Well, my intent of edumacating (yes that’s a made-up word) readers on how a grown man deals with life post major brain surgery hasn’t been all that exciting enough to warrant a new post (just yet), so I’m filling a gap with some stuff that went on my other blogs that other friends and family have been keeping tabs on (http://www.spiritualslideshows.ws). Feel free to bury your nose in that blogpile if you really want the history of what’s going on medically with me. If you want the short version, here it is:

• The surgery was successful and now I’m missing a chunk of my right frontal lobe about the size of my fist (about the size of an orange–my fists are under the average size)
• Not only was the surgery successful, but there was too much fluid of the cerebrospinal variety being generated to compensate for the lost tissue and was causing massive killer headaches. A week later I went back to have a shunt installed and that was successful as well, so headaches no more. Injuries caused at the surgical locations where the shunt-work (ha-ha sort of rhymes with stunt-work) was performed now remain as my #1 enemies at this point in time. They aren’t bad but I’m learning to live with them. Soon they will be gone
• Doctor follow-up visits have been positive and further treatments will include radiation but NOT chemo-therapy–thank goodness.
• I’m excited about an upcoming visit to a neuro-psychologist this week. They will help determine what I’m capable of and will hopefully affix a time for me to be able to return to work and resume my normal duties. However, in MY humble, unprofessional opinion, my brain has already been re-wiring itself since it’s been receiving sensory input. Obviously I can still operate a computer because I’m updating my websites, I can hold a conversation and hopefully still sound intelligent (I think so), and I haven’t forgotten how to write code or manipulate media which is important for my profession. What I suppose might be worrisome is my ability to stay on task given longer periods of time sitting down at a desk job, design and architecht software the way I’m used to, and meeting my personal goals of accomplishing helping people learn some of the things I’ve learned over the years so they can be self-sufficient in their approach to computing.

  Now the really exciting thing here is (and I’m not blushing too much hopefully when I say this) is that if I’m able to do all this with part of my brain missing, then that points to lots and LOTS of potential for individuals who have all of their brain tissue intact. As soon as I have my hands on the scans of my brain I’ll post them so that the world can see what I’m missing and what I’m now going to be dealing with for the rest of my life. My neurosurgeon might even let me observe a future brain surgery if I meet the right sort of criteria. That would be WAY cool. I’ll keep my fingers crossed.

My take on it is that for instruction we have to take into effect the philosophy that the best determining factor of what a person will learn can depend on what they already know. If a person is situated and surrounded by technology, they likely expect technology to be the medium by which they receive instruction.

With that said, I was having a conversation with a faculty member yesterday about the most important role that technology places in curriculum. I go back to my own learning experiences, both self-directed and instructor-led, classroom or "life experience" and realize that the human factor has always been a big part of it. If I was the last person on earth and all I had left were the technology left behind, I wonder how I might go about continuing to learn all that I could about various subjects?

My take on it is that if students have an expectation of how best they learn we should be aware of that fact. At the same time, I like going back into history before the advances of technology that we have currently were available. My assessment is that some of the greatest teachers and learners still succeeded without it. Why? It could be a number of factors, but having proper motivation of self or of instructor was likely a factor.

Most of my colleagues in the field would agree that by nature human beings are built to learn all that they can. Whether or not they are successful in that aspect of their life largely depends on their environment. Therefore, there is still a great need for people who can be mentors, encouraging entities, tutors, coaches, and most importantly good parents. I think it’s useless to point fingers at things or people or place blame when it comes to poor learning outcomes. Rather we should work towards correcting and improving learning opportunities. Technology is a big portion of that, but being an influence and role model for successful living is priceless in a world filled with teaching and learning opportunities.

May we choose our technology wisely and seek the success of our students accordingly!

This is an interesting perspective as a preface to this: http://www.adobe.com/solutions/broadcast/pdfs/forrester_report.pdf

 

We (at work) have made a concerted effort to comply to the TEACH act for fair use rights in digitizing media for educational purposes. Under the TEACH act, an accredited institution must take measures to ensure that digitized dramatic content must not be able to be replicated or archived by those who would consume it.

 

 

"11. While the transmission of distance education content may be conducted by diverse technological means, an institution deploying "digital transmissions" must apply technical measures to prevent "retention of the work in accessible form by recipients of the transmission . . . for longer than the class session." The statute offers no clarification about the meaning of a "class session," but language throughout the statute suggests that any given transmission would require a finite amount of time, and students would be unable to access it after a designated time. Also, in the case of "digital transmissions," the institution must apply "technological measures" to prevent recipients of the content from engaging in "unauthorized further dissemination of the work in accessible form." Both of these restrictions address concerns from copyright owners that students might receive, store, and share the copyrighted content. Both of these provisions of the statute call upon the institution to implement technological controls on methods for delivery, terms of accessibility, and realistic abilities for students to download or share copyrighted content. These provisions specifically demand application of "technological measures" that would restrict uses of the content "in the ordinary course of their operations." In other words, when the restrictive controls are used in an "ordinary" manner, they will safeguard against unauthorized reproduction and dissemination. This language apparently protects the institution, should someone "hack" the controls and circumvent imperfect technology." (Source: http://www.copyright.iupui.edu/teach_summary.htm)

 

The reason I ask this is that our campus has made use of the Helix Community Streaming server and has been delivering content using RealNetworks’ proprietary streaming format. Because at the time the decision was made it seemed to work and in our minds we were doing our best to deliver a good learning medium via online video and protecting ourselves in the process. Also, from a usability standpoint, many instructors who deploy media on the server encourage their students to download the latest free version of RealPlayer. I’ll refrain from the criticism of the annoyances that deploying the software creates (I’ll trust anyone replying to this message will do likewise)

 

I’ve not delved into it too much but the Windows version has a blatant feature embedded into the client that allows the user to save streamed media directly to their computer. It is painfully obvious that once installed, any of our instructors and media developers who have gone to great strides to protect content because the technology at the time was originally invented to protect it, is now left with a big problem to fix.  While our streaming media initiative is still very young (we aren’t delivering much copyrighted work at this time), I would like to address it before it gets blown out of proportion.  I have some ideas already but I’d like to ask what everyone else is doing for reference.

 

It seems like media technology companies have failed to address the impact that their ‘bowing’ to the trend of the general community of media consumers finding a way to download video content anyway shouldn’t affect education in the least bit, but if I’m reading into this correctly it seems like they’ve left educators out of the loop on their decision.

 

So I guess my point is three-fold: 1. Am I reading into this correctly given our circumstance, that we aren’t covered under the TEACH act anymore? 2. Is anyone else aware of this and affected by it? 3. Since RealMedia is a proprietary format, it isn’t easily convertable into another more desireable format. What would you be able to offer as a suggestion what to do with our instructors’ content?

 

Any insights would be appreciated.

One of the things we came to a conclusion upon was the fact that it is EXTREMELY time-consuming to put together a good, engaging, and pedagogically sound audio presentation. Apple computer is putting together several tools to hopefully make that easier.

http://www.apple.com/server/macosx/features/podcasts.html

Given Apple’s success in making difficult things easier for people who are intimidated by technology, hopefully this would put this in the hands of instructors who can make good use of it.

Sales Engineers have hounded us for money with it…

Conference presenters have put us to sleep with it…

Its inventors insist that it exist in our computing environments…all in hopes that we pay them money just for the privilege…

So what is this ghastly beast? And how can we stop it? Of course this is in jest. Any presentation software to be used to inform, educate, motivate an audience, etc. eventually MUST possess the capabilities that PowerPoint has. The principles of using a large screen to do this isn’t necessarily evil. So who is the true killer of the true intent and power of PowerPoint and its competitors? Most likely its users. Because it is relatively pervasive and so easy to get a presentation going educators and other informers often fall back on it to be the sole source of instruction. Keeping this in mind, my opinion that removing the human element from instruction is almost always detrimental to content that is by nature already dry. The solution? Develop talents of presentation style in the human first, and then focus on improving the human’s use of technology.

Given all this, what is the best software that will allow teachers to do this? Google now offers an online knockoff of PowerPoint in its Docs suite that has already revolutionized word processing and spreadsheet use. Here’s a recent comparison review from Slate.com. I’ll let you be the judge:

Inside is an interesting reference on how technology is affecting instruction today. I like the fact that it focuses back on the teacher: (note that in the following quote, IT is referring to Information Technology and NOT Instructional Technology, but I think in the end it applies to both)

“IT is not a good substitute for good teaching. Good teachers are good with or without IT and students learn a great deal from them. Poor teachers are poor with or without IT and students learn little from them.”

Here’s the link: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/09/17/it

I have to admit that I couldn’t pick out a favorite right away, so I went the other direction and mentioned some teachers that I have had with whome I did NOT particularly have a good experience being in their class. Here were my classifiers:

• Felt like the professor was there to pad their own ego
• Research was their primary function, therefore teaching a classroom full of college kids to them was a way they could continue their research and came secondary to their students’ learning

What my teacher did was turn this around and point out these two qualities boiled down to these respectively:

• Pride
• Disinterest in student outcome or performance

Over time, it has been pointed out to me that instruction at its root psychologically is a spiritual thing. Growth and change occurs in an individual as they are lead through effective teaching. Of course the student must be motivated, but we can teach our students to become motivated in our subject material. Paraphrasing a great religious leader, “Effective teaching is the very essence of leadership. [Growth/Achievement] will come only as men and women are taught with such effectiveness that they change and discipline their lives. They cannot be coerced,…They must be lead and that means teaching.

Granted, at this early stage of the semester it is difficult to pin down what I think of my teachers, but so far I don’t think I have anything to worry about. There are two parts to learning, learner motivation and instruction, that I think for me have been influential in my development as a person. Everybody is different, of course, so I’m being objective but as an educator I want to become a better motivator and an instructor. If nothing else, hopefully I will be able to accomplish this.