Multitasking makes you less productive

Turns out that multitasking actually makes us less productive, not only for adults but also for our youth. Nearly one-third of kids say they chat on the phone, surf the web, send instant messages, watch TV, or listen to music "most of the time" while doing their homework, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation survey. Whatever the consequences of multitasking, they're going to be widespread. The report also found that when students are sitting in front of their computers "studying," they're also doing something else 65 percent of the time.

What will be the long-term effects of multitasking and students' learning?

SL in the Classroom and Constructivist Teaching Methods

Jeremy Koester, an eighth-grade math teacher at Alamo Heights Junior School in San Antonia, Texas, uses technology in his classes and is exploring ways to use Second Life as a distance education environment. Koester, also a graduate student in the Instructional Technology program at the University of Texas at San Antonio, is working toward the immersive opportunities of gaming in SL for his students.

In an interview with TechTrends reporter Joe Landsberger, Koester indicated that SL “provides an opportunity for constructivist applications. Students can model and share their prior knowledge, learn from other learners and show proficiency through physical representation and collaboration” (p. 3).

Constructivist teaching methods have been used for many decades in the classroom and they allow for students to actively engage in the construction of knowledge rather than passively receiving it. For example, students form a study group when they have a difficult and confusing textbook. As they help each other, they are able to better interrupt and understand the book in way that they cannot do on an individual basis. This type of learning that focuses on how people work together reflects a social constructivism perspective (Ormrod, 2008).

Landsberger, J. (2007, July/August). Learning by design: An interview with Jeremy Koester. TechTrends, 51, 4.

Ormrod, J.E. (2008). Human Learning (5th ed.). New Jersey: Pearson Education, Inc.

Professional Development Needs Assessment

Many educational technologists are asked to devise a plan to help faculy integrate technology into the classroom. But, where do they start, and what do they need training in?

Conduct a needs assessment to answer these two questions by starting with a survey. You can conduct surveys online with a free, web-based tool that emails collected data to the creator for analyzing data and results.

One such online survey tool is Survey Monkey. It offers great video tutorials about it features.

Second Life and businesses

Summary of Second Life used for Business

More than 10 years ago it was though that Instant Messaging would only be used to socialize with friends and family, however it is now commonly used in everyday work activities between coworkers and customers to quickly communicate.

Just like Instant Messaging, SL is gaining popularity in the business sector by offering real-time meetings without leaving the office, employee training sessions and simulations, recorded teamwork efforts and product feedback from clients.

Statistics show significant growth among SL monthly user hours, which grew from an average of less than 20 hours in early 2006 to more than 100 hours in summer 2008 (Second Life Economy Graphs).

SL can offer inexpensive business alternatives in a fun, engaging environment for company employees and customers.

To learn more about Second Life, visit its website at: http://www.secondlife.com

Amazon Kindle

Over the summer Oprah Winfrey received a gift that 'changed her life.' The device is an electronic reader, specifically Amazon's Kindle. Before Oprah's big discovery, I had heard of Amazon's Kindle, I had a good idea what it could do, and I have even seen one in the hands of a faculty member in my building. But I wanted to explore it more.

Amazon boasts that it offers more than 190,000 magazine, book, newspaper and blog titles. To learn about the pros of owning a Kindle, go to Amazon's website. Some of the pros (from Gadgetsnoop.com) include:

• Amazon and books are peas in a pod, the user experience seems carefully crafter to lead to smooth downloading and reading workflow



• The form factor is interesting, the screen similar in size to a book and the e-ink technology looks like it offers a grayscale rendering, and it’s light



• The eBooks are less expensive is some cases, than buying and shipping the paper counterpart - there’s a definite “Green” notion to this.



• The battery is user-replaceable (cough - Apple, get a clue)



• No subscriptions or additional fees, beyond the cost of the device, for wireless access, 1yr warranty



• Promised >1 min. downloads



• USB 2.0 connectivity for PC and Mac, but does not require a computer



• Email documents and images to the device, read blogs and newspapers

David Fowler, a blogger, touches on the downside of a Kindle:

• Poor visual appeal: Black text on a dingy grey background instead of white; brief screen blackout for each page turn; device looks like old technology.



• Clunky scroll wheel for navigating; Kindle would benefit from touch-screen technology such as used by Apple.



• Lack of real page numbers limits use for students needing to provide footnotes for quotes.



• Frequent page turns are tiring; difficult to “pre-read” a chapter or know how many pages to go in a chapter; not a great device for reading long books.
  

Academic Freedom OR An Insult

Should tenured faculty members be allowed to post controversial viewpoints on public college websites? Even if their viewpoint denies The Holocaust? Northwestern University faculty member Arthur Butz thinks so, and has been spreading the word about his unpopular beliefs since the 1970s on the web and in his book. Read article:

Chronicle of Higher Education

Now, because he has the right to express his beliefs under the First Amendment does not mean he is correct. Personally, it is upseting to hear that people disregard such a horrific global event. More 17 million people suffered and died during The Holocaust - how do you discount that?

I had the opportunity to visit the Drancy Internment Camp outside of Paris, France over the summer. It was quite an eye-opening experience for me, one that I won't ever forget.
Drancy Deportation Camp
After visiting this location along with other notable WWII landmarks, it's hard to understand how man can deny that The Holocaust ever happened. It sickens me.

Requiring laptops for all incoming college freshmen

Laptop Distribution Day at SJU

This week's assignment pondered this question. Should colleges and universities a "one laptop for one student" policy? I decided to research two schools, Grove City College in Pennsylvania and St. John's University in Queens, New York.

Both are private, liberal arts schools, however GCC has an enrollment size of 2,500 students while SJU boasts an enrollment size of more than 15,000 students. My findings conclude that laptop programs are beneficial to students.

Summary and conclusion excerpt from my paper...

First, both schools provide students with the same laptop model so that technical support can anticipate and easily handle updates, virus protection and computer issues as they arise. Secondly, because it is imperative to provide everyone with the same model, the laptops are paid for through student tuition. Thirdly, both schools provide on-site repairs and ‘how to’ laptop training to faculty and students. And lastly, because these schools do not provide computers to part-time status students, it is necessary to accommodate this student population by providing on-campus computer labs.

Overall, requiring laptops for freshmen did increase the level of technology on campus, it did promote the concept of anytime/anywhere learning with its wireless Internet access across campus and it did increase the institution’s marketing advantage since both schools heavily promote the laptop program on its respective websites. However, both schools fail to mention if it did reduce university costs overtime. Further investigation would be necessary to accurately answer this question.

For a listing of higher education schools across the United States with required laptop programs, go to http://www2.westminster-mo.edu/wc_users/homepages/staff/brownr/NoteBookList.html

The Joys of You Tube in the Classroom

For Issue 2 my group decided to have students create a news broadcast; the kicker is that it is the past. Students in groups of three choose an era in history that was covered this school year, and then, they produce a news broadcast concerning that era. The format of a nightly-news broadcast could be a fun way to get students excited about learning about a period in history.

In addition, the news broadcast is an excellent format for:

• reviewing content taught;
• creating a culminating activity to a unit of study; and
• building the "core teaching" unit for any period in history.

The project might be approached in any number of ways. For example, small groups of students might work together to create a nightly-news broadcast for an "average" day during the Civil War or some other period in history. The broadcast will include both hard news and feature reports that present facts and interesting information about the period. All groups might work to create a news broadcasts from the same historic period, or each group might work on a broadcast from a different period such as the Revolutionary War, the Roaring Twenties or the Vietnam War.

With the creation of this lesson plan, I started to research some completed historical videos on You Tube. I also found a video site for teachers, called Teacher Tube. However, the streaming server is a little slow and the videos aren't as smooth to watch.

Below is a simple, but powerful, video about the May 4th Shooting at KSU during the Vietnam War. What a great way for students to learn about our history while creating an educational video for thousands of others to view. This assignment is a great example of cross-discipline collaboration - history and technology.

Constructivism in the Classroom

What kind of teacher are you in the classroom? Is your way of teaching student-centered or teacher-centered? Do you lecture or opt for group collaboration on solving an issue? As we begin to explore different learning theories (cognitive, behaviorist and constructivism approaches to learning) in this course, it makes you reflect on your ideas of how students learn best.

Since I only teach adults in higher education (18 years and up) I have students in the classroom with a foundation of prior knowledge. These students can read, write and understand basic math concepts (or so I hope :-) I find that with non-traditional students (ages 24+) they learn best using the constructivism approach to learning. They bring to the table many life experiences and enjoy group collaboration. I encourage group discussion/projects because it allows students to use problem-solving skills. In the class I am currently teaching, the answers to the questions posed don't always have right or wrong answers, therefore this approach to learning works very well in the classroom.

After conducting a little research on the web, I found that Jean Piaget, a Swiss philosopher born in the late 1800s, helped to shape (some say pioneer) the constructivism approach. He is pictured above.

Piaget's photo was taken from: http://hagar.up.ac.za/catts/learner/2000/scheepers_md/projects/loo/theory/construct.html

Fourth Week cont.

Ockham's Razor asserts that simplicity is preferred to complexity in design. This principle, named after William of Ockham, a 14th Century Franciscan friar and logician, and described on page 142 in Lidwell, can be applied to almost any design. And while I do agree that simple designs work best in many instances, including web and print design, I do gravitate toward aniques, flowers and plants and other items to decorate my home.

I never really was a fan of the "minimalist" home. Sure, everyone likes clean, straight lines and neutral colors, but who wants to live in a cold, untouched, boring and sterile environment?

Minimalist home

I appreciate houses that are a little more rustic and have lots of character; ones that are decorated with pillows and soft fabric, contain lots of greenery, and showcase built-in bookshelves and small, cozy rooms. A cottage on the lake with a porch sounds ideal.

My 'pretend' second home in Florida

Fourth Week

The storytelling topic on page 186 of Lidwell struck a cord with me this week. In the last few months I have been addicted to the "digitally storytelling" of This American Life, a Chicago Public radio podcast. The themed stories each week "are like movies for radio. There are people in dramatic situations. Things happen to them. There are funny moments and emotional moments and moments where the people in the story say interesting, surprising things about it all."

Read more about This American Life.

Social Engineering was the the most recent This American Life podcast I listened to. The episode unfolds with Daniel Canada and Gregory Deloatch (above), two homeless poets in NYC.

Third Week cont.

In Lidwell's text it discusses Baby-Faced Bias, a tendency to see people and things with baby-faced features as more naive, helpless and honest than those with mature faces. I never really considered this idea, but it does hold some truth.

I have two red-haired women posted below. Obviously one is older than the other, but they do have distinct features - one resembles a baby face with round features and the later one has a more mature face with a stronger bone structure and a less rounded face.

Baby Face (conveys innocence, honest, helplessness)

Mature Face (conveys expertise and authority)

In Lidwell's text, it also discusses Waist-to-Hip Ratio, a preference for a particular ratio of waist size to hip size in men and women. Studies show that people favored males with a .90 waist-to-hip ratio and women with a .70 ratio. I took the test on page 207 and I agreed with the male rendering, but I didn't choose the most popular female rendering based on the waist-to-hip ratio theory.

I did a little more research on the subject and found even more encouraging news for curvier women, considering I have a .73 waist-to-hip ratio. We are smarter, too.

Are Curvier Women Smarter?

Third Week: Fun with Monotone and Duotone Colors

For most of my adult career I have worked in education or non-profit industries. (I guess you could say that education is non-profit.) And because each field had little financial resources, I needed to be creative when designing brochures and other print materials. The companies I worked for didn't have the money to print glossy, four-color informational pieces. Instead, black and white and two- and three-colored images were used often.

As stated in chapter 7 of Williams, you don't always have to create pieces using all of the colors of the rainbow. You can use monocromatic colors - a color composed of one hue with any other of its cooresponding shades or tints.

I have created my own examples to show the differences of applying one and two colors to a black and white photograph.

Black & White Photograph (one color used - black)

Monochromatic Colored Photograph (one color -brown; R=153, G=102, B=0)

Duotone Colored Photograph (two colors - black and red; Red was R=200, G=0, B=0)

Second Week cont.

Enhancing the usability of design was the category of study this week in Lidwell's book. The title that caught my attention was "Inverted Pyramid." It brought a smile to my face because I am constantly preaching to my public relations students how important is it to write in the inverted pyramid style. Up to this point in most college student's lives, they are writing research papers or opinion pieces -- long paragraphs, citations, 25 pages in length, etc. GET TO THE POINT!

At work and when I teach public relations I focus on including the most important information about the story in the first paragraph. This includes the who, what, where, when, why and how. In my job I am mostly writing for the web or writing press releases to pitch stories to the media. The name of the game is to be short, concise and express the most important information at the beggining of the story because you don't have much time to grab the reader's attention. As our lives become more and more hectic, we sometimes only have a minute or two to scan headlines or the first paragraph of an article. Sad, but true.

Inverted Pyramid

Second Week

Typfaces, Typefaces and more Typefaces

In chapter's 9, 10, 11 and 14, Willam's book discusses everything typefaces - categories of type, type contrasts, typefaces used in her own book, etc. A central theme about her book is "don't be afraid" to try design elements. With that said she also emphasizes that type (and design) should never inhibit communication.

When designing must one consider what type of typeface to use - oldstyle, modern, slab serif, sans serif, script and decorative. Up to this point I only knew of two types - serif (times new roman, minion) and sans serif (helvetica, arial) But who knew, Willam's has identified six categories. She also discusses type contrasts, which include size (just say 'no' to ALL CAPS), weight, structure, form, direction and color.

Throughout these chapters on typefaces and fonts, she hits home that if you design using two different fonts on the same page, make it exciting by contrasting the fonts.

Example of contrasting typefaces used in a logo

First Week cont.

My "Universal Principles of Design" book was delivered yesterday evening. I read through the first section of elements and I want to expand on color more, specifically saturation of color (described on page 38-39). As stated in the book, saturation refers to the amount of gray in a hue. As it increases, the amount of gray decreases.

I created an example from my own photo collection to illustrate saturation. Yes, that's me.

This is my original photo.


Manipulated Photo

Details: This photo had the saturation taken low (not to zero since there is a little color.) Before I removed most of the color I selected a 'hot pink' tone from one of the flowers with the eye dropper tool in Gimp (similar to Photoshop). After I lowered the saturation on the whole photo I used the lasso tool to select the middle rose. I then filled the 'hot pink' color in the selection area using the paint bucket with the screen mode and a 22 percent opacity.

Good & Bad Design

ABOVE: A Good Design - it's so clever and simple!

ABOVE: A Bad Design - my eyes and brain are confused!

First week

I've heard of Robin Williams (and not the goofy, hairy guy in movies) before. This Robin is a female and her book, "The Non-Designer's Book" is quite good. I'm thinking about using it in one of my classes in the future. Robin hit the nail right on the head when she said after finding the Joshua Tree when she was a kid, she noticed it everywhere. I can say the same thing about print stuff. I notice and detest pixelated and skewed images on the web and in print on a daily basis. I am very conscious of this atrocity that lingers throughout many amateur sites and on homemade posters.

The four principles of good design in chapters 1-6 -- contrast, repetition, alignment and proximity -- make sense to me and will be easy to remember when creating my next layout. Robin's simple, multiple illustrations of how you can take a so-so design and make it more visually appealing with just some minor changes is genius. She focuses on straight lines, illustrations and type to convey clear communication on paper -- newsletters, advertisments, business cards or letterhead.

A few of my favorite tips that she mentions in the first six chapters are to provide clear communication rather than try to make a piece fun, or "dancing." It's so true that simple design is better. I also liked the chapter on repetition. Her example of how you can bold the name at the top of a business card and bold the phone number at the bottom to draw the eye up and down instead of off the paper is something I never considered. I am going to try it in some design pieces down the road.

I'd like to comment on the other book, but due to Amazon.com's lazy ways I am still waiting for it to arrive in the mail. 11 days and still waiting :-(

About Beth

I have worked in the communications and technology industry for more than eight years and my work experience includes public relations, graphic and Web design and journalism. I currently work at Kent State University as a Public Relations Coordinator for the College of Education, Health, and Human Services. In a previous position at KSU, I was an Educational Technology Designer for the College and trained and assisted faculty on how to integrate technology into the classroom.

I earned a B.A. in communications from Slippery Rock University and a M.S. in Technical Education from The University of Akron. Currently, I am taking doctoral-level classes in the Educational Psychology Department. I have taught Introduction to Basic Computers for art majors and Podasting for Educators and Trainers at Kent State University and Desktop Publishing and Introduction to Public Relations at Ursuline College.

In my free time I enjoy gardening, exercising, trying new foods and traveling. I am married and have cat, Lilly. When I grow up I hope to become a college professor.