Check out this video. See if you can count the number of passes between members of the team in the white t-shirts, and then read the post below.
Category: education
Discussion on the Post Above
Did you watch the video from the post above? How many passes did you count between members of the team wearing white shirts? I counted 14. Did you see anything strange? If not, watch the video again and keep an eye out for the gorilla. You aren’t alone if you missed it. Over 50% of folks fail to see the person in the gorilla costume walking through the center of the action.
This is the example of inattentional blindness that I mentioned in a previous post. My colleague Dr. Larry Pace pointed me to the video. Here’s another page with some more examples. This is so fascinating. My favorite is the study where they ask a subject for directions and creatively swap the recipient of those directions. The study revealed that the more the recipient approximates the subject in age, etc., the more likely the subject is to notice the switch. The bigger the differences, the more likely it is that the subject will keep giving directions to a completely different person and never notice the switch.
This inattentional blindness can play a big role in poor decision-making in survival situations, according to the book I’m reading. Basically, if you’re lost in the wilderness with me, it’s best to ditch me as soon as possible. Your chances will improve! I wouldn’t have seen the gorilla if I hadn’t known it was coming.
This has so many implications for the relationship between learning and learning environments. I can’t wait to read more.
Learning in Retirement Blog Class
Yesterday I taught a FULIR (Furman University Learning In Retirement) class on blogging as part of Dr. Lipscomb’s What’s New in Technology Series. I’m really enjoying the opportunity to get back in the classroom, and this was a great group of folks – friendly and very curious, especially with regards to how this technology fit into the big picture. The initial discussion was fostered with some iClicker questions about experience with blogs and familiarity with the term ‘Web2.0’. After a quick overview, we jumped into creating our own blogs.
The time I spent on Friday creating WordPress accounts (wordpress.com) for each participant was worth it. We quickly started creating posts, and I think everyone enjoyed swapping out themes.
Sample WordPress Theme
I’d like to see WordPress simplify adding pictures to a post. What if by inserting a photo into a post, it was uploaded behind the scenes, instead of having to upload, send to editor, etc..? We got through it, but the challenges highlighted the counter-intuitive user interface.
I think a decent portion of the class may keep blogging, based on the questions I was getting after class. Several wanted to know more about feedreaders, so they could consolidate the blogs they have been following.
A couple of things to do differently next time:
1. Track down some mice for the laptops. The trackpad was a significant barrier at times.
2. Provide more detailed, step-by-step instructions for adding / editing a post, and especially adding an image.
A couple of things to keep:
1. The clickers. This helped get a quick, anonymous gauge of experience level.
2. Directions on how to get to the admin panel. Many of the themes either make this link hard to find or remove it altogether, so having this in the handout really helped.
I really enjoyed this and might propose some classes for the spring!
One person commented as they left that they would explore this more the next time they couldn’t sleep. My blog started one morning when I was tossing and turning. I wonder how many blogs have started during a bout of insomnia??
Upstate Schools Consortium Presentation and Clickers
On Friday I presented at a meeting of the Upstate Schools Consortium which met at Furman University. I got to meet with a great group of talented and enthusiastic K-12 educators from across the upstate. It was a lot of fun!
I talked about our recent and early investigation into clicker technology. We’re piloting these in a handful of classrooms to determine if they’re a good fit and developing best practices. I’ve reviewed a good bit of the research, and it seems like clickers are most effective when they are used to support a constructivist learning environment which makes good sense. A great bibliography of the research is available from Vanderbilt University. If the technology is only going to be used to deliver fairly low-level content questions and not going to be used to modify instruction or engage the student, then I’m guessing we’ll find it’s not worth the investment. I’ve used them in several sessions and feel my initial skepticism waning.
Here’s a link to the question report that was generated from our discussion. Just click on the session summary to see the responses. Each session is actually split in two, so session 1 and 2 are the interaction with the first group and so on. For some reason, the second half of the session with the last group wasn’t recorded.
I split the sessions because there seems to be a bug in iClicker (at least on my machine) where if you add to an existing session, rather than starting a new one, the screen capture breaks.
* The question about Saddam Hussein was to start a very mini discussion about potential advantages of the anonymity that the clickers provide. I wish we had more time to discuss.
* The question about the gorilla required some intro explanation not on the slide. I described the Harvard study in which folks were asked to count the number of basketball passes between two individuals. During the video a woman with an umbrella or a person in a gorilla suit walks through the middle of the scene. 54% of participants reported never seeing the gorilla, so I asked if this intense focus would be a plus or minus in a life or death survival situation. In sessions where there was time, they discussed and recast their votes (Mazur-type of model with clickers).
* The Google Earth Question revolved around the spread of avian flu and asked participants to predict where the early outbreaks occurred (answer C: Southern Asia). The circled regions aren’t visible in the iClicker report, but were visible to participants.
* Oh yeah, the answer to the state insect question is A (Carolina Mantid). This was pretty obscure, but most folks knew it! I sure didn’t. I was hoping to demonstrate that simple content questions weren’t as fun or interactive as the gorilla / discussion type, but this generated a good bit of buzz as well (pun intended ;-)).
I’ll be updating the blog with our iClicker pilot experience. Here’s a link to the session handout. Please comment with your clicker experiences and thoughts in the comments here. We didn’t have enough time to talk, so it would be fun to continue the discussion here.
Great Google Earth Feature – Time Animation
On the Google Earth Blog, Frank Taylor lists the top ten Google Earth time animations for 2006. Time animations were added in Google Earth 4 and are a great way to view data that changes over time, for example animal and human cases of avian flu (Declan Butler’s blog). Authors simply add a time span element to data in kml files, like so, and Google Earth renders a time slider bar in the user interface.
<TimeSpan id=”ID”>
<begin>begin date here </begin>
<end>end date here</end>
</TimeSpan>
The time slider is highlighted in a screen shot of the avian flu map below.
There are some Google Earth software limitations that were apparent when viewing Hurricane Katrina data. I wished I could have incremented the “animation” in hours rather than days. There are some great suggestions for improvement on Stefan Geens’ Ogle Earth Blog, so I won’t rehash them here. This functionality is a great addition to GE!
Wii and Physics?
Tim Lauer of Lewis Elementary School points to an interesting use of Darwiin Remote Software and the Nintendo Wii remote to run a Roomba (a robot which will vacuum your house). I don’t have a Nintendo Wii game, but if Darwiin will capture 3D acceleration from the Wii game remote, it shouldn’t be too difficult to determine force information from the remote. So if someone is playing Wii baseball for example, it should be easy to capture the force of their swing. Perhaps students could experiment with different variables to increase the force of the swing and determine the impact on the distance the batted ball travels. Does the game show the force of the swing already?
In my physics classes we used the Vernier accelerometers to capture 3-dimensional acceleration on different amusement park rides. Although the experience turned me green, we got exceptional data (see image and graph below). I wonder if using a combination of a Wii remote, Bluetooth, and some sort of handheld device if the same sort of data could be gathered on the ride? It still doesn’t solve my motion sickness, but maybe it would save a few bucks and be fun to try.
Timeline software with AJAX
You’ve probably experienced AJAX through google maps and other websites. It makes for a great web experience, especially for the impatient. Dr. Lloyd Benson provided this timeline link. My colleague, Dr. Diane Boyd, had a great idea to combine timelines and maps, updating the map as the user progressed along a particular timeline. We’ll have to learn AJAX programming to do it, or perhaps it might fit into an First Year Seminar with a historical and technological focus, and the students could drive the construction. It’s definitely something to keep on the radar as we continue to strive to help students incorporate historical perspectives into their learning experiences.
GIS, Data Visualization, and Teaching 