Hi everyone,
I am planning to buy a computer VERY soon because my laptop is about to die (Gateway Solo 1150, 2001). I am going back and forth on whether or not I should buy a MAC or a PC and would like to know what you guys think. As you saw from my embarrassing demonstration (or lack thereof) with the APPLE yesterday during my three minutes of fame, I am not too familiar with MACs, so is this a reason to get a MAC to become more familiar with it, especially since many people say they are better for design applications, or should I stick to something that I am comfortable with (i.e. PC)? Any thoughts on what brand (in regard to PCs) you like better would be helpful too.
And for those of you who have been grad students in the College of Education for awhile, do you think it's better to have a laptop that you can carry around with you, or do you think I would be okay with just having a desktop at home and using the labs that are available to us while I am at school?
Sorry for all the questions - just want to make as learned a decision as possible on this, especially since there will be $$ involved:)
Thanks for any and all help!
Kathryn :)
Friday, September 22, 2006
Thursday, September 21, 2006
Free electronic access to tech books at UF Libraries
Hi all,
Just wanted to let you know that the UF Libraries purchases online access to many computer-programming related books, so you might be able to find some books for your tech development projects online. I found a few for Dreamweaver, for those of you who are doing Dreamweaver as your tech dev project. Hope this helps!
Kathryn :)
Just wanted to let you know that the UF Libraries purchases online access to many computer-programming related books, so you might be able to find some books for your tech development projects online. I found a few for Dreamweaver, for those of you who are doing Dreamweaver as your tech dev project. Hope this helps!
Kathryn :)
Tuesday, September 19, 2006
Learning theories in practice
Here are the examples that I found for constructivism:
http://www.thirteen.org/edonline/concept2class/constructivism/demonstration.html
This link is a collection of examples, but I found the first one to mirror a lot of the ENC 1101/ENC 1102 (freshman english) courses that the libraries teach. The instructor usually asks the student to choose a controversial topic and to take a side and find evidence from articles/books in favor of the side taken. It allows the students to choose what topic they want to learn about.
Another example of constructivism is from one of the engineering professors that I work with in Mechanical Engineering. He asked his students to take a real-life structure that has failed (such as a building collapsing or bridge buckling) and had them research why it had failed and determine what should have been different in the original structure design.
Another example of constructivism is from one of the engineering professors in Nuclear and Radiological Engineering who made his students develop their own radiation shielding device for whatever radiation facility that wanted to work with, whether it be an x-ray lab, nuclear reactor facility, or a nuclear power plant. They had to research their particular facility and then determine what degree of radiation they had to protect against and then determine what materials would help to create that protection.
In an article that I read this weekend, I found another example of constructivism that had to do with an accounting course that was offered with a web application that presented real-world tax problems that accounting graduates would face once they left their program.
Here are the examples that I found for Schema Theory:
When I was in high school, my geometry teacher made drawings on the board to make us remember what he was talking about. For example, for us to remember how a trapezoid looked, he said that there was this animal called a "ZOID" and that he was going to trap it. For some odd reason, I have neither forgotten that shape nor the story behind it.
Another example from my friend's history class in high school would be when her teacher asked the students to play on different sides of the Civil War and develop their political policy according to what their textbook said. She said it was effective because in her mind it's a framework for the past that she wouldn't have learned if she had just read it from the book alone.
http://www.thirteen.org/edonline/concept2class/constructivism/demonstration.html
This link is a collection of examples, but I found the first one to mirror a lot of the ENC 1101/ENC 1102 (freshman english) courses that the libraries teach. The instructor usually asks the student to choose a controversial topic and to take a side and find evidence from articles/books in favor of the side taken. It allows the students to choose what topic they want to learn about.
Another example of constructivism is from one of the engineering professors that I work with in Mechanical Engineering. He asked his students to take a real-life structure that has failed (such as a building collapsing or bridge buckling) and had them research why it had failed and determine what should have been different in the original structure design.
Another example of constructivism is from one of the engineering professors in Nuclear and Radiological Engineering who made his students develop their own radiation shielding device for whatever radiation facility that wanted to work with, whether it be an x-ray lab, nuclear reactor facility, or a nuclear power plant. They had to research their particular facility and then determine what degree of radiation they had to protect against and then determine what materials would help to create that protection.
In an article that I read this weekend, I found another example of constructivism that had to do with an accounting course that was offered with a web application that presented real-world tax problems that accounting graduates would face once they left their program.
Here are the examples that I found for Schema Theory:
When I was in high school, my geometry teacher made drawings on the board to make us remember what he was talking about. For example, for us to remember how a trapezoid looked, he said that there was this animal called a "ZOID" and that he was going to trap it. For some odd reason, I have neither forgotten that shape nor the story behind it.
Another example from my friend's history class in high school would be when her teacher asked the students to play on different sides of the Civil War and develop their political policy according to what their textbook said. She said it was effective because in her mind it's a framework for the past that she wouldn't have learned if she had just read it from the book alone.
Change in technical development project
After discussing this with a number of people, I have decided to change my technical development project. Previously, I wanted to learn HTML and CSS so that I could make my own website. But I have been encouraged to learn a software instead of having to learn straight HTML. So I am going to learn how to use Dreamweaver and will have a website as my proof of learning the software. I have been told that with its splitscreen capabilities, I would pick up some HTML along the way. Does anyone know the best place to get web space (I don't want to use the library server for my course and personal webpages nor do I want to use the grove account.)? Thanks for everyone's input!
Kathryn
Kathryn
Deciphering my concept map
So this is my first attempt at recording audio for the blog, and I am going to hope that everyone will be able to hear it. This recording is about two minutes long, and it explains what I presented last week in my gliffy concept map - you might want to open the gliffy map in conjunction with this recording to follow along with my explanation of things. Let me know if you have any questions. Thanks!
Recording:
http://uflibpm.pbwiki.com/f/deciphering_concept_map.wav
Concept Map:
http://uflibpm.pbwiki.com/f/EME5054-Learning_Theories.jpg
Recording:
http://uflibpm.pbwiki.com/f/deciphering_concept_map.wav
Concept Map:
http://uflibpm.pbwiki.com/f/EME5054-Learning_Theories.jpg
Monday, September 18, 2006
Lifelong learning
My particular area of interest in research is lifelong learning. At this point in the literature search, I have determined that these articles are from all areas of study in higher education. I am interested in reading about how lifelong learning is emphasized within different disciplines. Why did I choose this as a topic? Well, I am interested in lifelong learning because I think education should never end and that people in all fields need some way of staying in contact with the latest news of their field.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
