Tech Encounters – Oct 14th

October 14, 2009 at 10:26 pm (All, Tech Encounters)

For my last tech encounter blog post I want to take a step back.  Looking over my week’s posts, I would say that my feeling toward technology in general is somewhat ambivalent.  Some technologies (like Google Docs) I find very useful.  Although I have both a cell phone and a car, I am not so sure that they make my life (or the lives of others) better.  I find myself getting really excited about things like Fathom, that enable one to creatively engage information.  I am less interested in twitter, which I like so far but could easily live without.

What’s important to me isn’t so much the technology itself, but how it is and can be employed.  I often find cars and cell phones annoying because they have as many negatives as pluses in my life.  This isn’t a problem with cars and cell phones, but a problem with my relationship to them.  We have talked in class about we as teachers needing to model appropriate use of technology to our students.  After a week of thinking about the role of various technologies in my life, I am realizing that my own use may not be appropriate for my values, and that it may be a good idea for me to spend some more time thinking about how I use the technologies I have access to.  And that, too poses a challenge: How do we decide what is appropriate use?  It is perfectly alright for my brother to get online with his Blackberry and do work while camping.  It’s not ok for me to do that.  How do we decide which of these to model to our students?

A lot of this makes me pretty nervous.  I know that a high school classroom is a highly fluid environment, where a teacher really has to be on her toes in order to be sure she’s doing the best the can to reach as many students as possible.  Having to model appropriate social behavior, monitor emotional well-being, and keep the attention of 30 hormone-infested teens is a lot for any person.  Having to throw in managing all sorts of new technology seems like it could wind up making the job even harder, given how little technology has actually made my life easier thus far.  Although that is it’s promise, it does not always live up to it.  I know it’s early in the program.  I should probably not start panicking yet.  But if I am honest, I have to say that I am really beginning to be anxious as to whether or not I’ll be up for all of this.  It just seems so… complicated.

1 Comment

Tech Encounters – Oct 13th

October 14, 2009 at 11:20 am (All, Google Docs, NeoOffice, Tech Encounters, Tools/Techs)

Today’s technology: Google Docs/NeoOffice

In honor of my ed tech class this quarter, I’ve decided to try something new: taking notes with a word processing program, rather than pencil and paper.  To date I have tried two programs: Google Docs and NeoOffice.  I find that I like both equally well so far, and prefer either one to pencil and paper, for three reasons:

  1. I can type faster than I can write, so I am able to keep up with the discussion more easily.
  2. When discussing a new concept, I can search online and then embed links and images to either revisit later or simply remind me of what I thought we were talking about.
  3. I can be much more flexible with formatting.  For example, if we revisit a topic, I can scroll back up and insert notes so that all of my thoughts on a single topic are in one place.  I can also hyperlink topics together if need be.

These are all very powerful advances.  The one drawback so far is that I cannot quickly sketch, but this is mostly because I have not tried to find or experiment with a drawing program.  As I haven’t really needed to sketch anything, this is only a theoretical issue.  This is definitely something I would encourage my students to use in the classroom, especially if I could help them get access to programs like Geometer’s Sketchpad or Fathom.

Leave a Comment

Tech Encounters – Oct 12th

October 14, 2009 at 11:05 am (All, cell phones, Tech Encounters, Tools/Techs)

Today’s technology: the cell phone.

Along the lines of yesterday’s post, I find myself questioning the usefulness of the cell phone.  I realize that some people think of their cell phones as indispensible.  For example, I have a brother who uses his Blackberry to connect his laptop to the internet when he goes camping. He belongs to that part of the population that agrees with many techie-gadget commercials that tell us we need to be Always On and Always Available.  I am not sure I believe this story.

I think it’s very important to a person’s health that they be able to relax and get real rest on a regular basis.  I think teenagers, whose lives are probably at least as stressful as we adults think our lives are, are especially in need of this.  Having a cell phone and being accessible by others 24/7 seems like it would only add to the level of stress that a teenager would have to deal with.  It would give immediacy to things that aren’t really urgent (as in a late night text,”did you hear what so-and-so-said?”).  It can be difficult to sort these two things out.  Being under constant stress can lead to anxiety and depression, both of which seem to be on the rise lately.

I am not trying to suggest that cell phones are evil.  But I do think that it is important to remember that they are just a tool.  Just because someone could call me at 2am because they are bored, doesn’t mean they should.  Or that I am required to answer the phone.  This speaks to the appropriate use of technology, something that I think with cell phones we as a population are still figuring out (note the issues surrounding texting-while-driving).

As an experiment, I have begun to make use of a new “feature” that my phone has developed: it likes to shut itself off at random intervals.  Rather than trade the phone in for a new model, I have been simply ignoring the phone until I want to make a call.  Often, the phone is off.  I never know how long it’s been off.  I will also leave my phone at home while running errands, or turn the ringer off for an entire weekend.  I have yet to find that I missed anything really important or pressing, but I do find that I feel more at peace.  This may not work for everyone, but I am finding that for me, appropriate use of technology means establishing clear boundaries as to when I will and will not be available to others.

2 Comments

Tech Encounters – Oct 11th

October 14, 2009 at 10:37 am (All, das auto, Tech Encounters, Tools/Techs)

Today’s technology: the automobile.

This may seem to have little application to the classroom, but to me it stand as a good example for how a technology, when it becomes ubiquitous, can alter the structure of our lives.  One hundred years ago, before cars ruled the world, what people considered to be their “home area” was quite a bit smaller than today.  The idea of commuting 30 miles each way to work would have been impossible.  While people still got around quite a bit, it was much less frequent than today, when I might think nothing of hopping in the car to pop over for dinner at a friend’s house 100 miles away.  That cars (and things like buses and high speed trains) are available virtually anywhere means that people have access to a level of freedom they didn’t before.  But there are a couple of interesting things about this that I’ve been thinking about lately.

First, I would assume that the ease with which we can travel would mean that we would be more apt to do it.  As I didn’t live 100 years ago I can’t directly compare, but I noticed during our class discussion last week that it seemed many people had little idea of what their own country was like outside of the 40-50 or so mile radius that makes up the Pacific Northwest’s urban/suburban area.  Even places as close as Yakima and and Walla Walla could be visited in a day, and would help people understand that not even all Washingtonians share the usual Seattle area’s liberal views.  Go some place like Shell, WY or Louisville, KY, and you might as well be in another country.  The values are very different.

Second, owning a car requires a financial commitment, and so in some ways is actually limiting.  Perhaps this is why people travel so little.  Although it’s actually cheaper to drive most places than fly, it still takes time.  It also takes time to work to make enough money to pay for insurance and maintenance, and of course the gas used to drive to that job that enables you to make that money in the first place.  So it seems like owning a car can start you on a cycle that limits as much as it frees people.

I read about a similar cycle in a book called Better Off by Eric Brende.  He lived for a year in an Amish-like community.  Some of the farmers there used horses, some did not.  What he observed was that although the farmers using horses could produce more, they were required to produce more in order to be able to maintain the horses.  In the end, they didn’t really come out ahead.  They really just worked a lot harder to wind up with the same things he had.

I wonder the same thing about technology in general: yes, it sometimes seems like a magical, amazing thing.  But how often does the new technology (which requires at the least an investment of time to learn to use) really add to our lives?  Do we come out ahead?  Do I gain enough from using Twitter, for example, to justify the time I spend on it?  How about facebook or email?  Sometimes I think the answer is no.

2 Comments

Tech Encounters – Oct 10th

October 11, 2009 at 9:53 am (All, Paint, Tech Encounters, Tools/Techs)

I spent much of the day helping a family I know clean their house.  They have been through some rough times lately.  A group of people who know the family (including myself) decided to work together to help them get a kind of fresh start by doing a quick-and-dirty home remodel.  The main technologies I encountered were powerful cleaners and paint.  It’s pretty amazing how doing something as simple as really cleaning a bathroom or giving a bedroom a new coat of paint can change the atmosphere in a place.  The work is not yet completed, and yet the process seems to be lifting spirits already.  Part of this is probably from feeling good about helping someone else, but some of it is from the change itself.  We’re lightening the colors, organizing the mess.  What was dark and chaotic will be light and peaceful.

This family has two children, both of whom are struggling with the difficult times their family has been through in different ways.  The older child, a freshman in high school, is having trouble focusing enough to do his schoolwork and so is beginning to fail classes.  I am hoping that providing him and his family with a safe, clean, peaceful physical environment at home will help ease some of his psychological stress and make focusing at school easier.  I will be curious to see if it actually works.

Leave a Comment

Tech Encounters – Oct 9th

October 10, 2009 at 9:00 am (All, Facebook, Tech Encounters, Tools/Techs)

Today’s technology: facebook games.

Lately I’ve been spending a lot of time playing games on facebook.  They fall into two categories: 1) games that require constant attention for a short period of time, and 2) games that require only occasional attention spread out over longer periods of time.  As I usually have more than one game going at a time, I can provide myself with constant engaging distraction.

These games are for me a kind of escape.  They’re no different than zoning out in front of the TV or curling up with a good romance novel: they probably don’t really add anything to my life, and part of me wonders why I’m “wasting” my time with them.  But with any escape, the idea is to forget something for a little while.

As the games are on facebook, there is still a kind of interaction with others involved.  For example, in one of my games (Cafe World), actual friends of mine are “neighbors,” and they come eat at my cafe regularly.  What I find myself wondering from time to time is: why aren’t we eating together at a real cafe?  I feel like this is something we should be doing instead, but I am not sure that it really is the case.  This is, I think, part of “old person thinking,” where I assume on some level that interactions mediated by something like the internet must be somehow superficial and therefore inferior to “real life.”  In truth I wind up interacting with people through facebook I would rarely get to see or spend time with because they don’t live in my immediate area.

But still, I can’t help but wonder: as connected as young people today are supposed to be, do they miss something by being so involved in these unrealistic online worlds?  Are they learning to read and express body language?  Can they hold a sustained conversation without the disjointed pauses that often accompany online chat?  Although I have been spending more time around teenagers lately, those I know seem to have limited access to electronic technologies as compared to what we’re reading and talking about.  I have the feeling that either my experience is just not broad enough to know whether my concerns are legitimate or not, or technology isn’t as ubiquitous as some people think.

2 Comments

Tech Encounters – Oct 8th

October 9, 2009 at 9:00 am (All, Google Docs, Tech Encounters, Tools/Techs)

After last night’s class discussion, it’s pretty clear that the definition of technology I usually walk around with is pretty broad.  I have a strong background in archaeology and philosophy.  Between the study of ancient people and their use of technology and reading various phenomenologists, pretty much anything that has a use or potential use is a tool, and thus a kind of technology.  I think that this definition of technology actually fits well with the concept of bricolage discussed in the Brown paper.  A key part of phenomenological theory is that while a shoe may not have been made to work as a hammer, if you use it as one that’s what it becomes for you, in that time.  That seems to be central to bricolage and web 2.0.

Given this definition my days are packed with technological encounters.  For this assignment, I will pick one or two significant moments to focus on.

Last night I spent a significant amount of time tutoring a friend of mine in pre-calculus.  As we usually meet at my house, I use a pencil and paper as my “chalkboard” for writing out examples and explaining rules.  This time I tried using Google Docs.  As I am new to this technology, I simply used a blank document and typed out what I wanted to convey.  For a first attempt it went pretty well, but was slow compared to how quickly I can write with a pencil.  I am not used to typing mathematically.  I also found that it was more difficult for me to do things I normally find important, like emphasize part of an equation by circling it.  I think that with more practice I’d develop a new way of doing this.  I could also see that being able to cut, copy, and paste might be very helpful, although I didn’t get much chance to use these features last night due to time constraints.  This method showed enough promise that I am going to continue trying to use it.  I might also look for other programs to see if they might be more conducive to writing mathematically.

Leave a Comment

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.