Archive for ECI831

Carl Sagan & Stephen Hawking – ‘A Glorious Dawn’

{ October 6, 2009 @ 11:06 am } · { Brain Based Learning, CCK08, CCK09, ECI831, Education, Second Life, Second Life Course, Social Media, Social Media Class, Uncategorized }
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Lyrics:

[Sagan]
If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch
You must first invent the universe

Space is filled with a network of wormholes
You might emerge somewhere else in space
Some when-else in time

The sky calls to us
If we do not destroy ourselves
We will one day venture to the stars

A still more glorious dawn awaits
Not a sunrise, but a galaxy rise
A morning filled with 400 billion suns
The rising of the milky way

The Cosmos is full beyond measure of elegant truths
Of exquisite interrelationships
Of the awesome machinery of nature

I believe our future depends powerfully
On how well we understand this cosmos
In which we float like a mote of dust
In the morning sky

But the brain does much more than just recollect
It inter-compares, it synthesizes, it analyzes
it generates abstractions

The simplest thought like the concept of the number one
Has an elaborate logical underpinning
The brain has it’s own language
For testing the structure and consistency of the world

[Hawking]
For thousands of years
People have wondered about the universe
Did it stretch out forever
Or was there a limit

From the big bang to black holes
From dark matter to a possible big crunch
Our image of the universe today
Is full of strange sounding ideas

[Sagan}
How lucky we are to live in this time
The first moment in human history
When we are in fact visiting other worlds

The surface of the earth is the shore of the cosmic ocean
Recently we’ve waded a little way out
And the water seems inviting
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A four year olds view of WOW

{ October 4, 2009 @ 2:45 pm } · { Brain Based Learning, CCK09, ECI831, Education, Social Media, Social Media Class }
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We all should think this way……

World of Warcraft as a gateway to discussion

“She found the process of creating a character very interesting, and was clearly formulating a set of criteria while she did. She didn’t want to be a “baddie” and she selected a gender and skin colour that most closely resembled herself. She didn’t want to play a Rogue, because they stole and stealing isn’t right.

Then having created her character she quickly disagreed with the quests she was being asked to go on. She refused to kill any animals because “she likes nature” and “hurting animals is wrong.” I pointed out this is just a game and it’s pretend and that no animals are really getting hurt and she said it doesn’t matter. I asked her if there was any difference between hurting animals in real life and hurting them in pretend and she said a definitive “No!”……………….

Interestingly, she ultimately announced that she didn’t like the game and didn’t want to play it, that it was “inappropriate” and not only that, but that I shouldn’t be playing it either!”

Digital Nation from PBS

{ September 28, 2009 @ 12:32 pm } · { CCK09, ECI831, Second Life, Second Life Course, Social Media, Social Media Class }
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Henry Jenkins talks about this website in his blog.

At the Digital Nations site Henry Jenkins “talks about the value of multitasking in an era of information overflow, how collective intelligence may displace the ideal of the Renaissance Man, participatory culture, parents and video games, the myth of game addiction, the nature of virtual reality, what schools are misunderstanding about the new media literacies and why so many teachers are ding book culture at the expense of embracing new skills and experiences.” This is a great resource about new media.

Other talks that are great..

Mark Prensky

Paul Gee

Philip Rosendale – founder of Second Life.

Danah Boyd

Arne Duncan – Secretary of Education

Mark Bauerlein

There are also other interesting post here on War and Relationships.

The Well

{ September 23, 2009 @ 11:04 am } · { CCK09, ECI831, Social Media }
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Last night in our ECI831 session, the Well was mentioned. I was a lurking member of the Well many years ago. In SmartMobs, Howard Rheingold talked about the Well, he was one of the founding fathers.

There were actually 3 little excerpts in his book, that I was a part of. Although it made me initially feel very old…I realized that all three of these CONNECTIONS help to evolve me to who I am today.

The second except is when he talks about DARPA, I worked at Florida State University Supercomputer Computational Research Institute. This was one of 5 universities that DARPA gave supercomputers to. This was also my first introduction to the internet (before the WWW). I created mostly physics papers in TEX, which is to me, is the mother of HTML, CSS, etc. SCRI does not have a Connection Machine now, and the program has evolved into a Department of Scientific Computing.

The third except is when he talked about a whole audience at Siggraph playing pong together. Again, I went to that conference in Las Vegas because FSU sent me there.

Now, I know that I am proud to have been a part of all of this. I don’t think anyone at that time thought that the WWW would evolve into what it is today. But I am certainly glad that after two decades, I am still learning because of it.

CCK09 and ECI831

{ September 15, 2009 @ 3:08 pm } · { CCK09, ECI831 }
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CCK09 is an open course given by the University of Manitoba called Connectivism and Connective Knowledge 2009. I took this class last year and found it very interesting, but did not have much time to participate. This year I plan on being a part of this class.

ECI831 is an open course given by the University of Regina on Social Media and Open Education.

Both classes started this week, so I am trying to get organized. Blogs, twitter, wikis, etc all are going to be used including Second Life. I plan on having links in my Netvibes page at http://www.netvibes.com/lindaleea

Blogging is a part of both classes and so I will be blogging here more.

Since last year there has been much more discussion on open education and how people learn. I think this is going to be very interesting.