Web 2.0 experiences in the classroom

January 16, 2009 at 2:25 pm | In conference, education, internet, internet culture, local, math, technology | 3 Comments
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I just got back from TLT Day, Teaching and Learning with Technology Day 2009. I attended a great presentation by Marianne Hebert on Web 2.0 in the classroom. It was a great presentation that I was rather disappointed with.

The presentation slides are here on slideshare. (I learned about slideshare from Marianne’s talk … thanks!) See, that’s why I say it was a great presentation. I learned some new stuff that I want to look into and, via the discussion, found ways other folks are using Web 2.0 stuff. I even learned what the heck Web 2.0 means.

The reason I was rather disappointed with it is that I didn’t leave with ways to improve the classroom/course experience for my students. Sure, I know about various web stuff that’s really cool, and I could incorporate these things if I wanted to, but it’s not clear at all if using these things (like delicious, facebook, twitter, google maps, google docs, etc.) will improve my classroom/course experience. This left me conflicted, since I thought it was a good talk.

And that’s when it hit me. The talk basically said that people are on the web, our students are on the web more than we are, and here are lots of ways that we can interact with them to facilitate learning in ways with which they are comfortable. It gave lots of examples and demonstrated how many different websites are used. And it did a good job at that.

But that’s not what I need in order to improve my classroom/course experience. I’m not just going to use a piece of technology because it’s cool. (Ok, I might. But only if it’s REALLY cool.) And I’m not going to just throw more technology into my classes with the hope that the experience will be better. There’s no guarantee that it’s going to work.

What I need to do is spend some time alone and brainstorm. I need to just strip away all perceived boundaries, imagine that no impediments exist, and that I can make any classroom experience I can imagine a reality just by willing it to be. If that were the reality in which I lived, what classroom/course experience would I create? What sorts of things can I imagine?

That’s hard! I don’t know about you, but if I start doing that, part of my mind (call it the practical part) immediately starts thinking about all the problems with implementing what I just imagined. Now don’t get me wrong; I like the practical part of my mind. And I know it’s just looking at things that way with the intention of solving those problems. But it gets in the way of the creative part of my mind that imagines in the first place. And my creative part can get bummed out by a preponderance of practical concerns that I don’t know how to solve. So I need to take some time to give the creative part free reign, and imagine what I want to make happen.

Once I get an idea of what that looks like … well, then I will sit back and have a beer. A good beer, like Guinness. But after that, I will let the practical part out of its cage and say, “Make that happen!” In reality, it will probably only make a facsimile, or a lower dimensional projection, of my imagination happen, because it has to live in the real world. If it really can make my imagination happen, that’s a sign to me that I need to dream bigger.

So, my conclusion is that coming to a talk like this the way I did today is almost like putting the cart before the horse. I need to have that dream first. I need to imagine the ultimate classroom/course experience in a limitless world. Then I can come to a talk like this and when I see something useful I can say, “Hey, that can help make this little part of my ultimate experience a reality!” Then I won’t be just adding technology for its own sake. I will be filling a need, a function that I have already identified. Then whatever I add is practically assured to make a tangible improvement.

You’re indirectly responsible for this realization, Marianne, so thank you. You just may have helped me make every conference I go to more enriching. I also had good conversations with Linda, Karen, and Jenica. It was a few hours well spent IMO.

I also attended a workshop about iClicker, a classroom voting system that I will be using extensively this semester. I’ll devote a separate entry to just that.

Happy New Year!

January 3, 2009 at 9:59 am | In life | 1 Comment

Oh my goodness, it’s been over a month! Well, now that the semester is over and the holidays are over, it’s time for an update.

Halloween was fun. Jenny had a great idea for a last minute costume for me. She bleached and spiked my hair and I went as Billy Idol. Fun stuff. Maybe I’ll get a flickr account someday and post the pics.

Thanksgiving was good. We had some family and some friends over, ate food, and played games. The next day we put up the tree! That was exciting because we didn’t get around to it last year. We like our tree. And Jenny’s dad endured winter driving that wasn’t as bad as he feared.

The semester ended a bit roughly. I’ve got to reorganize some things. I’ve got the upper level courses worked out pretty well, but the workload on the lower level courses is killing me. I’m teaching 3 sections of 100 level Prob and Stat in the spring, so this is the time to figure it out.

Jenny and I had a nice romantic Christmas, just the two of us. She’s knitting me a sweater! Then I went south to visit my Mom in SC for a week. Got delayed on the 24th on the way out, and got sick on the plane. That only lasted a couple of days though, and we had a good time. Saw tons of movies. Love Actually, Lost In Translation, Benjamin Button, The Lake House, and The Accidental Tourist. Mom likes movies! Luckily she likes good movies.

Jenny and I have been enjoying the new year. We have been playing a great new game called Carcassone. We’ve played it before and liked it, and we finally picked it up with a B&N gift card. Fun stuff. Last night we saw Tortilla Soup. Great movie! If you don’t want to eat like a horse after the movie, you’d better see it after you’ve just eaten a whole lot. It’s got lots of scenes of fantastic food being prepared. I’m hungry just thinking about it.

For this year’s new year’s resolution, I resolve to blog more frequently and consistently.

Psych! Yeah, we’ll see about that.

Anybody know about processors?

November 26, 2008 at 3:02 pm | In technology | 3 Comments

Quick notebook question. I’ve been looking at PCs with Intel Core 2 processors, and ones with AMD Turion 64 X2 Dual-Core processors. Does anyone here know anything about them? For my purposes, web-surfing and word processing mostly, will it make a difference?

A slightly longer version. We’d love a MacBook, of course, but some of these sales are just too good to resist, and Jenny’s PC is really on its way out.

Thanks, dudes.

Origami

November 13, 2008 at 6:45 pm | In art, math | 4 Comments

This past Tuesday, 11/11/08, the SUNY Potsdam Math Alliance hosted its first Origami Night!  Four professors in the Math department do a non-trivial amount of origami, and they generously agreed to lend their expertise to what turned out to be a VERY well-attended event.

I made a stellated icosahedron.  Below is a picture of one, though it’s not the one I made. Here is a website that explains how to make some modular origami projects out of pieces, or modules, called Sonobes. Here is a picture of two made with pretty paper, made by Future Girl. I didn’t take a picture of mine before I gave it to my sweetie as a present.

I can’t wait to make more!

Stellated Icosahedron

Life update

October 21, 2008 at 8:58 am | In conference, family, holidays, life, math | 1 Comment

Well, the semester is in full swing as you, dear reader, may have guessed by the infrequency of my entries alone.  But life doesn’t stop, that’s for sure.

Last weekend I took 10 students to the Fall 2008 MAA Seaway section meeting, a local math conference. The talks were very cool, and many students told me they had a great time. I was also the chair of the student program committee. Last meeting in the spring, there were only 2 submissions for the student talk session, so this time we decided to supplement student talks with other things, like math jeopardy and an ice cream social. We also had two faculty give an workshop for undergraduates on how to craft a math talk. Lots of good stuff for our students. Then we got 12 submissions for student talks! We had to get help to cover all of the rooms we needed to fit all of these activities! In the end, though, I think it was a success. And we have some ideas to make the arrangement of activities better next time.

Some family have been going through some pretty rough times, and there is nothing I can do about it. That’s weighing on me and making it hard to concentrate on anything. Life sucks sometimes.

This weekend we’re going to do some preparation for winter. We’re going to store the motorcycles, and put the trailer out of the garage and beside it, covered with a tarp. Then we’ll have the motorcycles winterized in one bay, and the car in the other. I should replace that broken window in the garage door, too.

Thanksgiving at our house is on, and we’re going to have folks over again. Hopefully we can avoid the plumbing disaster this time around.

Over Columbus day weekend Jenny and I visited some friends and relatives. The relatives were Martin, Uta, and Tanta Martha who were visiting from Germany. Tanta Martha knew me when I was a nipperkin. She nicknamed me “schlingel,” which loosely translates as “rascal,” a nickname that stuck to me with my Oma (Martha’s sister) all my life. This will probably be her last visit to the states, so I just had to make the trip. I made two different holiday liqueurs, whose recipes I learned from Oma, and brought them to share during this visit; they were a hit. I really improved the coffee liqueur this time. We also had a great visit with our dear friends Edz and Sacha. One of these years we’ll get them up here to chill with us in the north country.

Academic advising has begun. It’s almost hard to believe that it’s time to start thinking about next semester already. On the other hand, I’m already thinking about what I’m going to be teaching in the 2009-2010 academic year, so it shouldn’t be so hard to believe.

Time moves so fast. I should make some time to think long term about life and what I want out of it. I did that over 10 years ago when I was working as a waiter in a restaurant, and I set myself on this course, got back into school, and now I’m a mathematician and professor. But it’s about time for a long term view again. I’m not going to be switching careers or anything, but I need a better balance between work, home, family, etc. Jenny and I talked about that a bit on the car ride back from the visit with the german relatives. Putting it off to the “break” between the semesters doesn’t work. There is no better time than now.

Spammers are tapping their own resources

October 3, 2008 at 7:25 am | In Uncategorized | 7 Comments

You know all those spam emails that clutter up your inbox or junk email folder?  The ones you just throw away as soon as you see them, sometimes even BEFORE you see them, when the subject is a dead giveaway?  And even when the subject is NOT a dead giveaway, usually the english is so horrible that it’s laughable.  I assume it’s foreigners and not junior high students who are writing these and that’s why their english is so bad.

When so many people delete them so routinely, it makes you think why they do it.  It must be economical, otherwise they wouldn’t do it.  It is very cheap, but it must make a bit of money for the companies that have spammers advertise for them.  One out of a thousand, one out of 10,000 … some non-trivial proportion of the population must be responding to these emails.

Well, spammers themselves are trying to tap that market, the one in a zillion people who respond to these “ads.”  They’re trying to make their emails not so horrible sounding, with decent english, with the hope that even more people will read them, and they’re getting that one is a gazillion people to help them do it.  It’s smart, actually.  Some spammer was thinking to themselves, “My english not good.  How to make my texts as an english speaking person?   Who not smart but english speaking fix my words to be hearing normal language?”  This is my proposition, and it is based on the following piece of spam that I just received.

—–

Hello,

We are offering a part time job based on computer.

Job Description:

We will provide you with the texts for our employees with the important information and you will need to revise and correct the texts as an english speaking person and send them back to us.

Salary:

We don’t have a fixed salary for this vacancy. We will pay you $7.00 for every 1Kb of the text which you revise .  You will get paid at the END of each working month. So, your salary will depend on your activity.

Example: If you correct about 5Kb of texts per day you will get over $1000.00 at the end of the month.

Requirements:

-Location: USA
-Age: 20+
-Home computer, e-mail address and Microsoft Word
-Responsibility

To apply for the position, please, provide us with the following information to our e-mail: dating.hrjob@gmail.com

__________
FULL NAME:
HOME ADDRESS:
CITY, STATE, ZIP CODE:
Phone number (home or cell, but SHOULD BE available any day time):
E-MAIL:
AGE:
OCCUPATION:
EDUCATION:
AVAILABLE HOURS TO DEVOTE TO WORK:
———-

As soon as we receive your aplication we will contact you within 24 hours.

If you have any additional questions, feel free to ask.

Awaiting for your application.

Sincerely,
Dating Group Team
dating.hrjob@gmail.com

Last rides of summer

September 14, 2008 at 12:13 pm | In Uncategorized | 2 Comments

Last weekend, Jenny & I took a ride on our bikes to Clayton to meet up with a few members of the local chapter of the Virago Owners Club.  We didn’t end up meeting them, but we did meet some friends who live there.  What a GORGEOUS ride!  To find the ride, tell google maps to give you directions from Potsdam, NY to Clayton, NY.  It’s about 75 miles each wayl.  The 10 mile stretches on county route 25 and county route 3 are just wonderful.  Not full-on “twisties,” but what I’d call gentle twisties.  A great introduction to the awesome feeling of motorcycling on back country roads.  We can’t wait to make another trip when the leaves start changing.

Yesterday, we rode with the Star Riding and Touring Club, chapter 289. They called the ride their Three Falls Ride & Hike. Actually it was mostly ride, not too much hike. We rode to three local waterfalls that had a parking area reasonably close by. (Less than a 15 minute walk.) Pretty cool.

I like this group. They’re friendly and easygoing. Not at all concerned with maintaining the cool and tough biker image. It’s true, they mostly wear denim and leather, but they also smile easily. And they don’t drink while they ride, which is a big plus. We disagree on helmets it seems. One of them has a “Helmet Laws Suck” patch on his vest, and some of them wear half-helmets while Jenny & I swear by full-face. I’m a bit conflicted about helmet laws myself, but if I had to choose I’d go for helmet laws. (I realize that might have something to do with the fact that a full face helmet saved my life once.) But I’m fine with agreeing to disagree on that. I’m not sure if we have anything in common with these folks, actually … aside from our love of riding and generally friendly dispositions, that is. So who knows if we’re actually going to join this chapter. At the very least, they’re fun to ride with occasionally. Time will tell.

Jenny’s rides on the weekends are getting longer and longer. The last two weekends had us on the bikes about 4 hours each. At this rate, she’ll be ready for Americade (one of the largest bike rallies in the country) next year!

Gramps is back, hold the mayo!

August 31, 2008 at 3:30 pm | In Uncategorized | 4 Comments

I’ve been having some issues with Gramps, my 1981 Yamaha Virago 750. The bracket that holds the right rear blinker to the frame (it’s called a “flasher stay”) had bent a few months ago when the bike kissed the pavement. Don’t worry, it was only in a parking lot, no one was hurt. It was still operational, so I rode it while trying to figure out, in my spare time, how to get a replacement part. Finally, it snapped off, and the blinker was hanging by the wires. Ok, gotta do something about it now!

Jenny called our new favorite shop, John Harvey’s Gasoline Alley in Malone, NY. They’re a Yamaha dealer, and they’ve impressed us on more than one occasion, from their customer service to their attentiveness and care with the bikes. She described in perfect detail over the phone the part I needed. A week later, it came in, but it was the wrong part. They admitted it was a miscommunication on their end, and they were willing to re-order it and pay to mail it to us so we wouldn’t have to drive the 50 minutes to Malone to make aNOTHer trip out. It turns out I got it on ebay (and thus had it sent directly to me) instead. No hard feelings, though. Those guys take care of us, and everyone makes mistakes.

So I went outside on Saturday, the first day of a long Labor day weekend, surrounded myself with my tools, and set to work on the freshly washed Gramps. (Thanks, Jenny!) It was a little challenging for me since I’m not the most experienced with matters mechanical. Also, sometime after the old flasher stay broke the blinker had stopped working, so I was pretty worried I’d have to take it to John Harvey’s on a trailer since I’m not much for electrical work.

I got lucky. The wire insulation had worn away in a relatively accessible place, so I was able to fix it myself. I went slowly and methodically, and hit a few snags along the way, but two or three hours later Gramps has all his parts in working order. And I did it all by myself! Ok, it wasn’t REAL engine work, but it was the first time in a long time it was just me, a busted bike, and some tools in the driveway. I felt quite satisfied with myself.

So today, on this beautiful second day of a long Labor day weekend, Jenny and I took a nice half-day ride, her on her 2000 Suzuki GZ250, and me on Gramps. It was just an awesome ride. We took 11B to Malone, and took 11 back. Route 11B is just a great road to ride. Between Potsdam and Malone it has no stoplights, it never goes below 40mph through the 5 or 6 towns it cuts through, it’s fairly lightly traveled, the pastoral scenery is beautiful, and it has about a dozen or more roadside farmer stands.

On the way back on 11 we stopped for a late breakfast at Scotty’s diner. They had an interesting idea, a BLT with egg! An egg and bacon sandwich is common enough, but a BLT with egg? Could be brilliant. If they didn’t put mayonnaise on it! (*blech!*) Ok, mayo on a BLT, that’s fine. But mayo on the same sandwich with a hot fried egg? No way! They fixed it, and it was actually good, but it you ever order such a thing, take my advice and HOLD THE MAYO!

Paper, textbook, and motorcycle updates

August 18, 2008 at 2:28 pm | In life, math, motorcycles | 9 Comments

Just a couple of updates on stuff from my last entry. My paper is done, and it will likely be submitted to a journal this week! I’m very excited.

About the textbook problems: after I complained to the publisher (the email was positively scathing), our rep fixed everything to our (the textbook manager’s and mine) satisfaction. I have the new edition in the bookstore, and they took back the old ones at their expense, and all within 3 business days of my complaint. I’m upset about the price increase, but that happens with new editions all the time. Overall, I am very happy with the way the situation was handled. No hard feelings.

I got my motorcycle back with the new exhaust pipes on it. The pipes were from an ‘82 Yamaha Virago 920, and I have an ‘81 Yamaha Virago 750, but folks on online forums said that exhaust systems from those early year Viragos are interchangable, so I took a chance, and it paid off. They fit just fine, and it sounds great. Not too quiet, not too loud. And I picked up a windshield they couldn’t get rid of for less than half the price, and it looks great! The only problem now is I need new saddlebags, since the current ones now hit the stock pipes (which are higher than the aftermarket ones I took off). That, and I need to fix a pesky turn signal, but hopefully that’s just replacing a bracket; a quick fix. That should be done soon, but the saddlebags will have to wait … I’ve put enough money into this bike this year!

Math is Delicious!

August 13, 2008 at 11:47 am | In books, comics, life, math, motorcycles, technology | 6 Comments

Check out Questionable Content, one of my favorite webcomics. It’s about a bunch of 20somethings centered around a coffee shop. I’m currently wearing this t-shirt. There are others here. Good geeky stuff.

In the meantime, I’m doing math a lot these days. The REU inspired me to get this paper that I’ve been procrasti- … er, working on, out. And for a week and a half now I’ve been incredibly productive! Talk about taking the bull by the horns and running with your nose to the wheel! It’s been great, and it looks like I’m going to meet my self-imposed deadline of getting this paper presentable, at least to a couple of colleagues to look over, and without qualifiers like, “Ignore the formatting errors in chapter three,” or, “I know the proof in the Hermitian case needs work.” This is going to be a no-qualifiers, one edit away from submission to a journal, state of done-ness.

This makes me very happy. It almost makes me not mind so much that my motorcycle’s been in the shop for a week and a half. I think I’ll call them. They said a part was on order last week, and that it’d take several days to get, so it’s not totally unexpected that it has taken this long, but I’m getting antsy.

What else is going on? Jenny’s tummy is unhappy, so neither of us got much sleep last night. My poor sweetie. :( She’s been doing lots of riding on her bike, though. Good for her! She’s taking it slow, practicing on the college campus after hours and on local residential roads. She’s concentrating on having excellent control, and building experience, and therefore confidence, little by little. We can’t wait til we can ride together, each on our own bike!

One and a half weeks until classes start. There was a recent issue with one of my textbooks. One company bought the textbook I was using from another company and raised the price by over 60% from the last edition. Then they had the nerve to ship us hardcover copies of the old edition, and were charging the inflated price! I sent one of the nastiest emails I’ve every sent, and it looks like it’s being taken care of at no cost to us. We’re getting the new editions, and my textbook manager won’t have to have our bookstore pay to send the old copies back. If it all works out, I’ll have no ill feelings about the publisher. I may not use this book again at this price (it’s a bit late to change at this point), but we’ll have to see.

Now I’m off to a clicker demo. “Clickers” are used for ConcepTests, classroom voting and such, and the college is evaluating several systems from various vendors. I use them regularly. I don’t recall if I’ve posted any entries about them. There’s lots of info online if you want to google “clickers,” or “conceptests.” Ta-ta!

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