Trail's End

I have enjoyed participating in GCC's 23 Things program this summer and have learned quite a bit by doing so. While I still don't understand everything about Web 2.0, I now have a much better grasp of what it is and how it can be utilized. My thanks to Christine, Karen, and the FCC for hosting this event and to all my fellow bloggers that participated as well. It was, indeed, a lot of fun, after all :)

However, I wonder if this is really leading us to a better means of education or not ...

In the world of electronic communication, there is a term called "signal-to-noise ratio" that is a measure of how much signal is getting through versus the (obscuring) background interference. In the parlance of teaching, this would be the equivalent to how much information is being imparted amongst the extraneous information that is being presented. For example, if a student can get 15 minutes worth of information by reading 30 minutes in a book, they have an effective signal-to-noise ratio of 1/2. Similarly, if they can get the same 15 minutes of information from a one-hour video, then they have an effective signal-to-noise ratio of 1/4. Granted that all students (myself included) learn in different modes at different rates, some modes of knowledge transference are still inherently faster than others. In a given day, a student can learn twice as much if their signal-to-noise ratio is 1/2 instead of 1/4. The trend to combine knowledge with entertainment in order to make it more fun and enjoyable is laudable, but it progressively decreases the signal-to-noise ratio.

We effectively hold students captive from K-12 ... that's 20,000+ hours of their lives. What signal-to-noise ratio do we want them to have during those hours? As we make things more entertaining and fun, are we diluting the essential knowledge that needs to be imparted over time? How many hours of actual learning are necessary to produce a literate product for the market-place by age 18?

I don't know.

However, I did learn something along the way about podcasts that I thought was worth sharing. If you want to create an audio podcast, simply save it as a MP3 file to a web site (every GCC employee has one or two whether they know it or not). Using iTunes (QuickTime), Windows Media Player, or other MP3 players, anyone can then choose "Open URL" and type in the address to load and play the audio file (example: http://web.gccaz.edu/~jhamilto/deadskunk.mp3 ). Similarly, if you save a video file as an MP4 to a web site, it will not only be very small and compact, but will also readily download using iTunes (think video iPods and iPhones), Play Station Portable (PSP), and many other new-generation portable video players (example: http://www.gc.maricopa.edu/advancement/audio/GCC_REV3.mp4 )

   "Two roads diverged in a wood, and I --
     I took the one less traveled by.
     And that has made all the difference."

23 Things made a difference to me ... it was a path worth travelling :)

Happy Birthday America!

All across America today, almost everyone celebrated the 231st anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Some held their traditional family get-togethers with fireworks and barbecues while others celebrated in alternative ways; if nothing more than to have a day off in the middle of the week.

And, yes, some unlucky poor sots had to work today ;(

My memory of July 4th, 2007 will forever be linked to this photo:

Joey Chestnut brings home to America our claim on the hot dog eating champion of the world: 66 hot dogs (with buns) in 12 minutes in Nathan's hot dog eating competition held at Coney Island.

Urrrpp.

Short, Shameful Confession

I gathered all of the remote controls laying around the house for a family photo:

For a self-proclaimed Luddite, I seem to have more than my fair share ;)

Image Generators

I have to admit that I had a lot of fun playing with a number of the image generators that I found. Once again, I'm not sure that I learned much, but play I did :)

Below is one of my "creations":

Intelligent Agents

I'm going to digress for a moment and share a learning experience I had about twelve years ago. I had signed up for a non-credit course at Glendale Community College called the Electronic Forum (EF) that allowed its members to post entries on-line and participate with others in threaded discussions. At the time, I firmly believed that humans had evolved considerably over the last 10,000 years and that we are now much different (superior) to our ancestors. As a result of a lengthy electronic debate on the subject, I was finally convinced that humans haven't changed much at all during that time, but it is our knowledge base that has steadily evolved instead. As Isaac Newton noted: "If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants."

I'm going to go long on generalizations here and short on specifics, but ever since humans have congregated into groups, the leader(s) of the groups have always sent out scouts to other areas to bring back information. If knowledge is power, then the gathering of knowledge is a key component to that power. A king might send his agents out, in his stead, to seek new ideas and ways of doing things and then report back to him. Many country's rise to power was accompanied by foreign explorations into the ever-expanding known world. Columbus was an agent of Spain when he "discovered" America in 1492 and his report to Queen Isabella insured many more return trips to the "New World" by many European countries.

The need and use of Intelligent Agents (IAs) has not changed in the last 10,000 years, but it is no longer the province of governments and kings. Today, (almost) anyone can use the Internet to tap into the current knowledge base of all human-kind and have at their finger-tips a veritable cornucopia of information ... so much so that it is no longer reasonably possible for a human to keep up with the data. In a sense, today's IA is needed more for filtering the information than for searching, organizing, and presenting it.

In my first post I noted that I am event-driven and like to have a goal in mind when learning something. This is why, in my last post, I noted that I have actively resisted using IAs of any sort. It's more of a philosophical view on learning than anything else: given a choice between learning a steady potpourri of information in the event I might need some of it and learning, in depth, specific information as needed to solve specific problems, I will choose the latter. I don't want something telling me what I might need to know ... I want to make the decision myself as to what that information needs to be. The downside, of course, is that I'm lost when I have no problems to solve, but that's what escapist novels are for ;)

My, but I do prattle on ... anyways, I will probably keep revisiting the idea that our society hasn't really changed much in the need for a given service, but that the technology to deliver that service has become faster, cheaper, and available to nearly everyone. IMHO, it is this common ubiquity that will have the greatest impact on society.

RSS Feeding Diet

I have consciously fought against using any sort of Intelligent Agent* for a long, long time, but I broke my vow and added a handful of the blogs from the fcc-23things blogosphere using Bloglines. In the process of doing so, I read all the blogs listed on the fcc-23things main page and noted Marla's tip about using IE7's built-in feed tool. However, I settled on Bloglines since it's easily accessible from any browser I might happen to use and isn't dependent on the individual browser settings and configurations.

Now I'm RSS ready and awaiting new content :)

*My next post will address this more fully - J.

Flickr'ing About

I was taken to task by another blogger for not participating in the Flickr exercises. From what I had read, I didn't feel a need to look any further; but the fact remains that I didn't do my homework ;(

So I spent the better part of three hours Flickr'ing and Mashup'ing and, while I found it highly entertaining, I'm not sure that I really learned much. Bear in mind that if I had something I might actually call a hobby, 2D and 3D image creation and manipulation would have been a substantial part of that for the last thirty years.

My favorite mashup was the one that converts a photo to a mosaic of smaller random photos based on average color values. This was something I had played with in the past, but I had a limited library of images at my disposal. The one below was created with images from Flickr using Image Mosaic Generator (v2.0) found at http://www.adelaider.com/image-mosaic/ and a picture taken with my cell-phone camera last April in Seattle:

Question: If you can have fun without learning anything, can you learn anything without having fun?