Former UF graduate who doesn't use technology...

For our article this week, I chose one from the March 31, 2000, issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education. The article is called "David Noble's Battle to Defend the 'Sacred Space' of the Classroom," which speaks about a professor and author who doesn't use any form of technology. He doesn't use email; he writes his books on paper and submits them to publishers as is; he doesn't make webpages for his courses nor does he have an online presence except for what other people publish about him; he refuses to teach online courses... It's an interesting piece to read. http://chronicle.com/free/v46/i30/30a00101.htm

Addicted to Wii :(

Because our internet connection is not working at home, I have been slacking in the "do work at home" area, and instead have taken up Wii sports on Mat's Wii system. I have to admit that I LOVE playing it. When I was younger, I was known as the Nintendo master on the first system (sad, right?). Since then, I have let my abilities go and have been turned off by the 90-button controller games, such as the playstation and game cube that have 90 buttons on them that you have to try to hit all at once to get the player to do anything correctly. Now, the Wii is here, and I am addicted once again. I also would like to get the Atari system - that is so great! My sister had one of those when we were growing up, and I played it sometimes and loved it. I guess my mind is too simple for the confusion involved in the 90-button controller games. Simple is better :)

Response to Vasa, Dr. Dawson and Martin

Thank you all for your comments about the post on forced learning and imagination/creativity/motivation. I read in one of the papers for my class paper that some teachers see undergraduates as not having the maturity to be in more adult-learning-theory situations. I feel this is a little off base. What do you guys think? As long as the instructor makes the topic of the course something that interests the students and develops fun, thought-provoking interactive activities for the students to participate in, then I don't see this as being a problem. Do some faculty write off undergraduates just on the notion that they are not mature enough to interact in a learning environment? Is it too much of a challenge? Or do they just not have the time to make their course an interactive, learning-based one? Just thinking outloud... :)

Comments on 11/9 presentations

Hi all,

Sorry for my delay in response to last week's presentations. Trying to play catch-up now. Each presentation really hit home with projects that I am working on at work and school.

Mary's presentation touched upon an organization's unwillingness to change quickly. I think with teacher training, some of these issues would be past quicker by administration. Most of the time, administration isn't even involved in the activity that people would like to modify or change; because of this, they don't see the immediacy in needing to change it. Change theory would come into play here. Great job Mary!

Ted's topic of copyright was really interesting, hitting an issue that libraries deal with on a daily basis. What is considered public domain and fair use...many of us are unsure because the lines are so blurred between. With the Google Book Project, I find this topic fascinating. I am also teaching a class on Google in the library and how we can use Google to answer questions on the reference desk. It's taking awhile to get librarians around the world to see how useful Google is to them as information providers. Excellent job Ted!

Michael presented on corporate e-learning and the trends within it. I am really interested in this because engineers, the group that I work with at my current job, span across the corporate, academic, not-for-profit and military areas. It's interested to see how some of the different engineering fields are trying to educate across those four areas. For example, the Advanced Learning Environment has been set up by aerospace engineers to span across these four areas, to reach as many professionals as possible. I think something like this should be set up for all subjects. Great job Michael!

And Jade's presentation on social networking was very thought-provoking. Especially when we broke into groups, we got to work on how we really would react to some of the situations presented in the articles that everyone submitted to discuss. I really feel that social networking could work in a personalized learning environment, the topic that I wrote on for the class paper. Learning still can occur in informal environments, such as SNCs. Thanks, Jade!

That's all for now!
Kathryn :)

SNC - Stalking a "good thing"?

I was at my boyfriend's intramural softball game last night, and I heard someone say that he was a mySpace stalker...and I was thinking to myself..."Stalking is not something that you would readily admit in public, but OK"...Everyone around the guy started laughing. When did the word "stalker" become something that everyone is comfortable with? I thought that was interesting.

Kathryn :)