Exhibit is claimed to be a "simple widgets tool" enabling mere mortals to make useful, interactive web-based visualisations of data sets easily. It is open source :) with samples like these:- plot birthrate against deathrate for various chosen groups of countries (select by language, population, location...)
- sort personal datas and photos in various ways
- let people find Recent United States Senate Bills according to various criteria
- map data
Labels: biblical.studies.online, communication, digital, teaching, technology
¶ 7:24 AM
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At SBL Seth told me that in exchange for a review here (and/or in a journal) his publisher would be willing to send me a copy of his new book:Sanders, Seth L. The Invention of Hebrew. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2009.
How could I refuse, the pre-publication hype and Seth's own descriptions of the book suggest that I'll either love or hate it. It seems it addresses my passionate interest in the intersection of culture and technology, especially writing and communications technologies. And it is focused on the "invention of Hebrew". My only sadness was that I had to wait till I returned home from a ten week working trip/holiday in Thailand and other interesting places. I'm home, and along with other goodies the book was waiting for me :) I'll post the review here in several parts, and I'll follow my usual procedure for reading a book (rather than for writing a traditional review, which aims to become a seamless whole) and post piecemeal as I read.
So first I looked at the most important bits (at least for getting an overall idea of a book):
- Publishers blurb
- Table of contents
- (Index etc.) not a read just a quick scan
- Preface (unless the first sentence or two suggest it is a waste of time)
The publishers blurb claims that Seth's book is groundbreaking: "absolutely innovative", "makes new knowledge", "first book to..." It also suggests that the work has an interesting thesis that Hebrew was a "self-conscious political language" promoting "a source of power previously unknown in written literature: 'the people' as the protagonist of religion and politics". Which is nicely sweeping and in a bookstore would lead me to open the work.
The preface is not at all one of the dead and dull ones that give "preface" a bad name, it is lively, quasi-autobiographical, and tells us that Seth intends to address loads of interesting questions:
- Language and identity: "Did writing always flow from your spoken language and everyday identity, or did the relationship change? And if it did could that change who you were?"
- Bible and politics The history of how "the Bible exercises power: through the manner in which it speaks to people". Have maximalists and minimalists both connived at reducing politics in Ancient Israel to the exercise of state power? (A question dear to the heart of every aspiring Anabaptist ;)
- Biblical Studies and the academy "What does biblical studies have to say to the rest of the academy?"
- Modernity's Ghosts: The Bible as Political Communication
- What Was the Alphabet For?
- Empires and Alphabets in Late Bronze Age Canaan
- The Invention of Hebrew in Iron Age Israel
All in all, I can hardly wait to read the "Introduction" and "Conclusion" tomorrow!
(But today I must make more progress on my chapter for The Gospel and the Land of Promise. My chapter will either be titled: "'Exile away from his land:' is landlessness the ultimate punishment in Amos?" or perhaps: "Land and earth, judgement and gospel in Amos".)
Labels: culture, hebrew, hebrew.bible, reading, technology, writing
¶ 3:40 PM
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I wholeheartedly agree about the use of endnotes. It drives me to distraction!! And if it really, truly still is cheaper to put notes at the end, the habit of indexing them as notes to ch 1, ch 2 etc, with new numbers for each chapter should be absolutely banned!! I rarely know what chapter I'm reading, so having to put a mark in my place, then find the beginning of the chapter and then find the appropriate note is tedious beyond measure. Sequential numbering throught the whole text and/or a notes section that says "notes from pp 75-87" is at least semi-reader friendly, but yes, footnotes get my vote every time.
By 
Judy Redman, at
February 4, 2010 9:19 AM
So you're back and into preparation for semester one?
By Stephen G, at
February 4, 2010 4:16 PM
Err, no. If I was preparing to teach in semester one I'd not have time to read really stimulating and ground breaking work, or writing my own articles, I'd be busy writing notes for stuidents and course outlines and the like. But as it is I am one of the fortunate few who are on sabbatical :) Hence the unusual number of good quality posts in the last few days ;)
By Tim, at
February 4, 2010 4:37 PM
I posted a long comment on Duane's blog, but since I am unlikely to post anything else here in the next while, on holiday with intermittent Internet, I'll reproduce here in even more extended and focused form, as a post.
Copyright, which seems to mean the right to forbid others to copy, may or may not be theft. Actually, of course it is NOT theft, producers of creative works have the right to obtain a reasonable (or at least today an unreasonable, if they are sufficiently famous) income from their work.
But copyright certainly IS the antithesis of science, since any science worthy of the name is open to debate and criticism.
Education is more interesting. There are two extreme cases:
- There is a commercial form of education that exists to ration and control the supply of licenced practitioners of various professions - that sort must love copyright.
- Then there is education as the process of learning to share in the process of growing and nurturing knowledge - that sort detests copyright as its antihesis.
As for education, the question is: Is technology science or commerce?
Now let's consider the case of theological study or education. Is copyright right or wrong? Is theology science (in this post I have tried consistently to use "science" in it's European sense of an open and criticisable body of knowledge) or commerce?
I know where I stand :)
Labels: copyright, culture, education, technology
¶ 5:23 PM
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It is!
Prezi lets me create something like a mindmap, and then share it with others, or use it to illustrate my talk. Click on the image below to explore my Prezi on biblical narrative it's my first try, it has no pictures, but already I can see this is a new and often better way to present ideas than the old slideshow was. An audience can zoom in and out (just click on something to zoom in there, click on the magnifying glass icon to zoom in, or the full screen icon to see the whole "page") or step forward or back through the presentation with the arrows.
PS:
Stephen asks (in the comments below) for a standalone file to run the presentation on a PC (without the need for an Internet connection) here it is. It is nearly a 10MB download as it includes the files for Prezi as well as the data for the presentation. Apparently it works on Windows and Mac (but not yet on Linux) so pretty portable!
Labels: teaching, technology
¶ 4:16 PM
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Can you general standalone movies that you could put on a PC in kiosk mode? That would be cool
By Stephen G, at
February 16, 2009 9:25 PM
And it works (they say) on both PC and Macs... how cool is that?
By Tim, at
February 17, 2009 7:36 AM
Dubbed "the explainer" by Wired magazine, Michael Wesch is a cultural anthropologist exploring the impact of new media on society and culture. After two years studying the impact of writing on a remote indigenous culture in the rain forest of Papua New Guinea, he has turned his attention to the effects of social media and digital technology on global society. His videos on technology, education, and information have been viewed by millions, translated in over ten languages, and are frequently featured at international film festivals and major academic conferences worldwide.Prof Wesch has a stimulating post on Participatory Media Literacy: Why it matters, he draws heavily on a fine essay Participative Pedagogy for a Literacy of Literacies, by Howard Rheingold. With one of the longest running stimulating gurus of digital collaboration (Rheingold) and one of the hottest - recently voted Prof of the Year - US tertiary teachers around (Wesch) there are plenty of stimulating ideas to reflect on.
Howard Rheingold is a critic and writer; his specialties are on the cultural, social and political implications of modern communication media such as the Internet, mobile telephony and virtual communities (a term he is credited with inventing). He is the author of The Virtual Community and Smart Mobs. website: rheingold.com vlog: vlog.rheingold.comReading the two underlines WHY teaching about digital literacy (beyond the standard "how to use the library catalogue, online databases and Zotero to research and write an essay in a Wordprocessor") is vital whether one is teaching Chemistry, Anthropology or Old Testament.
Just as it was not merely the technology of moveable type that changed the economics of literature in early modern Europe, but even more the ways that technology was adopted and used that revolutionised the culture and the thought that changed "everything". If Luther and others had not adopted the technology and used it to undermine the old power structures in politics, theology and the academy the technology alone might have enabled a very different world, where Rome and the aristocratic families of Europe licenced print and censored its contents...
In 2009 the failure of banks and auto manufacturers demonstrates that the notion of a "free market" that can adjust itself successfully is evidently false. Yet if the new(ish) communications technologies are to have a liberating effect (like that of print) we have a greater need of an open market than ever. To achieve this we need literate users using the technologies, so that those who would harness them for their own benefit alone can be hampered as Luther's rude and crude cartoons scandalised those in power in late medieval Europe.
As Rheingold tries to demonstrate only a participative pedagogy is up to this task. So, the deep questions are:
- Can teachers learn fast enough? or
- Will the volunteerism of "Web 2.0" be enough to open the doors?
Labels: culture, digital, teaching, technology, thinking
¶ 10:29 AM
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Hey, I've been thinking a lot about this topic through my work at Project New Media Literacies, and I'm thrilled to see so many people searching for actionable items in respect to participatory pedagogy. You can read a recent blogpost I wrote on this here: http://newmedialiteracies.org/blog/2009/01/and-what-rough-beast-its-hour.php
By Jenna, at
January 9, 2009 2:11 AM
Some authors achieve this status because their thinking is so clear, and their communication so straight and clear that one must either agree or disagree with them - they polarise. [Some of us are so good at seeing every facet of an issue that following our thought is like walking through untracked forest, a series of tiny decisions,rather than one momentous one...] Lewis earned his "brand" that way, and so has Carson.
He addresses a Christian approach to technology, and begins (predictaby) with Rom 12:2 and (also predictably?) 2 Cor 10:5. He states that "the most dangerous movements in any age are those that are so widely assumed that it is very hard to see them" supporting his case with reference to history, though any cross-cultural worker will be as aware that today's assumptions by Western Christians look very different in most of the world.
After an interesting, though to readers of this blog unsurprising, rehearsal of some features of current digital techno-culture he concludes:
We need to hear competing voices of information from the world around us, use our time in the digital world wisely, and learn to shut that world down when it becomes more important to get up in the morning and answer emails than it does to get up and read the Bible and pray. We may also learn much from church history, where we observe fellow believers in other times and cultures learning the shape of faithfulness. We begin to detect how easily the "world" may squeeze us into its mold. We soon learn that adequate response is more than mere mental resolve, mere disciplined observance of the principle "garbage in, garbage out" (after all, we are what we think), though it is not less than that. The gospel is the power of God issuing in salvation. Empowered by the Holy Spirit and living in the shadow of the cross and resurrection, we find ourselves wanting to be conformed to the Lord Jesus, wanting to be as holy and as wise as pardoned sinners can be this side of the consummation.Do read the whole editorial (HTML or PDF), and since Themelios does not have a comment feature (how I wish the church, and especially Evangelical Christians, would recognise that openness and discussion are healthy and not persist in old authoritarian modes of discourse) you are welcome to post any short responses
Labels: internet, technology, theology, thinking
¶ 12:54 PM
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What if... we really used Moodle to the full
Some years ago at Carey we began to "move our distance teaching to the next level". Part of the plan was to install, and make good use of, an open source (means free) online "Course Management System" called Moodle.
Moodle allows:
- a central store of documentation for a course, which can be updated as soon as something changes
- students to be reminded of assignments that are due soon and other important dates
- one central place to email a whole class
- a place to store and deliver marked assignments
- a place to provide course related material like pictures, videos, links, PDF files of readings that did not get into the course anthology...
- teachers to set simple "quizzes" (with questions in various formats like multiple choice, short answer etc.) that can either count towards the course marks or simply provide feedback to students or check that they have done required reading
- cheap - no software costs, and even a professionally hosted option is not expensive
- easy - it takes very little time and instruction for even our less techie colleagues to work the basics, and usually not too long for someone to show you how achieve the less obvious goals
- scalable - anything from one course with one teacher to the whole British Open University (which with over 150,000 students is a but bigger than the average theological seminary ;-)
- fairly easy to manage, and there are plenty of people around with experience who can help.
Some courses at Carey really quickly began to make real use of the system. Brian Smith (our retired principal who had not used a computer before retirement) clocked up the most student contributions to a discussion simply by asking really thought -provoking leading questions. I used the tests to reward students with up to 10% simply by doing the "required reading" and as a result turned what I think before was 80% of the class in real life do about 20% of the reading, to 80% of the class do at least 80% of the reading.
But there are gaps. Some teachers hardly use Moodle - though not difficult it is one more thing to learn in a life that is too busy. Few of us actually get organised to post pictures and links relevant to our courses... So, implementation and take up of the possibilities are a bit hit and miss...
What if...
- We had a "Moodle consultant" (alias a technically minded senior student) who could spend an hour or two each week helping us to use Moodle more or better - guess how much more most teachers would achieve!
- We had a policy that all teachers and students in every class promised to take a serious look at the discussion forums for that class at least twice each week (maybe one or two hours of work to timetable in each week, but think of the greater communication with distance students and how much more time effective than individual emails replying one-on-one to questions)
- One of the Moodle consultant's jobs was to check what pictures and other resources we used in teaching the class onsite, and helped us make them available to distance students.
- A scattering of our courses set as an assignment to present readings online and then interact with other students presentations - I have seen such an assignment put a student in South-East Asia in contact with one in the South Island of NZ and "watched" the experience open the student's eyes to a wider world producing real formative change.
Labels: distance, internet, teaching, technology
¶ 1:59 PM
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Tim
This article is coming along well and I hope others add their penny's worth.
When I taught some online courses at Whitley College, one of the assignment tasks was to contribute to online discussion on the lecture--about 250 words each week with encouragement to interact with each other.
We did have classes each week but also distance students were part of the course.
Some people really got into the online discussion with enthusiasm. Others hung back. It was important to give sufficient marks for this to be deemed to be worthwhile and important.
One guy said that as an introvert he liked the opportunity to reflect on his contribution before posting it to the class discussion, whereas in the real class he often hung back.
As a lecturer, the first time I ran this I discovered there were more students and more work in posting lectures and resources online. I did not give the time to stirring the online discussion and interacting and I think online discussion requires this support from the teacher.
The next time around and subsequent times I did not employ a 'Moodle Consultant' or the like but simply a tutor, part of whose job was to stir the online discussion and to chase up the online tasks. I found this to be a great help and he did act as a consultant, especially for students who were emailing assignments for the very first time.
By Geoff Pound, at
June 4, 2008 6:10 AM
Geoff, yes, the time delay (and probably the quasi-anonymity) of online asynchronous "discussion forums" is great for us introverts, but teachers still have to watch for the non-participants and encourage them.
Your "tutor" sounds like a more upmarket version of my (grandly named ;-) Moodle Consultant. Perhaps different teachers would benefit more from each:
the low tech great teacher (like Brian Smith) could use a Moodle Consultant - assisting with some of the technical stuff, like reformating pictures to suitable size and uploading them;
the more techie could use a tutor to assist with the actual teaching (e.g. I am not good at "stirring the pot" as a peace maker I tend to try to calm it too much ;-) a "stirrer" like you describe would be great.)
By Tim, at
June 4, 2008 6:23 AM
By the way, I am trying out BlipTV as a place to store the videos, I have uploaded some trials to The World of the Old Testament, of course the interviews with theology students and teachers in Sri Lanka will go on Wordpress, who have just upped the free storage to 3GB, what good timing!
Labels: email, technology
¶ 6:43 AM
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Here are two quick and dirty screencasts to demonstrate:
Labels: bibliography, references, teaching, technology, zotero
¶ 4:26 PM
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i use endnote (it comes with the school i attend). do you have any thoughts on the comparison between the two?
By Tim Ricchuiti, at
January 22, 2008 5:32 PM
Endnote is brilliant too, ten years ago it was superb, in between it began to slow my computer a lot. The later versions (people tell me) do not have as dire an effect :) However, Zotero is free, lightweight fast and does what I want... If I was writing a thesis again and my institution provided Endnote I'd go with that to get the support.
Where I am we can't afford to provide Endnote, and Zotero is superb. If Endnote has features I need that Zotero does not I do not yet know what they are ;)
By Tim, at
January 22, 2008 5:38 PM
I've tried the Mac OS X integration (with MS Word v.X) and it works quite nicely. The only thing I'd like is some more control over variant styles within a citation (but maybe that's hidden in a preference box somewhere) and a bigger selection of output styles.
Also, do you know anything about "Scholar's Aid". Seems to bill itself as a cheap (or free for the Lite version) alternative to some of the flasher systems. Only for Windows though, and I'm not sure about integration with Word/Open Office.
By Stephen G, at
January 22, 2008 10:50 PM
Clearly very, very cool!! I don't have time to play with Zotero at the moment, so can't compare. Two things I wondered about it:
1. how many different referencing styles does it have available and can you produce your own if it doesn't have one you want (because you are writing for some obscure religious journal)?
2. what happens when you add further references to the same book? Does it manage ibid and short forms of the citation in your footnotes or od you have to do that manually?
If it does both these things, it is probably a very good substitute for Endnote. If not, it is still very impressive for free software.
By Judy Redman, at
January 22, 2008 11:27 PM
American Political Science Association
American Psychological Association
American Sociological Association (Author-Date)
Chicago Manual of Style (Author-Date format)
Chicago Manual of Style (Full Note with Bibliography)
Chicago Manual of Style (Note with Bibliography)
Chicago Manual of Style (Note without Bibliography)
Harvard Reference format 1 (Author-Date)
IEEE
Modern Humanities Research Association (Note with Bibliography)
Modern Humanities Research Association (Note without Bibliography)
Modern Language Association
National Library of Medicine
Nature Journal
Though you can't (unless a computer geek) roll your own there is a big user-base and some institutional support, so they seem to add more all the time.
Zoterro handles ibid. and short forms as this example formatted in Chicago (Full note with Bibliography) shows:
1. Robert Alter, The World of Biblical Literature (New York: BasicBooks, 1992).
2. Robert. Alter, The Art of Biblical Narrative (New York: Basic Books, 1981).
3. Erich Auerbach, Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature (Princeton University Press, 2003), 12.
4. Alter, The World of Biblical Literature, 41.
5. Ibid., 12.
6. Alter, The Art of Biblical Narrative.
By Tim, at
January 23, 2008 6:59 AM
Stephen,
Sorry I have not tried Scholar's Aid, I used to love Endnote, then it "went MS" got feature bloat, and tried to do everything. While poaching my eggs for breakfast (at lunchtime) it slowed what I was actually trying to do to a crawl. So I dumped it and went manual for several years. Now I'm getting hooked on Zotero. I do hope it does not catch MS ;)
By Tim, at
January 23, 2008 7:03 AM
Tim, I'm one of the few people I know who hasn't had any serious dramas with EndNote (though I've only used the older versions 5, 6 & 7 on the Mac). I do know there have been more tales of grief with the later versions though.
The few trivial problems I've had have been the odd error in a citation style, the lack of a style (e.g. McIntosh (for Australian theological publicaitons) or an SBL variant), or a missing type of reference (e.g. book review in old EndNote). Most of which I've worked around.
On thing I loved about EndNote was the ability to connect to the various OPACs around the world with little or no hassle. No need to deal with different OPAC interfaces. Great for chasing down references when publication details vary by country. Zotero can do similar things, but it feels a little more clunky and I personally don't like working in web browsers (which includes webmail and similar - and why I use Ecto to blog with).
By Stephen G, at
January 23, 2008 10:48 AM
It sounds as though there are some things that Zotero can't do that Endnote can. It has literally hundreds of styles available for even reasonably obscure publications (although not Le Museon) and you can usually modify an existing style that is similar if you can't find "your" style. Having said that, there are still some things that need hand-editing in Endnote when you are writing for some of the older theological journals that haven't changed their styles since the mid 1930s!! And the Endnote SBL style isn't quite right.
A word of caution about WorldCat citations - they come from library catalogues and are not always 100% correct because they are put in by human beings. :-) You should always check that the citation you have downloaded is exactly the same as the book you are using. And as Stephen says, beware of the fact that there are British and US editions of some books published in the same year which are sufficiently different to cause problems if you reference the wrong edition.
Jim West is seeking your help to imitate the (possibly mythical) legend of king Canute. He wants to hold back the tide of technology. The technology of blogging works by allowing several things - all of them available separately elsewhere, but which in conjunction make the form what it is:- the writable web - like a content management system blog software makes it easy to write webpages, and insert them into a working site
- RSS feeds - allowing a loose "community" of others to read what you write, as you add something new, thus making the system more time dependent than the conventional web but also adding focus and greater sense of "community"
- links to other blogs - while not an obligatory part of the "system" almost all blogs have a "blogroll" of (some of) the blogs the author(s) read and think "like" their own
- "conversation" - while comments are not obligatory as a software feature, the genre of "blog" works through a high proportion of material showing interaction between different people about the topic, where the comment feature is not provided (and sometimes when it is) this takes place through linked posts.
Jim seeks to define an in-crowd, he does this honestly and exclusively by defining who is "out", while Duane rises to the bait and seeks to enlarge the borders through a Modest Suggestion. Now, if the biblical studies cloud round Abnormal Interests was the same as, or included the biblical studies cloud round Dr Jim West etc. etc... then we could neatly define the biblioblogsphere. But they are not, each writer includes some, but not others of the putative bibliobloggers. The attempt at definition, whether inclusive (Duane) or exclusive (Jim), fails. Or at best only offers an approximate answer, this blog is a bibiloblog with a 65% degree of probability! The technology itself resists the attempt.
The sub-title of this post may be explained by this old post.
Labels: blog, culture, technology
¶ 8:44 AM
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It is often the simplest ideas that are the most useful. From the most physical, like those few grains of rice in the salt celler that stop the salt coagulating by absorbing moisture, to the most cerebral, like the concept of zero. Donald Norman, author of the 1988 classic critique of the way VCRs (remember them?) work The Design of Everyday Things, has done it again. His new book, The Design of Future Things, deals with the failure of much technology design to relate well to/with humans.Some machines "think" and the relationship works, a clothes drier that senses when the clothes are dry and switches off... but other machines drive us crazy. Like the college photocopier, I put a book on the glass, carefully positioned so that the left page will nicely fill an A4 sheet (A4 is global standard paper size for North American readers) that means an enlargement to about 133%, so I type that in and choose the correct paper tray. This will produce a nice clean, readable copy for the students. I press "Start", and the machine whirs. It "thinks" for itself. It's sensors inform it's "brain": the page is B4 size, it is placed crosswise, but the user has chosen the A4 normal direction tray (and the users commands, or at least some of them, must be obeyed)... So it outputs a sheet with the whole double page spread of the book shrunk to fit cross ways on the page, each word a marvel of micro-minituarisation.
It sounds as if there is a problem of communication between the photocopier and me (actually it is not just this photocopier, the previous one was nearly as bad) perhaps counselling would help?
Enter Donald Norman, talking about Delft (yes the city in Holland) apparently the city square in Delft (I have not been there, so cannot confirm this observation - perhaps you have and can confirm it for us?) the city square in Delft is full of pedestrians and cyclists all busily wending their ways in different directions at different speeds. Yet there are seldom collisions. Now if each pedestrian kept their eyes open (especially the ones in the back of their heads) and carefully dodged the bikes all hell would break loose and the city hospital would be full to overflowing. It is because the pedestrians, sensibly - but counter-intuitively, do not attempt to dodge the cyclists, but plod predictably on ignoring the bikes whizzing past, that the cyclists can easily avoid the slower obstacles in their path, and concentrate on not hitting other cyclists.
Donald Norman sensibly notes:
If our smart devices were understandable and predictable, we wouldn’t dislike them so much....The simple idea that is really useful? Make things predictable. If I simply put a book on the copier and press "start" let the machine make its best guess as to the output, but if I make settings myself then, do what I blasted tell you and don't even try to think! If the stupit machine would learn that lesson we'd get along fine.
PS if all goes well Barbara and I go off to the bach (or see location) for our summer holidays today, so not more posts till next year...
Labels: design, interface, technology
¶ 6:52 AM
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If someone were to give me US$299 (or whatever the Education price is - not displayed on the website) I'd love to use the full version!
So, when they emailed me about a new "Virtual Classroom" tool (WiZiQ) for Moodle (the Open Source Learning Management System) I became really interested. If I was teaching next semester at Carey I'd try it out (but I am on sabbatical :) ...
I wonder how well the two-way audio would work over dialup, let alone video, so for now this is a dream of the future for many of our students.
Labels: teaching, technology
¶ 7:53 AM
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Hello Tim,
This is Umesh from authorPOINT team, thank you for your comments on aP Lite and WiZiQ. You got that all correct but for one thing. You can actually upload aP Lite output to your own servers (manually ofcourse) and they would play fine as any other html page OR embed SWF tag depending upon which mode you are interested in and how much you can code at your end :).
FAQ at http://www.authorgen.com/authorpoint-lite-free/faqs.aspx#6 has the details of possible distribution modes of the output. We did not include these within the software to keep the installer size as low as possible and to keep the UI easy enough for maximum possible range of users.
You can write to me directly at umesh@authorgen.com if you feel like discussing this more, such discussions help us immensely to plan the product further.
By 
, at
November 26, 2007 11:39 PM
Photo by kitsu
Writing the post below, It's not what we're teaching, it's HOW we are teaching! Reminded me of Amber's post We’re Living in Their World Now. Her account introduces a teacher, incensed (and I think also in-sensed) at a student daring to email another teacher during her class:
Amber responded:“Well, that’s when I banned computers from my classroom,” she said smugly. “That fixed that problem up right quick.”“It’s probably inconvenient for them to have to use pen and paper but it’s just so rude for them not to be focused on my lecture!”.
Amen! She also imagined a start-the-year speech introducing the new batch of students:
But, we still expect students, old and young in the age of MSN and TXT to sit, often in ROWS, and look to the front, while someone "delivers information and ideas"!?
Labels: education, technology
¶ 12:22 PM
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Hi Tim,
I was seven when Star Wars came out. I've never had to be connected to another phone via the operator, and I WAS able to record songs from the radio (my parents couldn't at my age)!
Yes, "we still expect students, old and young in the age of MSN and TXT to sit, often in ROWS, and look to the front, while someone "delivers information and ideas"... If the person being listened to knows what they're talking about and is open to sharing their perspective beyond the lecture script, there's value added!
I'd be interested in an unpack of the statement, "If liberal education is going to make progress and be of any value in this culture, it has to embrace the way people actually learn and consume information today, not they way they did in the days of Socrates, or even our parents. Or even, truly, us." Education is not about 'consuming information', MSN or TXT. I think what is sorely needed is an honest critique of "the way people actually learn and consume information today", which tends to be seriously lacking. The reference to Socrates is a really interesting one, particularly as he of all philosophers was most interested in the sort of dialogue that many hold to be the way forward for education in these eTimes!
By Nichthus, at
October 23, 2007 10:13 AM
Thanks, again for another perceptive comment, not least for the reminder that I should think twice before copying bits from a post that has me cheering! Sometimes the fine rhetoric misses the mark on a closer look :(
Though, I am still in agreement with what I take to be the overall intent and tone.
So, when you write:
'Yes, "we still expect students, old and young in the age of MSN and TXT to sit, often in ROWS, and look to the front, while someone "delivers information and ideas"...'
I just have to question, while I agree that as you continue:
'If the person being listened to knows what they're talking about and is open to sharing their perspective beyond the lecture script, there's value added!'
Even information delivery via lecture theatre can be ameliorated, but one talks to many is not a good way to deliver information, or even ideas. We should use it for what it can be good, to assist people to process, critique and understand the ideas and "information". After all is that not (again as you suggest) what Socrates did right?
But the kind of class room in the video is not conducive to that sort of engagement, it tends towards the old information from the front copied, or heard, by the rows but sadly left largely unprocessed. Unless we do things in, with and around the class room that subvert its influence!
By Tim, at
October 23, 2007 10:37 AM
Hi Tim,
Yes, I agree that we can and should be doing so much more as educators to teach well - and I agree that the lecture should be done well, and not be the sole part of an educational mix.
You wrote, "one talks to many is not a good way to deliver information, or even ideas". How about "One writes to many?" This of course can be implemented in e-learning 1.0 as "one writes to many" in conversation.
I applaud your last point - solid learning really does require process. But process without information is like oil without machinery; we need to take a holistic approach to teaching and learning.
I will be over your way on Monday... see you then!
By Nichthus, at
October 23, 2007 3:52 PM
Each poet was given a stimulus, so Marge Piercy got this quote about exodus:
She writes - at least on this occasion, with a short time limit - by slapping the main ideas down fast, and then tinkering till it is "right".Rabbi Mordecai Finley
IFbook also pointed to Ian Spiro's fascinating Dlog, at neat Javascript (I think) application that records what you write... So here is me writing a short fragment titled "Writing". (You need Firefox or Safari for this to work, apologies to those with sub-standard browsers ;-) for such impaired folk, and for those without the time (or too lazy) to go watch as you read here is the (final) text:
I've now started wondering what this process does to our reading...
I wonder how such a writing "space" might affect the process of composition. For certainly the "word processor" impacts the way we write [do I need to check the reference for that book?]...
Might putting a recording like this on a blog inhibit, or would we all - good exhibitionists that bloggers are - write rubbish at great speed, or indeed learn to think BEFORE we write - now that would be novel ;-)
I started this with no idea where it was going... and I still do not know how to title it! [I must have missed that bit in skimming the instructions!]
This whole experiment was stimulated by reading the post on the IFbook blog at http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2007/06/poetry_in_motion.html
and then looking at some of the poems they link to, and then wondering, how would such a tool (if always available) impact writing - after all writing is as interesting as reading!
... and how cool it would be if someone produced an edition of Amos that reproduced this using Wolff's redaction critical analysis to make the "edits" would one "see" the canonical shaping process at work more clearly? When I have time I must try...
Labels: technology, writing
¶ 7:41 AM
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According to the Reuters report, "Developing nations to test new $150 laptops" the One Laptop per Child project should start delivering the first few thousand innovative tough laptops to "to eight nations in February".This project is smart enough, new enough and visionary enough that anyone with a love of technology and half an imagination is bound to be excited by the possibilities. But recently I've begun to think of the possible unintended consequences.
These first 2,500 machines will inevitably be concentrated in villages associated with prominent people. But what about the next million or six? If they too are concentrated in the hands of the villages, tribes, and language groups of the powerful will Western altruism in trying to bridge one "digital divide" widen another? Or will organisations like World Vision ensure that they also get in significant numbers to the least "advantaged"?
And, what about the effect on child labour? It takes very little imagination, and kids even in the poorest places have huge imaginations, to envisage thousands of ways these laptops can be used to make a buck (and adult daily wages are little more than that) using these machines. Will pictures like these:
Labels: africa, one.laptop, technology
¶ 8:59 AM
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Did you listen to this interview Kim Hill did a week or two back? All about the OLPC project.
http://www.radionz.co.nz/audio/national/sat/chris_dibona
By Stephen G, at
February 22, 2007 10:37 AM
Thanks for the link! Not only a fun interview, but listening gave me a bright idea, within a year or three these (multimedia) laptops will be in villages across the world. Many of the (grand)parents of these kids will be illiterate and/or in hard to reach places... what a great way to distribute Scripture in mp3 format. Let the Bible be heard in places print Bibles cannot reach!
I've registered xobible.com and xobible.org already!
By Tim, at
February 22, 2007 4:32 PM
