Evolving Technology via Classrooms

Here is a cool article to check out that talks about the various equipment that we've used in an education classroom setting. Some of these are definitely old school while others you probably haven't heard about before or didn't realized what it looked like back then (for all of those newbies and Y generation folks!). It's good to know a little bit of history from each object. Ask your parents if they ever used these things before - I bet you'd be surprise with their stories!

The power of 140 characters

I found this article from one of my Tech & Learning newsletters and thought this author had a interesting point about Twitter. Overall you have to be careful what you post online. Just like the incident about a teacher being dismissed from her frustration tweet, Twitter has become a venue where people can express anything they want to say. Sure we know our rights and so forth to say whatever you darn want to say (I can be emotional and angry too) but putting that in 140 characters and tweeting it out there makes it fair game to the online universe. Overall think before you tweet. You'll never know who'll pick up your message and interpret it the wrong way.

Is the Internet really unsafe?!

I found this blog a few days ago and thought the author raises some good points in reference with the internet as a risky learning resource. Sure we've all heard of the dangers of the internet: gambling, porn, stalkers, trolls, etc. But our culture is constantly evolving, where people are accessing information as much as possible from almost anything. It's kinda freaky to think that we as a society are collecting information so fast that I begin to wonder if we'll become "the collective" (reference to Borgs from Star Tek - yea I'm a treky ✌). However with proper internet etiquette (netiquette) and moderate access for younger students, we don't have to live in fear from the WWW. The internet will always be a vast unknown for the new but with some helpful guidance the net won't be a scary place as most will think.

Digital Media - New Learners Of The 21st Century

So I have a twitter account and the main purpose is to get information on the latest design issues and news, whether it's the latest environmental problem to solving the aesthetic function of a product. I almost didn't get Twitter since I didn't want to be into this new web 2.0 too much. Yet I was forced (literally) after attending a user interface conference. There I discovered that contacts can be shared via Twitter accounts and streaming, or tweets, of information viewed by many. I was hooked.

Recently I just found a tweet regarding the same issues and practically the same project as my thesis. PBS is showing a program this Sunday, February 13th. Although the difference between my research is that I'm focusing on college/university level while I assume this will focus on K-12. Definitely must check out! Thank goodness for Twitter.