What technology will be pervasive in a generation?
I've pondered that question on occasion. The answers you get are pretty strange. The computer and the other communications devices will continue to grow in power, connectivity and speed. At the same time, they will get smaller and the price for what they currently do will go down. I say that last carefully because with technology, they sell you what you can't do now. That part stays on the spendy end, but even the cost of a high-end computer has gone down over time.
I suppose a person might look at an iPhone or a laptop keyboard and ask, "How can this possibly get much smaller?" Well, just wait. It will. Did you know that the chip manufactures are coming up on a physical limitation in the speed of chips? There will shortly need to be a major breakthrough in the design of computer chips to allow the speed of techonological devices to continue unabated. I'm pretty sure that breakthrough will happen in due course, and it is possible most people won't even know that it happened.
I suppose it might be some other way of getting around the problem. It could be that in a few years it will be common to have 64 processors burned onto a chip and to stick all of them into a computer at one go. You might even have 80 or so, and be guartanteed that 64 of them will work. (It will be iffy at first.) But, however it happens, the speed and power of the computer will continue to climb, and the size will continue to shrink. You might wonder how this could be. Well, I don't know exactly.
However, I do think that when my students are out teaching, they'll have a dilly of time trying separate their students from their technology during a test. And, for that matter, they'll have dilly of time separating their students from each other during a test.
Sometimes it's hard now, actually. It's hard to know the difference between a thinking student and a txting student. It will only get trickier as time goes on.
Thursday, February 28, 2008
Children of the Masterchief
Do you like the title? I think that would be a great title for the coming generation: "Children of the Masterchief." The Masterchief is a character in the video game "Halo" in its various forms and versions. Some of the guys I have in class have spent more time with the masterchief than than they will have with me, I think. I suppose that would only (only, he says) five hours a week during the school year to do that. That would equate (using forty weeks as a guide) to 200 hours for a full year. I'd say some of the guys I know have had that amount of time in in a year easily.
I haven't, mostly because I know that if I bought an xbox I'd need to give up little things like food and sleep, and that wouldn't be a good thing.
Basically what I'm saying the folks at xbox have the attention of some of my students for more time in a year than I have them in class. In some cases, I think than several teachers together have them in class. That might not be entirely healthy.
I suppose the same thing was said about the Atari and Pong ever so long ago. The one glaring difference is that Pong didn't have a warning on it for violence and gore. I suppose that means I'm getting old. Perhaps. In fairness, I wasn't much of a fan of Wolfenstein in the eighties.
I am somewhat concerned that the masterchief may be a good teacher. What if my students listen to what he says to them while traipsing through alien battle fields? What if he can motivate them in ways that I can't? What if that silly, glowing green box speaks to my students in some primal way? Frankly, it concerns me that it probably does. I suppose we'll see.
And as I age, I'm not looking forward to the one who will come after the masterchief. He'll be even harder to ignore.
I haven't, mostly because I know that if I bought an xbox I'd need to give up little things like food and sleep, and that wouldn't be a good thing.
Basically what I'm saying the folks at xbox have the attention of some of my students for more time in a year than I have them in class. In some cases, I think than several teachers together have them in class. That might not be entirely healthy.
I suppose the same thing was said about the Atari and Pong ever so long ago. The one glaring difference is that Pong didn't have a warning on it for violence and gore. I suppose that means I'm getting old. Perhaps. In fairness, I wasn't much of a fan of Wolfenstein in the eighties.
I am somewhat concerned that the masterchief may be a good teacher. What if my students listen to what he says to them while traipsing through alien battle fields? What if he can motivate them in ways that I can't? What if that silly, glowing green box speaks to my students in some primal way? Frankly, it concerns me that it probably does. I suppose we'll see.
And as I age, I'm not looking forward to the one who will come after the masterchief. He'll be even harder to ignore.
Saturday, February 23, 2008
Bit Rusty
I just made a theme for our project site, and now I'm waiting for the site itself.
This has been quite a day. It took a bit longer than I was hoping, but I'm pretty happy with what I ended up with.
However, I'm stopping work on it for now for fear that I might find something wrong with it. There probably are some things that need fixing, but ignoring them for now would be difficult if I know about them. So, for my own sanity I'm going to stop looking. That might sound weird, but it really is best.
Anyway, back to being a little rusty. I'm a little out of practice with the HTML and the CSS. I must say it was good to work through a project like this to get back into things a bit. Working with the wiki themes has been a bit of a trick because wikispace tries to make things nice and easy. This means that doing something out of the ordinary can be quite complicated. Oh well.
Hopefully what I've done today will work.
As for the project itself, it is going to be dicey trying to get blocks of time to work on the project. Today I had the time, and I took it. Hopefully most of what I did is correct... finding another full day will be difficult. The good news is that I think it might be close to correct.
This has been quite a day. It took a bit longer than I was hoping, but I'm pretty happy with what I ended up with.
However, I'm stopping work on it for now for fear that I might find something wrong with it. There probably are some things that need fixing, but ignoring them for now would be difficult if I know about them. So, for my own sanity I'm going to stop looking. That might sound weird, but it really is best.
Anyway, back to being a little rusty. I'm a little out of practice with the HTML and the CSS. I must say it was good to work through a project like this to get back into things a bit. Working with the wiki themes has been a bit of a trick because wikispace tries to make things nice and easy. This means that doing something out of the ordinary can be quite complicated. Oh well.
Hopefully what I've done today will work.
As for the project itself, it is going to be dicey trying to get blocks of time to work on the project. Today I had the time, and I took it. Hopefully most of what I did is correct... finding another full day will be difficult. The good news is that I think it might be close to correct.
Monday, February 18, 2008
A Measure of Success
You need to take pleasure in the small successes, I suppose.
I had one of those this week, I think. I made a worksheet for a lab write-up, and I was able to do it in a short period of time. This was a success because it had to be done in a short period of time. Sometimes the time crunch complicates things, but it was ok.
The lab was to make little boats out of aluminum foil and then to sink them with pennies. As it turned out, two of the students said they had done the lab before. One had done it the semester before at Manual (where they do the last chapters first), and one had done the lab in middle school. Either way, they hadn't done that version of the lab, since it didn't exist until the day before. This is another case where if it weren't for the last minute, some things would never get done.
The one not so great thing was the other project I did. It was a bonus project that had a couple of puzzles on it. The problem is that I introduced some typos into the project, and some typos are just hard to catch. I had the code wrong for a secret code (which all showed as typos) and I had two extra boxes in a crossword puzzle. Again, hard to catch.
As for computer problems in general, the one that I'm facing presently is a rather strange one. The other teacher for my class had a computer that got hit with viruses. So, he gave his computer to one of his students to kill the viruses. He's hoping to get it back soon, but for the present he is computer-less. Computer viruses are evil, wicked things -- and that is my professional opinion.
As for the library systems part of life, I have looked at a page making wiki templates, and it was not entirely clear. I'll need to go through some templates to see what to make of some of the codes. The page that I'm supposed to use as a model is worse: it is clearly ugly. The front part is fine, it's the stuff in the background that's not nice to look at. I suspect that a graphical interface was used to generate the code, and that will make slicing and dicing the code even more fun. So, I might slice and dice something I've used before to make it look like that page that is the model. The twist is that I've not used that template for a wiki page, but it is worth a try.
I had one of those this week, I think. I made a worksheet for a lab write-up, and I was able to do it in a short period of time. This was a success because it had to be done in a short period of time. Sometimes the time crunch complicates things, but it was ok.
The lab was to make little boats out of aluminum foil and then to sink them with pennies. As it turned out, two of the students said they had done the lab before. One had done it the semester before at Manual (where they do the last chapters first), and one had done the lab in middle school. Either way, they hadn't done that version of the lab, since it didn't exist until the day before. This is another case where if it weren't for the last minute, some things would never get done.
The one not so great thing was the other project I did. It was a bonus project that had a couple of puzzles on it. The problem is that I introduced some typos into the project, and some typos are just hard to catch. I had the code wrong for a secret code (which all showed as typos) and I had two extra boxes in a crossword puzzle. Again, hard to catch.
As for computer problems in general, the one that I'm facing presently is a rather strange one. The other teacher for my class had a computer that got hit with viruses. So, he gave his computer to one of his students to kill the viruses. He's hoping to get it back soon, but for the present he is computer-less. Computer viruses are evil, wicked things -- and that is my professional opinion.
As for the library systems part of life, I have looked at a page making wiki templates, and it was not entirely clear. I'll need to go through some templates to see what to make of some of the codes. The page that I'm supposed to use as a model is worse: it is clearly ugly. The front part is fine, it's the stuff in the background that's not nice to look at. I suspect that a graphical interface was used to generate the code, and that will make slicing and dicing the code even more fun. So, I might slice and dice something I've used before to make it look like that page that is the model. The twist is that I've not used that template for a wiki page, but it is worth a try.
Sunday, February 10, 2008
The Case Studies
The case studies have been an interesting experience for me. I say this because I am one for whom the case studies were not necessarily a new thing. I have thought about what goes on in a library during a conversion, and I have done data analysis, and I have process analysis.
For here things get a little strange.
It has been a while since I've done data analysis in quite this way. My most recent programming job had me doing web programming, and I did need to explain the data model to another person. However, generally the data model I used was close to the SQL code, and the one I explained to the other person was the data as it would appear on the screen (in a form). Since I needed to think about the form anyway, this was actually a useful prototype.
The last classes that I taught were VB and C++. These are rapid prototyping languages, and they are object oriented languages. This sort of made the data models tilt in a particular direction. The rapid prototyping part meant that the models tended to start as sketches of the screen, if I could get students to think about what they were doing. The objects we created tended to have lists of properties, and the other things they had going on were not easily graphed.
There were times that diagrams came into play, for lists, trees and so forth.
The process diagrams, flowcharts, are something I've done also. However, I haven't done flowcharts as such for some time. When I did FORTRAN, we did flowcharts. I even had one of the little plastic flowchart template thingies. I don't have one currently.
When I taught VB and C++ I normally didn't teach the flowcharting. Particularly with the VB, the nature of the language tends to make any one piece of code rather short. A flowchart and psuedocode wouldn't look that different for most sections of code. So, it was just simpler to look at psuedocode as a good option. The other thing is that to complete either, you have to be able to see the end from the beginning. Generally, my students needed to get to a certain point to see the problems. That's when the discussion happened about how to do something.
Sometimes, the students would be able to see farther and farther into the process. When they could look and see problems before they happen, that was a real success. When they could look all the way to the end of the project, that was something else again.
As for my experience making the case studies, I found that openoffice worked well for making the flowcharts, and I used an org chart (in Power Point) to make the data model. I don't know if either was the easiest, but they were at least manageable.
I'm thinking that I could have made either flowchart about twice as detailed, but nothing huge comes to mind that I left out. If I actually had to code it, I'd be looking through things with a fine toothed comb looking for what wasn't there. Mostly this would be details that the librarian doesn't see. But they're there.
For here things get a little strange.
It has been a while since I've done data analysis in quite this way. My most recent programming job had me doing web programming, and I did need to explain the data model to another person. However, generally the data model I used was close to the SQL code, and the one I explained to the other person was the data as it would appear on the screen (in a form). Since I needed to think about the form anyway, this was actually a useful prototype.
The last classes that I taught were VB and C++. These are rapid prototyping languages, and they are object oriented languages. This sort of made the data models tilt in a particular direction. The rapid prototyping part meant that the models tended to start as sketches of the screen, if I could get students to think about what they were doing. The objects we created tended to have lists of properties, and the other things they had going on were not easily graphed.
There were times that diagrams came into play, for lists, trees and so forth.
The process diagrams, flowcharts, are something I've done also. However, I haven't done flowcharts as such for some time. When I did FORTRAN, we did flowcharts. I even had one of the little plastic flowchart template thingies. I don't have one currently.
When I taught VB and C++ I normally didn't teach the flowcharting. Particularly with the VB, the nature of the language tends to make any one piece of code rather short. A flowchart and psuedocode wouldn't look that different for most sections of code. So, it was just simpler to look at psuedocode as a good option. The other thing is that to complete either, you have to be able to see the end from the beginning. Generally, my students needed to get to a certain point to see the problems. That's when the discussion happened about how to do something.
Sometimes, the students would be able to see farther and farther into the process. When they could look and see problems before they happen, that was a real success. When they could look all the way to the end of the project, that was something else again.
As for my experience making the case studies, I found that openoffice worked well for making the flowcharts, and I used an org chart (in Power Point) to make the data model. I don't know if either was the easiest, but they were at least manageable.
I'm thinking that I could have made either flowchart about twice as detailed, but nothing huge comes to mind that I left out. If I actually had to code it, I'd be looking through things with a fine toothed comb looking for what wasn't there. Mostly this would be details that the librarian doesn't see. But they're there.
Friday, February 1, 2008
Thoughts on Technology
I've been thinking about the technology discussed in class. There were a few things that came to mind.
First, I don't use RSS at present. The reason for this is that I don't follow any blogs regularly. This isn't to say that I wouldn't, but I don't. For me to start following a blog it would need to meet some fairly rigid criteria, I think. First, it would need to be informative, and probably technical. It would need to be interesting. It would need to be useful to me -- probably useful in a professional sense.
This last bit would be tricky. While I am a librarian in training, I am also a teacher at present. Today I am a teacher. As such, a blog would need to be teaching me how to be a good physics teacher to be spectacularly useful right now. They exist, I know this. However, I don't know of any right now. I might by the time that the year is out.
The personal blogs really don't hold much interest for me. There are several blogs and social sites I could follow (and probably should) as they belong to friends from church, friends from former places of employ, and my students (past and present). However, one thing keeping me from starting is that there are many of them and only one of me.
The other thing is that I would have to act on any information that I found on a student site, if you know what I mean. I don't want to appear to be hunting down students. I've needed to, and it's not fun. That is one "computer guy" job that isn't fun.
As for using technology, I use a computer almost daily, but at present I'm not doing anything revolutionary with it. I'm tracking grades and attendance and emails. That really is about it. The one thing that I did discover is that there are some weird things about the grade program. I say this because I've used (and trained other teachers) on a few others. This one is just weird. You have to create a new page of grades every tenth assignment. The "final" grade on the page is the grade to that point, and you have to flip to the last page to get a really, real final grade. I suppose that this would allow me to get grades through a certain point in the class, and maybe that's a good thing. I'll have to think about it. It is weird though.
As for the VIC classroom, there is a quote that applies:
First, I don't use RSS at present. The reason for this is that I don't follow any blogs regularly. This isn't to say that I wouldn't, but I don't. For me to start following a blog it would need to meet some fairly rigid criteria, I think. First, it would need to be informative, and probably technical. It would need to be interesting. It would need to be useful to me -- probably useful in a professional sense.
This last bit would be tricky. While I am a librarian in training, I am also a teacher at present. Today I am a teacher. As such, a blog would need to be teaching me how to be a good physics teacher to be spectacularly useful right now. They exist, I know this. However, I don't know of any right now. I might by the time that the year is out.
The personal blogs really don't hold much interest for me. There are several blogs and social sites I could follow (and probably should) as they belong to friends from church, friends from former places of employ, and my students (past and present). However, one thing keeping me from starting is that there are many of them and only one of me.
The other thing is that I would have to act on any information that I found on a student site, if you know what I mean. I don't want to appear to be hunting down students. I've needed to, and it's not fun. That is one "computer guy" job that isn't fun.
As for using technology, I use a computer almost daily, but at present I'm not doing anything revolutionary with it. I'm tracking grades and attendance and emails. That really is about it. The one thing that I did discover is that there are some weird things about the grade program. I say this because I've used (and trained other teachers) on a few others. This one is just weird. You have to create a new page of grades every tenth assignment. The "final" grade on the page is the grade to that point, and you have to flip to the last page to get a really, real final grade. I suppose that this would allow me to get grades through a certain point in the class, and maybe that's a good thing. I'll have to think about it. It is weird though.
As for the VIC classroom, there is a quote that applies:
"The more they overthink the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the
drain!" -- Star Trek III: The Search for Spock
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