Modern Text Book

Posted on August 20, 2007 by Alvin Trusty

I am looking through a half dozen recent textbooks for information on newer technologies.  The oldest text in my pile is two years old.

Here are some interesting technologies that I’m having a hard time finding.  Half the books do not have “blogs” listed.  The other three texts have single paragraph listings that define blogs as a “personal journal.” Only one book mentions that blogs can be used as a two-way communication tool.

Only one book has “wiki” listed.  That particular text gives an excellent definition and examples of how wikis can be used in an educational environment.  Unfortunately, five of the books do not even mention the term.

Comparing these books with texts I have from the nineties is almost comical.  One of the books goes on and on about “gopher” and “archie” and how each can be used in education.  There is no mention of Google.

What will our textbooks be talking about in five more years?

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Image of Mother Ohio

Posted on August 19, 2007 by Alvin Trusty

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Tonight at dinner my wife had this perfect image of Ohio fall onto her fork.  It is from the graham cracker crust of a wonderful butterscotch pie. 

Does it have a prophetic meaning?  Is it an omen?  Could we get cash from it on eBay?

We have left messages with the Pope, Jim Tressel and the Golden Palace .

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Vistativo

Posted on August 18, 2007 by Alvin Trusty

I have had a TV tuner card for many years.   I have used it as a streaming TV server that I created using the tuner card and Microsoft Media Encoder.  The TV signal comes into the computer with the tuner and Media Encoder streams the encoded signal out to any PC on my network.  It works great, but I don’t use it that much.  I don’t watch that much TV period.  Then I do it is something on the History Channel.  Using the system as a homemade Tivo was doable, but required a fair amount of manual interaction any time I wanted to record something.  First I had find out when the show would be on.  I do not get TV guide, so that wasn’t always easy.  I had to manually put in the date and start time followed by the duration of the recording.

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Vista’s Media Center changes all that.  I popped the TV card into a Vista machine.  The OS asked for my cable provider.  Based on my zip code it figured out all the channels I get.  Periodically it goes across the Internet and gets an updated schedule.  At any time it has about ten days worth of scheduling data.  I can scroll through and select something to watch.  If the show isn’t on at the moment, it asks if I want to schedule it to be recorded.  If the show is a series, it asks if I want to record the whole series.  Really cool.

All this is built into Vista’s Media Center and costs nothing extra to use if you have a TV tuner card.

All the recorded content can be viewed from other computers as well.  You do have to watch the hard drive space.  One hour of video takes up about 4 GB of disk space.  You can archive recorded TV on a DVD or CD, but that takes time and planning.

I still don’t watch that much TV, but it is nice to have the convenience of making a digital copy whenever something as big as High School Musical 2 hits the Disney Channel… at least the kids think so.

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Pop Quiz

Posted on August 17, 2007 by Alvin Trusty

The first day of school is just around the corner.  Here’s a great post about giving a quiz on the first day of class.  I do something similar.  My quiz has 26 matching questions.  On the left are 26 different technologies.  On the right are 26 years starting with 1440, the year Gutenberg invented the printing press.

I give them that first one.  I let them work in groups of two or three to try to figure out the rest.  It gives me enough time to take each student’s picture.  The only way I can learn all the names is by making a cheat sheet with names and pictures.

Half of the technologies on my list were invented after 1980.  Most college freshmen don’t know the CD was invented in 1982.  It has been in the news a few times in the past week, this being the 25th anniversary.   I wonder how many of them caught that bit of news.

I finish by showing a PowerPoint with all the answers and pictures of each technology with the inventor if possible.  It is my first chance to show a proper PowerPoint.  I point out that no bullet points were used.

My last slide is my ever-growing list of technologies.

I link it back to ISTE’s NETS for Teachers. One of the standards states that teachers will demonstrate continual growth in technology knowledge and skill to stay abreast of current and emerging technologies. A teacher must have a plan.  At that point, we start on the plan.

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Modern Art

Posted on August 16, 2007 by Alvin Trusty

I have been looking through all the pictures from our recent trip.  I have a few with some modern art.  The Indianapolis Art Museum did not permit photography of modern art.  It was all right to shoot anything outside the modern gallery, but I had to put the camera away on the fourth floor.

I suppose there are copyright issues.  Most of the works in the modern gallery were definitely created in the last few years.  My favorite was a room with three parallel orange strings of yarn fastened to the floor in the center of the room and stretched to a window where they were taped.  It looked like a beam of light coming in through the window.

In the corner were about a dozen black strings about eight inches apart stretched in parallel lines from the floor to the ceiling.  Every four strings were aligned in perfectly straight lines if viewed from the right angle.  As the view shifted to the right or the left, the row of strings took on the appearance of a solid plane.

These works weren’t complicated, but they weren’t random either.  I don’t appreciate modern “paint-flingers” as much as other types of artists.  I always wonder… did that turn out exactly like the artist planned?  Was that “splash” intended to be just that size and in that spot or did it just happen.

Take a look at the pictures below.  One of them was done by a world famous artist who is paid thousands of dollars for almost anything he does.  The rest of the pieces were done by first graders taking their first art class.

Can you tell which is which? (Click for a closer look.)

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