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Tools to Enhance Teaching and Learning in a Digital World » Blog Archive » iLife 06 … I am Finally Using it in the Classroom:

Well, I’m now using to iLife ‘06 and it has become an absolute staple in my classroom. Not really for my students mind you, but for me. GarageBand is now a part of every class period as I record lectures and produce enhanced podcasts. It gives me the ability to walk in with my PowerBook, a wireless microphone, and a Keynote presentation and do a class-based podcast. When class is over, I take about 30 minutes to export my slides from Keynote into iPhoto, they show up in GarageBand, and I can drag them to the timeline. I mix it down and push it to iTunes … I could be using iWeb to publish them, but I am not ready to jump off the WordPress bandwagon just yet. At the end of the day the students click a single link from my class blog and iTunes auto-launches and a subscription is set.

Let’s just add numbered bullets here to what Cole Camplese says in his ADC Exchange Blog above:

1. Walk in with Powerbook. a wireless microphone, a Keynote presentation.
2. Do a class-based podcast.
3. When class is over, take about 30 minutes to export sldies from Keynote into iPhoto.
4. They show up in GarageBand, and I can drag them to the timeline.
5. I mix it down and push it to iTunes
6. At the end of the day the students click a single link from my class blog and iTunes auto-launches and a subscription is set.

How long does it take to get to the point in one’s tech learning curve? I am asking this question because my next big push is to help my English department faculty accelerate their tech learning capacity. For a newbie, the six steps above might become forty if broken down by rigorous task analysis. That is exactly what I am going to have to do. I am going to have to de-automatize many of my own skills. Teaching is empathy isn’t it? It is the mark of a great teacher. My hope is that I can do this in my lifetime by just being “good enough”.

tellio :: Dec.17.2006 :: Podcast, Useful Tools and Processes :: 1 Comment »

A Buddhist prayer.

tellio :: Aug.21.2006 :: Podcast :: No Comments »

Neuroscientists have proposed a simple explanation for the pleasure of grasping a new concept: The brain is getting its fix.The “click” of comprehension triggers a biochemical cascade that rewards the brain with a shot of natural opium-like substances, said Irving Biederman of the University of Southern California. He presents his theory in an invited article in the latest issue of American Scientist.”While you’re trying to understand a difficult theorem, it’s not fun,” said Biederman, professor of neuroscience in the USC College of Letters, Arts and Sciences.”But once you get it, you just feel fabulous.”The brain’s craving for a fix motivates humans to maximize the rate at which they absorb knowledge, he said.”I think we’re exquisitely tuned to this as if we’re junkies, second by second.”Biederman hypothesized that knowledge addiction has strong evolutionary value because mate selection correlates closely with perceived intelligence.Only more pressing material needs, such as hunger, can suspend the quest for knowledge, he added.The same mechanism is involved in the aesthetic experience, Biederman said, providing a neurological explanation for the pleasure we derive from art.

‘Thirst for knowledge’ may be opium craving

Then, of course, we will want to know why we crave that particular neurochemical and not another. And on and on, turtles all the way down.

technorati tags:causality, materialism

Blogged with Flock

tellio :: Jun.25.2006 :: Podcast, Uncategorized :: No Comments »

Joho the Blog: [berkman] Traci Fenton on organizational democracy
Q: People have been saying this for a long time. What’s the resistance?
A: People don’t understand how. Business leaders freak out because they think they have less control. I tell them they’re just giving up the illusion of control.

tellio :: Jun.14.2006 :: Podcast, Uncategorized :: No Comments »

Try to imagine what future learners might look like. No, try to re-imagine it. I say “re-imagine” because that is what it seems we will need to do. I and many of like ilk must work on a new world, a new narrative.

Let me explain. One of my favorite books is Thomas Berry’s The Dream of the Earth. The most prophetic chapter in the book is titled “The New Story”. I cannot paraphrase Berry here, nor summarize. His own words or too apt and too wise for that. He says,

It’s all a question of story. We are in trouble just now because we do not have a good story. We are in between stories. The old story, the account of how the world came to be and how we fit into it, is no longer effective. Yet we have not learned a new story. (123)

I keep a bookmark on this page because I can return to it regularly without exhausting its depth. Note how he uses the word “learned”. Implies not only a teacher, but a re-imagined teacher. We are all slouching toward this new story of we know not what; and if Berry is right, then nothing is more important than the revelation of the new narrative.

This should be the teacher’s grail–the new story. Technology is not the new story. No. But technology can point us toward the story. Better yet, it can help us re-invent the story not from the mouldered cloth of history (that dead end can be seen in the recurrent fundamentalism worldwide), but from the fine silk of humanity spinning and weaving a new web. “Teachers” are the new Theseus. With Ariadne’s help the mythic Theseus reeled out a thread as he walked through the labyrinth to do battle with the Minotaur. All the better to return safely. We do not have that luxury. Instead we must spin forth a new thread into the labyrinth, blind but determined (pun intended). Then we walk forth into the mystery of the new labyrinth, the new story.

I agree with Berry here and insist that without this new story we cannot be confident in any future. We cannot live without meaningful stories. The corollary of that is that bad stories will kill us. Can anyone who sees our country as others see us deny that we are in the midst of a killing story? Our narrative autism will be our downfall not only as a nation, but as a race. This is the largest context within which “teachers” work. It is hard to maintain this satellite perspective because we have become so detail driven, but we must kick ourselves into this wider orbit at least every once in a while. Unless, of course, we prefer irrelevance.

tellio :: Jun.03.2006 :: Podcast, Uncategorized :: No Comments »