A worry about this technology

One of the problems of technology is that it functions as a multiplier of human abilities, which tends to make the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. I worry sometimes that this sort of technology will tend to discriminate against those who are, for whatever reason, more private, who simply do not want to give their opinions, to be asked to expose themselves, etc. We live in an increasingly exhibitionistic culture, and I wonder if we fail to respect people who are intelligent and able, but simply desire to be guarded and reticent.


Does anybody else worry about this?

My ideas for Wikis and Blogs -- how I might use this technology, Part I

At this point, all such plans are pretty hypothetical, for I think I need to do more experimentation and give this matter a lot more thought – more on that later.

Let me try to answer the questions in order…

(1) Right now, I suppose, if I use blogs or wikis, I shall use the services which we have used. However, I think there is a need for a wiki server as part of the MSU IT system. Perhaps I need to bring this up in a meeting. I am more interested in wikis than blogs, but I think both can be useful. But again, I am very much thinking this through. As I said during the conference call, I see using this technology as providing a space where students construct, early on, a framework for what they will study, by bringing up questions, concerns and issues which they then connect to issues pertinent to the subject under consideration, such as Roman history. This can become an ongoing project. I may experiment with this soon in the class I am teaching in my Senior Humanities Seminar. More to come on that.

(2) My very hypothetical notion is to create a wiki format which looks like a Talmud in progress. The core would be a central question, and radiating outward would be wikis devoted to the first layer of pertinent issues, and radiating outward from that would be more wiki pages devoted to specific concerns about these issues. This would be non-hierarchical. It would be also tied to the discussion group. Here is something of a problems – posting to a discussion group is a LOT less technologically challenging than posting to a blog or wiki, and right now, considering the difficulties I have had, I am not sure how comfortable I would be using wikis in a 35 person Gen. Ed. Class. Think of all the time it might take me, not only to moderate, but to deal with all the problems students might have implementing this technology. This seems something of a show-stopper for the moment, for I cannot ask students to call the help desk for help on their wiki. This is a real problem we need to address – right now, can we use this technology in a regular Gen. Ed. Class – which is mostly what I teach? Perhaps what I can do is to make discussion thread have a moderator, who will then make the wiki. Here is a visualization

---

---

I have a wiki on netcipia.net which my colleague Prudence Jones as started, with little student participation so far. Here is the text of what I have written.

---

---

I have been thinking about what a noted educator, Ken Bain, has been telling us about what we need to do so that students will better engage the material. The key for this engagement is _NOT_ to simply present a list of goals to be achieved. A better solution is to start with a problem or issue students can relate to, and then find ways to tie this concern to the course. I want to do a better job of this the next time I teach Roman civilization -- and you can help me. Please!!

And we can start with a very simple question, which we can then tie into the study of Roman history.

And the question is this -- what aspects of the political life of the United States REALLY MAKES YOU MAD? Please, let us all know!

---

---

Again, as I noted, there has been no student input as of yet. More to come.....

---

---

Why I support Obama

Why I support Obama:


I begin with a confession – I have had a difficult time making myself vote, for it was hard for me to like any of the candidates and their parties. It bothered me how very sound candidates like Richardson could make hardly a stir, and I wished candidates would tackle the hard issues harder, with less fear of the polls.

Yet I now support Obama – and I feel I must justify myself.



I support Obama, in the end, not only because I believe is he is the better bet, but because he is the superior dream. The worst case scenario for both candidates is roughly equal, although I think Clinton has more downside potential, due both to her own limitations and the inescapable baggage she hauls with her. And because of those limitations and that baggage, the upside potential of Clinton is hard to locate. But Obama is quite another case – as widely noted, he represents the imaginative possibility of significant positive change, not only to citizens of the US, but to diverse billions across the world. I think his election will make those billions, who also need better dreams, think anew about their beliefs concerning the US. Note how I said ‘imaginative possibility’ – and imagination is an important, even necessary factor at this time, for a hope you cannot imagine cannot move. In regards to Clinton, I strongly suspect it is far easier to imagine great disaster than great success from her. She probably deserves better, but that is how it is, and most of us really know it. But I can imagine greatness coming from Obama. It may be fantasy, but, since the downsides of both candidates are pretty equal, why not take a chance on fantasy? Especially when Obama’s election, without question, will signal the possibility of a new direction in politics. It’s been a long time since we and the world could imagine a new direction, not just the lesser of two evils.

More on Wikis

I just realized you could use HTML Coding here!


I have been working more on my own 'wikiverse', Wikis are another way of doing web pages, it seems to me, with some advantages. Teachers in poorer school systems should learn about them.


I also was thinking that the old-fashioned list format for presenting hyperlinks often would be much
better if the relationships could be better shown graphically. Here is a mock-up of a wiki on
Shelly's poem Ozymandias. See how the links surround the central point. And such links are not hard to make
with image mapping.

The adventure continues...

The next frontier...

I want to try to do some podcasting next, but I need to learn more -- for example, some ipods seem to be able to show video clips, some do not. Let's see what I can learn, how deep the techno-rabbit hole goes.




One of my colleagues, Susana Sotillo, was able to modify my Wiki -- so it looks like I am in business, at least with step one.

Stay tuned!

On Wikis

Yesterday I created my first WIKI, and today I figured out out how to put a table in it. The trick is to use the coding language. I downloaded a bit of bibliography as tab separated text from Filemaker Pro, then made some substitutions, of tabs for the vertical lines. Then I pasted it in the Wiki edit window, and it all worked.

You can see the result in

http://ialvarius.wikispaces.com/

I was always thinking of Wikis in terms of Databases which I could allow scholars to add to -- which is what I want to use it for -- but, looking at some of the examples my fellow professors have, I see now that the Wiki is another way of doing web pages. I wonder if doing web pages via Wiki is easier than doing them via Blackboard. There certainly seems some pretty clever things one can do - -how easily I do not yet know.

More on Utopia

In an alternate life which never happened in this timeline, I wrote a novel (you can see the picture) about the bright (but guilty, with underachievement anxiety) son of Bill Gates type who becomes determined to create a form of utopia. When governmental and societal obstacles prevent him from getting anything done on Earth, he decides to try to create Utopia on Mars. To create this form of Utopia he first, through some very complex personality and aptitude tests) a group of individuals who are very intelligent, wide-ranging polymaths who combine very practical abilities with skills in the most abstract forms of thinking, who also have a pronounced artistic bent, yet are, by nature, basically cheerful and cooperative. Equally important, he brings to Mars the sort of small scale technology (based on developments in synthetic organic machines, which include robot-like (but reproducing) machines) which will allow each citizen to be totally self-sufficient. And the basic rules of the colony require each person to maintain that self-sufficiency. The basic idea is that freedom can be perfected when each person has enough to be his or her own master, and thus a society of equals can more easily come into being, particularly when there is no vast differences of abilities which force social stratification and thus inequality. I won’t go into many details, save that in this colony all leadership positions are rotated by lot, and all major questions taken up in a town meeting.

Today's Technological leap?

Today iJean was able to hook up my iSight to my iMac and after iJean turned off iChat, iJean was able to record
video to iMovie. Not too bad.


You can see an experiment iJean made witih iSight and Imovie at

http://chss2.montclair.edu/classics/1jeanpage/JAtestVid4.mov

By the way, instead of oral reports, iJean is having his Senior Humanities Seminar students make
short videos of their reports.

Again, some problems with fine print, but it all got figured out.

-- iJean

Thoughts on Tech, part II

More thoughts on Technology, Part II

Well, the past few days I have had more tech adventures, all which teach lessons. As I told you, yesterday I tried to subscribe to Peter’s blog. Peter told me to specify Google reader, but when I tried it, it did not seem to work. I emailed Peter, and he told me I had to get an account. “Oh” I said. So I went to get an account, and tried to use Google reader. Did not get successful results. Emailed Peter again, with various screen captures illustrating my problems. He emails me that I was using an obsolete browser – more fine print. This was somewhat distressing, because I wondered, if I had to get a new browser, I might have to get a new operating system. I will need to do so soon anyway, because I have iMovie 3 on my G5, while the best (and free version) is probably iMovie 7, which, alas, needs OS X.4+ and I have only OS X.3+. And we know the fear that, if you change the operating system – what software that you need (like my version of Filemaker Pro) will then not work?

Me and the manual!


This is a serious problem to think about as we try to introduce new technology to our students, as well as fellow faculty. I think of the problems I have had, and I am probably a pretty tech-savvy guy. Can you imagine what might have happened if I had decided that everybody in my Senior Humanities Seminar should have a blog instead of a journal? At least I, as a full-time faculty member and Chair can get access to tech support that students probably can’t as easily. Think of the student who is using an old PC or Mac given to him by his brother, who barely knows what an operating system is, who suddenly is confronted with having to make a blog. I remember years ago when I helped put on some tech workshops. Time-stressed students and faculty, especially if they are not too tech-minded, hate the ‘fine-print’, especially when it manifests itself in incomprehensible problems. At least the problem I had made sense to me, because I am experienced enough with these problems to realize where to go looking for a solution. Thus, even though Peter did not suggest it to me, I tried my version of Safari – and it let me use Google Reader, so I was spared. Last semester one of my instructors encountered a problem with Blackboard which turned out to be some problem with, I think, the Firefox browser.

Thus, when we want to introduce technology to those who are not particularly interested in tech for itself, but only in achieving a purpose, we really need to make sure there is as little ‘fine print’ as possible, and that there is as much support as possible. But that would probably be too ideal a world, alas.

Musing on learning tech, part 1

Musing on learning more about educational technology Part 1

Yesterday, as some of you saw, I created my first blog and put up the first posting. So far, so good.

I am not much of a blog-reader, although I understand that some teachers use
blogs where once journals were assigned. I also wonder if video clips will supercede blogs for some educational functions.

In the past three days I have been getting my iSight webcam hooked up and
learning a bit about iChat, and, a few minutes ago, I attempted to subscribe to Peter Campbell’s blog. This was a good experience, because it makes me experience the
confusion and frustration I know my students probably face when they asked to
do one of my online exercises.

At this point I am quite interested in better ways so that online slideshows, videos and other material can be linked to online exercises which are carefully created to producd a logical and useful learning sequence, even some of the qualities of a private tutor. I have been creating online slideshows linked to BB exercises for Roman Civilization and General Humanities I. As I have been told, I tend to focus more on content…

-- Alvarius

Socialism and time...

One hears how ‘Socialism has tried and has failed again and again. It has been proven that it cannot work.” While I am not sure whether socialism is possible or not, this argument is rubbish. As a Classics scholar, one should learn to take the long view. For example, imagine two Romans talking to each other during the high point of the Roman empire, let us say during the reign of Trajan (98-117 CE). One man praises the achievements of Trajan and the Empire, while another, who has just read Tacitus’ Dialogue On Orators (Dialogus de oratoribus) which connects the decline in oratory to the absence of democratic processes, complains about the loss of freedom. Imagine the other then saying “Democracy can’t work. The Athenians and other Greeks tried it, our forefathers tried it for awhile. It can’t work for long in a society of any size and complexity. Autocracy is the only solution – even the philosophers admit that now. Haven’t you read Dio of Prusa’s work On Kingship?”

Well, he would have been wrong, for, at least to some extent, democracy as been able to develop and even expand in the modern world. Why? New ideologies, new philosophies, but also new means of production and social organizations made it possible. As technology advances, bringing out of necessity new social formations, socialism or even communism may become as widespread and successful as democracy seems to be now.

-- Alvarius.