My post for today is going to be about Randy Pausch's Last Lecture which I just recently watched. This lecture was just so moving and so inspirational on so many levels. Randy Pausch was a professor at Carnegie Mellon University. He died on July 25, 2008 having suffered from pancreatic cancer. He clearly advocated living your life to the fullest and going after your dreams, no matter how far-fetched or out of reach they may be. He started his lecture out talking about his childhood dreams and then moved on and talked about how to enable others to reach their childhood dreams.
Randy Pausch's Last Lecture started out with Randy discussing some of his childhood dreams some of which were playing for the NFL, becoming an Imagineer for Disney, and being a published author in the World Book Encyclopedia with a few others also. He discussed how he wasn't afraid to go after these dreams. One thing I liked was that he wasn't afraid to even laugh at himself. One of his other childhood dreams was "Being Captain Kirk", which when some people see this they probably just want to laugh because some would say "who wants to be Captain Kirk"? I think he pointed out something very interesting though; all of the others on Star Trek such as Spok and a few others he named all had some special talent that just made them so great, but what was so special about Captain Kirk? He didn't have a special talent, but he had the quality of leadership which put him on top of all of the others. Well, of course Randy couldn't become Captain Kirk, but he did meet him (well he met William Shatner who played Captain Kirk) and so he settled for that as meeting his childhood dream. Randy Pausch went after his dreams and he achieved them which is so inspirational in itself.
The lecture continued on with Randy talking about how to enable others to achieve their dreams which also tied in with him being a professor as well. He believed in helping others dream, and believed in helping others achieve those dreams no matter what they might have been. One of his starting stories was about a student named Tommy that he had at the University of Virginia. Tommy wanted to work on Randy's research team and told Randy that his childhood dream was to work on the next Star Wars films. This occurred around 1993, and when he was told this Randy told Tommy he didn't think those films would probably ever be made, and Tommy looked at him and said "No, they are." Needless to say, Tommy worked on those Star Wars films and fulfilled his childhood dream. Randy Pausch said he couldn't just settle for helping one individual at a time do this, he wanted to help large numbers at a time. When he was teaching at Carnegie Mellon he started up the "Building Virtual Worlds" course which held around 50 students at a time and began the process of helping many students achieve their dreams. In this course and with all of his teaching he implemented the "head-fake" teaching method. A "head-fake" is when you are teaching someone something when they think they are learning something else. The students in this course were learning to build virtual worlds, but at the same time were learning all about computer programming and many other aspects to go along with that. The course turned out to be a huge success all around the college because it incorporated every single department at the college which is something very rarely done. It continues on after Randy's passing in the hands of someone he handed it off to who he believed would have a lot of success with it.
Randy Pausch left so many legacies behind, not only with his course mentioned above but with the Entertainment Technology Center he co-founded with Don Marinelli at CMU, and also his ALICE project. He founded the ALICE project which is a software program which also uses the "head-fake" method; the students are just making things (worlds and storylines) on the computer, while actually learning all about computer programming. Even though he never really got to see the project take off he also left it in capable hands so I'm sure it has become a major success.
Randy Pausch, I think, is an inspiration to everyone. From future and current educators to the dreamer in all of us, I think there are some valuable lessons to be learned from his lecture. He taught, created, and lived a fulfilled life, and I think all of us could take his words and improve our lives to helping and enabling others to achieve their dreams.
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Monday, February 16, 2009
Sunday, February 15, 2009
More from the "Fischbowl"..
The next blog I read from the "Best (?) of the Fischbowl 2007" was best of May called "Customer Service". I thought this blog was not only interesting, but so very, very true! It starts off with a YouTube video of a customer service call to HP. It is literally the entire call, with captions at the top, and then followed up by a survey call about the service received. First the caller gets connected with a computer, then the computer connects the caller with a technician, then the technician connects the caller with another techician, but before the caller even talks to the second technician the call is disconnected. This is so typical nowadays when you call for customer service on a product you have. About 99% of the time you are going to talk to a computer for a large part of your call. Then about half of the time and with some bad luck you will also end up getting disconnected. It just seems to be the way things go now with the massive sizes of companies that there are. I have to say, while I was watching the video and reading the captions up top, I really did start laughing because the video is just so true. Also, during the video, after the call was disconnected and the person called to survey the man who had called customer service, the percentages they showed of how he spent his call were ridiculous. "16% of the call was spent on listening to music while on hold, 15% was spent talking to a computer, 44% was spent with the customer looking up model and serial numbers (when in actuality the technician should have those things right there in front of him with the open file), and 16% was spent actually talking to the technician about the problem." Absolutely nothing was done to help the customer out!
Karl Fisch then goes on in the rest of his blog to talk about how "customer service" can relate in the education field. He works as a technology technician at the school he's employed at, and he says the majority of this job is spent helping faculty and students out when they have a tech. problem. With as busy as he gets, and the amount of work he has to do, he says that sometimes it just gets easier to fix the problem without explaining to whomever he is helping how he actually fixed it. He goes on to express how, while it might be making his job easier at the moment to do that, he is not helping out those people in the future who will still have no idea how to fix problems that may come up with their products. He believes by explaining what he does to the person he's helping it could help them out in the future and also help future teachers to be "technology literate". He believes when working in customer service you should be familiar with the problems and people that you are working with on a daily basis. Relating this to the video, in short it just means don't take the easy way out, be familiar with what you are doing, and even if it takes a little extra time, explain what you're doing to help others out in the future also.
Karl Fisch then goes on in the rest of his blog to talk about how "customer service" can relate in the education field. He works as a technology technician at the school he's employed at, and he says the majority of this job is spent helping faculty and students out when they have a tech. problem. With as busy as he gets, and the amount of work he has to do, he says that sometimes it just gets easier to fix the problem without explaining to whomever he is helping how he actually fixed it. He goes on to express how, while it might be making his job easier at the moment to do that, he is not helping out those people in the future who will still have no idea how to fix problems that may come up with their products. He believes by explaining what he does to the person he's helping it could help them out in the future and also help future teachers to be "technology literate". He believes when working in customer service you should be familiar with the problems and people that you are working with on a daily basis. Relating this to the video, in short it just means don't take the easy way out, be familiar with what you are doing, and even if it takes a little extra time, explain what you're doing to help others out in the future also.
Thoughts on podcasts & How they might be improved..
As I was listening to podcasts done by the previous EDM 310 classes, there are a couple of things that I think can be done to improve them. Let me start out by letting you know which ones I listened to and a little about them. First, I listened to the podcast done by Brandy, Amanda, and Daniel discussing Randy Pausch's Last Lecture. It is not a video I've watched yet (that's for next week's blog), but from the way they discussed it, it is actually something I'm really looking forward to watching! The next podcast I listened to was done by Adrienne, Joylyn, and Brian discussing YouTube being used for educational purposes. They discussed the pros and cons of using YouTube as an educational tool, and also the possible uses it can have in the classroom. Both of these podcasts were very interesting and relayed a lot of unknown facts (to me anyway).
There are a couple of things I came up with from listening to these podcasts that could be used to help improve those done in the future, especially by me. From listening to these, it is obvious that you really need to know what you are talking about and have your facts straight. It is hard to get off track and say unnecessary things, so it's important to know what you need to be talking about and make sure it is all relevant to the subject. Also, I think another thing is to make sure that you actually sound interested in what you're talking about. It's kind of hard to do unless you are extremely familiar with what you're talking about, but if you aren't interested in the subject, chances are those listening won't be either. I think it's important for these podcasts to sound somewhat casual, but on the other hand it needs to be done professionally. I hope to implement these things when I do my podcast.
Hope you enjoyed my thoughts!
There are a couple of things I came up with from listening to these podcasts that could be used to help improve those done in the future, especially by me. From listening to these, it is obvious that you really need to know what you are talking about and have your facts straight. It is hard to get off track and say unnecessary things, so it's important to know what you need to be talking about and make sure it is all relevant to the subject. Also, I think another thing is to make sure that you actually sound interested in what you're talking about. It's kind of hard to do unless you are extremely familiar with what you're talking about, but if you aren't interested in the subject, chances are those listening won't be either. I think it's important for these podcasts to sound somewhat casual, but on the other hand it needs to be done professionally. I hope to implement these things when I do my podcast.
Hope you enjoyed my thoughts!
Sunday, February 8, 2009
Fischbowl, Best post of 2007
Ok, for the next post of the day I'm going to discuss the post on Fischbowl that won the Most influential post of 2007. It was titled "Is It Okay To Be A Technologically Illiterate Teacher?". I thought this post was very interesting, and also pretty intense. From what Karl Fisch says, and also what he added in from another blogger's post, between the two they are very serious about the subject. I think the seriousness is well needed. Technology is every where and children are learning about it at a younger and younger age every year. I'm sure there are probably two-year-olds now that know how to work a computer. Also, as much as some people might want technology to just stop and go away, I doubt it will probably ever go anywhere but become more and more advanced.
I also believe that it is so important for teachers to know at least the basics of technology. It is no doubt that when students come into the classroom they will know how to work computers, possibly even better than their teachers can. Also, children in school are using computer programs and so much more in their daily lessons now. Kids use powerpoints and slideshows for projects, and just about every child has to type a report various times throughout the school years. If teachers don't know how to work this simple technology what kind of a message will this send to children. They will either see their teacher as someone not capable of keeping up with them, or they might think technology is not such a big deal, when it is! They will use technology probably everyday of their life, and if they do not learn to use it when they're younger, it won't come any easier to them when they are adults working in their careers. Teachers should make the effort to at least learn the technology and keep learning more and more everyday. Just because you are a teacher doesn't mean your learning experience stops.
I really liked the post we had to read. I thought it was very true and very, very influential! Well, that's all for today, hope you enjoyed!
I also believe that it is so important for teachers to know at least the basics of technology. It is no doubt that when students come into the classroom they will know how to work computers, possibly even better than their teachers can. Also, children in school are using computer programs and so much more in their daily lessons now. Kids use powerpoints and slideshows for projects, and just about every child has to type a report various times throughout the school years. If teachers don't know how to work this simple technology what kind of a message will this send to children. They will either see their teacher as someone not capable of keeping up with them, or they might think technology is not such a big deal, when it is! They will use technology probably everyday of their life, and if they do not learn to use it when they're younger, it won't come any easier to them when they are adults working in their careers. Teachers should make the effort to at least learn the technology and keep learning more and more everyday. Just because you are a teacher doesn't mean your learning experience stops.
I really liked the post we had to read. I thought it was very true and very, very influential! Well, that's all for today, hope you enjoyed!
Saturday, February 7, 2009
Podcasts, How they're done.
The post I'm going to do today is all about podcasts and how a few that I listened to seem to be done. Podcasts are a very interesting subject, once again the advances that have been made in technology is just amazing. Well to start off, I listened to the following podcasts and I'll just comment on them as I go through them all.
First off I listened to the podcast SmartBoard Lessons Podcast. I listened to Episode #125 called Learning to Fly. The podcast was hosted by Ben and Joan, from what I gathered it seems that all of the podcasts are hosted by them. The podcast sounded somewhat like it was recorded in a radio station. It just came off as a radio talk show vibe, which makes it much more casual and easy to listen to. The two hosts just started off having a casual conversation and gradually worked their way into the topic. From the part I listened to, they just seem to take questions (more than likely from e-mail) and answered them on air, talking in detail about it. Also, they had little segments of just music clips, possibly to signal a small break or pause in the conversation. It seems this podcast was pretty up on the technology possible for it.
The next podcast I listened to was KidCast. I listened to Episode #58 called The Medium is NOT the Message. This podcast was hosted by Dan from his living room. It was pretty casual, no special effects or anything, just him sitting their a sharing his knowledge. It sounded like he just had a computer and was just basically recording the podcast. He talked about how he had been looking up different projects such as podcasts that were being created by the kids in schools. He felt that the kids were just being taught how to basically use the software but weren't being taught how to communicate and the value of it. He saw this as a real problem. The podcast continued on similar to that. Another podcast that seemed similar to this one was EdTechTalk. I listened to Episode #19 of this podcast which was hosted by Matt Montaine. He had other guests there with him such as Lorna Constantini, and a couple of other ladies. Also, he had various parents from around the country connected in with the podcast. This podcast also seemed to be simply done. Just recorded basic with the other people connecting in. All those involved with this podcast are volunteers who work within or have children in the schools. They just come together and discuss various aspects of technology within the schools. These two podcasts were well done, they just seemed similar with no advanced additions, just a normal podcast.
The next podcast I listened to was ConnectLearning, and I listend to Episode #91 called A conversation about Podcasting with Media Coordinators. This podcast was hosted by David Warlick and was actually a Podcasting Workshop. He was at the North Carolina School Library Media Association with 9,000 library/media specialists from around the state of North Carolina. This was a very interesting podcast to me because it ws more like a conference, but when he would talk to the various people there he would have to go up to them with a microphone and they would talk into so you could hear them on the podcast. It was more like something you would think of as watching a video, but it was just a podcast. The talked about various issues with creating podcasts within the schools, for instance the security of the students with posting podcasts online and such. The library/media specialists seemed to up-to-date with their technology and really liked using podcasts in the schools.
The last two podcasts I listened to were very similar. The first was MacBreak Weekly, I listened to Episode #124. This was another podcast that very much sounded like a radio show. It sounds like various people just sitting around having casual conversations with each other. Like I said before, this makes it much easier to listen and be interested in the podcast to me. The main speaker was Leo, but there was also Alex, Andy, Scott, Lisa, and Frederick. All of which were not actually in the same place. I think three or four of them were connecting in from another place. In fact, I know Lisa was actually in Vancouver during the podcast. They all seemed to be of some kind of techonoloical profession and talked about various updates to do with Mac and cameras and such. The other podcast I listened to that was very similar to the one before was This Week in Photography, I listened to Episode #60 of this podcast. It was actually hosted by two of the people that were apart of the previous podcast mentioned, Alex Lindsay and Schoot Bourne. Also, as in the one before, they had various people connecting in from other locations. The format was similar, also sounded like a radio show, with them just sitting around talking casually. They talked about different photography software that was coming out and being updated.
I really enjoyed listening to these podcasts. The technology involved is really amazing and I think this is a great tool to use within education. It makes things more interesting and involved for the students. Well, that's all for this post. Hope you all are having a great day!
First off I listened to the podcast SmartBoard Lessons Podcast. I listened to Episode #125 called Learning to Fly. The podcast was hosted by Ben and Joan, from what I gathered it seems that all of the podcasts are hosted by them. The podcast sounded somewhat like it was recorded in a radio station. It just came off as a radio talk show vibe, which makes it much more casual and easy to listen to. The two hosts just started off having a casual conversation and gradually worked their way into the topic. From the part I listened to, they just seem to take questions (more than likely from e-mail) and answered them on air, talking in detail about it. Also, they had little segments of just music clips, possibly to signal a small break or pause in the conversation. It seems this podcast was pretty up on the technology possible for it.
The next podcast I listened to was KidCast. I listened to Episode #58 called The Medium is NOT the Message. This podcast was hosted by Dan from his living room. It was pretty casual, no special effects or anything, just him sitting their a sharing his knowledge. It sounded like he just had a computer and was just basically recording the podcast. He talked about how he had been looking up different projects such as podcasts that were being created by the kids in schools. He felt that the kids were just being taught how to basically use the software but weren't being taught how to communicate and the value of it. He saw this as a real problem. The podcast continued on similar to that. Another podcast that seemed similar to this one was EdTechTalk. I listened to Episode #19 of this podcast which was hosted by Matt Montaine. He had other guests there with him such as Lorna Constantini, and a couple of other ladies. Also, he had various parents from around the country connected in with the podcast. This podcast also seemed to be simply done. Just recorded basic with the other people connecting in. All those involved with this podcast are volunteers who work within or have children in the schools. They just come together and discuss various aspects of technology within the schools. These two podcasts were well done, they just seemed similar with no advanced additions, just a normal podcast.
The next podcast I listened to was ConnectLearning, and I listend to Episode #91 called A conversation about Podcasting with Media Coordinators. This podcast was hosted by David Warlick and was actually a Podcasting Workshop. He was at the North Carolina School Library Media Association with 9,000 library/media specialists from around the state of North Carolina. This was a very interesting podcast to me because it ws more like a conference, but when he would talk to the various people there he would have to go up to them with a microphone and they would talk into so you could hear them on the podcast. It was more like something you would think of as watching a video, but it was just a podcast. The talked about various issues with creating podcasts within the schools, for instance the security of the students with posting podcasts online and such. The library/media specialists seemed to up-to-date with their technology and really liked using podcasts in the schools.
The last two podcasts I listened to were very similar. The first was MacBreak Weekly, I listened to Episode #124. This was another podcast that very much sounded like a radio show. It sounds like various people just sitting around having casual conversations with each other. Like I said before, this makes it much easier to listen and be interested in the podcast to me. The main speaker was Leo, but there was also Alex, Andy, Scott, Lisa, and Frederick. All of which were not actually in the same place. I think three or four of them were connecting in from another place. In fact, I know Lisa was actually in Vancouver during the podcast. They all seemed to be of some kind of techonoloical profession and talked about various updates to do with Mac and cameras and such. The other podcast I listened to that was very similar to the one before was This Week in Photography, I listened to Episode #60 of this podcast. It was actually hosted by two of the people that were apart of the previous podcast mentioned, Alex Lindsay and Schoot Bourne. Also, as in the one before, they had various people connecting in from other locations. The format was similar, also sounded like a radio show, with them just sitting around talking casually. They talked about different photography software that was coming out and being updated.
I really enjoyed listening to these podcasts. The technology involved is really amazing and I think this is a great tool to use within education. It makes things more interesting and involved for the students. Well, that's all for this post. Hope you all are having a great day!
Sunday, February 1, 2009
Blogs Around the World..
Well this post is going to involve educational blogs which I found in other countries. It is amazing how versatile and widely used this kind of technology is used. Well for what I found, here we go..
The first school I found using a blog is Dhahran British Grammar School which happens to be Saudi Arabia. Ian Jones is the headteacher at this school, and I'm also assuming that he is the one running the blog. The blog actually is updated every school day with information on various activities going on in and around the school. It also gives various updates to the parents about what their children are studying. The blog is very detailed and seems to serve many different purposes to the students, parents, and people in and around the school. The stories and information shared on the blog is very interesting, even to people with no relations in the school.
This is a picture of students in what they call "year 7" who were awarded for excellent work with an out-of-uniform day and pizza party.
The next school I found using blogs is Holy Trinity School in Richmond, which is in London, England. Many teachers at the school use blogs, but the one I primarily looked at is Miss Ashby's. The blog appears to be more of an update for the parents than anything else. It gives detailed information about activities going on in the classroom. Miss Ashby also seems to update whenever materials are needed to be brought in from home, and various events that the parents are welcome to, or welcome to come to the classroom and help with. It's also geared for the students to look at also, perhaps if they have forgotten details of something at the last minute, but I can see where it would be a major help to the parents so they know exactly what is going on with their children! I really liked looking at these blogs. Although you may think, wow these blogs are from a completely different country they are probably going to be way different than ours, they really aren't. Most of the blogs I looked at are used just like they are here in the states. It's very interesting though!
I could not find a picture on the blog, but this is one of the Holy Trinity School.
I hope you find these blogs that I found interesting! Well, that's all for today! =]
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