Complaints about Technology

"Any teacher who can be replaced by technology can't be because students and administrators don't usually know how to use technology, and because technology is not dependable enough, yet" - Mark Johnson 12/18/2011

I have made a large number of movies and uploaded them to vimeo and to YouTube. ASometimes, I find an error in my upload and I go back to my Moviemaker file to edit the movie so that I can upload the corrected version. But, windows movie maker often looses some of the video files. then, I need to reload them. This does not always work. It happens often with movies that are highly edited with splits and that are longer than 10 minutes. I need to find a better movie making editor to download because I can't depend on Windows Movie Maker anymore. The problem might be with my bran new, shiny latest version of computer. I called for support to Dell and they said there are few techys available to fix my new version of windows, etc. I know, I should have bought a Mac, I suppose. Now, I need to experiment with a Mac to find out. Oh well, now I'll need another bedroom in my house too.

Last Class

To teach Ella, I would have a class WIKI and she would at least be co-manager. I would ask Ella to link games appropriate for each content area. Ella would be presentation coach and teach other students how to make presentations using a variety of presentation platforms that she would use and showcase as president of technology club. I will be faculty sponsor of the technology Club. Ella would prepare scripts for my television presentations, and cohost our TV production. Why not?

What did I learn during this semester? I learned that there are a lot of digtital tools that can be adapterd to engage students with content. these include presentation programs,movie making programs, cartoon making programs and web page programs like Google Sites, Wikispaces and pbworks. I learned that for the most part neither students nor teachers generally know how to use or adapt technology for use in their classroom teaching. I learned that I can figuire out how to usae most programs on my own hook, get help from the programs help desks and adapt programs to my own teaching style. I learned that I want to teach by distance education and by Internet. I also learned that I want to hit a lot of kids in schools, amd I would like to really wack them ahrd and fast like my cat does her kittens. I learned that the suystem is so broken that it wastes tax doillars to the max. I learned that I want judges to substitute teach. I learned that my classmates could really get into the work once they had the time and that was really cool. I learned how to use technology to wow people during an interview.

Exit Slip Games

I didn't realize there were so many educational games on the Internet. i ahve never played any myself except for the types that were were assigned to review in social studies classes where I substituted.

I haven't had the time to do much searching for games and maybe I will do more of this over Christmas.

IRLO Reflection:Scratch Scratch, Maybe.

I enjoyed learning Scratch from MIT.edu. I used the answer until correct function to develop the interactive part. This function might be great for mathematics or chemistry problems. But, I question it for ecology where correct answers are often more complex than single words and where multiple answers can be correct when given in any order. I think that multiple answer questions will frustrate students. I often found that I could not get the correct answer because I typed in the correct answer as a plural rather than a singular noun. Also, answers that included multiple nouns did not often work evewn when typed in correctly. I even found in one example that my correct answer had an extra space between words that caused incorrect answers everytime I thought I was correct. It was very hard to see the extra space. Another prtoblem is that long, multiple scripts using controllers often skipped questions,arts odd questions or sprites. But, this did not happen everytime. But, it did happen most of the time with the clam; not everytime.

The way I would use scratch in biology is to have students use it to demonstrate their learning. I would gelp them and we would interact whil;e learning both Scratch and academic content. I simply don't trust a lengthy scratch project to operate effectively in a biology classroom without significant support. I do think that students wouild like learning it and making presentations just as I did. So, in interactive F2F computer lab sessions, I think it will be outstanding. But used alone for independant use by students, I think it is standing out in the rain until mit.edu improves upon the way controllers connect, and the reliability and flexibility of the answer until correct operators/controllers. See the screencast of my project below.

Screencast of an Old Blog

Or, is this a blog of a sceencast of an old blog.  Maybe it is.  Whatever.  It's hard to find something that is buried in a cyberbucket under a bunch of other cyberstuff.

http://www.screencast.com/users/mjohn631/folders/Jing/media/1790335b-f208-48e1-aca0-b17d6377379c   and, I am trying to embed the screencast.com file and while that works it embeds larger than this blog page.  I am not certain that I can make it smaller.  I will try.  I found that the links I point to all do work fine.  The Gobi Desert video that I made a screencast of would now be embedded since you taught me how to do that.  I tried to do it in an  e-mail but that doesn't work.

I guess I have to buy a different version of screencast in order to change the screencast size of an embedded video. So, I can use the flip cam to video the screencast and then upload it to vimeo if I have any space left. Then I can embed that here. Ok, I try.

Gambling OnLine PSA

I had previously made a video with moviemaker.  So, This project was relatively easy for me.  Initially, I spent a few days thinking about different subjects and trying to relate them to different themes of digital citizenship.  At first, I wanted to tackle "Occupy Wallstreet".  My passion was colored by past experiences with civil rights demonstrations and demonstrations against the government that got us out of Viet Nahm.  This violence changed the U.S.A.  I would not be surprised if "occupy wallstreet" ultimately has similar success.  It begann after social media was used to revolutionize northern Africa.  I suspected this to happen here too.  I was also enjoying a 25th anniversary of Les Miserable and thinking about The French Revolution and the fact that the Poor executed so many of the wealthy French who controlled the government there.  The very idea that it could not happen here does not exist in my mind.  Prevention of revolution is why the government forces children to recite the Pledge every day.  I believe that the brainwashing of children is the greater crime.  I say, "Off with their heads!"

Then, I considered the e-commerce theme and realized that I had participated in Western Union transfers of money and remember being threatened with prison if I failed to report people who either sent and received money by wire when it concerned gambling.  The federal government has standing to prosecute anyone who might send an e-mail across state lines because that is interstate communication and related e-commerce is interstate trade.  So, even when no state law is violated a citizen can be prosecuted for a non-crime in federal court.  Interesting, don't you think?  Big brother is watching you, after all.

So, I e-mailed my idea and got one fellow (not really a fellow) student response to join in the effort.  I was never able to contact the student again.  So, I proceeded on my own using volunteeers.  I had previously written a brief script and identified the punch line to use up front, "You can't win!"  Of course, you can't.  You can gamble over the Internet, but because you can not legally transfer money associated with gambling in that manner, you can't win!

I spent about 2 hours making a series of video clips and about another 2 hours making and uploading the video to Vimeo.  Now, I am using 1-2 hours more to write this memoir and to embed the finished PSA into the blog.  I just learned to embed and I like it very much. 

I enjoy making the movies and as a result, I will use this a lot in class to have students construct their own learning.  I will enjoy helping them.  Maybe, other students will ask me for help when they try to do the EDUC 331 assignment during the last minute.  I will be happy to help them.  I think the hardest part for everybody will be identifying a message and coming up with a script.

One question is whether the PSA is appropriate for K-12 learners.  Except for my last statement, it is because online gambling is where under age children could get away with it.  There is no way to enforce the age limit really.  My last staement could have been something like, "So, if you plan to gamble on line because you are not yet 21, forget it because You Can't Win; You can't get paid".  The truth is that nobody really enforces the law.  How would a Western Union agent know that a person is getting or paying money from gambling?  In one case, I found out because I asked why the customer was coming in so often and getting so much money.  He told me.  He shouldn't have told me.  Now, he does his transfers at a different Westeern Union operation.

My volunteers liked participating too and the movie making program is so much fun that I will buy my own little, sneaky camera that I can keep in my pocket.  Then, when I catch people doing things they shouldn't, I can show them how they looked.  I think that I will also heve students film, edit and criticize some of my class performances.  I bet that assignment will be a big hit.

By this timew in the semester, I have also found that it is nearly impossible to connect with other students in the class.  They don't know me in the first place.  Because of my age, I travel to the beat of a different drum in the second place.  My motivations are different, I think.  It will be interesting to see the proportion of students who do the A contract.  I wonder why they don't have enough time.  My PLC group has done nothing that I kn ow of on the book study or on the wondering.  Why?  I know that one of them is really pressed for time, and has told me she will probably not do the A.  I know that she can do it.  We'll see.  In the third place, it must be pretty damn intimidating to have a grandfather figure who is a university professor for a classmate.  Is it a generation gap thing, or arte they just afraid of not measuring up?  Nothing to be afraid of, really.  We are all neophytes in EDU.  Maybe F2F is too much.  Would Internet interaction with out ever knowing anything elso make a difference?  That would be a very neat Ph.D project for EDU.  Maybe I shoiuld do that.  Where can I do that?

Rethinking 10

"In some sense, the divorce of schooling and learning may take us back to an era where individuals negotiate their own learning experiences , often with strong guidance from their parents." Page 129

So, what kid listens to their parents?  Home schooled kids do , I think.  Don't you think that the authors are pretty presumptive by claiming that children don't learn anything in schools anymore?  I have to think more about this one.

"The current school system does not help students develop intrinsic motivation to learn.      One report found that 50% of high school students are bored every day in classes; another found 82% of California 9th and 10th graders reported their school experiences as "boring and irrelevant.""  Page 131

I agree with this set of statements.  I find that students are bored in every school that I am in.  But, they are not bored in every class.  They like band, choir, shop and certain classes where they are constructing things such as the video/TV production studio, Art and sometimes their web design classes in schools that have that.  This should tell us something.  Maybe we need to design teaching so that students are doing something physically active to learn academic content.  I used to take all of my upper level wildlife classes hunting and fishing on weekend field trips.  I had a mini physics class where certain students signed up for "special studies" where a retired physicist and Marine taught us to reload ammunition, tune rifles and how to shoot well.  Students seemed to like those "special studies", especially girls.

"As a society we need to understand how to balance the need to use schools as engines of economic committment..............."  Page 144-145

Yes, this is my complaint.  We should be training students for the work force.  But then, we might need to stop the practice of hiring foreigners who pay no taxes, take the money home and who pay no social security taxes.  A lot of business owners would not like this because for every one they hire, they save the 7.5% soc sec match.