July 10, 2007 – Edna Dach

Edna’s presentation really hit home with me. I have two aunts who work abroad in foreign countries, one is a physiotherapist in Nepal and the other is a teacher in Tanzania. They are committed to helping others in other countries in the same way that Edna is trying to help teachers through the Pan African teacher’s centre. Trying to help is not always an easy thing to do. There are many road blocks and obstacles in ensuring that the help get to those for whom it is intended. My family is involved in raising money to help students at a school in Nepal. We sponsor 15 students by paying their yearly tuitions. However, it is only because we have my aunt as contact person that we can ensure that the money actually gets to the school to the students who need it.
I did agree with the point that Ian raised during our conversation. While I believe that sending money and supplies to those who are less fortunate is important and part of our social responsibility I also believe that we cannot just throw money at a problem and hope it will go away. We need to provide support and education so that we can help them to be able to help themselves. When offering this help and support however, we need to be sure that our help is wanted and appreciated. We do not want to offend the people who we are attempting to help.
The other idea which really struck me from the presentation was Edna’s quote “they have the power to learn in spite of us.” I believe we have all worked with these types of students. They show resiliency in the face of all sorts of adversity and still are successful students in our classrooms. I wish that we could show all of our students how a positive outlook and spirit can make all the difference in the outcomes of our lives. I found Edna’s presentation very encouraging and uplifting.

July 9, 2007 – Dr. Stan Ruecker

“It’s not that there’s too much information – it’s that there aren’t enough tools.” I think this quote from Stan’s presentation expresses what he is trying to accomplish. The rich prospect interfaces and data visualizations with which Stan is working are the tools which we are going to be able to navigate the wealth of information which makes up the internet of today and the possibilities for tomorrow.
Stan’s presentation was totally amazing. Though I was not able to see practical connections to how I might use this technology in my current teaching situation it still was very remarkable. I was amazed at the wide variety of examples and the different uses that rich prospect interfaces and data visualizations made possible. The pill interface could be a vital technology for paramedics, doctors and nurses. If they were able to recognize and act upon the pills they find it could save lives. The delegate browser would serve as a very useful tool for speakers and presenters at conferences as well as business people. I know for certain my Dad would benefit significantly from a data visualization such as this. He is a CFO and always tries to pride himself on greeting every employee by name. If he were able to look at the different faces he would be able to remember more personal information and help to make his employees feel valuable. Though so people might argue that this is a very false pretense, but when an organization is as large as his, it would be impossible for him to remember names, faces and other relevant data about all of his employees.
I would like to see data visualization move into the elementary classroom. While I can see that it might not be a priority for the programmers right away I think there could be a wide variety of uses. Elementary students are moving from concrete to a more abstract thinking and the data visualizations might be the tool to help them accomplish this. I am eager to see what the future holds with this interesting and unique technology.

Podcast

Here is my podcast on rocks and minerals. I wonder if anyone knows...can I run the audio clips together and have the pictures switch when I change topics?

July 4, 2007 – Danny Maas

I really enjoyed Danny’s presentation on videoconferencing in Alberta. I found it informative and it raised several personal issues and concerns. The primary of those issues being the cost benefits of using money to pay for the videoconferencing suites. I come from a school community which has very limited amounts of technology for our student population (we have one computer lab of 30 and a mini lab of 10 for a student population of 500 elementary and junior high school students). For the cost of a suite of videoconferencing technology our school would be able to purchase a wide variety of equipment and software which would allow our students better access to computer technology. While I cannot disagree with the need to offer science and math courses to students who need them to graduate and gain access to University I really feel torn about spending thousands of dollars when there are many other schools that are in need of technologies for their students.
I wonder a lot about the feasibility of using freeware technologies to provide the same access to videoconferencing technologies. While we did not have time to delve into the issues and concerns with using programs such as Skype, MSN, iChat or xmeeting I believe that they could be used to offer the same type of programs that are currently being offered without the costly videoconferencing technology. While the freeware may have some issues there are no guarantees that the more costly suites will not have the same issues.
Another issue raised by Danny’s presentation, which had not occurred to me before, is that of supervision of sites where the videoconferencing is being broadcast. If there is in fact a teacher in the classroom supervising, why couldn’t they be teaching the class? If the teacher needs to be in the classroom for legal reasons then it seems that they should be the one teaching the class. If the teacher does not have the correct qualifications then the cost of the training is nothing compared to the cost of the videoconferencing technology. These issues as well as many others were raised by Danny’s presentation. It will be interesting to see what advances are being made in the area of videoconferencing over the next few years.

Just a test

This is a test of my blogger account.