Here is my mashup about Duke basketball!

Conceptual Selves

To me, CMaps are a new tool, and a useful one. While exploring the CMap program, it was largely user-friendly and easy to navigate; I surprised at the ease with which even a novice could maneuver and use the program. More importantly, however, the CMap program allowed me to quickly and easily create a conceptual map that visually depicted the relationship between my favorite foods. I am happy to have learned about this new tool, as it can come in handy in preparing for and writing papers. I'm sure I will use it in the future.

The auto-summarize and word filter features available in Microsoft Office were also new discoveries for me. I used both on my thesis, a lovely 61 page document about African American and Latino race relations. The auto-summarize feature did better than I expected, as it seemed to pick up on key words and sentences based upon their frequency of appearance and relative positioning within the paper, respectively. Although the auto-summarize feature did not clearly explain or put together all parts of my paper, it did provide a rough overview of the main topics. This feature is not suitable for rigorous academic work, but it can be handy in creating quick estimates.

Furthermore, the word filter features were impressive. They pick up on the key words and note the number of times each word appears in the paper. This can also be a helpful feature in determining the main points of an article.

All in all, these tools are helpful in representing, summarizing, and understanding articles and main points.

The Folksonomic Revolution

After completing this week’s ISIS assignment, I am both excited and weary of the Folksonomic Revolution, in which anybody can upload information to the internet and consequently, spread it quickly to a large number of people. My first reaction was that such technology can have a transformative effect on the availability of information worldwide and that an increased availability of information will lead to higher rates of efficiency and better decision making. This seems only natural. But after thinking more critically about this assignment, I realize that there are significant costs associated with the ability to easily disseminate information- namely, the ease with which inaccurate or wrong information can be spread. To this end, I was disturbed by how quickly I could change a Wikipedia webpage and while the literature states that Wikipedia’s fact-checking oversight is effective, I am still skeptical. The volume of information is simply too large to be continually fact-checked. Furthermore, where I turn to a website like juicycampus.com where malicious intent, damaging rumors, and gossip of all sorts is on public display, I feel bad for the humanity of our campus and am outraged the type of electronic medium that facilitates this hurtful behavior. These types of websites are easily accessed, easily changed, and can have a profound impact.

On the other hand, there are innumerable benefits associated with the Folksonomic Revolution. The general public can quickly and easily access information of all sorts. And furthermore, people can share a variety of types of information. Photo-sharing or networking sites are ideal to keep in touch with others. Wikipedia is a wonderful starting source to use when it comes to conducting preliminary research on a topic. Flickr, blogs, and a multitude of other sites are tremendously helpful. All of these have truly changed the way I live my life by making it easier to stay in touch, find information, and be more efficient.

In the final tally, I am still very happy with the availability of such easily accessed and easily used sites, and I think that the Folksonomic Revolution will have an overall positive impact. But along the way there are costs to bear, and we, as a public, must be aware of this.

Technology to Support Learning (assignment for Jan 22)

The “Technology to Support Learning” article adds several new dimensions to our continuing class discussion regarding the role of technology in an academic setting. While the article seems a bit out of date, it is still relevant in our conversation. The article highlights five key ways in which technology can positively impact education: enhancing curricula, providing tools for learning, facilitating teacher feedback, building educational communities, and expanding opportunities for teaching. Each of these areas of impact has the potential to significantly change, and possibly even revolutionize, education overall. These innovations can make learning more interactive or problems more tangible; they can engage students, provide frameworks, and bring people together. To underscore the potential benefits of a variety of technologies, the authors cite several convincing studies and use case examples. The authors conclude by stating that technology is an “important instrument in education” and holds “great promise both for increasing access to knowledge and as a means of promoting learning” (229).

While this article is well-written and convincingly argues that technology has undeniably important impact in education, it fails to substantively discuss the complicated relationship between technology and traditional teaching, and this is one of the areas I am most interested in. At what point does technology become overbearing? At what point does it hinder social interaction? Where and how is this line drawn? These are all difficult questions. On the one hand, technology provides a new and innovative way of doing things that may be more efficient, but on the other hand, a traditional approach emphasizes interpersonal skills, teamwork, and a freedom from what, if unchecked, could quickly become a debilitating technological dependence. Finding the middle the ground between the two and balancing the costs and benefits of technology versus the traditional approach is complicated. I’d like to further discuss the issue in class.