Week 5 Linking people and ideas

For me, much of this week was about links - tenuous as some were. The week started with our class linking together on line with Elluminate (R). It worked, but not as well as an in-person class would have. I'd have gladly come to the campus to get more out of the 3 hours we spent. Nevertheless, most of the class linked up. The voice, chat, and whiteboard features enabled alot of ideas to surface. Group-1 did their presentation and included some features that would not be possible without computer connection. These included a quick survey and a pop quiz. Those interactive features made the connection to me that indeed more may be possible with a digitally connected classroom, than an in-person one. Kudos to Group-1!

The mind mapping and concept mapping exercises made a lot of connections for me as well. Not only in the diagrams themselves, which connected related ideas, but the very idea of graphic organizers as for visual representations of information made a connection. From a heiarchial chart, to a KWL chart, a pie graph, schematic diagram, fishbone diagram, flowchart, story chart, mind map, or concept map, these are all visual organizations of knowledge or ideas. They are tools we've used in industry, in physics, in literature, and other fields. I had never collected them all together in the concept of "graphic orgainizers". I see that visualizing information in these different ways can be so powerful (as opposed to say prose on a page, or verbalized). This also gives me a glimpse as to the power of gaming, or simulation software. Much of what we've done in the past on computers has been static (i.e. pictures or words). But the net-gen is more familiar with richly annimated dynamic representations of information. Could that lead to a powerful new level of learning?

Finally, this week continued the theme of critical thinking and evaluation of media, in a topic called, "media literacy". I believe this really is very important for a thinking society. I have had contact with Ithaca College's, "Project Look Sharp" and with Alan November in the past. It was nice to see this in the curriculum of a Teaching with Technology course, although, I have to admit, I didn't exactly see the connection to the mind-mapping assignments.

My greatest disappointment with this course has been with the organization. I beleive I could have learned more and better, and in less time, with a more structured organization. With all the tools we've been learning about for organizing ideas, I wish I could see them used to organize the material in this course better for me. The final connection may be, for me to use those tools in the classes I teach in the future.