, then came together again with an ebb and flow using lifts and positions where the girl would stand on the man and entwine herself around him in a thousand different ways with continuous motion. Does it trace the birth of a human relationship, or the co-evolution of a symbiotic species? At times they looked like insects, other times they looked like underwater creatures. It was breathtaking to see the creativity of two human beings using their superb athletic and creative abilities to interpret music to form such an intimate and beautiful moving image.

Blog 12a Webpage Building

I do not have experience building a webpage by hand. My experience with webpages includes the Google blog that we use with ITE 130 and more recently TeacherWeb which is used by our school for teams and individual teachers to keep parents informed. I am working on mine which includes Announcements, Homework, Supply List, Links, FAQ's, Teacher Info, Calendar, Schedule.

My participation on the Blogger blog has been a great learning experience. I have been exposed to a myriad of internet information that certainly has broadened my horizon. I also have enjoyed reading my classmates blogs and appreciate their efforts and opinions as people on a quest for knowledge.

Blog 10b Artificial Intelligence

I liked the Ansgar video about the man opening the book and turning the pages. It reminded me of some of my students. The Bradford video was great! Just seeing the professor managing everything in his life through his voice and touching the screen was like Star Trek. The one technology we do not have in personal computing today is an interactive human interface.
I found an article from IBM Research on Artificial Intelligence at http://domino.research.ibm.com/comm/research.nsf/pages/r.ai.html. It states that Artificial Intelligence is the study of how computer systems can simulate intelligent processes such a learning, reasoning, and understanding symbolic information in context. The IBM Research's chess-playing program Deep Blue made history by beating world chess champion Gary Kasparov. AI research goes far beyond game playing and is at the forefront of many of the hottest areas of Artificial Intelligence. AI applications include electronic commerce, intelligent tutoring systems, knowledge management, performance management, and exploratory vision. IBM projects include Anti-Spam Research, Machine Learning for Coverage Directed test Generation, Personal Wizards, Swift File (An intelligent assistant for Lotus Notes that helps users organize their e-mail.

Blog 10a Thomas Barnett: The Pentagon's New map for war and peace

Thomas Barnett argues that the moral mission of the United States is to extend the benefits of globalization to the one-third of the world that is disconnected from the global community. America needs to create a more secure world by eliminating the seeds of conflict. In Barnett's world, Earth is made up of two groups, The first is the Functioning Core, nations like the U.S., Canada, Europe, Russia, China, Japan, and India. The second is the Non-Integrating Gap, made up of the Middle East, most of Africa, parts of Central and South America and parts of Asia. The Core is defined by economic, political and military stability while the Gap is home to poverty, authoritarian regimes and conflict. Led by the U.S., it is the Core's mission to shrink the Gap and usher in a new era of relative global stability. A transformation of a new military- one that would split the present force into two different organizations would be used to provide security to Gap nations which will slowly be added to the Core. The United States-with help from other nations-will play the role of global policeman and global SWAT officers.

I think it makes sense to realize that the trouble in the world stems from poverty, authoritarian regimes and conflict. Could Barnett's concepts be improved? How about trying out what he has proposed? The countries of the Functioning Core should take the lead and work together using their economic, political, and military stability to help the Gap people become self sufficient, democratic, peaceful societies.