Hello Fellow Zaadzsters!

I am taking a Psychology class and am running a study on:

Computer-based tutorials and problem solving to look at problem-solving strategies in the absence of instructions.

Everyone who participates will be entered into a drawing for a $20 iTunes gift certificate.  It will only take about 10 minutes to complete.

If you'd like to be in my study, go to:
http://www.maryluong.com/psy301/ml/

MANY THANKS!
Mary

Having been born in Vietnam, I occasionally cast the proverbial net out to look for what is going on there.  I do this as my way of staying, peripherally, connected.  And, of course, I am especially interested in Vietnam's technological advances - to watch both technology and economic trends in this third world country.

PC World published this WiMax story on September 21, 2007.  While getting Internet connectivity to rural areas in the U.S. has become almost mundane, getting service in the mountains of Vietnam still has the pioneer spirit about it.  It isn't the technology that is particularly pioneering but rather it is the goal that touches the pioneering spirit - "develop an 'Internet in a box' application that can be rolled out quickly and cheaply." 

But what is most interesting to me is that Vietnam is becoming a country that is attracting enough international investment and trade that Internet access, even in remote regions, is an effort worthy of the energies of Intel and the U.S. Agency for International Development.

It makes me very curious about Vietnam's economic development and how much of it is dependent upon technology versus industry which, as I understand it, is how developing nations have entered the world economy.

Do any zaadzsters know about Vietnam's economy?

Well you have to give the Germans huge credit on this one!  Research scientists there have "...developed a way of harnessing natural body heat to generate electricity" based on the "...principle of thermoelectric generators, TEG for short, made from semiconductor elements."

Check out their release at:
Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft Research News

You can also read about it on the Discovery Channel website.

While Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft (F-G) designed the technology for use in medical devices that monitor patients' "heart rate, blood pressure, body temperature, pulse and breathing rate," they acknowledge that there would be applications for capturing heat from machines, say your fridge or air conditioner, and feeding the electricity generated by their technology back into your house.

For that matter, my laptop generates a considerable amount of heat.  I would be willing to replace my cooling pad for one that captures that heat to power the laptop!  The only electricity the laptop would ever need then is the initial charge on the rechargeable battery.  Or, if you really wanted to be GREEN, you could sit at the coffee shop with the pad capturing the sun's heat to generate the initial charge on the batttery.  Then, literally, you would have a laptop that is powered 100% from free, perpetually renewable energy!

At the moment, the folks at F-G are thinking about body heat generating the electricity to power battery-less devices.  But I think there could be large-scale commerical uses if their technology were implemented in heat generating devices (like my laptop) that use rechargeable batteries.  The heat could be converted to power which would be used to charge the rechargable battery.

Admittedly going battery-free would be better than keeping rechargeable batteries in the equation, but, unlike the human body which is constantly generating heat, machines only generate heat while they are drawing power.  So unless you want to hook up your lamp to your body, I think rechargeable batteries are going to have to stay.

That being said, the life of rechargeable batteries could be extended if, after the machine is generating enough heat to produce the necessary power, the machine switched from the battery power to F-G power.  Now you'd have a truly closed loop of renewable energy production and consumption.

Oh, and yes, I did send this suggestion to F-G.  :)

If you are looking for funding for your digitial media and learning initiatives, check out http://www.dmlcompetition.net/home.php

There are 2 categories of awards:

Innovation Awards ($250,000 and $100,000) will go to pioneers who are exploring new digital models of learning that build upon and enhance the informal, networked, and collaborative styles today, especially but not only among youth.

Knowledge-Networking Awards ($30,000-$75,000 each) will go to creative and dedicated communicators. Not every digital inventor/developer is a skillful knowledge-networker.

Good luck to any and all that apply!

Wired.com published an article this morning (at 2AM!) titled, Halo 3: How Microsoft Labs Invented a New Science of Play.  Not knowing that Halo 3 is a shoot-em-up, virtual world game - I know its hard to believe that such a diehard geek is not a gamer! - I opened the article thinking it might be about educational games.

When I realized what the article was about I stuck around anyway in hopes to garner something that I could relate to educational techology.  And then it struck me.

The "science of play" to which the article refers is literally the science of analysis.  According to the article, Microsoft lab technicians "...analyzed more than 3,000 hours of Halo 3 played by some 600 everyday gamers, tracking everything from favored weapons to how and where — down to the square foot — players most frequently get killed."

Imagine what could be learned not only about educational software but also about how students use educational software if 3,000 hours of use by 600 students were analyzed!  Educational technologists could observe patterns of behavior and map those patterns to pre- and post-assessment scores to determine if one or more patterns produced greater understanding of the material.  Then those patterns could be coded into the system to guide students down the path that produced the highest scores.

Of course there would likely be several optimal patterns depending on various factors such as learning style and familiarity with computer software, but at least educational software designers would have empirical evidence to support the design decisions.

Wired.com's science section recently (8/15/2007) published an article titled: Microfluidics: Like Computer Chips With Plumbing.  So, yup, being the geek that I am, I checked it out.

Microfluidic devices use electricity to manipulate drops of liquid - primarily for the medical field and, specifically, for medical diagnosis.  According to the article: "Many engineers have designed microfluidic chips for medical diagnosis. They can pop cells open, purify the DNA, copy the DNA, and then check for individual genes. Akonni Biosystems has developed a rapid tuberculosis test that uses this technology."

The question for me, as always, is what does this have to do with educational technology.  And the answer wasn't so much about how microfluidics relates to educational technology but rather my brain began to wonder about the problem solving process that these engineers used to get to a solution that seems counterintuitive - combining water and electronics.

Which, actually, then did lead me back to educational technology.  If the goal of educational technology is not to solve the learning problem but rather to help students learn to problem solve, then what happens to the limits of learning?  Does learning now become about creating a repository of knowledge that one retains for its value in problem solving?  Can educational technology facilitate that repository creation?

I'll have to think about that some more!

Sure, the topic of quantum computing appears in the news periodically but it is always very we're-getting-closer in tone.  And even now, the latest news reported by Reuters is no different.  Their article, Dancing atoms hold prospect of superfast computing, reports on research by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) that has "coaxed pairs of super-cold rubidium atoms to repeatedly swap positions, a feat that could make them useful for storing and processing data in quantum computers."  The article concludes that this discovery is really just a demonstration of the 1st element needed to build a quantum computer and therefore the article falls in line with all the other news about quantum computers.

That being said, I still think it is valuable to fuel the fire of quantum computing.  So I bring it up here to do just that.

As a computer geek, and a digital native, watching the developments in quantum computing is, I imagine, like watching the atomic bomb being developed.  When the quantum computer is created, the world will never be the same.  And it will be different in a way that doesn't compare to the way modern computing changed the world.

A quantum computer can process a million computations simultaneously whereas modern computers can only process a single computation at a time.  Once the quantum computer becomes a reality, all current encryption software will become useless, video-based applications (like face recognition and virtual realities) will explode, and artificial intelligence will make exponential advances.

But what does all that potential mean to me as a future educational technologist?  First, it means that I have to respect the potential of technology the same way I respect the potential of a student.  There is a sort of care-taking reverence which goes with that level of respect; i.e. I believe I guide the potential but in no way do I have control of it.  Which is to say that I don't have control of where students will take the technology.

Second, it means that I have be a perpetual student which, actually, should be said of all of us, regardless of our profession or passion!  The world would be a more open-minded place if we all continually sought understanding.

And finally, it means that ethics play an increasing role in my budding career.  When computers become that powerful the reality of abuse becomes even more invasive.  I'm not talking about just abuse by students (cheating) but also abuse of the students.  Even now students are overwhelmed by the demand to assimilate more and more information simply because it is readily available.  And what about the divide between the students for whom technology is a boon and those for whom it is a bane?

You have to love the Internet!  My iGoogle page brings me all kinds of stories about Educational Technology and I came across this one: Using a Robot to Teach Human Social Skills on Wired.com.

The article reports that a robot, named KASPAR, simulates human behavior which the researchers hope will "encourage social interaction amongst autistic children."

As if that isn't interesting enough, keep scrolling through the article and you find that Yale University has, yes, a Social Robotics Lab.  Their home page also talks about robotics and autism - who knew?! - and another project: Nico, a robotic baby.

"When completed, the robot, named Nico, will serve as a test-bed for theories of social learning.  Designed to resemble a 9 month-old baby, Nico will be able to take part in standard child psychology experiments, allowing its cognitive models to be tested under the same conditions as undergone by human babies."

The world is a very interesting place, indeed.

CampusTechnology.com reports that "the pedagogical value of  podcasts depends almost entirely on student motivation and the learning "context" of the application."

The article goes on to cite Ashley Deal, a researcher in the  Office of Technology for Education & the Eberly Center for Teaching Excellence at Carnegie Mellon University, "Podcasting does not contain any inherent value. It is only valuable inasmuch as it helps the instructor and students reach their educational goals, by facilitating thoughtful, engaging learning activities that are designed to work in support of those goals."

Read the full article.

*** After reading this article I felt as though it reinforced my mission: to transform educational technology from a medium through which people get information to a symbiotic partner in the learning process.  Podcasting, like all current forms of educational technology, is no different, at its very lowest level, than a pencil.  Much learning can be achieved with a pencil but the pencil itself is only the tool; the learning comes from the student.

The question for me now is: Can educational technology ever have inherent pedagogic value?  I don't really have an answer because I don't have anything against which to compare educational technology.  What does have inherent pedagogic value?

I'll have to research that.  Or if any fellow zaadsters knows the answer, I'd love to talk with you about it.

An article on ContraCostaTimes.com features Barry Eckhouse of St. Mary's College because he "... leaves no paper trail. In fact, he uses no paper at all."  What Eckhouse does, for his MBA students, is grade their electronically-submitted papers by recording his comments digitally.   "[The students] log on to the Internet to hear Eckhouse's online comments as he scrolls through their papers."

The rest of the article features other tech-savvy professors and concludes with a prediction of what technologies will be used in higher ed. classroom in the near, if not immediate, future.

Check out the article.