Doc posted a link to a debate over Online Degrees that has some great ideas. I really like  Anya Kamenetz when she quotes David Wiley at Brigham Young he says, “classroom teaching is to online teaching as regular polo is to water polo”.  This helped bring my thoughts around nicely to what Doc was saying.  We do what we are comfortable with as humans.  We can wrap our brains around the FTF classroom setting so we just apply that to online and viola an environment we can understand.  I also like Mark Bauerlein when he is discussing how an online writing course can be daunting in terms of time, “This amounts to revision by correspondence, a slow and exhausting process. It works with skilled writers, perhaps, but tentative and inexperienced 18-year-olds need closer and more expeditious guidance.”  Finally Karen Swan discovered through students that their number one reason for taking online classes was not distance but, “. . . overwhelmingly to be a matter of time. In today’s world, working people and people with families especially just don’t have time for face-to-face classes.”

These perspectives to me seemed to be grounded in reality of student and teacher interaction, not collegiate money.  Robert Zemsky and Greg von Lehmen seemed too keen for the money and students that online education can bring to colleges as Robert Zemesky stated, “Once again higher education’s electronic El Dorado beckons.”

I really enjoyed this article on many levels. First of all I truly appreciate an insight into the theories behind gaming in general as well as educational gaming. Lateral thinking of withered technology is genius! I had never hear of this before (not surprising because I know nothing!). We have done this type of technology use in the classroom in Keller (KMI@TMI, GPS Units, etc.). But, I truly believe they would have been more successful with the 5 principals of a “mature” technology. While the 5 questions were asked at some point during these projects, they were never grouped together for focus. I believe we missed some truly good answers to our project questions by not having this focus.

My other “Aha” moment was the “synthesizing” rules that games are comprised of. These four rules could also outline lessons that include little or no technology. Educational speaking the four rules could apply in this phrase: “Fun lesson must have quantifiable outcomes (learning) that are gained through true to life play.”

Finally, I do appreciate the fact that video games do cost $10-20 million to produce. I believe that video game manufactures and programers/designers should “give back” some brain cells to our students (and me) by helping public education via their “withered” technologies.

Doc posted: An article from last fall about the future of SL:
http://www.pixelsandpolicy.com/pixels_and_policy/2009/10/media-doubts-sl.html

Interesting article, but even better is the response from a reader! Look down towards the bottom of the page and read the post by Dusan Writer, damn. She rips that article up. Also went to Dusan’s page and like this youtube video.

I love my mac, but has apple started a trend for consumers to demand beauty as well as functionality? Does an object that is just a tool need to also be beautiful? Michael Angelo’s paintings are exquisite, but his tools were everyday. So now a final question, does beauty blind us of substance?

Windows XP (2001 release date) became a good, stable working version of the windows platform. It is not excessively flashy or beautiful. In 2004ish the Ipod exploded and changed our music experiences for ever (and soon after our cellphones). This eruption brought Apple to the attention of the masses as a beautiful and simple operating system. Windows jumped on the Beauty band wagon of OSX and created Vista. Vista was released and flopped in two years. The goal in my view of Microsoft was to create a product that was visually stunning, but they forgot to make it actually work!

This trend seems to have also spilled over into the classroom. Districts love to have shinny new toys and tote the benefits of technology to student learning. But does the vanity begit the substance? Making the tool (technology) the focus will never improved instruction. Vanity or Substance, technology does not equal good instruction; good instruction stands alone.

Our Solar system is approx. 5 billion years old. We have approx. 5 billion years left. When we only live at longest 100-115 years (very few people achieve this) 5 billion years seems ridiculously far away. In fact that is closer than we think. I fear the musings for our place in the Universe seems to be waning. Since the foundation of NASA was based off of fear from Cold War tactics that are now dead, funding is tight and we can only hope the government funds NASA well.

Our students will always be the future, because that is the next generation to teach the future (so on and so forth). We must be vigilant in continuing our prosperity as humans. We must help progress our society from rich to poor to be better than our current state, not only monetarily, but morally. As educators we must find the path of enlightenment that will best benefit our society. Technology has opened a whole new world for educators to operate in.

We are in the age of great communication. No matter what government regime someone lives under they can find out truths and non-truths like never before. Our world has never been this connected for almost all classes of citizens. While technology changes rapidly we cannot deny that the main uses of technology are slowing down. As we explore all the ways in which technology can be stretched we will reach a limit. Updates will continue to occur and new ideas will flourish, but a core categorization of technology will remain to be in place. At the forefront will be communication, wither by video, text, or voice, communication is now a staple of technology. I believe that as technology advances we will see that devices will become more condensed and multifunctional, but that the functions will cease to change.

I want to make sure that I have done everything I can, so that my children can do everything they can, to help our society in 5 billion years prosper.