How will the allosphere change how human beings interact with data?

This TED talk, about the allosphere, brings up stunning new ways for computer-generated visualization tools to enhance how people interact with data.

What is the allosphere?

• A three story metal sphere in an echo-free chamber.
• A large, dynamically varying digital microscope that’s connected to a supercomputer.
• A way for scientists to visualize microscopic relationships and events.

I remember reading about a math professor of a graduate class at Dartmouth. He taught complex topology equations, and he learned that even graduate math students had trouble learning the material. He realized that if they first played with bubbles, if they were able to visualize and make connections with the relationship between network nodes and the variety of possible pathways to them, they were much better able to learn, understand, and apply the mathematic principles he was teaching. Good visualization tools often lead scientists to new understanding and new discovery. It seems to me that this system, created collaboratively by artists, engineers, and scientists can lead to great leaps in understanding of our the inner workings of the world. Perhaps an example is helpful.

an allosphere visualization

This screen capture is a visualization of the bond between a hydrogen atom and zinc atoms (blue). The yellow lines, generated by artists, are tied to the electron flow and help scientists visualize the bond. An overlaid sound indicates the emission spectrums of each atom. These visual and auditory effects are tied to actual data obtained from and about the molecule.   Twenty scientists can stand on a bridge inside of this visualization. They can explore it, experience it, manipulate it, and learn from it.

From the HCI perspective:

This is a great leap. And what a powerful way for humans to experience scientific information, incorporating all the senses. What an interesting way for artists, scientists, and engineers to collaborate on a project of their own design to find ways to visualize and experience data. The fact that a group of people can experience and talk about this visualization in real time means that great collaborations are possible.

Aside what can be learned through the experiments that are carried out in this environment, I think about what the team is learning as they develop the environment itself. The supercomputer that is monitoring and displaying the data is an accomplishment in and of itself. The collaboration of artists in a seriously scientific environment opens doors to other rich collaborations between artistic visualization tools and computer software developers. This idea opens up whole new worlds to the way we use computers and their accompanying interfaces to work, learn, and to understand our world. Since miniaturization is a constant in the computer world, I am wondering when small, possibly portable devices like this will be available to immerse students in worlds and simulations they would never be able to experience otherwise.

Last, TED talks are simply awesome and inspiring. If this topic doesn’t get your creative ideas flowing, just visit the site. You will find some talk that amazes and inspires.

Meyers Briggs Test

My profile was INTJ – Introverted, Intuitive, Thinking, Judging
I’m interested in the statement that less than 1% of the population has this personality type, yet we have (at least) four in this class who were designated INTJ. That’s interesting. It reminds me of an article that I read that the tech field had a disproportionate number of Asperger’s Syndrome employees. Seems something about this field attracts and INTJ type of personality. Or else the test isn’t accurate. Or this is a statistical anomaly.

My favorite quote from an INTJ:
“Ideas do not have to be correct in order to be good; its only necessary that, if they do fail, they do so in an interesting way.”
~Robert Rosen

I related to a lot of what was stated in the INTJ profile, but then I relalte to what my horoscope sign says about me, and what my Chinese birth year profile says about me. Is it that we tend to read the parts we relate to and say, “Yes! That’s me!” while discounting the parts that don’t quite apply? A few things I disagreed with in the profile are the description of always being prepared not only with a Plan A, but also a Plan B, C, or D if needed. I think I’m flexible enough to try other approaches if the first one doesn’t work, but I don’t see myself being efficient enough to have all the plans prepared ahead of time. I can be a more “fly by the seat of my pants” type of person. It also stated that I don’t like/tolerate inefficiency, but I don’t think that’s quite true of me. I don’t like people who waste time on stupid stuff, but I think highly of creative people who do not always proceed to get things done through an efficient, linear process. I do agree with these parts of the profile: I like to work in the background. I am not a fan of established rules; I am a fan of good ideas. I do think I work hard, and put in extra hours, I generally try to accentuate the positive and move things forward, and I like problem-solving.

While I think I am theoretical, I don’t necessarily feel that having all the research done before deciding is the right approach. I believe in intuition that is backed by work and experience. How does this profile apply to how I teach and use technology? First, I am willing to incorporate new technology, even if I haven’t mastered it. I want to see what kids do with it if you put it in their hands. There is a part of me that thinks I would be a better teacher if I were more prepared. But then another part of me encourages jumping into new territory and seeing what happens. I don’t teach in a very prescribed, step-by-step method. I don’t like the pace that happens when I wait for everyone to do step one before giving step two. (It was a good way to go when I taught 2nd – 4th grades, but doesn’t seem right for high school.) I think it’s OK for my students to experience some ambiguity; to have to figure things out; and to talk to each other: “how did you do that?”. I am becoming more comfortable with the idea that students know stuff that I don’t and/or that they will figure out a way to do something in a different or even better way than I would have given them. I don’t really leave students hanging in the void – if they are experiencing trouble, I help. But I like for them to ask the questions, to have to explain what parts they do/don’t understand, and to come up with ideas for how they can accomplish the goal. I think that technology will always be changing, and rather than teach them the specifics of how to use this version of this software, I would rather teach them the flexibility to figure out a way to accomplish a goal, to use different softwares, to apply useful strategies, to be lifelong technology learners and problem-solvers. Now I’ll use another favorite quote, from Dennis Miller: “But that’s just my opinion. I could be wrong.”

At school, the tech committee is discussing a vision and mission for technology. I opened an email- from one of the many folks I get email from. Usually I delete them. Too little time. But this time, I didn’t. Among the news, there were links to a couple of  very interesting blogs. Since one of the conversations on the tech group was the ever-present complaint about “how do we get teachers to use technology more?” “how do we get them to participate in training?” “how do we get them to see that students using tech in pursuit of education is not just for the computer department or the ‘tech people’ ?” The blogs I found seem to relate to these issues.

Anyway, part of the answer may be to start using the technology itself to address the issues. Since it is hard to get teachers to come to after school training, why not do more to provide training that they can do from their own computer, at their own time and pace? I just created a very simple lesson on podcasts that teachers will be able to access from their email client. While the school’s tech coordinator worked with me on this project, she and the curriculum coordinator have come up with an idea.

Elaine (curriculum) will be working to post information about technology that teachers can use easily. Much of her stuff could be websites that are simple to find, navigate, and use. She calls her part the “tech for dummies” domain. An example would be a website for making rubrics. In her posting, she would give a blurb about the website and how teachers can use it.

Betty (ed-tech) will do similar postings, but on topics that might be a little more complex. Betty’s topics might require a bit of a tutorial that she will either point to (if there is already one created and posted online) or that she will create. Still, these postings will focus on things that teachers could do fairly easily, and that do not require a great deal of help or direct training.

I have been thinking about how you get teachers who are not much in touch with tech to understand the importance of doing more. Honestly, in the last few months, I have heard teachers at both middle school and upper school level explain that they do not have enough time in their curriculum to show students how to use a spreadsheet, but explaining that it was important, that students should be able to do it, and that they would give assignments using spreadsheets if only the students knew how. They were math teachers, and–impatient soul that I am–I just wanted to slap them into reality. or yell. or something. Honestly, sometimes I am dumbfounded. Who’s job do they think it is? Why do they think a computer teacher–or anyone else– is more qualified to teach students to use spreadsheets for analysis of numeric information than they are? It gets frustrating. Sometimes feel like a canary in a mine. But anyway, what I was going to say is that I think we should also post information for teachers that relates to the use of technology, the power of technology, the importance of technology for learning. Even, the importance of students learning to use digital tools in preparation for college and their work lives.

I think that some of these blogs would be good to share. Perhaps if teachers read more about what others are doing, what others think about the application of this media to the classroom, then they will start thinking how they can use it. As a good private school, we don’t really have teachers who don’t care about teaching–who don’t take pride in being good, even excellent, at what they do. But we do have people who don’t “get it” when it comes to integrating technology. We even have people who are at least somewhat anti-tech. In their view, computers take away the human interaction that they think is a critical component of good teaching. In their view, it takes us away from the good, sound values of traditional education. It is alienating. It often doesn’t work, or fails you when you count on it. They haven’t developed the fluency or flexibility to adapt or problem-solve the technical difficulties that come with using technology. And they are mistrustful and supicious of it.

I think that we will gain from feeding them information, conversations, essays that deal with intelligent people, respected academicians, good teachers discussing how digital tools can enhance teaching and learning. That’s why I was excited about the blogs I found today.

Here they are:

Britannica’s Brave New Classroom 2.0

Whiteboard Jungle

Tween Teacher

I was especially interested in something I found on tween teacher. At least at this moment, we seem to have many teachers who–when trying to integrate tech into the classroom– get confused about what counts. Some think it is showing a video. Some think it is showing a PowerPoint. We are working toward the idea that it means students using the tech tools, not just the teacher in the front of the room. This picture struck me as relevant.

And it was accompanied by this very relevant text:

Yet, this model got me reflecting about technology’s role in classroom collaboration: by blocking many of the online sites for collaboration from our schools, we as educators have censored the very tools of collaboration that this generation of students speaks. By blocking blogging sites, wiki sites, YouTube, etc…we are also blocking our students from the tools of their future.     

This was a good project. -Tine was a good leader.

I worked on two collaborative projects this fall. One for this class and one for another class.
For the other project, we communicated mainly via email.
And the work was passed around using attachments.
That made it hard to edit.
And while we wrote ideas and thoughts to each other, email didn’t promote the collaborative aspects.

For the NFO project, we used VYEW for a lot of our communication. It helped a lot. I think it was important for the team to be onine at the same time, discussing the organization, issues, and decisions. The chat function of VYEW also promoted our getting to know each other a little better. On the emails, we tended to get right to the point, sticking to business. On the chat, we sometimes, well, just chatted. It felt more real. more connected.

It was also helpful that we were developing our project on a Moodle shell to which we all had access. If someone saw something that needed adjustment, they just did it. It didn’t take passing a document back and forth. Or one person trying to coordinate and collate everyone’s work. It seemed to flow better. And we could all see each other’s work. So we had a better sense, as the work progressed of how our parts fit into the whole.

We also used the discussion function of Moodle extensively for communication. It was an active and useful discussion forum. We all knew that we could check in there and quickly be updated on the progress. It helped us all stay in sync between meetings.

It is also good to note that I felt everyone in this group did his/her part plus some. No one was a slacker. No one had to be reminded of the importance or the due dates. Although not everything was completed exactly according to the timeline, everyone was working to accomplish their parts, and everyone was communicating about the status of their work.

I would say this was a very successful project.
And the final result is something I am much more pleased with, proud of, and happy to have been a part of.

Kudos to -Tine and the team.

I had to go to Discovery Park to take some photos for our group project.
Our work referred to Debbie, and Cindy, and Vinnie.
They seemed to be important people with whom new faculty members would interact a lot in their first days on campus.
But their photos were not posted in the area where all the faculty members had photos.

It seemed as if it was important to provide a picture of each of them.

So, instead of being sensible, emailing them and requesting a photo, I thought I needed to go there and do that.
Digital Immigrant. Definitely.

But I’m glad I went.

Some people love libraries. They just walk in and have a sense of knowledge and learning.
I fell in love with Discovery Park.

It’s industrial looking.
Lots of exposed structural elements: beams, pipes, machines and dials.
And the lighting, space, and openness of it was breathtaking to me.
It seems like a place where people do important stuff.
It was inviting.
I just loved it.
I’m glad I went.
Worth the drive.

I thought I was pursuing a degree that was a part of the education department.

It was not until we all started working on the Project B assignments that I started to realize that I was not a part of the education department, but rather a part of the Learning Technologies Department. I don’t suppose it much matters, but still it was a surprise to me.

I have read more material about the reorganization of these departments that happened recently. Now I am wondering, was I ever in the education dept, and this reorganization changed that? or was this always somehow separate?

And, in working with the materials, I learned about Discovery Park, sometimes also referred to as research park. A completely separate place. Not on the main campus. And not, by the way, closer to Dallas.

This was all a surprise to me. I suppose I got an email about it at some point. But I typically delete the UNT emails. Most of them don’t apply to me. They are often about things happening on campus. For example, I can learn about keeping myself safe as I walk from the library to my dorm late at night. Or I can learn about clubs and activities. Or how to be more aware of and sensitive to diversity. Like I said. I delete most of them. Perhaps one of them told me all about the reorganization of the department I’m in.

Anyway, now I feel a little more clued in.
Good to know.
I guess.
Really at the end of the day, if someone hands me a piece of paper that says I have a Masters degree, I will be happy enough.

I volunteered for what -tine called “Making the document live.” It involved going through all the materials and figuring out how to organize them. Putting them into segments or units. I had looked at the materials, and it seemed straightforward, but then I got stuck. I had thought up a framework, like a journalists “who, what, where, and when”. And that seemed to make sense for the kind of tasks that needed to be done, but trying to apply that structure to the materials just didn’t seem to work. I struggled with it for awhile, and then went with more of a unit structure. In hindsight, I should have just started putting things on Moodle and then shifted them around to the places they best seemed to fit. I think it would have worked better, because during my time of being stuck, I created 3 or 4 different Word documents, all with a slightly different organization scheme. After copying and pasting materials back and forth, I began to really lose track of what was what.

I hadn’t used Moodle before. Well, of course, as a student, I used the Moodle interface, but I hadn’t done any development in Moodle. So I was hesitant to start putting things on until I felt they were correctly organized.

But I found out that Moodle was just too easy. It naturally deals with segmented information. With parts and pieces. With pictures, and files, and links. Next time, I think I’ll just start throwing everything on there and move it around to make sense of it. Of course, you should start with some sort of basic order, but all the fretting I did was probably unnecessary.

Bottom line. I love Moodle. I have been using Tapped In in my classes. It provides a place to post some files, a chat function, and discussion forums. But I also use a wiki for some classes. And Google docs for a class calendar. Too many different things. Too many different places. I love that Moodle puts it all together in such an easy to use environment. I found- and signed up for- a Moodle server, and now I have my own online classes. So far, the students I have introduced it to love it. And so far, I love it. Woo hoo!

Well, first I have to say that project A got waaaay off track.

Problems?

1. It’s a bad time of year. I always think that the fall is easier, because I don’t have my robot team active until after Christmas, but among the school things that have been going on…

• Budget time – review current budget and propose next year’s budget, which in light of current economic conditions this year entailed identifying areas that can be cut while still working to provide good educational opportunities for students…that took more work than usual.
• Course development- in the fall, we review curriculum and make proposals for new courses or course changes. This year, we are proposing a major shift in computer courses for the school. Every course, starting next year, will contain a significant programming component. That means we are cutting classes like digital video. We will keep the flash animation class, but add more focus on the use of Actionscript; we will keep the web development course, but put more emphasis on things like javascript. The Game Programming class has been taught in Flash, using Actionscript, but since the regular Flash class will teach more of that, the Game Programming class will now be taught with Python. and  so on. This process of investigation, decision, realignment, and write-up has taken a significant amount of time. We also negotiated the addition of a Middle School computer class, which was much needed, but again, took time to propose, work out, and plan.
• STEM – my school has formed a new STEM initiative, and I am on the committee. It’s great stuff but I am now adding that on to the tech committee, the curriculum committee, and department chair meetings. A lot of non-teaching stuff.

2. Using Camtasia to make the instructional videos for the teachers was harder than I expected. The interface wasn’t bad. One of the hardest parts was planning out each move on the computer so that I did a good job of illustrating the process. And I found out that when I tried to record the right moves PLUS not mess up the narration part, it was more than I could effectively do together. Kinda like walking and chewinggum, I guess. So I decided to record the audio on Audacity, which wasn’t hard, but then I had the problem of syncing up the imported audio with the video. None of it was extremely hard, just more time consuming than I expected.
3. In order to get things moving quickly, I posted the first materials before the Camtasia screen capture parts were done. And since those videos took longer than expected to make, there was too much delay between the first part and the second part. That lost some of the momentum of the project, and probably lost a few teachers as well that started, but then got involved in different things before the next set of materials were posted.
4. Getting started on Project B. Every time I was crunched for time, it seemed that I needed to prioritize the group work, since others were depending on me to complete my part of that. And that was a big project….major time commitment.
5. This is the first time I have tried to take two graduate classes while also teaching. I never felt like I was caught up in either of them. It was a challenge!!!
6. Alice. We taught a two-week course in programming to sixth graders and to 8th graders. That got scheduled for the fall. We decided to use Alice. Since none of the people involved had ever used Alice before, and since I am the most experienced at programming, it fell to me to develop the unit, and to be the lead teacher for it. Those weeks were harried. And the time necessary to learn Alice and plan the unit was pretty major. The good news is that it was a success. We have had kids very excited– even going home to tell their parents about the cool thing they were doing in school! Yea! Kids excited about programming!

Good things?

1. The Camtasia materials, when finished, turned out well. They are clear and easy for a novice computer user to follow.
2. The decision to deploy this through the email client made it easy to post materials and easy for teachers to access them.
3. The teachers who responded were representative of our target audience. There was a self-selection process. It seems that the materials clearly communicated who they were for, and who would most benefit from them.
4. The client – the school’s ed-tech person was pleased with what we did, and I think, would like to do more projects like this. The asynchronous nature of them could serve our teacher population well.
5. I learned a lot. Knowing what I know now, I would have proposed something different for the first project. Something I needed to do for school, or something that actually had a teacher, so all materials didn’t need to be developed as totally independent, therefore more detailed, activities.

All in all, it’s been a challenge, but I learned a lot by going through this process!

Prompt, Week 6: Post a blog reflecting on the feedback you have received from your partner and your client. What changes will you make before implementation? Why? What did you ignore in the client’s feedback? Why?

OK, So I just posted my updated document. It has been finished for a week, but I have been working on the materials to go with it and lost sight of the fact that I needed to post the document for review. So I don’t have any criticism/suggestions from my partner. I do, however, have some feedback from my client. So I will discuss that for now.

• She is excited about this approach and thinks it might be a good way to get teachers to do some tech learning.
• We have decided that the simplest way to go with this for now is to post it on our email client. That way, all teachers will be able to access the materials easily. Teachers are also fairly comfortable with using the email interface, so she believes that will increase their comfort level. Since these activities are directed toward reluctant technology learners, that is an important consideration.
• I had originally thought that we could get feedback through Survey Monkey, or creating a form in Word, or PDF form. But, teachers would be less likely to be comfortable with Survey Monkey, and I don’t know how to make a form in Word or PDF. That’s sad to admit, but true. I’m sure I could learn, but right now there are LOTS of things I am learning, doing, working on, so in the interest of time– rapid deployment– it is best to find another way.
• Luckily, one of our IT people can (and is willing to) create forms within the email client. It will fit right in with the way we are doing things. The learner can click to open the survey, then the responses will automatically and immediately be emailed to my client (the ed-tech coordinator for the school). So the pluses: easy for learners, immediate results, fairly quick and easy to develop. The minuses??? Unlike an app like Survey Monkey, there will be no automatic collation of data. My client (or I) will have to do any data crunching necessary. However, I think the most important part of our data will be anecdotal: what the teachers (learners) report about their experience with the learning materials, and 2. Keeping stats on how many people access and use the materials, which wouldn’t really be benefitted by data crunching in Survey Monkey.
• Did I mention…If this is implemented through our email client, we will also have access to the history of the materials, so we will know who looked at them. We will be able to compare how many looked with how many did. That should tell us something about how the learners perceive the materials.
• Since we know who looked compared  to who engaged,
  AND since we also have a fairly good idea about which teachers in the school are comfortable with technology and which are not,
  THEN, we should get at least a rudimentary idea of whether or not we are reaching our target audience.

My client found some good materials from Miguel Guhlin about podcasting for schools, and we looked at those. I decided not to incorporate them at this time. These materials are more about how to create podcasts, and how to post them. The lesson we are focusing on at this time are more rudimentary than that. How to use iTunes to find, subscribe to, and listen to podcasts. While Guhlin did have some interesting info that we could have used– some ideas to incorporate into our introductory podcast, for example– it seemed that rewriting the script for that would delay the project. And right now, we are working to get it deployed quickly.

Also, after discussion, we are cutting back on the user feedback that we will solicit. While we want to get info, we do not want the teachers to feel like they are guinea pigs, and we do not want to overload them with stuff to do. We want this to appear to be simple, and quick. We want to create a pleasant, non-threatening method for learning something new about technology. We also hope that this will be a model for other self-study units. So, we want the first one to seem more fun, inviting, and non-drudgerous (is that a word?).

That’s all for now!

Well, here is the design document so far. It’s been a lot of work, but interesting.

Too bad I decided to do something where all the materials had to be created from scratch AND I couldn’t count on an instructor to do parts of it!!!

Progress on the materials so far.

Lesson 1 stuff: I have written the document. I have made the podcast to go with it. I have written the questions for the feedback form and submitted them to one of our IT people who will turn it into a form that can be completed through our email client. I have created the conference in the email client and posted the stuff so far.

Lesson 2: I have installed a version of Camtasia and am working on a Camtasia demo of how to download and install iTunes. The narration for that remains to be done. I have also done the screen capture part of how to use iTunes to find and subscribe to podcasts. Again, the narration still must be recorded for that part….

Lessons 3 and 4: Still to Do.

Also, I have made arrangements for the materials to be posted and an email invitation sent to all teachers on Monday. At last a start on people interacting with the materials. I hope the feedback we get on it from teachers is good. Whew…. So much to do. Deadlines looming.

The documents so far are posted here….

design_document_goudy_5210_2a

podcastdirectionsandinfo

Lesson 1 Podcast: Introduces the lessons