PLE Short Rundown

Thankyou to all who have participated in some way or another to this blog and my associated wiki over the course of this semester. This has been my first blog and I have found it invaluable in collecting in one online environment my thoughts and related resources to, not only material pertaining to the Flexible Learning Environments subject, but also material, videos, quotes and artwork that I find interesting and inspiring in general. During the course of the semester I have had to master technological skills that I had not previously used in my previous educational experience and this PLE helped serve and a focal point for several of these skills. Particularly helpful was the capacity to embed video clips from Youtube, as this was the method we used in our VLE peer review to post instructional videos we made onto the blog after we had created them and uploaded them onto Youtube. The ability to have everything linked together on this PLE, as well as this PLE linked to other blogs and wiki's, is definitely an important skill for educators of the future, and I plan on continuing to maintain this blog as well as my wiki into the future. This blog has been used mainly as a resource centre for all the interesting material I have found over the semester, as well as to serve as a working link to colleagues PLE's. It is great to be able to collect online resources all in one place and to have easy and convenient access to everything everybody else is doing. The wiki I created, whose link can be found in a previous post on this blog, is designed to serve as a repository for ideas and information related to the interface between Geometry and Art in Education. This is something I am passionately interested in and I hope that in the future the knowledge and skills I have gained in this subject will enable the sharing of resources by an online community of students and educators with like-minded values and goals.

'What Teachers Make'

This guy is a teacher turned slam poet who is a vocal advocate of the 'nobility of teaching'. His goal is to create 1,000 new teachers through 'poetry, persuasion and perseverance'. His name is Taylor Mali and he is worth a look.

MICROBLOGGING

The 7 Things We should Know about Microblogging

http://www.educause.edu/Resources/7ThingsYouShouldKnowAboutMicro/174629

FLE NING

I joined the Flexible Learning Environments Ning. My page can be found at http://flexiblelear.ning.com/profile/JulianLumb

Anyone heard of Jaron Lanier

I read a book by this guy last year. Thought it was worth mentioning him as he is somewhat of a cyber-philosopher/critic. He is a computer scientist and has some interesting criticisms of current cyber-culture in general, including criticisms of Social Objects (SO's) and social networking sites. He encourages people to create their own blogs from the ground up and not rely on pre-made formats for their online identities. He acknowledges that many of his opinions are not shared by his collegues.




His criticism aims at several targets which are at different level of abstraction:

* any attempt to create one final authoritative bottleneck which channels the knowledge onto society is wrong, regardless whether it is a Wikipedia or any algorithmically created system producing meta informations,
* sterile style of wiki writing is undesirable because:
o it removes the touch with the real author of original information, it filters the subtlety of his opinions, essential information (e.g. incl. graphical context of original sources) is lost,
o it creates the false sense of authority behind the information,
* collective authorship tends to produce or align to mainstream or organizational beliefs,
* he worries that collectively created works may be manipulated behind the scene by anonymous groups of editors who bear no visible responsibility,
o and that this kind of activity might create future totalitarian systems as these are basically grounded on misbehaved collectives which oppress individuals.


NOTE: the above dot points are taken from wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaron_Lanier). Funnily enough I don't think this source of information would be something that approved of by the aforementioned author.

Critics Battle Over Online Learning

Here is a link to page that has several links to articles presenting some perspectives of online learning, some quite critical of the direction of technology in education.

http://www.findingdulcinea.com/news/Americas/July-08/Critics-Battle-Over-Online-Learning.html

This is a great video. Very optimistic and exciting, an important video for the educators of the future. It ties in strongly with our conversations regarding Social Objects (SO's) and Learning Objects (LO's) and gives examples of the kind of large scale projects being undertaken at the moment to use technology to transform education. Some great ideas for technology in maths education towards the end.

WIKI!

I have created my own Wiki. I have set it up as a repository for info relating to the teaching of Geometry through Art and Art through Geometry. Check it out, link is below

http://jlumb.wikispaces.com/

Video Screen Capture

Our VLE Group used a video capture software called JING to record the instructional videos posted previously on this blog. The instructional videos were for our VLE peer review and we were happy with JING as a tool for video and audio screen capture. Prior to us discovering JING we tried out several other video screen capture options including CAMSTUDIO, WINK, SNAGIT, BETA and ran into technical difficulties at some point with each of them. We were happy to discover JING as it seemed simpler and more user friendly than some of the others. However, in order to export recording in mp4 format (as opposed to the default swf.) we had to get a yearly subscription, this was only $15US and well worth it. Even with the subscription the length of video recordings was 5 minutes which was inconvenient as we had to split the VLE tutorial into two parts. I recommend giving JING a have included a link below.

http://www.jingproject.com/pro/

VLE Project Instruction video 1-login and quiz

Here is the first instruction video for the peer review of Assignment 2. In this video we demonstrate (i) login and (ii) creation of a quiz in the Moodle VLE. In the second video we demonstrate adding resources into the VLE and how to participate in the online forum.

VLE Project Instruction video 2-resourse and forum

Here is the second instructional video for the peer review of Assignment 2.

I made this one messing around with the logistic equation

Some quotes I find interesting...


Why is it drug addicts and computer afficionados are both called users?
Clifford Stoll

I spend almost as much time figuring out what's wrong with my computer as I do actually using it.
Clifford Stoll, Silicon Snake Oil, 1995

Data is not information, information is not knowledge, knowledge is not understanding, understanding is not wisdom.
Clifford Stoll

A box of crayons and a big sheet of paper provides a more expressive medium for kids than computerized paint programs.
Clifford Stoll

Computers are incredibly fast, accurate, and stupid; humans are incredibly slow, inaccurate and brilliant; together they are powerful beyond imagination.
Albert Einstein

You have just received the Amish Computer Virus. Since the Amish don't have computers, it is based on the honor system. So please delete all the files from your computer. Thank you for you cooperation.
Unknown

People say that if you play Microsoft CD's backwards, you hear satanic things, but that's nothing, because if you play them forwards, they install Windows. Unknown

I do not fear computers. I fear lack of them.
Isaac Asimov

Microsoft: 'You've got questions. We've got dancing paper clips.'
Unknown

This guy is interesting. He is a scientist who, while jumping all over the place in his talk, has some interesting stuff to say about science education. He demonstrates a prac that he does with his year 8's where they approximately measure the speed of sound. He also is of the opinion that we should get computers out of schools rather than get more into schools, he doesn't really elaborate on this point however i plan on searching the web for more material featuring him as it may be of theoretical interest for this subject.

Welcome to my first blog!
Created to serve as a Personal Learning Environment and Mathematical Art Gallery.