Believed (Minh's and Betsy's) definitions:Community: a group of people with things in common with the where with all to actually be on Web 2.0 (no old people, babies, or po' people)Identity: something no one has anymore.Design: bad (confusing), but sometimes kind of niftyWorking definitions (web 2.0-based? technology-based?)--Minh does not condone these, but Betsy and Heather do:Community: a group of people who interact with each other based on some commonality.Identity: how a person is defined (by himself or others) in relation to his community.Design: the architecture within which individuals from communities and/or communities themselves interact

Jason, Doug, Keith, Becci

Community:
a group of people which have a sense of belonging through common circumstance or interest

Identity:
a way of knowing someone by way of connecting attributes through a common representation which is context specific

Design:
(n) an organizational method
(v) the act of attributing affordances to...(you will in the blank)

test yxl?

My name is Ben Donaldson, and I'm currently a graduate student in Industrial Engineering. My specific interests are in product design/development, engineering education and the gray areas where they overlap.
I grew up in the suburbs of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to thethen went to the suburbs of Boston, Massachusetts for my undergrad degree at Olin College of Engineering. Olin was a brand new school that tried many unusual ways of teaching and learning, so the topics and style of a course like "Disruptive Technologies in Teaching and Learning is my favorite kind.
As far as technology is concerned, I feel very comfortable about its presence. my parents ran a graphics/advertising firm and so I was taught how to use computers and do graphic design from a very young age. I later realized they were just using me as cheap child labor, but my interest in technology and computers kept growing since. Especially now that the online world is getting more social and interactive I'm extremely interested in how using it can change people's "offline" behavior.
When a technology allows people to do something new then it can be happily embraced, but when it's created to think for you then there may be a problem that interferes with people's learning. The way we act and talk online has always been different, and teachers now need to keep up with online & offline trends to teach their students most effectively (or simply to understand them). The "social web" aspect is especially complicated and I hope we discuss that topic at length in class. Social behaviors aside, I'd like to list how tech is adding new styles of learning so teachers can adapt their own styles, and list how students rely on technology so teachers can focus on turning those parts of the brain back on. For example, I'd worry about a student that is always on time for class and assignments, but can't remember anything the week his BlackBerry dies.
Other "interesting" facts about me:

I spent a year after high school volunteering at local newspapers and public schools;
I can cry like a newborn baby.

Disruptive technology is any piece of technology that has changed a discipline or industry in a way they had not planned for. When a technology is used to move forward in some particular path (like increasing Plasma TV size) that was expected or desired it is not disruptive, even if it represents a huge step forward.
Example: peer-to-peer file sharing like BitTorrent
Whether a technology is disruptive or not is completely dependent on the situation. Music studios could have foreseen the idea of P2P and prepared a way to adapt to that type of sharing, in which case it would have been expected and not disrupting. Compact discs were not as disruptive because music studios knew about the technology and it allowed them to continue their markets and businesses in a normal way. To make an analogy to people, It's almost as if compact discs were an organization filling out paperwork and hiring lobbyists to help get Congressional support for their ideas, while P2P just started screaming and protesting in the streets while getting occasionally arrested. If no one foresaw CDs as a replacement for cassette tapes, it would have had the same ugly and disruptive entrance into the music industry as P2P.
Now this doesn't mean CDs are doomed to be a normal technology that maintains the status quo. It may find an unexpected use somewhere else (I don't know how, but maybe). We can't label any technology as completely "not disruptive", because there's always the possibility that it could be cleverly applied to a discipline or industry in a disruptive way.
Hopefully because classrooms are not as worried about profit and competition as corporations, they can adapt and deal with technologies that disrupt them in a graceful way. A big problem is that the students' preference for certain new technologies may be recognized, but the schools don't have the funding to include the tech for years while students grow frustrated with slower, "old-school" methods.
On a related note, here's a sci-fi short story called "The Road Not Taken" by Eric Iverson, which gives a neat account of how two civilizations attack each other, and each one's "normal" technology is disruptive to the other.

The video in question by Prof. Michael Wesch is definitely gorgeous and fun to watch; although it was trying really hard to be profound, it felt more profound like a planetarium ride than profound like a motivational talk. In other words, what's going on in the online world is amazing but I wasn't sure if we're supposed to do something next.
For instance, today is Martin Luther King Day, celebrating a man who gave one of the best speeches in our country's history. The Web 2.0 video, like MLK's speech, was beautifully composed and very philosophical. But Mr. King's talk was about an obvious need for change to happen, whereas the YouTube video just showed us obvious changes that are already happening. The constant re-editing of words and sentences definitely communicates how "we all" have a role in shaping this new wave, but is there nothing to worry about?
The fact that I can instantly whip up a blog, tag it on several social sites with my personal profile and get my friends to vote it up... is the ease alone what I should be delighted about? Or the idea that millions of people are all going to do the same thing so easily and we will be huddled together in a giant virtual room called the Internet, trying to have normal conversations over the infinite crowd noise? There is great potential, and who knows what might happen, but what struck me is the idea that these technologies will let people produce so much information automatically, and with just tags and keywords to separate it all.
Well I guess it's good for Martin Luther King's sake, because in the future our children will not be judged by the color of their skin but by their Twitter feeds and Digg points.

This is a great reference for anyone needing to keep track of some educational psychology and human interface terms (as almost every paragraph seems to either coin a term or define another), but isn't something really satisfying to read unless you're a PhD student. There is more than enough empirical evidence cited in the sections (and even a shout-out to Howard Rheingold's book) to show that people can learn and solve problems better with an external tool or combination, whether analog or digital.Pea tries to convince us that in today's information-overflow environment, kids will need to harness distributed knowledge for problem solving because they simply can not know how to do everything. He doesn't need to convince me, it sounds pretty obvious. How best to get kids using distributed knowledge and tools effectively is an endless battle that the paper cites to the extreme, and the discussion seems to cover just about every angle. But I couldn't really find Pea's practical, concluding strategy for how to deal with it. Sorry, I'm an engineer and we love that application stuff, but it's all theoretical discussion in that paper.Overall, if you want to finally understand what "affordances" are and how the scholarly world feels in a nutshell about education without classroom boundaries, the article was really helpful and exhaustive. I just secretly wish that every sentence didn't feel like it was run through the thesaurus five times to make the vocabulary as high as possible.

As much information (and personal stories) as the Internet publishes every single day, it's really special to read something that:Is from the "dawn" of the Web's popular use;Is from a well-spoken and important source;Attempts to predict a future that we've already reached.Despite being relatively young (25) in age, I do remember spending long nights on text-based forums and newsgroups, back when AIM was non-existent and e-mail was something to be checked once in a full moon. So to hear Rheingold talk about these virtual meeting places like the WELL as if they are some great new social revolution, I never realized how much more important that step really was than what we're seeing today. Of course the current Web 2.0 wave is all about putting a personal and social stamp on every electronic thing possible, from photos to audio thoughts to "what books Amazon thinks I want to buy", but that's just a bunch of frilly extensions to what the WELL was doing twenty years ago.Those old forums did the same thing although without the bells and whistles, and that's why all the deeper statements he makes are less psychic than they seem. The whole idea of people coming together on common interests (or dislikes) rather than physical location. The ability to meet, work with, learn with or even fall for someone  based entirely on the strings of text that you've been sending back and forth. The personality types, argument styles and unexpected movements that online communities always seem to have.All of those things were just as possible and just as apparent when Rheingold and friends were at a boring black and white terminal, so suddenly I'm not as impressed by the Web today. Our reach and bandwidth are much better, the ease of use and range of mediums are much better, but from the point of view of a psychologist or sociologist, what has changed? The one unique thing that Rheingold really predicted was that the power of online communities would grow and not just stay as an "chat-aholics anonymous" meeting. Even I never would have expected today's bloggers and online groups to have so much strength in the offline world.

Community - A group of people who share something common: goals, interests, values, or traditionally location. Now the location piece is not critical, and while people could meet about shared interests in a classroom or public place, now they could be anywhere. Also, as Rheingold pointed out, instead of having the local interest group "choose you" because you were closest to them, you choose your community wherever it is.Identity - formed partly because of the communities explained above: what set of communities a person is in (and how they overlap) can show a huge part of someone's identity. Instead of someone's job being 90% of their expertise and public voice, they have blogs or feeds or "casts" about who-knows-what that add a different voice, and brings a legitimacy to that identity as well. And if you wanted to create a 'false' identity that you haven't been able to live in real life, you can do so online without most people knowing who you physically are.Design - how you get your identity out into the online communities; how your blog looks, what writing style you have, how you 'sculpt' your identity even if it's not false. Creation, management, and facilitating communication are all major considerations when designing or imagining a design.

Has anyone seen the new Diane Lane movie (thriller)? I have not, but apparently, the premise could be very applicable to the ideas in this course. As I understand it, the faster people log onto the killer's site, the faster the person dies...essentially people are participating in the death of the victims. While I know this thought is quite morbid, the concept could be applicable to our class. So...can we convince Cole and Scott to take a field trip to the movies and then blog about the topic??? Who knows, but apparently if we vote, then we can discuss this topic in class...Power to the People!

As we work to make this space more powerful and flexible, we'll be looking for your feedback.  The first one we have is to create a tag / category that will allow for sorting via week.  Leave comments to this post with your ideas for making this space work better for how the class is using it.

Article about Amazin's purchase of Audible.com

http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/business/reuters-amazon.html?_r=1&ref=technology&oref=slogin

As we work to make the Pligg space more powerful and flexible, we'll be looking for your feedback.  The first one we have is to create a tag / category that will allow for sorting via week.  Leave comments to this post with your ideas for making this space work better for how the class is using it.  It will only get better if you participate.

So, I had lunch with a professor friend yesterday and I was singing the praises of Web 2.0. Now it just so happens that my friend is a farmer and an agricultural educator. Our ensuing conversation so deeply disturbed me that I felt compelled to put this out there for our class to ponder…

I am not certain of the numbers, but let us say that 10 percent of the world’s population has access to broadband internet infrastructure. If we are touting open access and to everyone and a distributed intelligence throughout mankind, are we not just talking about just those people who have use of the technology? Further compounding this issue is the literacy rate world wide. Even the lowest tech of cell phone texting assumes literacy, even if the phones and networks are available. However, podcasting would be good if there would be hubs for uploading…

I found a good article that speaks to this (here). Think of Africa vs. the Philippines and the difference in literacy rate.

My friend asked a question that I had not even considered. Does the IT infrastructure serve to widen the gap between the haves and the have nots? If we only give voice to those accessing the “matrix” who does Web 2.0 speak for? Should we even consider this issue? It relates, sort of, to the power outage questions and built environments Distributed Intelligence and the availability of Built Environments, dependence on e-learning spaces, college success and all that.

Even in PA the access to the internet in high speed is extremely limited in rural areas because companies do not deem it feasible to run cable to remote areas or areas with difficult terrain. SO, what good is /google Earth if no one see it? What good is developing all the platforms for communities of practice for teachers when a large percent of the teachers will never be able to access it? These are broad sweeping statements from someone who has not yet crunched the numbers. I do recall last year the political discussion about internet access in rural PA and the companies turning a deaf ear to those who would lobby for the cause. The political issues are a fact of life where IT(tech) is concerned. Who will use it? Who demands it? Are we creating a system that is not equitable nor sustainable for all?

This bothers me. I have always worked in my teaching to bring access to education to disenfranchised students and families, students of poverty, and students with literacy issues, those who cannot read.

If I support a system that does not provide equitable access in our country much less in third world countries, how do I now ignore the issue? My friend said use Mexico City and other rapidly growing population dumps, nodes, clusters and tell him how IT will improve the lives of the people living in barrios, tent cities and slums…I had no answer, I feel an unease. How will this IT reduce illiteracy, crime, poverty? Was Web 2.0 conceived for all or just all who access it? Any ideas?

what is the first thing you can come up with when talking about disruptive technology?Being a tech geek myself, I honestly never asked myself this question...so what did i do? went on wiki:A disruptive technology or disruptive innovation is a
technological innovation, product, or service that uses a "disruptive"
strategy, rather than a "sustaining" strategy, to overturn the existing
dominant technologies or status quo
products in a market. Disruptive innovations can be broadly classified
into low-end and new-market disruptive innovations. A new-market
disruptive innovation is often aimed at non-consumption, whereas a
lower-end disruptive innovation is aimed at mainstream customers who
were ignored by established companies. Sometimes, a disruptive
technology comes to dominate an existing market by either filling a
role in a new market that the older technology could not fill (as more
expensive, lower capacity but smaller-sized hard disks
did for newly developed notebook computers in the 1980s) or by
successively moving up-market through performance improvements until
finally displacing the market incumbents (as digital photography has begun to replace film photography).a scrap from wiki had a good layout of what it ment. I was also curious what others had in mind with disruptive?some thought helpful some did not, but if you ask me it's an evolution!things that we really don't notice and the technology does make it easier.For example, when everyone was using analog style camera's some where poped out the digital camera's actually letting the film buisness go down in the gutter. For us we do pay more for the camera's then we used to, but we don't need any films to take pictures anymore. So is this a help? or not?some might say that this is not such a help, lots of people do not think we actually "need" all these new things, but because of the economy and policies, development does occur and everyone does start to use it.For me, I still think it riches our lives. Some might think before internet we would've went to the library and rent or read a book. now we just click on line to see if we can find a pdf file or have it ordered to our homes. we might of got a bit lazyer but we got more time on our hands to rich our lives. maybe spend more time with our families or work further on whatever is on our minds.I think that disruptive technology also help out the economy of any country (or the other way around). going back to the camera example, unless you take pictures for your job, normally if you have a camera at home no one would want to buy a new camera, unless it's broken or so. however this new product line would be a great excuse for other policy makers whoever stated that economy would boom; having this unfamiliar product familiar, many purchases would be made. and when the people start to  buy the market would grow~  you know just like the "the invisible hand of
Jupiter"for us? we get to use new stuff, after all humans are adaptable animals, and it's pretty surprising to see how people can adapt ot new stuff very quickly. making our lives easier to liveanyway, disruptive technology would mean to me a good deal for the policy makers to rapid the economy and for us a good life or a lazy and comfortable life depending on our self control. hey believe or not.

There are two readings for next week.  Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of practice : learning, meaning, and identity. Cambridge, U.K. ; New York, N.Y.: Cambridge University Press.andTurkle, S. (1995).  Life on the screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet.  New York, NY.  Touchstone.These are the introductions to these two books, so not too heavy weight.  Please remember that responses are due by 5 pm on Monday 02.04.08 and you need to read and vote by Tuesday 02.05.08 at 5 pm.

There are two readings for next week. 

Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of practice : learning, meaning, and identity. Cambridge, U.K. ; New York, N.Y.: Cambridge University Press.

and

Turkle, S. (1995).  Life on the screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet.  New York, NY.  Touchstone.

These are the introductions to these two books, so not too heavy weight.  Please remember that responses are due by 5 pm on Monday 02.04.08 and you need to read and vote by Tuesday 02.05.08 at 5 pm.

I had to read Pea several times and that is why I am a bit late in posting. I wrote a response and then read the assignment posting that the responses have to revolve around community, identity and design. So here is the revised version. Feingold is the diametric opposite of Pea as he is user friendly and represents the manifestation of distributed intelligence. The discussion about copyright, who owns content, and how creativity of the future is built on the past is and important message. Taken together, I believe the message is as follows:

Community: The possibilities of developing a synergistic “community” is boundless using technology as a tool. Creativity will be infinite if open open copyright and the "Free Culture" perspective will apply to all. This week I spent many hours exploring the various ways community exists on the web to try to get a vision about what people are really doing. This is all new to me. I believe that community is perhaps the most important part of the trilogy of community, identity and design. It is people (I got the Soylent Green reference), first. For my research, I believe building teacher communities using the relative low tech (no code writing) of spaces like ning, blogs, and wikis will be the “state of the art”. How community develops and is sustained will be crucial pieces to follow as I continue on my doctoral journey.

Identity: It seems that identity springs from community affiliation. Identity has less to do with distributed intelligence than community. I will need to work on this one for a while. Pea was little help here for me. Copyright seems an issue here as open content will not be connected with any one creator, especially if the creation comes from a widely distributed and often anonymous sources. Tought concept for me.

Design: Feingold makes design simple, both understanding it and applying it. I am not certain I understand
what role design plays in all this yet. Certainly, distributing the responsibility of creating spaces in which synergistic work takes place will hugely increase the rate of design output, and therefore the rate of new spaces for yet more people to form communities of creativity. Boggles the mind when you really think about it.

I have just given cursory responses here because I am still trying to take it all in and make sense of a world that I did not experience. I am fascinated and hooked, as it were, but do not understand yet how it will be used.

Sorry for the late post, classmates and wonderful professors.

Want to know what Harvard thinks is happening in terms of the future? Of course you do. This set of articles covers the gamut from why gaming is valuable as a learning environment to what fields actually need experts. Choose some trends that interest you and check them out.

http://harvardbusinessonline.hbsp.harvard.edu/hbsp/hbr/articles/article.jsp?ml_subscriber=true&_requestid=64765&referer=/hbsp/hbr/articles/article.jsp&reason=freeContent&productId=R0802A&OPERATION_TYP

Want to know more about what blogs are and why we should care. This article does a good think on blogs and books.

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/21013

Web 2.0 acutally saw this clip a year ago, while I was goofing around youtube, it's pretty surprising what you can do with just simple clicking on the web.
I've read some comments on other blogs and postings and saw that lot of people really have different idea's about this clip.
For me i'ts a brilliant clip which shows that simple clicking and simple things will give you so much benefit of our everyday life.
I'm not saying there's nothing negetive about the vast broad and fast techonology these days but I guess, trying to make the best out of it is something we teachers or scholars needs to do.
I'm a technology geek guy, who would always try to make the best out of everything that I can take the chance, for web 2.0 I guess, depending on how we could tweak the interent and the web, it'll be better used for development in class.
i love technology is something I love and try to look at the positive side which will benefit ourlives, or at least my life. ^^

If the use of virtual communities turns out to answer a deep and compelling need in people, and not just snag onto a human foible like pinball or pac-man, today's small online enclaves may grow into much larger networks over the next twenty years.
-Howard Rheingold in 1993
 
We are exactly fifteen years into that twenty year period.  The changes that have been created since Rheingold initially wrote that article are amazing.  Could he have imagined a thing like Facebook or My Space?  It is interesting for me to read Rheingold's article because I was a freshman in high school in 1993.  I've grown up with this information age.  It has become something I just do. I've never quite thought to look back and realize how fast things have developed. 
 
In cyberspace, everybody is in the dark. We can only exchange words with each other -- no glances or shrugs or ironic smiles. Even the nuances of voice and intonation are stripped away. On top of the technology-imposed constraints, we who populate cyberspace deliberately experiment with fracturing traditional notions of identity by living as multiple simultaneous personae in different virtual neighborhoods. , HR
 
This quote brings to mind the virtual reality game of Second Life.   Could Reingold have conceived of a place where it is not only words, but pictures that allow someone to take on a "second life"?   
 
Because we cannot see one another, we are unable to form prejudices about others before we read what they have to say: Race, gender, age, national origin and physical appearance are not apparent unless a person wants to make such characteristics public. - HR
 
This leaves the question --- Do these communities bring us closer to Social Justice? We loose the visual prejudice, yet we gain the ability to escape and become some sort of ideal. 
 
Reingold brings up the idea that the technology is just another way for us to satisfy our human needs for friendship and attention.  We are using the machine .

Ok, this has nothing to do with improvisation and education, but I am practicing embedding and this is cute.

I don't think we realize how much we depend on technology until the power goes out. Yesterday I was without power for 6 1/2 hours. I was told by an automated message from the electric company when I reported my outage that it was caused by faulty lines.

Soon I realized that I had no refrigerator, no freezer, no TV, no DVD, no IPod, no computer, no internet, no stove, no microwave, no toaster oven, no radio, no light, no heat, no phone...

As the sun set, I thought, "I need to be prepared here." After lighting almost every candle I owned and putting a log in the fire, I at least had some light. I had an hour of time left on my computer, which had to be prioritized and divided between the many hours of work due today for all of my classes. After all, with no electricity I couldn't recharge my computer. For a moment, I kind of freaked out...I couldn't make food; There's no noise (like the TV, radio, Ipod, etc.) in the background; I don't have sufficient light; and I'm cold...I grabbed my textbook and a highlighter, sat down under a blanket by the fireplace, and read my other "traditional" assignments by firelight.

Romantic? Maybe to some people, but every time I experience a power outage, it reminds me of how dependent I am on technology. It is quite troublesome, really, because it makes me feel helpless. Does our dependence on so much technology make us vulnerable?

The following is a response I posted to http://engage.tlt.psu.edu/disruptive/story/title/Howard_Rheingold_Facebook_and_SecondLife---_Millionaires.
There seems to be a lot of concern about life/identity in the digital age- a lot of (understandable) fear.  I think there are two points we must understand:  1) we do not know what we do not know, and 2) knowledge isn't power- power is power.
If we are standing on the platform at the deep-end of digital technology: are we divers? good swimmers? bellyfloppers? or retreaters?
Where do we think it all goes from here?  I don't think it's going to stop.  Why would I want it to?  There is so much momentum built into the human-machine interface already.  We don't resist grandpa's pacemaker, the mammogram machine that detected aunt Betsy's breast cancer, the sonograms that help us have healthy children and the life support machines that we demand for them if they aren't.  What about the aerospace equipment that enables us to explore "where no man has gone before"?  It all goes back to fundamental philosophical questions: Who am I and why does it matter?  We will talk about issues of identity and i hope about those of control. We have made such rapid technological progress in such a short amount of chronological time- for some it feels shocking, for others more "natural" (Pea, 1993).  For those who feel distressed at the thought of breathing water- you are already in the fish bowl, but do you see your self as a fish?  What are the implications of our awareness of the world?  What is the world we live in and how are we defining our selves in relation to it?  After all, according to Barbara Glenn, chief of animal biotechnology at the Biotechnology Industry Organization, in a recent article on the future of the food we eat: "Clones are just clones."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/16/AR2006101601337.html
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16372490/

I just wanted to let you all know that the Blogs at Penn State toolset is now working with visitor comments.  If you want to turn on commenting, you can follow the directions here: http://blogger.psu.edu/help/basics/commentsAnd you can now leave comments here at the course blog as well.

A while back we completed another Hot Team white paper related to social rating sites — think of digg.com as the big example. Essentially a space where content is either aggregated in or submitted by users and then voted on by the community to raise the opportunity for exposure to all readers. Lots [...]

So, Whats a “ning”? A friend of mine showed me this site and I am in love. Here I can make my own “Facebook-like” pages for my horse client community, and if I do that well, then I want to use it, maybe with the Education PDS to develop and interactive environment. I cannot cease to be amazed at what is out on the web for creativity. Both my parents were artists, but I, being an instant gratification junkie, really want to use my creative juices to bring people together. Change agent, leader, facilitating groups—isn’t that an art?

Anyway, check out Classroom 2.0 at Ning…as in Lear….Ning????

Take a gander at this!

Zentation

http://www.zentation.com/viewer/index.php?passcode=692291What old people do for fun0:40A comical how-to-guide for drivers

Here is a video of what the show 24 would have been like in 1994.  Even if you don't watch the show (I don't), you can still appreciate it.welcome, you've got mail

I just wanted to let you all know that the Blogs at Penn State toolset is now working with visitor comments.  If you want to turn on commenting, you can follow the directions here:

In "Distributed intelligence and designs for education," Roy D. Pea suggests that in education, pedagogy, and instructional design, our outcomes and goals should strive to have learners invent their own tools for learning rather than receive information and spit it back.  Pea states that learners should be "inventors of distributed-intelligence-as-tool" rather than "receivers of intelligence-as-substance." The implications of his research are simple.   Teachers should facilitate the creation of tools that will serve as resources for creative and intelligent activities in the classroom whether in individual or group work.  In dealing with technology, the following question comes up: Are the implications of distributed intelligence different with Web 2.0 technologies?  No.  The Web 2.0 revolution has created a world where "the machine is us" (words by Michael Wesch).  There has never been a time in history where technology has been so easy to learn and use.  Whereas the teacher is the facilitator in the classroom, Web 2.0 technology is the facilitator in our lives.  Web 2.0 allows all of us to create tools that will serve as resources for creative and intelligent activities throughout our lives. 

In a "A Slice of Life in My Virtual Community", Howard Rheingold asks the following question about the future: "will there be an open market, in which newcomers like Apple or Microsoft can become industry leaders?"

I think there is an answer to that question right now in the present. With the emergence of Web 2.0 tools and social networks, the future is now and the future is open source. The leading social network in the U.S., Facebook, just recently produced a SDK (software development kit) package and opened up their software to developers around the world. Facebook has made it possible to create applications that can be used as part of their network. Small businesses can now become part of the social network market. Businesses can create applications for the Facebook platform and then sell them to Facebook. They can also retain rights for applications and run advertisements on their application pages. If you would like to learn more about this new facebook feature, watch Mark Zuckerberg, the creator of Facebook, explain it in detail (Click here). Having a programming background myself, I am interested in trying my hand in developing a few Facebook applications. Who knows, I may even make some money. Which in turn begs the question... who will be the first millionaire in Facebook applications?

Another open source online community has already produced its first millionaire in Anshe Chung. What is truly amazing is that Chung started out in SecondLife with an initial investment of $9.95! For some more information about SecondLife, click on the Anshe Chung link above or watch the online office space that Rheingold set up at http://vlog.rheingold.com/

I first read Pea's piece two years ago, in rereading my initial response to it I am struck by the evolution of my own thoughts on the concept of distributed intelligence.  First, I based my entire response on a misunderstanding of Pea's use of the word intelligence.  "Pea discusses the role of tools in distributed intelligence, mentioning such items as pulse meters and currency exchange calculators saying, "These tools literally carry intelligence in them (53)."  I interpret him to be referring to the intelligence of the designer of said tools and that the designer has embedded his/her intelligence within them.  But this could also be interpreted to mean the items encase a web of intelligence unique to themselves.  I am disturbed by the position.  Artifacts carry the result of an individual's ability to use his/her intelligence but, in my opinion, not the intelligence itself.  That would be as if the pop-up paperclip at the bottom of my word processing program was actually reading and thinking about what I was writing before it suggested help in writing my letter.  Though Pea does say, "a software program may provide timely cues to the different subtasks of writing (68)" in regards to distributed intelligence, finding and helping with problems this does not mean the paperclip is actually intelligent." As I revisit the piece I am struck by my prior error.  Pea does not intend for intelligence to be confused with cognition.  Intelligence, in his opinion, is "accomplished rather than possessed (Pea, 50)".  This connects intelligence with action, of achieving understanding and crafting solutions rather than mere thought processes, as I previously supposed.  In this sense, intelligence must, by definition, be distributed throughout a population.  One person knows how to build a house, another milk a cow and a third darn socks and by pooling their respective intelligences a functional community is formed.  We cyber-immigrants are faced with the same general need to pool our collective aptitudes and produce an end which is greater than the sum of it's parts.  If intelligence were not distributed, we would be born knowing everything we need to know in life, but this does not occur.  Children are taught how to function in the world.  These lessons are passed down from generation to generation with the instructions becoming modified to fit a changing environment.   As we grow we sit in classrooms, discussing and debating our own ideas as well as the ideas of those who have come before us.  A book is a simple example of "off-loading" thoughts.  By capturing an idea in writing it no longer belongs to the individual but is free to be modified and applied by the collective.  This is the epitome of web 2.0!  Sharing ideas, passing along conclusions, refining thoughts all with the help of potentially EVERYONE.  Anyone can read and comment on anyone else's posted ideas.  These comments can either be internalized by the author and used to refine his/her argument or they can be rebutted but either way the idea has changed. Posts are copied, forwarded, altered and parodied. They squirm out of the individuals' head and into the hands of others taking on a life of their own.  Distributed intelligence is faster, easier and more widespread than ever.  Have a question?  Simply, "google it" to find an answer or start a thread in a discussion board and hear what other's have to say.  With the inception of web 2.0 we are no longer bound by bricks and mortar.  Friendships are formed, ideas are shared, debated and revised, lessons are learned and taught, and data is available in real-time , the potential of distributed intelligence is far reaching and remarkable but we must also never cast aside human-held cognition in exchange for machine-held intelligence.  As a the world community becomes increasingly meshed it becomes even more imperative to form a reflective practice of connection to off-line culture, traditions and values.  We are a collective species, we do not thrive in isolation.  So even if you're a member of a thriving on-line community, make a point to drop into someone's office instead of emailing them, dial the phone instead of sending a text message and smile at a stranger instead of sending a ☺.  Though ((((hugs)))) can cheer you up they will never be as good as sharing a cup of coffee with a friend or having an actual shoulder to cry on.   Web 2.0 may enhance our distributed intelligence but reading about how to tie your shoes should never replace a parents' loving instruction and guidance.         

In his article, "Practices of distributed intelligence and designs for
education," Roy D. Pea suggests that intelligences are, "distributed
across minds, persons, and the symbolic and physical environments, both
natural and artificial" (p. 47).  As well "invented artifacts"
within these physical environments act as "mediating structures," which
shape and direct our desired activity (Pea, 1993, pp. 48-49).

My interest in this article, for this discussion, is in distributed
intelligence and the built (physical) environment.  Moreover, how
the design of built environments (architecture) influences distributed
intelligence.

According to Pea (1993), intelligence is regarded as something that may
be "accomplished," "crafted," or "designed" (p. 50, 76). 
Likewise, affordances of artifacts effect activity and are the
origination of the "material distribution of intelligence" (Pea, 1993,
p. 50).  <Here, affordances refer to the "perceived and actual
properties of a thing, primarily those functional properties that
determine just how a thing could possibly be used' (p. 51).>

Thus, in the "mind-environment interface" artifacts of distributed
intelligence are perceived as "invisible" and "un-remarkable" aspects
of our "natural" life experiences (Pea, 1993, p. 51, 53).  When
this interface is seamless, artifacts are accessible, actions are
efficient, and our human influence on the design and distribution of
intelligence fades from acts of history to conditions of nature (Pea,
1993).

But what happens when distributed intelligence is disrupted, blocked,
and made inefficient not necessarily by the artifacts themselves, but
the environments they have come to be incompatible with?  If we
are to accomplish our desired engagement in intelligence crafting, when
our interfaces are ripped at the seams, we are forced to (re)negotiate
with our environment.  If distributed intelligence is expressed
through "dynamic systems of activity involving persons, environment,
and tools," how is it expressed when the system is rendered static or
inactive because of an unintelligent/archaic built-environment? (Pea,
1993, p. 79).

The distribution of intelligence is enhanced, made invisible and
seamless through artifacts encoded with web 2.0 technologies, but if it
is not accessible because of conditions in a built environment, then
what is it?  Point being, a more comprehensive discussion of
distributed intelligence in the context of web 2.0 in the 1.0 classroom
(read: classroom, coffee shop, library, or any other "wi-fi" space with
horrible convertibility, two power outlets per 50 users, etc.) is
greatly needed.

 

In his article on life in his virtual community, Howard Rheingold defines (his) virtual community as:



a group of people who may or may not meet one another face to face
who exchange words and ideas through the mediation of computer bulletin boards and networks

chat and argue, engage in intellectual intercourse, perform acts
of commerce, exchange knowledge, share emotional support, make plans,
brainstorm, gossip, feud, fall in love, find friends and lose them,
play games and metagames, flirt, create a little high art and a lot of
idle talk- all in cyberspace
do everything people do when people get together
do it with words on computer screens, leaving our bodies behind

have already built communities where our identities commingle and interact electronically, independent of local time or location
live now how the larger population may live in the future

Based on this article, I think there are several points to consider.


there seems to be a lot of resistance to accepting cyberspace as
a place where community can (and does) occur.  why?  is this
resistance a condition/viewpoint germane to the non-native (of today's
technologically infused world)?


we are mirrors of our environment- our identities are becomming
as fragmented, multiplied, and overlapping as the information networks
we live in.  claim to the singular identity is now the profession
of the dis/connected and technophobic nostalgist.


if we are to teach and learn in increasingly techno-immersive
worlds, how may our attitudes and beliefs about technology, community,
and identity need to change/shift/evolve so that we can be active
participants in the creation and use of 2.0 (learning/teaching)
environments and experiences?

I do not believe the implications of distributed intelligence with Web 2.0 are greatly different than with other technologies that have facilitated the exchange of information. I am thinking of technologies such as writing, printing, telephone, radio, television, Web 1.0 and the like. Most of these technologies increased the speed at which information could be created and distributed and the volume of people the information could reach. The Web 2.0 may provide a greater opportunity to accomplish these things but my guess is that in the future there will be new technologies that allow for the even more rapid dispersal of information.
 
Part of this assignment was to discuss how these technologies contribute to identity, community, and design. I am not sure at this point what this means in the relation to Web 2.0 and distributed intelligence. I have spent hours trying to come up with something but now as the deadline approaches I decided I will go with this. The affect on identity of these new technologies is more rapid and permanent in nature then previous technologies, but not that different. People can post anything on the internet almost instantaneously and this information can be retained in a variety of ways nearly indefinitely using downloads, screenshots, and cached pages.
 
The affect of Web 2.0 technology on community well it has positives and negatives like every technology. In the Rheingold article he talks about spending a great deal of time in front of a computer screen for work and recreation. It seems a little much to revolve such a great deal of ones life around these technologies. However, I likely feel this way as they have not been a part of my life for as long as they have been apart of his or this generation of children. He makes it seem like entering these chatrooms is like stopping in on friends just to say hi and hang out. I still prefer seeing my friends and family in person and being able to share my emotions with more than a colon and a closed parenthesis.  As far as design, well Dr. McDonald said that this was not covered in the article by Pea so I will take his word on it and not post anything in relation to it.

Rheingold's piece on the old-school internet communities brought back so many memories. Back in the day (1997), when AOL 2.0 was the newest version, 28.8 kbps was fast, and we paid for the internet by the hour (sign up for AOL and get 10 hours free!), I used to be on a Backstreet Boys mailing list/list-serv (that's right, you heard me). I would sit on the computer for hours on end, reading other people's emails to the group about anything and everything related to the Backstreet Boys: I saw their new video on MTV, I heard the new song on the radio, take a look at these pictures I found, etc. I was that "sport hassler" Rheingold mentions,I picked fights with all the little teenyboppers (yes, I was one, too) about how Nick is ugly and can't sing (still true) and Oh Look At How You Used The Wrong Its/It's! I even made close friends through that mailing list. I went to BSB concerts with one girl who lived about an hour away (my parents were okay with that, because she is Asian, too, and that makes everything okay). The sense of community was extremely clear. We knew who everyone was, who met the BSB the most times, and which Backstreet Boy was everyone's favorite. The best part about being on this mailing list and making friends with the girl who lived an hour away is that it enabled me to finally meet the Backstreet Boys oh-so-many years later (w00t!). The girl and I bought tickets to the same concert and arranged to meet up. We met with a guy who worked with the record label (whom we had met and hassled for backstage passes at a previous concert), and he actually let us backstage.I'm really sorry for all you people who actually read this whole thing.

My own blog entry ("I would pee on Pea") is listed on Pligg as being written by yxl228. I think my identity has just been stolen.

Pea considers intelligence to be distributed and stresses the need for education "teaching for the design of distributed intelligence."  Intelligence is not limited to what facts a person knows.  Intelligence can be contained by objects and tools.  Everyday items, such as the coordinate plane, that are taken for granted contain intelligence.  Efficiency is one of the goals people always have.  They want to make things easier, more user-friendly.  When design eliminates the need to read an instructions manual, everyone benefits. 

Computer mediated communication (CMC) has enabled people to create additional social circles.  Howard Rheingold's 1993 assessment is still applicable today.  Through online communities, people are able to connect with others who have similar interests.  They can determine what information to reveal about their identities.  others in the community will read what they have to say without regard to race, age, gender, or handicap.  People can even assume new identities if they wish.  Over the years, people have joined online communities en masse.  The youth and those in academics have remained at the forefront, with social networking sites like facebook and myspace among the most popular.  Here is my favorite message board: world famous letsrun message board

I must say that Roy Pea's discussion on distributed
intelligence was mighty thick for me to cut through. Perhaps I have distributed
my intelligence to thin. From what I was able to understand, this concept of "distributed
intelligence" seems to play a big roll in how we interact with our environments
to achieve a goal. It is quite apparent to me that humans distribute their
intelligence, their knowledge, into the environment buy making tools. But much
past that, I get lost.

 

Pea says "we should strive toward a reflectively and
intentionally distributed intelligence in education, where learners are
inventors of distributed-intelligence-as-a-tool, rather than receivers of
intelligence-as-substance." I think this idea is embodied in the current trend,
especially in science teaching, to move toward more student-centered, inquiry based
lessons. Hopefully the era of high-stakes testing does not derail this idea.

Howard Rheingold has been mucking around in the ethers of
the virtual world for a long time. It is interesting to see how many of his projections
have come to fruition. I like how he talked about how online communities form,
and how they are not based on location, as traditional ones are, but of common
interest. What better place is there to find people you that to engage in
conversation, intellectual or casual.I have done this myself. As I have
mentioned in my introductory post, I am an avid pocket watch collector , but there
is no local community to support my interest. So where did I go to support my
interest, thirst for knowledge and desire for a community , online. However, I
have treated this as an educational - businesslike type of environment. I go
there to learn, and if able give insight, but not to complain about my problems
(unless they are watch related).

I am a seeker by nature, a teacher/researcher by profession, a writer by passion and a Mom by the grace of the Universe.  These all collided in September of '06 when I became a member of my first virtual community.  At first I was intimidated by the convivial conversations between 'missniss' 'southrndlite' 'blu_daisie' 'whitcombls' and 'KirstenG'.  Who was I?  I felt like the new girl who didn't have anyone to sit with in the cafeteria.  I had never been a member of a virtual community and didn't yet understand the cultural norms of such a group let alone the deep friendships and bonds which could form.  So with a slightly trepidacious heart I introduced "myself" . "Hi, I'm psugal " and so began my fall down the rabbit hole of life lived online.I didn't know who these women were or where they came from, but come we did.  From an office building in Atlanta, a back porch in Virginia, a kitchen in Illinois and a beach in California we came.  All of various colors, ideologies, backgrounds and beliefs.  We ranged in age from 14 to 40 but the bond that we shared was undeniable , we were pregnant and due in April!  We all felt the same life life growing within us and because of that we were the same.  It didn't matter that some of us were married and a long time Mommy or that some were first timers embarking on this journey alone.  We all had questions.  We all had answers.  We all needed to be connected to women experiencing the same things we were at the same time.  With our differences masked by the computer screen, our similarities poured out.  Women who, I am ashamed to say, I would have overlooked as potential friends in "real life", have taught me the virtues of acceptance, of not judging, and of seeing what connects people versus what separates.  Together we grew (emotionally, intellectually and of course physically!) learned, laughed and changed.  Something was happening to our group.  Our posts transformed from asking for advice to chats about husbands, jobs, bills, friends, our lives were connecting in ways unanticipated.  Together we became better versions of ourselves.  We also realized we were different.  No one used our forum as a firing range. Our anonymity seemed to bring out the best rather than the worst in us.  Of course people disagreed, but quarrels were resolved with respectful "conversation" instead of catty cutdowns.   When one of our members went into early labor, we collectively panicked and sent her straight to the hospital.  Three weeks later when her daughter passed away we mourned, cried and felt a depth of sadness none of us had ever felt for someone we had never "met".  One by one we all went into labor.  As we departed for our respective hospitals we knew intimately that we were not alone.  That what we were experiencing was not ours alone but shared by all women or at least by 50 or so other women across North America.  And now, a year and a half later, we still lean on each other for comfort, advice, support and best of all, friendship.  As we paced for miles around our living rooms trying to calm a crying child we would pause, sign-on and breathe a shy of relief that our child was not the only inconsolable baby in the word.  Our connections have strengthened as well as our similarities.  Are we different?  Are we the same?  We experience the same things.  We cry, we laugh we send out (((((((hugs))))))).  Words on a screen have become phone calls and "someday" has become this April when we will come together in Philadephia to celebrate our babies first birthday's and begin a new chapter as friends in "Real Life"So are virtual communities, "real" communities, as Rheingold asked?   I did a quick search to find the definition of community and stumbled upon the following:     a group of people living in a particular local area     a group of people having ethnic or cultural or religious characteristics in common     common ownership     a group of nations having common interests     profession: the body of people in a common learned occupation To my dismay, it seemed at first that we had not formed a community.  But then upon revisiting the previous list of definitions, one word jumped out at me , common!  We shared common interests, common bonds, common fears, common questions, common concerns but most of all we shared the common need for connection and support.  Ultimately it does not matter if you live within a physical community if you feel isolated emotionally or if you share a religious background with someone but lack a bond beyond that.  Community is not proximity.  Community is anywhere a group of people come together to support each other, learn from each other and grow as individuals and as part of the group.  A community effects someone's identity and increases the cohesiveness between its members.  A community cares for each other.  My (virtual) community has made me a better mother, a better teacher and a better friend.  In today's suburban isolation the notion of it taking a village to raise a child seems arcane and overly simplistic , where is this village anyway?  Well I have found my village, unbounded by walls and free to evolve but a village none the less!   

Howard Feingold's article was like looking through old issues of a magazine.  He was certainly way ahead of the curve in terms of his use (addiction to?) online communities.  Some of his remarks (about plugging a phone line into a computer) made me smile.  Remember those days?  Interesting how at the time of the article there was little to no commercialization online going on at all, and he wonders about when and/or if that will happen.  He also hints at the phenomenon of multi-tasking that is seen so often now:  Teens with a laptop in front of them, 19 IM windows open, listening to an iPod, as ESPN a ticker running across the bottom of the screen in the background.  He talks about the evolution of the online community, and does recognize the absence of the trappings of traditional human interactions, but he doesn't seem to mind that he doesn't actually get to see the faces of the WELL people.   Even in his vodcasts, he seems content to have people be able to see his face, but not see theirs.  Some could argue this is a very artificial existence.  I wonder what would have happened if he had taken 30 minutes of those two hours a day he spent in the WELL and went outside to perhaps pull weeds or something.  Perhaps he might have struck up a conversation with a neighbor and maybe learned the same kinds of things about him or her as he did about the WELL community members.  At least then he might have someone who could bring in his mail when he goes on vacation or notice when his newspapers pile up outside and check on him.  Seems like his online community may have grown at the expense of his real life one.   I think it will be the challenge of educators using 2.0:  that we remember what human interaction adds to the educational experience, and that we use the tools to enhance that interaction, not replace it completely.  . 

    Disruptive technology... distributed intelligence... disturbed technology (haha).  I'm noticing a pattern here.  This reading really got me thinking about how many artifacts of distributed intelligence I use everyday.  As I peddled my bike to campus (uphill, both ways), I was thinking how even the simplest things, such as the wheel, are examples of distributed intelligence.  Almost any tool, formula, or system I use has been designed by one or more "others" (be them cavemen or scientists).  That's pretty cool in my book.  Also the author (Pea is such an awesome name) makes a good point about using distributed intelligence in the classroom.  School should help students prepare for the future, whether it be a trade or college.  I can't remember the last time I saw someone whip out a piece of paper and a pencil to solve a math problem they couldn't do in his/her head.  When equipment that can do complex calculation (i.e. computers, calculators, and even cell-phones and PDAs) are ubiquitous, why teach a student only how to solve something via pencil and paper when those distributed intelligences are becoming scarce in the wild? 

[Aside: I think one of the most difficult barriers for me to overcome in writing a blog for a class is: How do I make it academic? Answer: I can't. For me, a blog is written diarrhea. Its contents consist of ideas that pop into my head in whatever order they so please. I write what I hear in my head; I don't hear voices, but I hear my own voice speaking to me, and that's exactly what I write. So, if anything I write offends anyone, just let me know and I will try to edit my thoughts.]The Pea chapter really annoyed me. It brought up a lot of interesting ideas, and though I tried as hard as I could to disagree with all of them, I couldn't. I understand but resent the utilitarian notion of education (that everything students learn must be in preparation for their future careers, or practical in everyday life), which seems to be Pea's point of view. This must be the theorist in me: I enjoy education for education's sake, just as I enjoy research for research's sake. (This is why I resent the new NASA administration's focus on "Big Events" like landing on the moon and on Mars at the expense of less-publicized research projects.) I'm all about depth over breadth. I know Pea argues that this is not the intention of distributed intelligence, and that such technology can actually enable further, more in-depth study, but it's dangerous to put all your eggs in one basket (technology). What happens the day your calculator's batteries die or you forget it at home? You'll need the basic skills to do simple arithmetic. Or, as often happens with new technologies, what happens if there are bugs in its system? What if your calculator tells you 2+2=5? Will you just accept it as truth, lacking the ability to do that arithmetic yourself? Admittedly, that's a pretty extreme example, but I don't think it's too far off the mark.

I have to admit the Pea article was very difficult for me to get through.  Maybe I just haven't been awash in academese enough, but I was wishing I had a machete in hand while I read it to try to understand what he was trying to say.  I can see how his ideas of distributed intelligence can apply as I consider how 2.0 tools add value and enhance and facilitate the "accomplishment" of intelligence.  He discusses how tools have evolved over time that aid and abet in man's ability to accomplish great things, but it often goes unnoticed.  Rarely does someone stop to think about the ballpoint pen that they're using and give thanks to John J. Loud (look him up!) for his role in facilitating the ability to put thoughts on paper.  We can extrapolate and see that this is how the Web 2.0 tools we're studying today will be viewed by our children and grandchildren.  It will be no big deal to gain knowledge using these tools.  They likely won't even see them as tools.  In the same way that Pea discusses how children today who are learning arithmetic are assumed to have access to a calculator, we will assume that students, even today, have access and have used Web 2.0 tools to conduct their work.  I'm living proof of this, I suppose.  I can tell you I have been in the doctoral program now part-time for two years and have yet to set foot in Pattee because so much is available through the library Web site.  I am even so geeky as to have conducted an online chat with a Pattee librarian rather than pick up a phone or, God forbid, actually haul my butt down there.  This may be considered to be too much of a short-cut for some traditionalists, who may reminisce about late nights in the stacks, and think this generation is lazy.  However, it's important to remember that without the proper strategy to approach and research the work, students won't be able to successfully use the 2.0 tools to solve their problems.  Just like prior generations of learners weren't able to successfully solve their problems if they weren't able to effectively utilize the tools and aids they had at their disposal.  

One of your weekly assignments will be to post responses / reflections on the readings that you are doing.   These responses should focus around the three themes of the course: Community, Identity, and Design.   Not all readings will address all themes, so it is not a question of commenting on each theme with each reading.   The idea is for you to start to build up a strong theoretical foundation for the way technology should be used in teaching and learning and the implications of various technologies.   You will also be asked to respond to the responses / reflections of your classmates.   Here are the deadlines and details:Monday (by 5 pm) - Post your reflection to your blog, it will automagically be posted to our course Pligg site.Tuesday (by 5 pm) - Read reflections of your classmates, pick three (3) that you think are interesting / provocative / need more discussion, vote for these three reflections and write a response about why this reflection earned your vote.Each week one group will be responsible for harvesting the top vote getters and facilitating a discussion about them in Thursday's class.

At least one week this semester your group will be asked to take the top vote getters on the Pligg site and facilitate an in-class discussion.   To the degree it is possible, you should focus the in-class discussion around the themes of the course (community, identity, and design).   How you run the discussion is up to you.   You can be as creative as you like, and draw upon technologies (either ones we have discussed in class or not) to help you.   You will need to check the Pligg site after 5 pm on Tuesday and then organize your discussion in time for Thursday's class.   If you need things (materials, etc.) from Cole and I make sure to request them ASAP.   We will do what we can to accommodate you.   You should anticipate approximately one to one and a half hours of discussion, so plan accordingly.  

Do you recall the expression, "Somebody pinch me please?" when referring to the inability to determine reality? After reading Howard Rheingold's piece "A Slice of Life in my Virtual Community" and listening to a part of his vlog, the question of reality arose. In these venues he talks about his virtual community and his online identity. Not only has he been able to design his virtual office, but he has also created a virtual him - a picture of someone who has similar features but whose physical appearance differs in what I will refer to as "real life." He also refers to his virtual community as an on-going soap-opera, an addicting drama where one feels the need to tune in (or maybe in this case it should be log in) to each day, but if one misses a day, the sagas are so cyclical that one can easily catch up on the storyline. I wonder as people get more involved in virtual communities and an online life essentially, what happens to the line of reality? Does it get blurred? Are there two distinct sides - reality and virtual surreality/fantasy? Will what today is deemed as virtual surreality become reality someday? What implications will these actions have on what we currently see as "reality?"

Today's newspapers line tomorrow's wastebaskets. This statement implies a concept that Roy Pea describes in his article "Distributed Intelligences and Designs for Education." In the early stages of the article, he discusses accessibility and the "mythic"-ness of objects. Here is implying that objects that the current generation sees as innovative will eventually become so ingrained in society that they will eventually go unnoticed, almost like a new penny losing its shine. His thinking probed insight into some of the technologies in my life that I feel are on the cutting edge but will one day be looked at as antiquated by my children.

For Christmas, my husband and I received an IRobot - a "smart tool" device that vacuums all by itself. It knows where to go, when to clean, and how to return to its dock. It helps me keep up with the cleaning and allows me to devote more attention to other aspects in my life. I'm starting to feel like Mrs. Weasley in Harry Potter. With a wave of her wand, the dishes are done, the duster floats about the room, and dinner is made. Well, with a push of a button, my first floor gets vacuumed.

What I wonder is what will smart tool technology mean for the future? What will it allow, or not allow for that matter, the next generations to be able to do? Will we become The Jetsons?

Well, we got in yesterday and enjoyed poking around San Antonio. Today it all gets started. Allan and I present at 4:30, so we are getting set to put the finishing touches on our slides. Later this evening we’re hoping we can get a little ELI Podcast — ETS Talk style — [...]

Rheingold has obviously been immersed in a highly technical community and way of life for a long time. His description of his past experiences give me the impression that he computer technology and communication is his life. At the same time I feel that I have even less experience and confidence with some of these technology tools as I had previously thought. He comments that the communication networks that he is involved in are more than pseudocommunities. I agree some some networks can be more than pseudocommunities but do not think that most of them are. In fact I believe that most of the communication networks I have heard about are an extension of an already existing community. The technology tools help facilitate communication but do not take the place of tradition communication. I do think that there are some pseudocommunities out there though. My definition of this would be any community that has members engaged in online conversations that have never met, do not intend to meet, and are engrossed in conversations as if they are part of a reality show. In other words, their false community does nothing to improve their life, benefit their career, it only causes distractions from their real life.

The ideas in a distributive intelligence framework match perfectly with online communication tools like blogs, knowledge is socially constructed and distributed for use. Members in this community add to and have access to artifacts shared by others. Pea mentions that "intelligence is accomplished rather than possessed" (pg. 50). This statement describes distributive intelligence in an online environment. Online communities consists of a large group of members with diverse and detailed knowledge about concepts. All members are able to contribute to the formation of a knowledge base. This community is the opposite of a traditional learning community in which one member, the expert, has the knowledge and gives it to the novices. The novices traditionally do not questions or even add to the knowledge. Not so in the distributive online networks. Knowledge in these networks is constantly being questioned, formed and expanded. While I think this type of knowledge building community is the way of education's future I do believe that there will be a lot of resistance. There is already resistance from teachers to use tools like wikipedia, myself included. Where in these communities is the definitive knowledge? You may say there is no definitive knowledge but step back. I'm not talking about all knowledge but there are basic concepts and knowledge that has been proven as true over time in the scientific community. No one is going to change these scientific laws. Distributive knowledge communities may discuss these laws but they will not change them. They can only engage in the actions of sharing and building on this knowledge. Can't they just as easily do that in traditional formats?

At least one week this semester your group will be asked to take the top vote getters on the Pligg site and facilitate an in-class discussion.  To the degree it is possible, you should focus the in-class discussion around the themes of the course (community, identity, and design).  How you run the discussion is up to you.  You can be as creative as you like, and draw upon technologies (either ones we have discussed in class or not) to help you.  You will need to check the Pligg site after 5 pm on Tuesday and then organize your discussion in time for Thursday's class.  If you need things (materials, etc.) from Cole and I make sure to request them ASAP.  We will do what we can to accommodate you.  You should anticipate approximately one to one and a half hours of discussion, so plan accordingly.  

One of your weekly assignments will be to post responses / reflections on the readings that you are doing.  These responses should focus around the three themes of the course: Community, Identity, and Design.  Not all readings will address all themes, so it is not a question of commenting on each theme with each reading.  The idea is for you to start to build up a strong theoretical foundation for the way technology should be used in teaching and learning and the implications of various technologies.  You will also be asked to respond to the responses / reflections of your classmates.  Here are the deadlines and details:

• Monday (by 5 pm) - Post your reflection to your blog, it will automagically be posted to our course Pligg site.
• Tuesday (by 5 pm) - Read reflections of your classmates, pick three (3) that you think are interesting / provocative / need more discussion, vote for these three reflections and write a response about why this reflection earned your vote.

Each week one group will be responsible for harvesting the top vote getters and facilitating a discussion about them in Thursday's class.

  I remember reading a book by Stephen King a while ago titled "Thinner."  It was about an overweight man who's only wish was to lose weight.  Needless to say, his wish was granted... but not without it's consequences.  I was saddened by Mr. Rheingold's article on living in a virtual world.  I know... I'm too young to be this cynical...but I blame a good ole' liberal college education.  What got to me the most was Mr. Rheingold's light-hearted admittance that his wife and daughter have gotten used to him sitting off by himself in his virtual world.  Obviously he feels that he is getting something out of the experience that he cannot obtain by spending time with his family.  I would feel so sad if my dad ignored me and my family for two hours of every evening to be with "someone" else while I was growing up.  I'm not just saddened about the loss of "people" due to technology.  It seems that almost everyone is trying desperately to make up for some emptiness in their lives and, in the end, only make themselves more hollow: we are all growing terribly thinner.  We eat more than we need, we spend more than we make, we work more than we can sanely tolerate.  Now we are going online and making more "friends," "connections," and "networks," than we can maintain in cyberspace and still be grounded in the real world.  Technology is only just one facilitator for our need for "more."  We mentioned in class that every-time we create a profile, link to others, join a forum, etc, we are fracturing our identity.  I believe that I can only cast my identity in so many directions at once without truly losing a sense of who I am and how I connect to the world (especially people) around me.  I don't want to be stretched too thin.  I want a life with some depth to it, not ever increasing breadth.

Posts are coming at a very slow pace these days over here. It is obvious I have entered into a very hectic travel, work, life period again. I have been on the road much of January … first to FL for vacation, then to Arizona for a couple of talks, back to FL [...]

Really enjoyed class yesterday.  The conversation about the demographic breakdowns about the different features of technology made me laugh.  As the parents of 4- and 7-year old boys, we have a stable of babysitters that we call upon to help us keep our sanity.  We realized relatively recently that texting was the best way to communicate with them.  Emails were going unanswered, voicemails unreturned.  Now we know.  However, when we started doing this, one of our sitters was very taken back that we would a) know this was even an option and b) would actually do it.  She said she thought it was "funny" to get a text from my wife.   We actually found it very useful during football season when we would want a quick babysitter check-in while my wife and I were at Beaver Stadium.  Much easier to text a quick "Evrythng OK?" than try to hear a cell phone conversation with 106,000 screaming people around.  The conversation about youth not even realizing that the technology they're using is technology resonated as well.  I thought about that as my family and I were flying to San Antonio to visit friends last weekend.  My wife and I brought along an iPod and a Microsoft Zune.  I had loaded a season of "Ben 10" onto the iPod, and my wife had loaded "Meet the Robinsons" and several Brady Bunch episodes (what can I say?  The boys think it's funny, and I'd rather have them watching Greg and Marcia than Zack and Cody).  Each boy sat happily (after an unpleasant vomit episode by the younger, that is) watching their own individual shows with their own earbuds as we cruised along, and I thought to myself that this will be their expectation going forward for air travel.  Buckle your seatbelt, put in your earbuds and fire up a show.  As a result, their generation will avoid the "Business or pleasure?" conversations that many of us were forced to have on airplanes with our seatmates.   Lucky them.  Although, some of those conversations can lead to some pretty unexpected results, but that's a story for a different blog. 

After class today I thought I'd share some information on copyright with you.  It seemed as though there was lots of interest around this topic --  especially  given the ownership and identity questions we posed.  This isn't an assignment of any sort, but should give you the basics related to copyright.  Much of this adapted from work my tam did at IST several years ago.The birth of the Internet and other technologies that allow for easily sharing information have opened up challenges to our copyright laws. In recent years landmark cases have filled our court systems and left many experts searching for new answers. The purpose of this Lesson is to help you understand copyright law, fair use of copyrighted works, and how to avoid violation of copyright.  Essentially, after reading this you should be able to:Describe protections afforded to an author under copyright laws.Explain how to obtain permission to use a copyrighted work.Explain conditions of Fair Use under the copyright law.Describe how one can avoid plagiarism.Explain the penalties of plagiarism.Understand emerging trends in open copyright and discuss the "Free Culture" prespective.Protections Under the LawCopyright is the protection provided by U.S. law (Title 17, U.S. Code) of "original works of authorship" both published and unpublished. In their brochure, Copyright Basics, the U.S. Copyright Office (2001) outlines eight categories of copyrightable works:Literary worksMusical works, including any accompanying wordsDramatic works, including any accompanying musicPantomimes and choreographic worksPictorial, graphic, and sculptural worksMotion pictures and other audiovisual worksSound recordingsArchitectural worksThere are several categories of materials that the U.S. Copyright Office (2001) does not list as eligible for copyright.Works that have not been fixed in a tangible formTitles, names, short phrases, slogansIdeas, procedures, methods, systems, processes, concepts, principles, discoveries, or devicesWorks consisting entirely of information that is common property and containing no original authorshipUp until 1989 in order to have one's work protected by copyright, it was required that a Notice of Copyright be provided. According to U.S. Copyright Law, the Notice of Copyright was required to contain three elements: (1) The copyright symbol ( ©) or the word copyright; (2) the year of the first publication; and (3) the name of the owner of the publication. The birth of new technologies has led to some significant changes in the copyright laws. One such change, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) was signed into law in 1998. The DMCA makes it illegal to circumvent anti-piracy measures built into commercial software. Additionally, the law seeks to prevent the manufacture, sale, or distribution of code-cracking devices used to copy software. Provisions in the law do permit cracking of copyright protection devices for the purposes of encryption research, assessment of product interoperability, and to test computer systems.Obtaining CopyrightOnce a work is created and fixed in a copy or "phonorecord" (U.S. Copyright Office, 2001, p. 3), copyright is secured. It is not necessary to register a work or publish the work to have copyright privileges. If you use or reproduce a copyrighted work without expressed permission, you are infringing on said copyright. However, Section 107 of Title 17 of U.S. Code provides the use of copyrighted works is free of infringement if being used for any of the following purposes:CriticismCommentNews reportingTeachingScholarshipResearchIn order to gain permission to use a copyrighted work, simply contact the copyright holder, explain your need for their work, and ask permission. You should be sure to gain a written or recorded copy of their permission for your records.Fair UseAccording to Section 107 of Title 17 of U.S. Code, four factors must be considered in determining whether or not use of a copyrighted work constitutes fair use:What is the purpose and character of the use of the copyrighted work?Is the use of the work commercial in nature or for nonprofit academic use?What is the nature of the copyrighted work?What is the amount of the work and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole?What effect will the use of the copyrighted work have on the potential market for or value of the work?Avoiding PlagiarismThe use of someone else's ideas, words, etc. without clearly acknowledging the source of information is considered plagiarism. In order to avoid plagiarism, give credit where credit is due! In other words, if you use someone's ideas, words, opinions, statistics, graphics, etc. through a quotation or paraphrase, provide a citation for the work. When paraphrasing, be sure to put ideas in your own words. If you use words taken directly for a source, put the passage in quotation marks and provide a page number from the source where you pulled the quote.PenaltiesIn an academic setting acts of plagiarism may result in a failing grade or expulsion from the institution. Additionally, such acts may result in legal action in the form of a lawsuit. Here are some additional resources to review:  PSU Copyright Bytes: Information about how copyright can affect you.  Berkley Digital Library Sunsite: Links and information on Copyright and Intellectual Property Rights.  Copyright Clearance Center: How to obtain copyright permissions.Open Copyright: The CommonsProbably the most interesting development in the copyright space has been the birth of the  Creative Commons  approach to copyright. This new thinking is allowing people to share and share alike to move their art forward. To me, it is the way of the future , at least I hope. Some people really don't like it (Bill Gates) and some think it is THE way to go (Lessig). I will let you decide however. I'd like you to take a half hour of you life to listen to  Lawrence Lessig's talk, Free Culture   I'll be asking you to respond to that, so please take a look.Wrap-UpNow that you have completed this Lesson you should have a better understanding of copyright law and your responsibilities to use information in accordance with that law. In this lesson you should have learned to:Describe protections afforded to an author under copyright laws.Explain how to obtain permission to use a copyrighted work.Explain conditions of Fair Use under the copyright law.Describe how one can avoid plagiarism.Explain the penalties of plagiarism.Understand emerging trends in open copyright and discuss the "Free Culture" prespective.

I really enjoyed meeting all of you today and I was thrilled that the attached presentation created enough interest to drive the discussion we had.  It is attached as a PDF ... please feel free to send me any comments or thoughts, or  better yet, leave them here once the comments for  the  course blog are activated. Download the PDF of the  new_class_conv.pdf

I really enjoyed meeting all of you today and I was thrilled that the attached presentation created enough interest to drive the discussion we had.  It is attached as a PDF ... please feel free to send me any comments or thoughts, or better yet, leave them here once the comments for the course blog are activated.

After class today I thought I'd share some information on copyright with you.  It seemed as though there was lots of interest around this topic -- especially given the ownership and identity questions we posed.  This isn't an assignment of any sort, but should give you the basics related to copyright.  Much of this adapted from work my tam did at IST several years ago.

The birth of the Internet and other technologies that allow for easily sharing information have opened up challenges to our copyright laws. In recent years landmark cases have filled our court systems and left many experts searching for new answers. The purpose of this Lesson is to help you understand copyright law, fair use of copyrighted works, and how to avoid violation of copyright.  Essentially, after reading this you should be able to:

• Describe protections afforded to an author under copyright laws.
• Explain how to obtain permission to use a copyrighted work.
• Explain conditions of Fair Use under the copyright law.
• Describe how one can avoid plagiarism.
• Explain the penalties of plagiarism.
• Understand emerging trends in open copyright and discuss the “Free Culture” prespective.

Protections Under the Law

Copyright is the protection provided by U.S. law (Title 17, U.S. Code) of “original works of authorship” both published and unpublished. In their brochure, Copyright Basics, the U.S. Copyright Office (2001) outlines eight categories of copyrightable works:

• Literary works
• Musical works, including any accompanying words
• Dramatic works, including any accompanying music
• Pantomimes and choreographic works
• Pictorial, graphic, and sculptural works
• Motion pictures and other audiovisual works
• Sound recordings
• Architectural works

There are several categories of materials that the U.S. Copyright Office (2001) does not list as eligible for copyright.

• Works that have not been fixed in a tangible form
• Titles, names, short phrases, slogans
• Ideas, procedures, methods, systems, processes, concepts, principles, discoveries, or devices
• Works consisting entirely of information that is common property and containing no original authorship

Up until 1989 in order to have one’s work protected by copyright, it was required that a Notice of Copyright be provided. According to U.S. Copyright Law, the Notice of Copyright was required to contain three elements: (1) The copyright symbol (©) or the word copyright; (2) the year of the first publication; and (3) the name of the owner of the publication. The birth of new technologies has led to some significant changes in the copyright laws. One such change, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) was signed into law in 1998. The DMCA makes it illegal to circumvent anti-piracy measures built into commercial software. Additionally, the law seeks to prevent the manufacture, sale, or distribution of code-cracking devices used to copy software. Provisions in the law do permit cracking of copyright protection devices for the purposes of encryption research, assessment of product interoperability, and to test computer systems.

Obtaining Copyright

Once a work is created and fixed in a copy or “phonorecord” (U.S. Copyright Office, 2001, p. 3), copyright is secured. It is not necessary to register a work or publish the work to have copyright privileges. If you use or reproduce a copyrighted work without expressed permission, you are infringing on said copyright. However, Section 107 of Title 17 of U.S. Code provides the use of copyrighted works is free of infringement if being used for any of the following purposes:

• Criticism
• Comment
• News reporting
• Teaching
• Scholarship
• Research

In order to gain permission to use a copyrighted work, simply contact the copyright holder, explain your need for their work, and ask permission. You should be sure to gain a written or recorded copy of their permission for your records.

Fair Use

According to Section 107 of Title 17 of U.S. Code, four factors must be considered in determining whether or not use of a copyrighted work constitutes fair use:

• What is the purpose and character of the use of the copyrighted work?
• Is the use of the work commercial in nature or for nonprofit academic use?
• What is the nature of the copyrighted work?
• What is the amount of the work and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole?
• What effect will the use of the copyrighted work have on the potential market for or value of the work?

Avoiding Plagiarism

The use of someone else’s ideas, words, etc. without clearly acknowledging the source of information is considered plagiarism. In order to avoid plagiarism, give credit where credit is due! In other words, if you use someone’s ideas, words, opinions, statistics, graphics, etc. through a quotation or paraphrase, provide a citation for the work. When paraphrasing, be sure to put ideas in your own words. If you use words taken directly for a source, put the passage in quotation marks and provide a page number from the source where you pulled the quote.

Penalties

In an academic setting acts of plagiarism may result in a failing grade or expulsion from the institution. Additionally, such acts may result in legal action in the form of a lawsuit. Here are some additional resources to review: PSU Copyright Bytes: Information about how copyright can affect you. Berkley Digital Library Sunsite: Links and information on Copyright and Intellectual Property Rights. Copyright Clearance Center: How to obtain copyright permissions.

Open Copyright: The Commons

Probably the most interesting development in the copyright space has been the birth of the Creative Commons approach to copyright. This new thinking is allowing people to share and share alike to move their art forward. To me, it is the way of the future — at least I hope. Some people really don’t like it (Bill Gates) and some think it is THE way to go (Lessig). I will let you decide however. I’d like you to take a half hour of you life to listen to Lawrence Lessig’s talk, Free Culture … I’ll be asking you to respond to that, so please take a look.

Wrap-Up

Now that you have completed this Lesson you should have a better understanding of copyright law and your responsibilities to use information in accordance with that law. In this lesson you should have learned to:

• Describe protections afforded to an author under copyright laws.
• Explain how to obtain permission to use a copyrighted work.
• Explain conditions of Fair Use under the copyright law.
• Describe how one can avoid plagiarism.
• Explain the penalties of plagiarism.
• Understand emerging trends in open copyright and discuss the “Free Culture” prespective.

Chris Long does some really interesting things with blogs in his class.

http://symposium.tlt.psu.edu/stories/ChrisLong

We were able to get all the blog RSS feeds publishing into the Course Pligg site this morning.  You can bounce over there and click through aggregated content from class blogs, this blog, and some del.icio.us links tagged with ci597c.  Please feel free to vote on items to push them to the front page and try out the comments while you are there. We will be exploring how a site like this can influence what we discuss on a weekly basis.  This is truly a grand  experiment,  so please find ways to think critically about what it means for a learning community to use a social environment to help move the discussion and focus of a course around.

We were able to get all the blog RSS feeds publishing into the Course Pligg site this morning.  You can bounce over there and click through aggregated content from class blogs, this blog, and some del.icio.us links tagged with ci597c.  Please feel free to vote on items to push them to the front page and try out the comments while you are there.

http://www.smallfuel.com/blog/entry/productivity-toolbox-37-tools-for-taking-action-and-getting-things-done/

http://techland.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2007/12/04/

My work and my "stuff" will be on here, hope to show what I can.others plz check out http://hanbi.org

My definition of disruptive technology below is based solely on my current understanding and likely to evolve.  I consider anything electronic that a teacher would not want the students to be running at a given time to be examples of disruptive technology.  This can include computer applications such as email, instant messaging, facebook, myspace, or any other networking site.  It can also include browsing the web for articles not relevant to the current class, playing games, and shopping.  Cellular phone use and the use of graphing calculators to play games would be other examples.  People use disruptive technology because it is what they want to do.  Everyone could benefit from some harmonization.

As I was reading through introductions and other early blog posts I started to recognize a slight trend -- the language of the course (on the technical side) is causing a little  confusion.    With that in mind I thought I'd add a post defining (in my own words) what a handful of this stuff is.  This should probably be more of a wiki page, but for now I'll just add a few definitions ... comments should be working on the blogs today or tomorrow, so feel free to add thoughts as this grows: RSS -- RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication.  RSS is an XML (extensible markup language) varient that allows content to be redistributed without any style associated with it.  It is pure content that can be pushed around the web and redisplayed in nearly any other location.  It is most commonly used to allow users to subscribe to websites (mainly blogs and news sites) so that fresh content is delivered to them in a single interface.  In the same way you use an email client for reading new messages, an RSS (or news reader) is used to subscribe to sites and read newly updated content -- all without having to visit the original site to find it.  At the simplest level it is an incredible time saver ... imagine having all the new content from 20 online newspapers delivered to one location only when newly published material is available?  No need to surf to 20 sites, it comes to you.  There are lots of other things about RSS that we will discuss in the coming weeks as well.Web 2.0 -- This really isn't one thing, it is more of a philosophy and approach to the way the web is evolving.  We'll discuss this in class today, but think back to when the web started and remember what a one way platform it was -- updates were not regular, the common person did not have a voice online, and creating web sites was hard.  Today the web is an open platform where anyone can not only consume content, but create it with ease.  Look at the way the web has evolved into a platform for open participation -- blogging, photo sharing, social sites (FaceBook and My Space), social bookmarking, and so much more.  Web 2.0 is about people, it is Soylent Green.Pligg/Digg/Social Ratings -- All of these types of sites are built around a very simple premise, that people (especially communities of people) can create a better source of relevant news than a single editor.  This all started with Digg -- mainly a news aggregator site (no original content, just content that is linked in from around the web) that allows the members of the site to vote content up or down.  Content with the greatest number of votes (or diggs) end up on the front page and more easily discoverable.  We've adapted this approach with our course Pligg site. Pligg is simply an open source version of Digg.  Your blog posts are aggregated in (via RSS) to the site and each post can be voted on.I could go on and on, but those seem to be the ones I read about the most.  We'll dive into a lot of this over the next several weeks and will be looking at how to take these tools and use them for teaching and learning.

As I was reading through introductions and other early blog posts I started to recognize a slight trend -- the language of the course (on the technical side) is causing a little confusion.  With that in mind I thought I'd add a post defining (in my own words) what a handful of this stuff is.  This should probably be more of a wiki page, but for now I'll just add a few definitions ... comments should be working on the blogs today or tomorrow, so feel free to add thoughts as this grows:

About two months ago I was spending quite a bit of time talking with Brad Kozlek about how we might more fully explore CommentPress … we had great conversations, but as the holiday approached it sort of slipped into the background. Much to my surprise I saw a great post by my friend Alan [...]

There are lots of things interesting about this -- the fact that it is a great paper is one of them, but I have to say that the use of the CommentPress plugin from the Future of the Book organization is what caught my attention. This thing lets you provide very granular comments associated with a paper. I can think of dozens of ways we could explore community publishing using a model like this. Any thoughts?

http://wp.nmc.org/communication/

The most frustrating aspect of technology is how quickly it evolves.

Disruptive technology is what traditionalists could call WEIRD AND CRAZY.

Because this class is all about technology, the internet, and whatnot, I feel a little vulnerable that everyone will be able to see the times I complete (or start) assignments, which tends to be at the last minute. That being said, everyone should also be stunned and amazed at the quality of what I produce in such short times.

Why am I here? I have lost count how many times I have asked that question or have been asked that question. There comes a time in a life that a teacher needs to take a long look and re-commit to the goal and the profession of helping young people grow and become what they were destined to be. This is especially important in light of all the changes in education—changes that I have lived through. Sometimes enough is enough. Many of my colleagues have taken early retirement at 55. Some have changed professions. I did not want to retire, but am not still sure where my path will lead. This class is a first step on that new path.

I am a lifetime teacher veteran who decided to take a detour back to school in the middle of a career. I hail from the Seattle area, at least that is where I spent the last 30 years. Originally from Reading, PA and the daughter of a career Army Dad, Reading was a mere stopping-off point in a long string of residences. I actually lived in State College longer than in my home town, as I spent six years here working on my two B.S. degrees and a M.Ed. back in the day. I was an agriculture and shop teacher turned science and math teacher. Long story.

My interests lie, believe it or not, in emerging learning systems using tech and how they can be used in a sustainable professional development/personal growth for lifelong learners. Web 2.0 facinates me. I guess that is because I did not grow up in the Nintendo Boot Camp. I played PONG in the 80’s, but my thesis was computed with data punch cards. Since I am now working on a doctorate in CI/Sci Ed, I guess my learners will be teachers and my data will be complied and analyzed …how? Probably not even invented yet. I am especially concerned with the problem of teachers leaving the profession withing the first five years and want to learn how to keep the flame alive, especially for Science teachers and inquiring student minds…

So sustainable and seamless systems for professional development. That is this week’s interest. I am quite certain that the class will drag me kicking and screaming to places I have never pondered. I am taking the class for that very reason. I am behind the times. Way, way behind. I was the first classroom to have internet in my district, the first to have cable and I was the district trainer for the interactive video(early Breeze-type)conferencing. Then, the technology took off, I went to teach in the woods in an alternative school with a copy machine from 1960, and I fell rapidly behind over the last 10 years. I like to feel uncomfortable in a group of smart people, so I am counting on the cheers and support of this class to get me through the first week’s assignments…RSS feed? Where is my blog? I have 2 friends on Facebook because people of my vintage feel stupid out there in cyber…net..world with the kids….at least I do. I love learning about it and it is self-motivating. It eats up a lot of my time since I do not know what anything means or how it works. I did have a breakthrough this week as I just started pushing buttons and clicking…..and did not die. Again, I am fascinated by this and could spend all my time doing this…bring it!

I bought a digital voice recorder, got an MP3 from my Mom for Xmas (daughter would not give up her iPod)
and I spent the week learning how to use the Mac that has been on my desk for 4 months at work.

What is interesting about me is that I sold my house, all my furniture, horses and my stuff, drove a loaded horse trailer across the country to get here and now I live in a condo in a horse barn on 40 acres. I am coming to this new pursuit with no baggage (lots of trepedation that I will never keep up with the tech), an open mind, healthy body and a good sense of humor. So, if you see me crying in the corner or hear me asking a lot of stupid questions, keep in mind that I am not alone, there are many of us older technopeasants out there, so be kind. Laugh, that is ok, but help me…..

Talk a little about how you see technology influencing teaching and learning.
What do you think disruptive technology means?” Finally, take a minute and reflect on the Web 2.0 video and share some thoughts and your reactions.

My name is Keith Parsons and I am from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. My academic interests include nearly all sciences. I am in the process of getting my masters in curriculum and instruction as well as becoming certified to teach earth & space science. Along with teaching about science I talk to students about the possible consequences of abusing drugs and alcohol.  My fascination with science and some of my teenage life experiences help me succeed with these endeavors. Some non-academic interests include computers, games, movies, reading, and traveling.
 
I am comfortable with technology and trying new advancements. I am using an onscreen keyboard to write this, I would have used voice recognition technology but apparently my voice has compatibility issues with it. Some of the technologies that I have used while teaching include Smart boards, document cameras, digital responders and digitals projectors. I interested in learning about the different types of web technology to understand how I can use them in my classroom and gain an awareness of their other possible uses.
 
Eventually I think that technology will enable everyone to receive an "on demand" education. Recorded lessons from top professors and professionals will be available on televisions and computers. Students will be able to pause and rewind the lessons. They will be able to post questions, have discussions, and even perform laboratory exercises online. Even further into the future students and educators will be able to meet in virtual classroom similar to the holodecks on Star Trek. Along with these abilities people will be able to download information into implanted biotech memory storage devices similar to the way the characters in the Matrix were able to. This may seem fantastical but wireless implants that enable people to control robotic arms and TV remotes only using thoughts have already been created.

 Howdy,      I'm Betsy Larcom... and this is my very first blog.  I was never one to keep a diary... or even write personal letters or e-mails for that matter, so this is kind of weird for me.  I come from Bloomsburg, a smallish town about 90 miles east of State College, Pa.  Bloomsburg is the only incorporated town in the state (it has something to do with how the town government is set-up)... all others in the state are run as cities, townships, boroughs, etc.  I have many interests, including: reading epic novels ("War and Peace," "The Grapes of Wrath," "Atlas Shrugged," and "Gone With the Wind" are among my favorites), listening to music, playing my french horn, messing with my pets (I'm trying to teach my hamster, Henrietta, how to bowl in her plastic ball-thingy... so far I have been unsuccessful), working out, watching semi-educational T.V. (i.e. "Good-Eats," "Mythbusters," and "Antiques Roadshow"), getting an M.ed. so I may someday have a job, and cooking/baking for my fiancé (he loves me dearly :-P).     I am taking this course because Dr. Scott McDonald, my advisor in times of academic crisis, said I should. My overall comfort level with technology is pretty low.  Aside from word processing, browsing the internet (gotta love w00t.com, digg.com, and addictinggames.com), and AIM, I'm pretty technologically impaired.  This is why I have a Mac; I don't even have to worry about the right or left click.  I am pretty good at following instructions so as long as something tells me where to type and when to hit "submit" I'm o.k.  I am sort of indifferent to technology in the Web 2.0 sense as of now.  I'm not sure if it has made life any better for individuals in society on the whole, just different.  I don't really use "myspace" or "facebook" (gasp!) because I would rather keep track of my friends though live conversations (and I don't really think anyone can have 300+ people they can classify as actual friends anyway)... enough of that, though...  I can't see a way that technology won't continue to increase in influencing every aspect of education, from online homework to video conferencing to copyright and personal identity security issues. Wow... and I thought my first entry would be short.  See you all in class!

    Until about a week ago I had no clue what disruptive technology meant.  I knew that the course would be, to some extent, about using technology in the classroom.  Taking the two words at face value, disruptive meant something that caused a disturbance, something that changed the status quo of things.  I've always viewed the term "disruptive" to have a negative
connotation. To me, the word technology means something complicated that runs on electricity, has something to do with data (i.e. storage, manipulation, or transfer), and contains at least one button or port.  (I know... quite vague).  So previously, my definition of disruptive technology boiled down to "something bad that is also complicated with buttons." After talking with Dr. McDonald, I've learned that in the
case of this course, "disruptive" does not mean "bad;" it can mean
different, changing, redirecting, restructuring... just to name a few. I know that I will reformulate my definition as the course progresses.  So.. .to use Wikipedia, an example of what I now think would be classified as a disruptive technology, disruptive technology is defined as "a technological innovation, product, or service that uses a 'disruptive' strategy, rather than a 'sustaining' strategy, to overturn
the existing dominant technologies or status quo products in a market."  I think, however, that the term "market" can be broadened to encompass education, community, society, and culture.  

My name is Doug and I'm from the heart of Penn State country - Happy Valley. I'm working on my M.Ed. in science education at University Park and hope to be teaching physics full-time next fall. As part of my graduate studies, I thought it would be prudent to take a class on the uses of technology in the classroom - and when Scott (co-teacher of CI 597) told me about this class on "Disruptive Technology" that they were offering, it seemed the perfect fit. But to be honest, I had no clue what "disruptive technology" was - and still don't for the most part. Guess it's a good thing I signed up for the class.On the whole, I am very accustomed to using technology, and consider it essential in the science classroom - both as an instructional tool and a topic of study. Technology permeates today's society and as such, educational providers have a responsibility to uses it to the betterment of education - in whichever of the infinitely possible ways that can be conceived. It is also just as important to educate society about technology, present and future. As a science educator, this is most apparent, as if we do not teach science and technology to the next generations, there will be far too few who are capable of filling the high demand of the future workforce.That being said, I have not had much of an "online presence" before. No facebook, myspace, blogs or anything of that sort. I do, however, participate in a few message boards or forums that pertain to my hobbies and and interest. Most notably the NAWCC (National Association of Watch and Clock Collectors) message board. I am an active pocket watch collector and I have found this message board to be a treasure trove of horological knowledge. Members work together to help each other in the pursuit of information and advancement of their hobby. This is how I see the present and future of the internet - communities of people sharing information. My first stop on the information supper highway about anything unknown to me is wikipedia - the quintessence of this idea, IMHO.

Greetings all,My name is Steve Kerlin and this is my blog. I was born in Aliquippa, PA (Pittsburgh) and spent my grade school and high school years at a few different schools in western PA. My father was a State Park manager and we moved every 5-6 years as he got promoted to a larger, more visited state park. Since then I've lived in the State College Area, completed my undergrad at PSU, taught earth science at Penns Valley, completed my M.S. at PSU and am currently working on my Ph.D.My family includes my wife (Betsy), our cat (Titus), our dog (Juniata). I share my interests in all kinds of outdoor adventures (hiking, camping, rockclimbing, backpacking, kayaking, etc.) with my wife and sometimes Juniata.Why am I taking the disruptive technologies class? The first answer is simple. It is a new class that I have not taken yet. It is also very interesting to me in the I think the content of the class echoes changes in education. And lastly, it is a great match with my dissertation research interests. I am currently working as a curriculum developer and evaluator while researching FLEXE (From Local to EXtreme Environments). FLEXE is a new Earth Systems Science Project with GLOBE. It helps students understand their local environment and the deep-sea extreme environment through a comparative approach. It utilizes online technologies and engages students in what I've started to call a Global Learning Community (GLC) through postings, peer review and other yet to be developed communications.Anything interesting about me? I have many interests and can not easily be classified into a group or type of person. For instance, although I am in academia I also have built a custom chopper (sold it a year ago) and still ride my 1975 Harley.My overall comfort level with technology? On a scale of 1-10 with 10 behind proficient and completely comfortable. I would give myself a 7. I embrace technology and am excited to find out about new technologies that make life easier or facilitate and enhance education. But at the same time I don't rush out to buy the newest gadgets (maybe that's because I am once again a poor student).Does technology interest me? Yep, for academic and personal reasons.How do I see technology influencing teaching and learning? To a great extent. As I alluded to earlier with the short description of  the FLEXE curriculum I see education as no longer limited by the walls of the classroom. I see an educational world without walls, students and teachers interacting with each other over great distances and national boundaries. It's time for education to catch up with the technology of the times.

I find the choice of the word "disruptive" to traditional conjure up a negative tone. But I an hesitant to think that way in relation to this topic and this class. I do believe that as an educator it makes me pause and be careful about the use of technology. Can certain technologies actually cause a disruption in a classroom? Absolutely they can. It all depends on how technology is used. Is it being used as a distraction or an integrated part of the learning process? I believe that technology, especially communicative technology tools can be a great benefit to society and education. Some of these technologies may be disruptive in the sense that emphasis may shift from conversations within the classroom to conversations outside of the classroom that are not directly monitored. In this case the use of technology is not disruptive in its purpose but can become disruptive. While I do embrace and champion the use of technology in education, I do have fears. I fear that a shift from in person conversations to virtual conversations may affect student's communication skills and teacher's evaluations.I worry that the shorthand method that so many of our students use with technology may hinder their ability to become literate members of society. I also worry that our students may not acquire necessary skills to present themselves in a professional and proper manner to employers and others. There is something to be said to talking with another person face-to-face. I find that I get a lot more accomplished and get a much better read on someone's reaction and feelings about my ideas when I can talk with them real-time and in person. Communicative technology is not yet able to duplicate the in-person conversation components.I mentioned teacher's assessment being effected by technology earlier. I believe teacher's lives can be simplified through technology but I also worry about the teachers' accuracy in assessment using technology. Just because someone does not post messages or as often as others does not mean they do not understand the content. In an actually live class it is easy to tell by looking around the room if someone is attentive and engaged but it is much more difficult to make that judgment of whether someone actually is engaged and is developing understanding or if they are just faking it in an online environment.To conclude, while I embrace the use of technology I believe the word disruptive gives me pause to consider the selection and actual use of technologies.

The video is effective at showing the benefits of web 2.0 technologies (Good positive propaganda/advertising). I agree that web 2.0 is very versatile and will be handy for me to use. I applaud the user friendly approach that means I don't have to learn computer programming to participate in forums like this one. I look forward to becoming more familiar with this type of technology and hope that other educators will incorporate it into their learning environments.On the flip side, I do have some concerns that I wrote about in my last blog. The major concern deals with the personal interactions that can not be duplicated in a web environment. But I do believe the benefits outweigh my concerns and that educators merely must proceed with caution.

I have listened to the podcast and created my blog. It appears that I am progressing through the first several assignments.

I am having trouble understanding all of the new language...RSS, Web 2.0, Pligg, Digg, etc. If anyone can help a novice out, your assistance would be greatly appreciated as I attempt to learn this new foreign language.

Welcome to my blog! To learn a little bit about me, please check out the following interview done virtually by interviewers Scott McDonald and Cole Camplese represented as (Q:). My responses will be distinguished by (A:).

Q: What is your name?
A: Rebecca Burns, but I am most commonly known as Becci.

Q: Where are you from?
A: My family is from the Huntingdon Area. Growing up, I lived in a variety of places: Huntingdon, PA; Carlisle, PA; Vorhees, NJ; Havertown, PA; Sinking Spring/Wyomissing, PA; Birdsboro, PA; and State College, PA.

Q: What are your interests?
A: I have many interests. I love sports. Playing table tennis, soccer, and volleyball is a part of my pastime. During the fall, I enjoy watching football - the Nittany Lions in particular. In my prior life, I enjoyed playing the flute and singing, especially in musicals.

Q: Why you are taking this class?
A: This course was recommended to me. As a doctoral student and Professional Development Associate for Penn State University's Professional Development School, my interns have access to and use multiple mediums of technology. I want to not only understand what these "creatures" are but also how they work and how they impact teaching and learning in the classroom, particularly the elementary classroom.

Q: Is there anything interesting about you?
A: Maybe...I'll let you decide. As an undergraduate, I played table tennis for PSU. After graduation, I taught sixth grade in an elementary school for five years.

Q: How would you describe your overall comfort level with the use of technology?
A: I am not very comfortable at all. In fact, I feel like the understanding of technology can be a sign of age, and according to this age scale, I am not very youthful. However, I am seeking ways to become more "hip."

Q: Does technology interest you?
A: Somewhat but it also scares me. It opens the door to an entirely different community. Because of a past poor prior experience, I have severe reservations about information and the ease with which it is transported across the internet highway. I recognize both positive and negative aspects of technology, and I am interested in engaging in discussions to toy with such ideas among peers.

Q: Talk a little about how you see technology influencing teaching and learning.
A: Well...that depends on the definition of technology. For me, technology is a construct of an era. It is something new to that generation or civilization, as some will refer to it, used to supposedly manipulate processes in life whether it be for work or play. The question for me has always been that technology is a relative term. Technology is only new to those that were not born with it. Therefore as technology changes, so will society, which in turn will impact the pressures society places on educational curriculum in order to meet the needs of the current population , thereby driving the curricular change and impacting teaching and learning.

My first reaction was to decipher the word by breaking it into two words - disruptive and technology. To me, disruptive means interrupting. Initially my thoughts revolved around how all of these new technologies are interrupting our lives. After doing some exploration online, my eyes have been opened slightly. Dictionary.com offers an explanation, but I gained a clearer understanding from whatis.techtarget.com. When I first started exploring the Pligg posts, I also was able to uncover some discussions about the definition. Now, however, I'm having trouble finding the location of my previous search. Consequently, I turned to whatis.techtarget.com to form a new understanding of the definition. If I am understanding it correctly, disruptive technology is a technology that could eventually replace an existing technology. Initially the disruptive technology could be raw, a little rough around the edges, and appeal only to a small audience. The practicality of the disruptive technology is initially unknown but could develop and become more attractive and ultimately marketable to a larger audience over time.

Each time I view the movie, I feel I learn something new both in content and meaning. First it can be overwhelming, slightly scary, and yet exciting all at the same time. I remember in high school I took a Pascal course in order to better understand programming language, and yet today in order to publish something on the web, those former skills are obsolete. When we enter into a tool of such possibility, the tasks of learning and participating can be overwhelming. Living in such a community evokes many feelings and potential issues, as mentioned at the end of the movie. Yet, the fear of those concerns can also bring excitement in that you now are literally, or maybe it's virtually, connected.

NAME:  Mike Montalto-RookBIO:  Completed my
undergraduate and masters degrees at T.C.N.J. (B.S. in Comp Sci and
M.A.T. in Secondary Ed. Math).  Currently enrolled as a full-time Ph.D.
candidate in Instructional Systems in College of Ed. at P.S.U.  INTERESTS: 
Watching all sports, playing soccer and wii sports (if that qualifies),
playing and teaching music (vocal, guitar, djembe drum, piano), reading
(currently R. Ludlum novels), and watching movies.  View the picture of me conducting a K-8 Music Concert at Saint Michael School in Loretto in the PHOTO section on the right.  REASON FOR TAKING CI 597:  Learn more about blogs, wikis, podcasts and how to incorporate these technologies in the classroom.INTERESTING FACTS: 
Have performed numerous hand drumming shows with Jim Donovan, the old
drummer for "Rusted Root," as part of the Saint Francis University
World Drumming Ensemble.OVERALL COMFORT LEVEL WITH TECHNOLOGY: 
Very high... prolly 10 out of 10.  Previous projects have included Web
Design, Graphic Design, Audio Editing, and Movie Filming and Editing.  DOES TECHNOLOGY INTEREST ME:  Yes, with an emphasis on emerging technologies and their use in teaching and learning.HOW TECHNOLOGY INFLUENCES TEACHING AND LEARNING: 
I currently feel that technology is necessary for teaching and learning
in the classroom today.  However, I view technology as an aid and
resource, not as the main teaching method.  A teacher is still the
leader and facilitator of the classroom and needs to determine where
and when the use of technology is appropriate.

In a recent video featured on YouTube, Michael Wesch states that "the machine is us."  We are the new internet.  Through Web 2.0, we can connect to other people around the world.  The internet is no longer a one way street.  We can now collaborate with other users, argue and compare ideas, show pictures and videos of our cultures, and organize all the information that we normally view into a single page.  XML and RSS Feeds allow someone to effectively organize many different news feeds into a single page.  What is very interesting is how many people are unfamiliar with the term Web 2.0. and its meaning.  My background is in Computer Science and Mathematics and I was very unfamiliar with this technology until I started using iGoogle last semester.  If I am behind the times, what does that say about other computer users?  As Web 2.0. becomes more popular and spreads to more and more internet users, I feel it is worth it to think about the potential uses and upside of this technology in teaching and learning.  Currently similar technology is being used for course management systems and/or distance learning, but where else and in what capacity can this Web 2.0. technology assist with teaching and learning?  I think it will be a fun and interesting journey to find out.

What follows is a stream of consciousness response to the movie.

The concept of Web 2.0 makes perfect sense. The video put things into perspective quite rapidly for me. Web 2.0 is personalized, it is a do-it-yourself project. I the past three days, my skills and understanding have grown incrementally as I begin to comprehend the nature of the possibility for learning, and beyond as I create, interact, and synergize.

I am a bit taken aback with the concept of virtual relationships and networking supplanting face to face. It happens so fast in cyberspace. The people who cannot learn or do not want to learn how to interact with this environment will be disenfranchised. The concluding thoughts about how to rethink everything overwhelms me.

Having posted those two first thoughts, I would like to focus on a few ideas and would like to have some feedback on them. First, the meaning of the Web 2.0 format being largely undetermined and not yet reachable due to the newness requires some deliberation. Where is it going? How will it change our lives, our economy, the truth…how will we know what the truth is?

The notion that authority is decentralized in the access to knowledge is a counterpoint to the problem of knowing what the real truth is. No authority means people determine their own meanings from information.

Social networking begins to create new information as people are linked, electronically and conceptually outside the machines….to communities, to children….defining relationships at a click…

Finally, the tags registering hits actually produce a map-like three-D graphic story board about how people learn. Do not know what to do with that thought.

The video does an excellent job demonstrating how the systems work. I guess it will be up to us to determine what the system will be used for in education since everyone does not have the same access to the technology, and the baby boomers comprise the largest group of teachers ready to retire and not often willing to lean new things. How can we harness the power if not everyone is involved?

Did we have the tipping point yet? So many questions, I will quit now and see how the thread goes…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disruptive_technology

I first looked up disruptive technology and I am glad I did. I had NO idea why it was disruptive and to whom. Now I know that disruptive technology as a term is used in economic circles. DT seems not to refer to the actual technological application, but how the technology eventually affects the market—supply and demand, and the like. What ramifications does this phenomenon have for teaching and learning?

I suppose the largest issue I see is that the learning comes into the hands of the learner, and removes some of the authoritarian doling out of information. It also removes the accountability of the learner to anyone but him or herself. Motivation might change. The control on cost of information and reliability of information will change. Truth becomes available once again to those who can pay to play. Technologically , one will need to know how the system works to interact in the newly evolving social order.

Distributed teaching and learning and the need NOT to have to keep all the information in one’s head but at one’s fingertips may render the “test” obsolete. How WILL students be assessed? If we are indeed measured by an evolving product, how will we know when we know? Collective intelligence cannot be all good when everyone knows the same thing as everyone else or conversely, when groups are prohibited from learning like everyone else.

I reserve the right to continue with my thoughts at a later time.

Be a FISH Teacher Leader

What's In Each LeaderFISH! Unit?

Unit 1: It Starts with Me
The secret to outstanding leadership is not in what you convince others to do for you, but what you inspire them to do through your example.

Unit 2: Be There
People may admire your talent, charisma and business skill, but they will not really trust you until you make time to be present for them,emotionally as well as physically.

Unit 3: Play
You can't just order creativity like a lunch special or instill happiness through a program. To enjoy the many business and human benefits of Play, you need to nurture an environment full of trust and respect, and free of fear.

Unit 4: Make Their Day
One of the best ways for a leader to make someone's day,or month, or year, or life,is simply to value them. Simple gestures, such as appreciation and giving people a voice, fulfill emotional needs too often ignored on the job.

Unit 5: Choose Your Attitude
As a leader, your attitudes have a powerful effect on the people who work around you. What impact do you want to have on others? You,and you alone,get to choose the attitude that will achieve that impact.

Unit 6: Find IT, Live IT, Coach IT
How can you live and lead more purposefully, so you are affected less by what happens around you and guided more by who you want to be? It starts by defining your purpose (Find IT), taking action (Live IT) and asking others to help you be the person you say you want to be (Coach IT).

OR

Topic #1: Loving What You Do - Doing What You Love
Take a look at the importance of having a powerful vision and what it takes to create a work environment that empowers people to be great at what they do , and love doing it.

Topic #2: Creative Listening
We’ve discovered that most people don’t listen, but think they do. This topic explores the kind of awareness that’s required to listen to people in a powerful way.

Topic #3: Team Building - From Managing to Coaching
In this topic, we address the kind of creativity and productivity that’s possible when managers transform themselves into coaches who are out to enhance their players’ performances and build great teams. We show people how to get started being coaches.

Topic #4: Beyond Customer Service , An Opportunity to Make A Difference
Most organizations know that their relevance and, indeed, their very existence can depend on the quality of service they provide for their customers (both external and internal). In this topic, we share what it takes to deliver service that actually impacts the quality of someone’s life.

Topic #5: A Game Worth Playing , Creating a Company People Love Working For
What does it take to have people stay with your company? What does it take for them to decide your company is the place they want to build their future? In this presentation, we explore the possibility of creating a place for people to build their future.

Christopher D. Sessums :: Blog :: Networks as Learning Communities:

http://eduspaces.net/csessums/weblog/250883.html

http://supportblogging.com/Articles+and+Resources

click here

My daughter, Gina DeNoble is singer songwriter, Check out her first CD!!

The title and substance of this blog is inspired by a dissertation by David L. Young. He says, ” A reflective and analytical understanding of related phenomenological scholarship could support enhanced perception of the improvisational ways of being—of life as an ongoing journey of improvisation.

Improvisation occurs in the “now”, the real time moment. Being “present” is the first step to engaging students where they exist… Much of teaching involves “being in the moment” with students. Withitness, being in tune, tuned in, aware, on the same wavelength are all terms that allude to what good teachers have or do when interacting with learners. We may also know this phenomenon as ” monitor and adjust”.
But it is so much more…an intuition that good teachers have that students can detect…and respond to.
Being there. See the entry about the FISH Philosophy. “Being there” is improvisation—sustained, evolving.

Innovation in education can grow from such sustained improvisation.

Taking David’s idea one step further, teachers who view a teaching career as a journey of adaptation and incorporation of what life and the classroom have to offer will become the ultimate improvisers and, as a result, I believe, ultimate innovators.

With regard to disruptive technologies, the changing face of our learners/audience, and the changes in social networking dictate that educators stay in the moment, grwoing, learning, evolving. Hopefully, this blog will provide a forum to explore the improvisational nature of being an educator in these times.

Young, David (2005) . An invitation: improvisational living and teaching. Retrieved September 8, 2007 from http://ir.lib.sfu.ca/retrieve/2104/etd1733.pdf

My name is Lis and I am a New Hampshire girl who fell in love with a Pennsylvanian Farmboy turned Vermont Ski bum who brought me to some PSU football games one fall and we never left.  Last April we had a beautiful little girl named Madeleine, she is just about my entire world right now.  When I extricate myself from her and venture onto campus, I will usually hide in my office, attempting to complete my mountain of unfinished work.  Unfortunately, I usually end up getting caught in a whirlpool of internet procrastination!    I am very intrigued by the potential of our current technology but worry about the unnoticed isolation which can arise from chat-rooms and social-netwoking sites.  What good can come from having 437 "friends" on MySpace while sitting alone at lunch? Or being able to txt sum1 @ ne tim but loose grammar, diction and eloquence?   I worry about the use of technology in the classroom.  It seems open debate and discussion are going the way of the passenger pidgeon and students only want to be told the answer and the "correct" way to do things so they can get their A and get home to their facebook page.  One student said she was "more engaged" when she was texting in class and that it was like "twittling" her thumbs.  I use technology sparingly in my classes because I fear we are loosing the ability to communicate face-to-face and only feel comfortable if their is a screen or cell phone between us.  I have set up reading discussion boards and posted a prompt for students to respond to which is then used to springboard discussion in class, though many students simply agree with what has been posted and do not explain their own thoughts.  I wish to learn how to integrate more technology in my classes in order to enhace student communication and community while decreasing fear of productive argument. I claim to be a poet and wrote about these concerns on my personal blog  PSUGALbut have included my writing here as well. The sun shone brightly on the techno-colored autumn brillianceBut no one commented on the beautyThe last of the lingering warblers churtled in the cool air But no one could hear it's songConnection and Conversation or Isolation and Seclusion?Which has emerged with the rise of the wireless umbilical cord?By connecting loved ones, cells phones have beheaded the affable stranger A knowing nod, a friendly hello, a connection over random commonalities -- all extinct Fallen in the wake of our digital loneliness 

I am not at my best in the morning but am striving to use my time
better in 2008, yet after watching Web 2.0 I may have to change my
resolution.  With my eyes still groggy with sleep and soy latte in hand I clicked into youtube to watch Web 2.0 -- whoa -- it was too early to attempt to change my identity!  Yet, slowly I realized, I have been evolving, becoming more and more connected to my 'machine'.    While I continue to find comfort in putting pen to paper, the call of instant 'publication' is enticing.  No longer are my thoughts solely mine, not only can anyone read my writing but unlike traditional publication, anyone can comment on my writing as well.  I can literally engage in a conversation with my readers.  Their opinions can alter the direction of a piece and revisions are instantaneous, so when is a piece ever final?  Books don't change.  I love that -- the same words I read, pages I turn, margins I scribble in could have been touched, read, absorbed by ANYONE!  When you hold an old book you are holding history in your hands.  But  where is history going now?  We claim to be documenting our lives, sharing our viewpoints and expanding everyone's world view.  But tomorrow we can go back and hit 'delete'.  Edits, alterations and ideas are hidden or erased in an instant.  Even while writing this piece I have gone back and changed entire sentences but if I hadn't told you, you would have never known.  But you can stand in the Library of Congress and actually see where Benjamin Franklin changed words, moved paragraphs and rearranged the skeleton of our country.  Early drafts of the Declaration of Independence are a mess, but they
live on!  If it had been written today, all we would have in 200 years
is a link we could click on to read that day's version of history.So I am currently struggling through a love-hate relationship with the digital world.  Without it I would not have access to the hundreds of journal articles I read every year from the comfort of my living room couch, could not look up the weather in Italy on a whim and could not listen to any song I wanted to the moment I have the urge and my writing would, most likely, remain hidden in my journals but it would remain.  When I attempted to migrate my old blog entries into the new system, I feared they were lost forever when the computer could not find my saved export file.  Months of writing gone.  I've been told I need to 'back-up' my files, create copies of copies so nothing is lost.  People spend hours waiting for their computers to sync with hand-held devices and external hard-drives.  While we 'back-up' our digital identities are we letting our un-virtual identities slip away?  How long will it be before we can plug in and down-load our thoughts into a machine?  If we can live out our lives on-line, with no need to even go grocery shopping, how long will it be before we can create a digital scrapbook of sorts?  A file we can access at any time to review what was(n't), the trips untaken, baseballs unthrown and waves un-played in.  How long will it be before we need a back-up life?    

My understanding of 'disruptive technology' is a new device or system which swoops in and usurps the status of some older
tool even though it may have bugs aplenty and mass appeal may be
lacking.  Whenever a new Microsoft operating system comes out and
entire digital worlds are thrown into disarray, disruptive technology
is to blame. While this definition seems sufficient, I would also like to expand it to include:A cell phone ringing in the middle of a concert hallHaving to wait for earbuds to be removed before saying helloAn incoming email beep during a meetingCyberbullyingText messaging in classFreezing computersPapers lost to the digital etherNovel length users manualsViruses, worms and hackersJammed printersPersonal emails sent to an entire officeUpdates that won't installUnrememberable passwords which have to include a number, symbol and capital letter (+ your first born)Platforms that won't speak to each other (can't we all just get along?!)Automatic (un)formattingI'm sure this list will expand as the semester, and my understanding/viewpoint, progresses.In the words of the great refrigerator magnet -- "To err is human.  To really screwup you need a computer."

Your name -->  Heather Hughes
Where you're from -->  Houston, Texas
What are your interests -->  community/art/space/interaction/dialogue
Why you are taking this class --> to learn more about the technologies i want to incorporate into my work
Anything interesting about you -->  of course...
How would you describe your overall comfort level with the use of technology?  -->  i think my answer depends of what type of technologies we are talking about.  am i comfortable with using a microwave oven?  very.  PhotoShop, mp3s, the internets?  pretty confident.  podcasts?  not yet, but ready to learn.
Does technology interest you?  -->  yes.  technologies are like evolving languages- intimidating and challenging, yet rewarding and satisfying to learn.
Talk a little about how you see technology influencing teaching and learning.  -->   technologies are becoming increasingly interwoven into our everyday, contemporary, lived human experiences.  like the video (from Kansas State) suggests, man and machine are merging.  so then, what becomes of the classroom that is no longer adaptive/congruent with the lives of those who inhabit it?   a prison?  obsolete?

I AM
 
        a pixel                                             (10101010)
                     
                            <flashing>  $$$
 
multi-literate
 
recovering  TECHNOphobe
 
who uses the LIGHT                         of her  *cell*  phone
 
to see in the                    dark                                              DARK
 
_spaces_
 
                   unbound
 
and                                           - positioned -
 
on the               /hard/                                            /wired/
 
((body)
          mechanic).

Disruptive technology may be non-linear, non-sequential, discursive, emergent, interruptive, user-driven. 
One one hand, it may be interpreted as a kind of application that might propmt you to leave a potentially burning building (a fire alarm), thus disrupting your previous experience (seen as both a nuiscance and a life saver).  In this example, the disruptive technology (the fire alarm) is reactive- it is waiting for a cue to disrupt an event. 
On another hand, a disruptive technology may be one that (pro)actively disrupts experience, promting the user/participant to react to its existence.  Examples of this type of disruptive technology could be monitors on elevators playing the images and sounds of CNN, traffic lights, and hypertext. 
In a classroom, disruptive technologies may exist in the forms of mp3 players, cell phones, pdas, internet, podcasts, video/computer games, and even the "bell" used to signal class change.  Within this context, it seems disruptive technology is/can be treated as a problem or a possibility.  Do teachers punish students for plugging in to technologies that exist as integral parts of everyday social interaction and learning for them, or do they incorporate technologies (or at least acknowledgement and discussion of them) into everyday teaching and learning? 
Perhaps, reaching a greater congruence- a more seemless interface- between the classroom and the world outside its walls would benefit teaching and learning in a way not inspired by the dis/connect that often is.  Pertaining to the context/content of this course, I am hoping for the later view of possibility for inspiration. 

No, I'm actually not a huge Rolling Stones fan, but the words popped into my head, so I went with it.  I'm John Dolan, a doctoral candidate in WFED, sliding into C&I territory to learn more about Web 2.0.  My day job is with Penn State Continuing and Professional Education, in which I am responsible for the development and delivery of professional education programs for individuals and organizations.  Part of my job requires me to use technology to communicate with the offices of Continuing Education across the PSU network, keeping them abreast of what's new & exciting in our shop.  I have been diving into Web 2.0 tools to do this recently-- podcasts, vodcasts, blogs, etc. and am looking into even more in the future.  I think these tools can have a very positive impact on sharing information across diverse audiences in organizations, especially those who are geographically removed from "headquarters".  The challenging part is, I'm not sure how well these efforts are being regarded, or if they're even being used.  You can lead a horse to water but you can't make it listen to your podcast . . . I am fairly comfortable with using technology, but have never done any kind of coding or anything like that.  I was a product manager for several years with Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive, where I was responsible for the management of several online classified advertising products.  This was in the heyday of the Web Economy, and I got to see the swell of excitement and then the crash back to reality.  I am originally from State College, and returned to Happy Valley after living away for about 13 years in 2002.  During the 13 year break, I lived in Washington, D.C., Nashville and Atlanta, and then Washington D.C. again, before returning with my wife and two sons to be closer to my family.  I received my BA in Advertising from Penn State and my MBA from Vanderbilt.  In addition to the aforementioned Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive, I have also worked at BellSouth (now AT&T), Knight Ridder (now McClatchy), AT&T (still AT&T, sort of) and The Washington Post newspaper.   I look forward to meeting you all. 

Disruptive technology is an interesting term, as it connotes some sort of out-of-control software program wreaking havoc in the workplace, turning desks upside down and spilling boxes of paperclips and folders all over the floor.   However, what I believe it to mean is that it's the development of technology tools that improve (fill in the blank).  It is disruptive because it is shaking up what was being done previously, not because it is passing notes in class.  Any innovation, whether technology-based or not, could be considered disruptive to what was the state-of-the-art previously.  

Wow!  First off, who knew Kansas State had this going on?  Good for them!  Second, this was very visually entertaining.  The creators should be proud of how they were able to communicate these themes in such a dynamic, engaging, and thought-provoking way.  The message was not lost in the presentation, however, and I'm thrilled to be one of the ones who will be studying this phenomenon and trying to make sense of its place in the working world.  It, I thought, got a little creepy at the end when it stated we were going to have to rethink things like family and love as a result of 2.0, but I guess I can see how you could stretch it to make a point.  After all, if we are currently redefining "friends" as those on our Facebook, even though many people "friend" people they have never even met, redefining family and love cannot be far behind.  This was also my first exposure to the Wayback Machine, and it allowed me to poke around to some of the sites that I worked on back in the day, and that was amusing. 

 
I looked at my email and screamed.  Penn State accepted me into their graduate school!  Penn State accepted me!!  Hallelujah!  I went to bed very, very happy that cold, December Thursday night.  Friday morning came with an avalanche of reality.  Classes will start in three weeks!  I need to pack up my life in New York and move.  How will I find an apartment?  How will I tell everyone I'm leaving? Where the hell am I going to get the money to do this???? Have I lost my mind???
            I calmed myself down and went to work.  I found the apartment on the internet by a stroke of luck.  Friends were extremely supportive of my decision to move out here.  Trying to explain Penn State's location to a die hard Manhattanite went something like this:  
"I got into Penn State."  
"Oh, that's awesome!," said my friend Michael, "So where will you be moving to?"
"State College", I replied. 
"Yeah, that's great!  You got in.  I wanted to know the name of the town."
"State College, Pennsylvania." 
"Yeah, I heard you the first time." 
"No, no, the town.  The town is called State College." 
"There's a town called State College???"
I can't tell you the number of conversations that sounded like this.  Financing this degree is still proving to be a trick, but will work itself out.  I came to the realization that I lost my mind a long time ago, so I just let that concern go.
              I have been a teacher for the last six years.  Five were in the secondary drama and English classroom.  Half of the remaining year was spent as a traveling teacher with a group of actors, the second half of that year I was a tutor on movie and TV sets.   Most recently, I worked in the Soundview section of the South Bronx at two different high schools and fell in love with the kids.  Much of my research here at Penn State is derived from the lessons they taught me.
            One too many beeps, rings, and random clips of rap songs piercing the flow of a lesson has driven me to take Disruptive Technologies.  Side Kicks, cell phones, and other things that go beep inappropriately drive me insane.  The only thing worse than a cell phone going off in class is a cell phone going off in church or the middle of a live theatre show.   The library is a great place to hear people talking on their phones having a "private" conversation broadcast for all patrons. 
My generation is the first to grow up with computers in the home and classroom.  My father bought a computer when I was in second grade.  It was a white box that had this flashing green writing.  It took up the entire desk.  All I wanted to do was play with it, explore it, but all I could do was stare at it.  Dad, in his infinite wisdom, told me I had to learn to type before I could touch it.  I was not happy about it as a kid, however I thank him for it now.  I learned to use various software such as word processors and spread sheets.  In fact, I learned United States geography playing Where In the USA is Carmen Sandiego?.  In school, dot matrix printers with continuous paper published our compositions and we played Oregon Trail during recess.
My mom had a very different relationship with the computer.  She was terrified of the machine for years.  She eventually learned to turn it on and how to get into the word processor.  When she was in grad school, my siblings and I typed her papers.  It wasn't until they required her to use computers at work that she lost some of that fear.  Today, she uses email well and surfs the internet.  I am proud of her. 
I tell the story of my mother because it describes many of the more experienced teachers with whom I worked.  (I write "more experienced" because if I wrote "older" Mom might be a little upset.)  They exibited the same fear, avoided the machines at all costs, and resorted to doing things by hand.  Often, they relied on the newer teachers to help them out with some of the professional development sessions involving technology. 
            It is impossible to ignore the influence of technology on teaching and learning.  This generation of students posses access to more information and gadgets that do the most unimaginable things.  On a positive note, technology gives us the ability to bring information at lightening speed to the classroom.  Models are available from various angles and in many colors with the click of a button.  Students now have the ability to email you a question at home or turn in a paper at 11:59 pm on the day it is due.  They also occasionally send an instant message.   Communicating with parents via email is one way to be somewhat sure the parent received a message.  However, students' attention span is significantly shorter and they demand immediate gratification in all aspects of their lives.  This has a significant aspect on their ability to sit and learn.  MP3 players have become so miniscule that students can listen to their music and not be detected until called on.  Cyberbullying is something that teachers must become familiar with as well as social networking sites such as My Space, Friendzone, Facebook, and Sconex. Teachers should be warned before they read the teacher rating pages for their schools. I admit to giving into temptation and looked just once.  It was a real eye opener.  If you want to know what the kids really think about you as teacher, it will be right there in black and white for all the world to see.  Other kids will add to the discussion, creating excellent picture of how the you are perceived. 
            Now I find myself on the other side of the desk.  I must relearn what it is like to be a student and give someone else control of the classroom.  I am excited and look forward to the experience. 
           

     Web 2.0 parallels who we are as human beings.  It adapts to its environment, changes its output when given new information, and promotes social interaction.  
      We are the web.  It has adapted itself into our culture changing how we communicate, what we watch on television, and even who gets a role in a Broadway play.  It is truly the most democratic instrument society possesses -- potentially everyone in America has access and the ability to publish his/her opinion somewhere.  No one needs an intimate knowledge of code; it has become more and more user friendly. 
     Our society does need to rethink the way it does things.  Privacy has become almost nonexistent.  What about copyrights?  Who owns what we write?  Who can use it? Should it be governed?  If so, in what ways? This is a truly interesting time to be alive and a participant in defining a new digital society. 

A great post by Chris Stubbs. Chris works here at PSU and thinks about how technology can impact teaching and learning.

http://chrisstubbs.com/2008/01/who-does-number-2-work-for.html

I hope all Americans (and the World in general) takes a moment to reflect on the great things Dr. Martin Luther King did for this country. It isn’t everyday that you can point at a human being and have nothing but respect for their vision, passion, and sacrifice. A great man who is [...]

Its been several days since Steve Jobs introduced the new Apple MacBook Air … during that time I have been thinking a lot abut what it is and what it isn’t. To tell you the truth, I am a bit conflicted over this. On one hand it is an amazingly thin and sexy [...]

Disruptive technologies are those that current educators find no reason to use in a classroom setting.

Disruptive technologies are those that current educators find no reason to use in a classroom setting. More...

Now that there are several new Digital Commons studios in place across the Commonwealth of PA we are starting to see some amazing things come out of them. The thing I am continually excited to see is that faculty and students come up with amazing ways to use the things we envision and install. [...]

Just to clarify - there is NO face to face meeting on the 17th in 236 Chambers.   Checkthis  post if you have any questions about what you are doing this week.   We will post assignments on Thursday for next week and then we will all see each other in the flesh on the 24th.  

Just to clarify - there is NO face to face meeting on the 17th in 236 Chambers.  Checkthis post if you have any questions about what you are doing this week.  We will post assignments on Thursday for next week and then we will all see each other in the flesh on the 24th.  

I have been as off the grid the last two weeks as much as possible while on vacation. It has been a wonderful (And even a little stressful) letting go. Things are starting to stack up a bit, but for the most part I have been able to stay out of it all. [...]

In addition to the assignments that Cole laid out in the previous blog, we also want to spend some time talking about the theoretical foundation that surrounds these disruptive (in this case Web 2.0) tools and how they can be used in teaching and learning.  That means reading some theory on community, identity, and design.  First up, Howard Rheingold is one of the original thinkers about online community and the implications of technology on our lives.  He recently started a video blog (vlog) to return to online communities and how they have evolved since the late 80's when he first started writing about them.  Take a look at the updated of his original 80's piece "Slice of Life in My Virtual Community" and also the new vlog, which is only on its first episode.  While it is not strictly an academic treatment, he surfaces some interesting ideas about communities online.The other reading for the 14th will be by Roy Pea and will follow in its own post.

I have posted a piece by Roy Pea about Distributed
Cognition / Intelligence on the course ANGEL site.  This is a seminal piece that has clear implications for what it means to increasingly off-load our cognition into our
environment, either onto other people, artifacts or technology.  Please
read this chapter by class on the 14th.Pea, R. D. (1993). Practices of distributed intelligences and design for education. In G. Solomon (Ed.), Distributed cognitions: Psychological and educational considerations (pp. 47-87). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.One questions that you should consider, and likely post some thoughts about:  Are the implications of distributed intelligence different with Web 2.0 technologies?  If so, why?  If not, why not?

Interesting piece on how new offerings are coming to the facebook to manage corporate content. I wonder what a real eLearning environment laid on top of FB might look like? What would be the features and how could you see it interacting with educational content and typical FB features?

http://blog.hbs.edu/faculty/amcafee/index.php/faculty_amcafee_v3/workbook_getting_facebook_ready_for_work/

A quick little Q&A session about Google, who owns you data, and why you should care.

http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/16-01/st_qa

What do games mean when they play out in the open with hundreds, thousands or hundreds of thousands of real people working together? This article takes about alternate reality games and how they are used in marketing. Fascinating use of web 2.0 technologies.

http://www.wired.com/entertainment/music/magazine/16-01/ff_args

This is an article about scraping - a process of gathering data from a web-based service (e.g. facebook) and repurposing it for use in other applications / services. It as interesting implications for who owns what data.

http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/magazine/16-01/ff_scraping

I have posted a piece by Roy Pea about Distributed Cognition / Intelligence on the course ANGEL site.  This is a seminal piece that has clear implications for what it means to increasingly off-load our cognition into our environment, either onto other people, artifacts or technology.  Please read this chapter by class on the 14th.

Pea, R. D. (1993). Practices of distributed intelligences and design for education. In G. Solomon (Ed.), Distributed cognitions: Psychological and educational considerations (pp. 47-87). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

One questions that you should consider, and likely post some thoughts about:  Are the implications of distributed intelligence different with Web 2.0 technologies?  If so, why?  If not, why not?

In addition to the assignments that Cole laid out in the previous blog, we also want to spend some time talking about the theoretical foundation that surrounds these disruptive (in this case Web 2.0) tools and how they can be used in teaching and learning.  That means reading some theory on community, identity, and design. 

First up, Howard Rheingold is one of the original thinkers about online community and the implications of technology on our lives.  He recently started a video blog (vlog) to return to online communities and how they have evolved since the late 80's when he first started writing about them.  Take a look at the updated of his original 80's piece "Slice of Life in My Virtual Community" and also the new vlog, which is only on its first episode.  While it is not strictly an academic treatment, he surfaces some interesting ideas about communities online.

The other reading for the 14th will be by Roy Pea and will follow in its own post.

Not much to say at the moment … I am actually relaxing and enjoying being off the grid. I am getting ready to do some travel in the coming weeks — I am heading back to Arizona to give a couple of talks back in the Maricopa system. I did one there last [...]