I have written a post previously about how I feel about Youtube as a curation tool (for those of you who didn't get a chance to read my work, I found Youtube to be distracting and not terribly helpful. I would not recommend it.) This post will be taking a look at some of the content that I have found on Youtube regarding education and technology.
As I mentioned, the videos that I have found the most helpful have been TED talks. My favorite TED talk was by Paul Anderson. Paul Anderson talked about how technology in the classroom can be very useful. However, he pointed out the dangers of relying too much on technology by comparing that type of technology-reliant classroom to how young Spock learns in the Star Trek reboot movie. He reminds us that most students would be bored out of their minds by just watching videos all day and reciting memorized facts. In his experimenting with using more technology in his own classroom, Anderson also found that there is a great danger of neglecting of reading. It is easy to forget how important reading is, but videos and technology cannot replace the benefits that come from reading. I feel that Anderson's views on technology and education address some concerns that I had after reading Disrupting Class. He does not advocate separating students by learning style, but rather gamifying the classroom so that each student can learn at his or her own pace while still being able to work with one another. There was a link in the video description to Paul Anderson's website with more information on the topic.
Raj Dhingra also gave a TED talk about education and technology. He recommends what he calls blended learning, in which teachers function as coaches/tutors rather than the traditional teacher who is in charge of deciding what students learn. This is also called student-centric learning. This philosophy about teaching reminds me of the recommendations made in Disrupting Class. For my thoughts on the problems inherent in this type of system, feel free to take a look at my previous blog post on the topic.
In summary, while I did not find YouTube to be a helpful curation tool overall, I am glad that I used it because I likely would not have found Paul Anderson's philosophy on gamifying his classroom without using Youtube specifically.
Saturday, November 23, 2013
Parenting in a Digital Age
This post is for my teammate Ashley. As I understand it, she has been looking at parenting in a digital age-- specifically how growing up with technology impacts our generation's parenting styles.
I decided to try and find as many useful articles and sources as I could. I know that curating information on topics is frequently what takes the most time when researching, so hopefully this will help you in that phase of your researching.
Here is what I found:
This link: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/parenting-in-digital-age goes to a list of different links that Psychology Today has already curated regarding parenting and technology. I found this article to be especially interesting, as it references a flipped classroom, which is part of what I have been looking at for my project. However, in this article the emphasis is on flipped parenting. The article includes a list of rules that the parents and children came up with together about technology.
I also found a national survey about parenting in the digital age which I only skimmed. However, it looks promising from what I did look at.
This website is entirely devoted to helping parents in a digital age.
This article about iPad Bootcamp for Parents also looks like it might give you some insights on your topic.
I hope some of this helps you! Let me know if you need more help. I would be happy to help find more resources for you!
I decided to try and find as many useful articles and sources as I could. I know that curating information on topics is frequently what takes the most time when researching, so hopefully this will help you in that phase of your researching.
Here is what I found:
This link: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/parenting-in-digital-age goes to a list of different links that Psychology Today has already curated regarding parenting and technology. I found this article to be especially interesting, as it references a flipped classroom, which is part of what I have been looking at for my project. However, in this article the emphasis is on flipped parenting. The article includes a list of rules that the parents and children came up with together about technology.
I also found a national survey about parenting in the digital age which I only skimmed. However, it looks promising from what I did look at.
This website is entirely devoted to helping parents in a digital age.
This article about iPad Bootcamp for Parents also looks like it might give you some insights on your topic.
I hope some of this helps you! Let me know if you need more help. I would be happy to help find more resources for you!
Thursday, November 21, 2013
Education Insights with James Paul Gee
My teammate +Cheri has been mulling over the idea of how education and digital tools interact, but she's had trouble honing in on a specific idea. I ran into a lot of ideas tied to education in the book that I read, "What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy" by James Paul Gee, which I have reviewed briefly in previous posts. This is a great opportunity to also go into more depth about the material in the book. I'll keep my post to a few specific points.
The cool think about JPG's point of view is that his solution is not necessarily to incorporate games in the classroom, but rather to take concepts that are inherent in video games that facilitate learning and find ways to apply them to the classroom.
A. Video games challenge gamers.
This is so important to learning. On page 70 of his book, JPG says,
B. The value of taking on new identities
Video games allow players to take on new identities. As players experience more games, they are put in the shoes of a myriad of characters. In Pikmin, the player must act and think as though she is in the shoes of a spaceman who is trying to repair a ship before his air supply runs out. She must be able to experiment with her environment and discover the best ways to find the ship pieces before her 30 days are up. In Sonic Adventure, the player is called upon to identify with the "heroes" of the game - Sonic, the main character and his friends - as well as the "villains" of the game - Dr. Robotnik and his teammates.
While taking on the role of the "villain", a player must reconcile the idea of "bad guy as good guy". While we as players may recognize that the villains' aim to blow a hole in the earth is not very moral, we find ways to identify with their situation and accept their values as our values. Other games take on very complex moral arguments, like the morality of killing in survival situations, which is presented in a chillingly realistic way in The Last of Us. +Paul Bills has posted videos discussing the potential value of experiencing violence in this game.
JPG points out that in the classroom, a lot of students come in as "damaged" learners. They have come to accept identities that leave them disadvantaged in the classroom. These are identities like "slow reader," "bad at math," "doesn't like school," and so forth. In order to "repair" these "damaged" learners, JPG says that 3 things must happen.
1. The learner must be enticed to try, even if the learner has a good reason to be afraid.
So if we have a student who is "bad at math", perhaps he has taken on this identity because of poor math scores in the past or publicly showing his poor skills by giving wrong answers in class.
2. The learner must be enticed to put in lots of effort, even if he has little motivation to do so.
If the learner gets a reward for no work, no progress has been made.
3. The learner must achieve some level of success when this effort is expended.
If the learner works really hard and gets no reward, progress is unlikely. For example, if you publish a book that nobody buys, you are likely to set it aside for a few years.
C. Precursor Domains
If you figured out how to make word art in Windows '95 like the rest of us in elementary school (the rest of my generation, to be more exact) you are probably more likely to understand text manipulation in a variety of image programs like MS Paint, Adobe Photoshop, and a variety of word processors that have followed Word.
In video games, if you have played one first person shooter, you are likely to pick up your second first person shooter a little faster. You realize that there is probably a button that will switch your weapons, one that will fire the weapon, and the dots in the corner of the screen are part of a map that shows yourself in relation to your enemies and your environment.
In the classroom, you will have an easier time understanding a new concept if you can link the experience to something you have previously mastered.
Textbooks in the classroom will make no sense if you have no experience in the "world" of this textbook, just like it doesn't make sense to read a video game manual or walkthrough if you have never played the game.
D. Psychosocial Moratoriums
This is a fancy name for a place where you can learn and real world risks are lowered. If you die in a video game, you can go back to a save point and try again.
In the classroom, if you get a wrong answer on a test it goes on your grade card for your parents to see. JPG suggests that learning could be easier if the risks of a wrong answer are lowered.
James Paul Gee's book is free at the HBLL and browsing through it could definitely lead to some topics that spark your interest and help you narrow your topic, Cheri. You could also search for people who are writing similar books or speaking at the same conferences where he's been speaking (he seems to do plenty of lectures). On my preview post about JPG's book I found a related author Keith Devlin, and others in the class have shared about Ian Bogost, who might have good insight.
There's a lot of weird stuff you can teach people to do well with video game principles! Why not, then, normal stuff like math and science? (Which could also be considered weird but let's not get into that discussion.)
The cool think about JPG's point of view is that his solution is not necessarily to incorporate games in the classroom, but rather to take concepts that are inherent in video games that facilitate learning and find ways to apply them to the classroom.
A. Video games challenge gamers.
This is so important to learning. On page 70 of his book, JPG says,
"Sadly in school, many so-called advantaged learners rarely get to operate at the edge of their regime of competence as they coast along in a cirriculum that makes few real demands on them."I could not agree more, and this goes right along with an issue that Cheri brought up in her own video review - the issue of possibly separating the "good" learners from the "bad" learners in an effort to challenge them more appropriately. JPG points out that video games are designed to be challenging, and I've read before in video game design books (like Bob Bates' "Game Design: The Art and Business of Creating Games) that a video game must be challenging to be interesting or the player will be bored. If it's too hard, it will be frustrating and the player will give up. Video games are inherently designed to give us the right level of challenge for our skill level and to reward us as we overcome obstacles, then continue giving us more challenges. You can't perfect a skill in a game and coast through the rest of the game with that skill anymore. JPG points out strategies he tried to keep using in first person shooter games he was trying to beat and how he realized through different trials and bosses that he needed to adapt and create new strategies to overcome tougher obstacles. If a student realizes that he can figure out what assigned reading is about from the first 15 minutes of discussion in class and use that to do well on tests and in the classroom, why would he ever pick up the assigned book? A lot of skilled students realize that they don't need to learn the material to "win" at class. They need to learn the teacher. (Not JPG's point, but something I'm hypothesizing right now. I had a religion teacher a couple semesters ago and I quickly learned that I didn't need to spend more time with scripture to ace his tests. I needed to understand the points he highlighted in class because he had very subjective views about the scriptures and that came through in his tests. There are "cheats" that apply to most teachers. Example: if you let them know ahead of time that you have a conflict, you are more likely to work it out and save your grade. If you turn in an assignment late with no explanation, it will get marked more harshly.)
B. The value of taking on new identities
Video games allow players to take on new identities. As players experience more games, they are put in the shoes of a myriad of characters. In Pikmin, the player must act and think as though she is in the shoes of a spaceman who is trying to repair a ship before his air supply runs out. She must be able to experiment with her environment and discover the best ways to find the ship pieces before her 30 days are up. In Sonic Adventure, the player is called upon to identify with the "heroes" of the game - Sonic, the main character and his friends - as well as the "villains" of the game - Dr. Robotnik and his teammates.
While taking on the role of the "villain", a player must reconcile the idea of "bad guy as good guy". While we as players may recognize that the villains' aim to blow a hole in the earth is not very moral, we find ways to identify with their situation and accept their values as our values. Other games take on very complex moral arguments, like the morality of killing in survival situations, which is presented in a chillingly realistic way in The Last of Us. +Paul Bills has posted videos discussing the potential value of experiencing violence in this game.
JPG points out that in the classroom, a lot of students come in as "damaged" learners. They have come to accept identities that leave them disadvantaged in the classroom. These are identities like "slow reader," "bad at math," "doesn't like school," and so forth. In order to "repair" these "damaged" learners, JPG says that 3 things must happen.
1. The learner must be enticed to try, even if the learner has a good reason to be afraid.
So if we have a student who is "bad at math", perhaps he has taken on this identity because of poor math scores in the past or publicly showing his poor skills by giving wrong answers in class.
2. The learner must be enticed to put in lots of effort, even if he has little motivation to do so.
If the learner gets a reward for no work, no progress has been made.
3. The learner must achieve some level of success when this effort is expended.
If the learner works really hard and gets no reward, progress is unlikely. For example, if you publish a book that nobody buys, you are likely to set it aside for a few years.
C. Precursor Domains
If you figured out how to make word art in Windows '95 like the rest of us in elementary school (the rest of my generation, to be more exact) you are probably more likely to understand text manipulation in a variety of image programs like MS Paint, Adobe Photoshop, and a variety of word processors that have followed Word.
In video games, if you have played one first person shooter, you are likely to pick up your second first person shooter a little faster. You realize that there is probably a button that will switch your weapons, one that will fire the weapon, and the dots in the corner of the screen are part of a map that shows yourself in relation to your enemies and your environment.
In the classroom, you will have an easier time understanding a new concept if you can link the experience to something you have previously mastered.
Textbooks in the classroom will make no sense if you have no experience in the "world" of this textbook, just like it doesn't make sense to read a video game manual or walkthrough if you have never played the game.
D. Psychosocial Moratoriums
This is a fancy name for a place where you can learn and real world risks are lowered. If you die in a video game, you can go back to a save point and try again.
In the classroom, if you get a wrong answer on a test it goes on your grade card for your parents to see. JPG suggests that learning could be easier if the risks of a wrong answer are lowered.
James Paul Gee's book is free at the HBLL and browsing through it could definitely lead to some topics that spark your interest and help you narrow your topic, Cheri. You could also search for people who are writing similar books or speaking at the same conferences where he's been speaking (he seems to do plenty of lectures). On my preview post about JPG's book I found a related author Keith Devlin, and others in the class have shared about Ian Bogost, who might have good insight.
There's a lot of weird stuff you can teach people to do well with video game principles! Why not, then, normal stuff like math and science? (Which could also be considered weird but let's not get into that discussion.)
Tuesday, November 19, 2013
Moby Dick Cetology-- Images
For my second look at Moby Dick, I decided to focus on everyone's favorite chapter-- the cetology chapter! I remember when I first read that chapter fighting the urge to go look up images of every whale mentioned. When I found out we were looking at Moby Dick through the lens of technology, I thought I would see what the benefit was of seeing images of each different type of whale.
My original plan was to link to pictures rather than copying and pasting images into the text. However, I quickly found that so many words were boring to look at. I started copying and pasting. That was more helpful in that the pictures were right in front of me. It also held my interest better.
However, I was curious to see what the effect was to get rid of all of Melville's descriptions and let the pictures actually replace the words. I found that looking at images of each type of whale is just as informative for me personally as reading Melville's descriptions. In fact, I found that seeing pictures helps me to focus a little bit better than the pages of words that all ran together in my mind.
What is your experience as you take a look at the cetology chapter with images? Do the images change the meaning of the chapter for you?
Chapter 32: Cetology
First: According to magnitude I divide the whales into three primary BOOKS (subdivisible into CHAPTERS), and these shall comprehend them all, both small and large. I. THE FOLIO WHALE; II. the OCTAVO WHALE; III. the DUODECIMO WHALE. As the type of the FOLIO I present the SPERM WHALE; of the OCTAVO, the GRAMPUS; of the DUODECIMO, the PORPOISE. FOLIOS. Among these I here include the following chapters:--I. The SPERM WHALE; II. the RIGHT WHALE; III. the FIN-BACK WHALE; IV. the HUMP-BACKED WHALE; V. the RAZOR-BACK WHALE; VI. the SULPHUR-BOTTOM WHALE. BOOK I. (FOLIO), CHAPTER I. (SPERM WHALE).
BOOK I. (FOLIO), CHAPTER II. (RIGHT WHALE).
BOOK I. (FOLIO), CHAPTER III. (FIN-BACK).
BOOK I. (FOLIO) CHAPTER IV. (HUMP-BACK).
BOOK I. (FOLIO), CHAPTER V. (RAZOR-BACK).
BOOK I. (FOLIO), CHAPTER VI. (SULPHUR-BOTTOM).
Thus ends BOOK I. (FOLIO), and now begins BOOK II. (OCTAVO). OCTAVOES.*--These embrace the whales of middling magnitude, among which present may be numbered:--I., the GRAMPUS; II., the BLACK FISH; III., the NARWHALE; IV., the THRASHER; V., the KILLER. *Why this book of whales is not denominated the Quarto is very plain. Because, while the whales of this order, though smaller than those of the former order, nevertheless retain a proportionate likeness to them in figure, yet the bookbinder's Quarto volume in its dimensioned form does not preserve the shape of the Folio volume, but the Octavo volume does. BOOK II. (OCTAVO), CHAPTER I. (GRAMPUS).
BOOK II. (OCTAVO), CHAPTER II. (BLACK FISH).
BOOK II. (OCTAVO), CHAPTER III. (NARWHALE), that is, NOSTRIL WHALE.
BOOK II. (OCTAVO), CHAPTER IV. (KILLER).
BOOK II. (OCTAVO), CHAPTER V. (THRASHER).
No images found.
Thus ends BOOK II. (OCTAVO), and begins BOOK III. (DUODECIMO). DUODECIMOES.--These include the smaller whales. I. The Huzza Porpoise. II. The Algerine Porpoise. III. The Mealy-mouthed Porpoise. BOOK III. (DUODECIMO), CHAPTER 1. (HUZZA PORPOISE).
BOOK III. (DUODECIMO), CHAPTER II. (ALGERINE PORPOISE).--A pirate. Very savage. He is only found, I think, in the Pacific. He is somewhat larger than the Huzza Porpoise, but much of the same general make. Provoke him, and he will buckle to a shark. I have lowered for him many times, but never yet saw him captured. BOOK III. (DUODECIMO), CHAPTER III. (MEALY-MOUTHED PORPOISE).
Beyond the DUODECIMO, this system does not proceed, inasmuch as the Porpoise is the smallest of the whales. Above, you have all the Leviathans of note. But there are a rabble of uncertain, fugitive, half-fabulous whales, which, as an American whaleman, I know by reputation, but not personally. I shall enumerate them by their fore-castle appellations; for possibly such a list may be valuable to future investigators, who may complete what I have here but begun. If any of the following whales, shall hereafter be caught and marked, then he can readily be incorporated into this System, according to his Folio, Octavo, or Duodecimo magnitude:--The Bottle-Nose Whale; the Junk Whale; the Pudding-Headed Whale; the Cape Whale; the Leading Whale; the Cannon Whale; the Scragg Whale; the Coppered Whale; the Elephant Whale; the Iceberg Whale; the Quog Whale; the Blue Whale; etc. From Icelandic, Dutch, and old English authorities, there might be quoted other lists of uncertain whales, blessed with all manner of uncouth names. But I omit them as altogether obsolete; and can hardly help suspecting them for mere sounds, full of Leviathanism, but signifying nothing. Finally: It was stated at the outset, that this system would not be here, and at once, perfected. You cannot but plainly see that I have kept my word. But I now leave my cetological System standing thus unfinished, even as the great Cathedral of Cologne was left, with the crane still standing upon the top of the uncompleted tower. For small erections may be finished by their first architects; grand ones, true ones, ever leave the copestone to posterity. God keep me from ever completing anything. This whole book is but a draught--nay, but the draught of a draught. Oh, Time, Strength, Cash, and Patience!
(The text was taken from the Project Gutenburg electronic text)
Monday, November 18, 2013
A Dada Analysis of Moby Dick
In my statistics class we're learning about the importance of true randomization in data analysis. While this is not a scientific analysis, I really liked the idea of true, computer generated randomization in my analysis. I started out a little too ambitious -
Step 1, pick 5 random chapters:
19 99 29 50 15
Step 2, get word count for chapter and then randomly select about a paragraph's worth of words from that chapter. I decided 100 words is a good paragraph. Does not include chapter title.
Chapter 19 - 1200 words:
399 430 578 709 1045
837 407 170 23 315
364 828 359 1190 403
135 550 136 806 838
682 445 384 455 1098
197 988 736 923 131
357 331 638 1007 824
781 452 858 929 366
485 1054 1174 191 450
767 221 1026 1146 276
209 208 1066 644 605
444 815 640 428 391
544 526 360 544 720
934 796 406 744 817
141 699 305 1187 1080
1032 884 1039 980 1046
353 691 104 140 969
1023 544 639 582 323
676 588 675 364 477
528 495 346 726 649
Chapter 99 - 2407 words:
22 1011 2305 267 813
1765 469 1843 2313 1731
1967 862 2200 1164 1943
2131 1312 937 983 1351
384 912 964 1831 1165
1328 955 306 492 2116
2038 2212 81 50 1400
1252 2274 2055 764 27
1950 189 679 34 917
1353 1488 138 1262 2082
844 984 2102 615 2014
2059 1551 304 404 2237
217 1498 679 1926 934
1001 449 2353 463 1871
1192 773 618 557 1387
933 1407 2249 1318 415
2314 1570 181 1757 14
38 236 196 1423 958
63 1845 124 1276 1234
2282 1938 1198 1483 1027
Realization: There's no way of finding the 2305th word in the chapter that is not time consuming, but I did see that my word count takes stats for "keyword density" (words that occur most frequently). New idea.
Step 1: I will select more chapters and take the 10 most dense keywords. Reselect random chapters but this time take 10. I select among numbers 1-137 to account for etymology and the epilogue, which I have assigned as 136 and 137 respectively. That will leave us with 100 words (10 from 10 chapters). Again, excluding chapter numbers and titles from selections.
42 4 37 72 3 77 12 6 15 117
Chapter 42:
white 46 (19%)
whiteness 26 (11%)
yet 14 (6%)
nor 11 (5%)
why 11 (5%)
things 10 (4%)
upon 10 (4%)
her 10 (4%)
man 9 (4%)
same 9 (4%)
Chapter 4:
me 19 (14%)
queequeg 13 (10%)
up 12 (9%)
arm 9 (7%)
bed 9 (7%)
over 8 (6%)
very 7 (5%)
could 6 (4%)
room 6 (4%)
lay 6 (4%)
Chapter 37:
ye 14 (20%)
me 12 (17%)
swerve 5 (7%)
iron 4 (6%)
will 3 (4%)
come 3 (4%)
ahab 2 (3%)
er 2 (3%)
ever 2 (3%)
like 2 (3%)
Chapter 72:
queequeg 16 (10%)
ginger 15 (10%)
whale 13 (8%)
poor 9 (6%)
now 8 (5%)
upon 7 (5%)
monkey 7 (5%)
rope 7 (5%)
hands 6 (4%)
harpooneer 6 (4%)
Chapter 3:
me 46 (8%)
harpooneer 35 (6%)
bed 31 (6%)
landlord 28 (5%)
up 24 (4%)
now 24 (4%)
room 20 (4%)
thought 18 (3%)
head 18 (3%)
said 18 (3%)
Chapter77:
whale 11 (15%)
tun 7 (10%)
sperm 6 (8%)
heidelburgh 5 (7%)
case 4 (5%)
head 4 (5%)
forming 4 (5%)
know 3 (4%)
upper 3 (4%)
end 3 (4%)
Chapter 12:
queequeg 10 (12%)
father 5 (6%)
ship 5 (6%)
me 5 (6%)
among 4 (5%)
last 4 (5%)
might 4 (5%)
christians 4 (5%)
old 4 (5%)
now 4 (5%)
Chapter 6:
new 11 (13%)
bedford 9 (11%)
will 8 (10%)
town 6 (7%)
upon 5 (6%)
green 5 (6%)
see 5 (6%)
like 5 (6%)
streets 4 (5%)
country 4 (5%)
Chapter 15:
hussey 12 (9%)
us 10 (8%)
clam 10 (8%)
queequeg 9 (7%)
mrs 9 (7%)
chowder 8 (6%)
cod 7 (5%)
little 6 (5%)
supper 6 (5%)
pots 6 (5%)
Chapter 117:
her 12 (13%)
ship 9 (9%)
come 7 (7%)
down 6 (6%)
two 6 (6%)
filled 6 (6%)
ahab 5 (5%)
bachelor 5 (5%)
men 4 (4%)
whale 4 (4%)
Step 4: I want make this a little more fun. Make every 5th word bigger.
Step 5: Take the words I've found and arrange them arbitrarily.
I printed out my words and placed them over top of a seagull picture I pulled from the top of my stack of magazine stuff I have in a drawer. All I had for adhesive was glitter glue. At first I was tempted to remove certain words like hussey and sperm. I'm used to censoring myself in a classroom environment, but doing so is not necessary and would take away from the work. I also thought of limiting myself to a small selection of the words, but I instead made it a goal to use every word. This is the result.
To me, this is a lot more meaningful than something I might have made with a word cloud, as cool as those are. What do we get from this?
When I read it, I feel like I am having soup on a rainy day.
Step 1, pick 5 random chapters:
19 99 29 50 15
Step 2, get word count for chapter and then randomly select about a paragraph's worth of words from that chapter. I decided 100 words is a good paragraph. Does not include chapter title.
Chapter 19 - 1200 words:
399 430 578 709 1045
837 407 170 23 315
364 828 359 1190 403
135 550 136 806 838
682 445 384 455 1098
197 988 736 923 131
357 331 638 1007 824
781 452 858 929 366
485 1054 1174 191 450
767 221 1026 1146 276
209 208 1066 644 605
444 815 640 428 391
544 526 360 544 720
934 796 406 744 817
141 699 305 1187 1080
1032 884 1039 980 1046
353 691 104 140 969
1023 544 639 582 323
676 588 675 364 477
528 495 346 726 649
Chapter 99 - 2407 words:
22 1011 2305 267 813
1765 469 1843 2313 1731
1967 862 2200 1164 1943
2131 1312 937 983 1351
384 912 964 1831 1165
1328 955 306 492 2116
2038 2212 81 50 1400
1252 2274 2055 764 27
1950 189 679 34 917
1353 1488 138 1262 2082
844 984 2102 615 2014
2059 1551 304 404 2237
217 1498 679 1926 934
1001 449 2353 463 1871
1192 773 618 557 1387
933 1407 2249 1318 415
2314 1570 181 1757 14
38 236 196 1423 958
63 1845 124 1276 1234
2282 1938 1198 1483 1027
Realization: There's no way of finding the 2305th word in the chapter that is not time consuming, but I did see that my word count takes stats for "keyword density" (words that occur most frequently). New idea.
Step 1: I will select more chapters and take the 10 most dense keywords. Reselect random chapters but this time take 10. I select among numbers 1-137 to account for etymology and the epilogue, which I have assigned as 136 and 137 respectively. That will leave us with 100 words (10 from 10 chapters). Again, excluding chapter numbers and titles from selections.
42 4 37 72 3 77 12 6 15 117
Chapter 42:
white 46 (19%)
whiteness 26 (11%)
yet 14 (6%)
nor 11 (5%)
why 11 (5%)
things 10 (4%)
upon 10 (4%)
her 10 (4%)
man 9 (4%)
same 9 (4%)
Chapter 4:
me 19 (14%)
queequeg 13 (10%)
up 12 (9%)
arm 9 (7%)
bed 9 (7%)
over 8 (6%)
very 7 (5%)
could 6 (4%)
room 6 (4%)
lay 6 (4%)
Chapter 37:
ye 14 (20%)
me 12 (17%)
swerve 5 (7%)
iron 4 (6%)
will 3 (4%)
come 3 (4%)
ahab 2 (3%)
er 2 (3%)
ever 2 (3%)
like 2 (3%)
Chapter 72:
queequeg 16 (10%)
ginger 15 (10%)
whale 13 (8%)
poor 9 (6%)
now 8 (5%)
upon 7 (5%)
monkey 7 (5%)
rope 7 (5%)
hands 6 (4%)
harpooneer 6 (4%)
Chapter 3:
me 46 (8%)
harpooneer 35 (6%)
bed 31 (6%)
landlord 28 (5%)
up 24 (4%)
now 24 (4%)
room 20 (4%)
thought 18 (3%)
head 18 (3%)
said 18 (3%)
Chapter77:
whale 11 (15%)
tun 7 (10%)
sperm 6 (8%)
heidelburgh 5 (7%)
case 4 (5%)
head 4 (5%)
forming 4 (5%)
know 3 (4%)
upper 3 (4%)
end 3 (4%)
Chapter 12:
queequeg 10 (12%)
father 5 (6%)
ship 5 (6%)
me 5 (6%)
among 4 (5%)
last 4 (5%)
might 4 (5%)
christians 4 (5%)
old 4 (5%)
now 4 (5%)
Chapter 6:
new 11 (13%)
bedford 9 (11%)
will 8 (10%)
town 6 (7%)
upon 5 (6%)
green 5 (6%)
see 5 (6%)
like 5 (6%)
streets 4 (5%)
country 4 (5%)
Chapter 15:
hussey 12 (9%)
us 10 (8%)
clam 10 (8%)
queequeg 9 (7%)
mrs 9 (7%)
chowder 8 (6%)
cod 7 (5%)
little 6 (5%)
supper 6 (5%)
pots 6 (5%)
Chapter 117:
her 12 (13%)
ship 9 (9%)
come 7 (7%)
down 6 (6%)
two 6 (6%)
filled 6 (6%)
ahab 5 (5%)
bachelor 5 (5%)
men 4 (4%)
whale 4 (4%)
Step 4: I want make this a little more fun. Make every 5th word bigger.
Step 5: Take the words I've found and arrange them arbitrarily.
I printed out my words and placed them over top of a seagull picture I pulled from the top of my stack of magazine stuff I have in a drawer. All I had for adhesive was glitter glue. At first I was tempted to remove certain words like hussey and sperm. I'm used to censoring myself in a classroom environment, but doing so is not necessary and would take away from the work. I also thought of limiting myself to a small selection of the words, but I instead made it a goal to use every word. This is the result.
 |
To me, this is a lot more meaningful than something I might have made with a word cloud, as cool as those are. What do we get from this?
When I read it, I feel like I am having soup on a rainy day.
Wednesday, November 13, 2013
Ishmael's Precursor Domains in the Mercantile World
During our discussion in class today I realized that there's a very important quality in James Paul Gee's Video Games and Literacy book that I haven't much explored: adapting past experience to new experience. Being able to change with what's going on around you.
Why is that important in our world today? It is vital because everything around us is changing so quickly and so constantly.
James Paul Gee points out that video games provide environments that are conducive to learning and that we can learn to operate within a self-contained universe fairly quickly because of the way games are designed. They provide what he calls a "psychosocial moratorium", which means that real world risks are lowered. You're more apt to be adventurous and heroic if you can return to a save point when you die. The games also provide tutorials as you go along to understand the "semiotic domian", or self-contained world. (The world of basketball, with its own lexicon and rule system is an example he gives of a semiotic domain. The world of a video game could be considered one as well.) He argues that when one can master a "precursor domain" it makes it much easier to learn a new domain. He points out that people who have played shooting games who have never handled real guns before can understand and use them better the first time than people who have had no similar experiences in shooting. If you've mastered the current social networking site, it will take you little time to upload a photo compared to the time it takes a newcomer to understand what all the buttons and links do.
One of the important things about making video games useful is the ability to translate knowledge from one place to another. As you get to playing a lot of first-person shooter games, you come to expect, as you pick up a new game, which buttons will do what. There is usually a map in some corner to help you navigate, a certain button will fire your weapon, another button will change between weapons, etc. That's great for moving from game to game. What about moving from games to real life? I personally was able to translate my experience hooking up video game A/V equipment to camera equipment, which is very similar. I also knew basic things about software that helped me learn video editing with just a day of toying around with the program. With this knowledge and no past experience or anything impressive on my resume, I got a job shooting and editing video.
As JPG points out in his book, translation of knowledge isn't restricted to games. He gives the example (not scientific. don't dwell on it like I did) of the first cavepeople. Suppose the encounter a tiger for the first time. They figure out very quickly that tigers are dangerous and should be avoided. Suppose those same cavepeople encounter a lion. If they cannot translate the tiger experience to another jungle cat, they're dead. To put this in real life perspective I would add that if we cannot translate our computer or video game experiences to the real or working world, we will be at a disadvantage compared to those who are more capable of seeing the similarities from experience to experience.
Ishmael, at the beginning of the book, is new to the whaling business. If Ishmael had not been able to translate his experiences working on a merchant ship to the workings of a whaling ship, he would have been useless on this whaling voyage.
A bigger point I wanted to get to is the idea that we are all like Ishmael and must face the working world with whatever past experiences we have. If we want to go on adventures - even the adventure of paying our bills from day to day - we usually have to ally ourselves with a bigger entity. For Ishmael this is the whaling ship. He must accept very little pay for what he does because he is not individually very valuable to the company. He is not in charge of what the company is going to do. He is not in charge of what he makes. Ishmael is in charge of what is inside his head and little else.
At the end of the story, that is still what Ishmael has - what is inside his head. (Which might be PTSD.) His invincible whaling company with the big shot Ahab CEO has been crushed by a larger entity. That is, a large white whale. In fact, this whale has destroyed the rest of the crew and the ship as well.
Suppose Ishmael's whaling ship was Google. Suppose he had been working on this ship for a good couple of decades and to his dismay he finds himself shipless because something bigger has crushed it. Is Ishmael now useless because his company is gone? No, because he still has the capacity to move into another similar company. He still has experiences he can translate. Even if that means going from designing software for phones to software for the jet packs we will all have in the future, he can draw comparisons and still be useful if he knows how to adapt. If you become a big star in the blogging world and suddenly blogs are yesterday's news, you'd better believe adaptation is the key to survival. You could cling to old ways and try to shepherd people back to your world in small numbers, but to thrive you would need to figure out the new tools and change.
Right now I'm working at an insurance company and I'm doing a job that they have told us outright will be done by computers in the near future. If I was simply doing a minimal amount of work and not really learning about the insurance world, I might be very scared for my future. However, since I know there are other tasks needed to be done at this company I could easily move into - filing taxes, binding policies, renewals, etc. - because at my current position I'm not just entering data, but trying to understand what the data stands for and why it's important. So even though my little policy typing boat may be sinking, there are other boats around I can jump to. Maybe Ishmael joined the Rachel and helped whale there.
So it might sound silly to compare video game experiences to real life, but there is some truth to the way virtual worlds are constructed. That's why the Sims need to eat and sleep in order to go to school and work, just like you!
Why is that important in our world today? It is vital because everything around us is changing so quickly and so constantly.
James Paul Gee points out that video games provide environments that are conducive to learning and that we can learn to operate within a self-contained universe fairly quickly because of the way games are designed. They provide what he calls a "psychosocial moratorium", which means that real world risks are lowered. You're more apt to be adventurous and heroic if you can return to a save point when you die. The games also provide tutorials as you go along to understand the "semiotic domian", or self-contained world. (The world of basketball, with its own lexicon and rule system is an example he gives of a semiotic domain. The world of a video game could be considered one as well.) He argues that when one can master a "precursor domain" it makes it much easier to learn a new domain. He points out that people who have played shooting games who have never handled real guns before can understand and use them better the first time than people who have had no similar experiences in shooting. If you've mastered the current social networking site, it will take you little time to upload a photo compared to the time it takes a newcomer to understand what all the buttons and links do.
One of the important things about making video games useful is the ability to translate knowledge from one place to another. As you get to playing a lot of first-person shooter games, you come to expect, as you pick up a new game, which buttons will do what. There is usually a map in some corner to help you navigate, a certain button will fire your weapon, another button will change between weapons, etc. That's great for moving from game to game. What about moving from games to real life? I personally was able to translate my experience hooking up video game A/V equipment to camera equipment, which is very similar. I also knew basic things about software that helped me learn video editing with just a day of toying around with the program. With this knowledge and no past experience or anything impressive on my resume, I got a job shooting and editing video.
As JPG points out in his book, translation of knowledge isn't restricted to games. He gives the example (not scientific. don't dwell on it like I did) of the first cavepeople. Suppose the encounter a tiger for the first time. They figure out very quickly that tigers are dangerous and should be avoided. Suppose those same cavepeople encounter a lion. If they cannot translate the tiger experience to another jungle cat, they're dead. To put this in real life perspective I would add that if we cannot translate our computer or video game experiences to the real or working world, we will be at a disadvantage compared to those who are more capable of seeing the similarities from experience to experience.
Ishmael, at the beginning of the book, is new to the whaling business. If Ishmael had not been able to translate his experiences working on a merchant ship to the workings of a whaling ship, he would have been useless on this whaling voyage.
A bigger point I wanted to get to is the idea that we are all like Ishmael and must face the working world with whatever past experiences we have. If we want to go on adventures - even the adventure of paying our bills from day to day - we usually have to ally ourselves with a bigger entity. For Ishmael this is the whaling ship. He must accept very little pay for what he does because he is not individually very valuable to the company. He is not in charge of what the company is going to do. He is not in charge of what he makes. Ishmael is in charge of what is inside his head and little else.
At the end of the story, that is still what Ishmael has - what is inside his head. (Which might be PTSD.) His invincible whaling company with the big shot Ahab CEO has been crushed by a larger entity. That is, a large white whale. In fact, this whale has destroyed the rest of the crew and the ship as well.
Suppose Ishmael's whaling ship was Google. Suppose he had been working on this ship for a good couple of decades and to his dismay he finds himself shipless because something bigger has crushed it. Is Ishmael now useless because his company is gone? No, because he still has the capacity to move into another similar company. He still has experiences he can translate. Even if that means going from designing software for phones to software for the jet packs we will all have in the future, he can draw comparisons and still be useful if he knows how to adapt. If you become a big star in the blogging world and suddenly blogs are yesterday's news, you'd better believe adaptation is the key to survival. You could cling to old ways and try to shepherd people back to your world in small numbers, but to thrive you would need to figure out the new tools and change.
Right now I'm working at an insurance company and I'm doing a job that they have told us outright will be done by computers in the near future. If I was simply doing a minimal amount of work and not really learning about the insurance world, I might be very scared for my future. However, since I know there are other tasks needed to be done at this company I could easily move into - filing taxes, binding policies, renewals, etc. - because at my current position I'm not just entering data, but trying to understand what the data stands for and why it's important. So even though my little policy typing boat may be sinking, there are other boats around I can jump to. Maybe Ishmael joined the Rachel and helped whale there.
So it might sound silly to compare video game experiences to real life, but there is some truth to the way virtual worlds are constructed. That's why the Sims need to eat and sleep in order to go to school and work, just like you!
Friday, November 8, 2013
Video Book Review: JPG's "What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy
I almost want to make a 30 minute version with all of my opinions and a deep discussion. In the end, I also really like this.
Except for the towel in the corner. But I didn't want to do another take.
Maybe I'll get some discussion on YouTube for more social proof! :D
Wednesday, November 6, 2013
Video Review of Disrupting Class
I just finished my video review of Disrupting Class! Here's the video itself: (this was the best out of the possible images, unfortunately :))
This was my first time posting a video to YouTube. I feel like I've just passed through a rite of passage. I was amazed at how easy it was to do. I simply googled "how to record a video using your webcam" and came across an article with step-by-step instructions that were very easy to follow. I recorded a couple of different versions of my review until I had one that I was satisfied with, then uploaded it to YouTube.
My review focuses on the main problem that I saw in the book (which I referred to in my last post) of segregating students based on their background and learning styles. However, all problems aside, I do think that Disrupting Class is a worthwhile read for anyone who is interested in ideas of how to change our current education system.
Tuesday, November 5, 2013
Review of Disrupting Class
I just finished my Goodreads review of Disrupting Class! You can read my full review here.
In short, I agree that the authors make some good arguments for how technology and disruptive innovation can improve our schools. I believe there is a lot of room for improvement. However, many of their specific suggestions are problematic. An example that I did not list in my review is the authors' suggestion that, as we incorporate technology into our education system, teachers' roles will shift into more of a tutoring role and we will be able to assign more students per teacher. To me, this idea seems to be relying on technology to do the majority of the educating, while teachers play a supporting role. I believe that the relationship should be more balanced, with teachers still playing a significant role in teaching. We should definitely use technology as a tool. However, I do not believe it should replace teachers as the primary method of educating students.
If you are interested in learning more, I would recommend this book. While I do not agree with everything the authors propose, I believe that Disrupting Class is still worth reading in that it points out some flaws in our current system and suggests some methods to for our education systems to improve. This is a good book to get you thinking about relevant issues in education.
In short, I agree that the authors make some good arguments for how technology and disruptive innovation can improve our schools. I believe there is a lot of room for improvement. However, many of their specific suggestions are problematic. An example that I did not list in my review is the authors' suggestion that, as we incorporate technology into our education system, teachers' roles will shift into more of a tutoring role and we will be able to assign more students per teacher. To me, this idea seems to be relying on technology to do the majority of the educating, while teachers play a supporting role. I believe that the relationship should be more balanced, with teachers still playing a significant role in teaching. We should definitely use technology as a tool. However, I do not believe it should replace teachers as the primary method of educating students.
If you are interested in learning more, I would recommend this book. While I do not agree with everything the authors propose, I believe that Disrupting Class is still worth reading in that it points out some flaws in our current system and suggests some methods to for our education systems to improve. This is a good book to get you thinking about relevant issues in education.
Monday, November 4, 2013
Review! JPG's What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy
I really like abbreviating James Paul Gee's name. I could just call him "Gee", but that is not as fun. I was trying to keep my review short and simple but I had a lot to say about the book! Especially trying to answer questions posed by our professor. So here is my Goodreads review.
The upshot:
1. James Paul Gee explains to us why video games are not "a waste of time"
2. He does this through his personal experiences with video games. You can tell he's played a lot because he uses examples over several genres and consoles.
3. He relates these learning experiences to difficulties children face while learning in the classroom.
For example, he writes about how a player might want to make certain choices within a video game because of an identity he or she has assumed. JPG played Arcanum and decided he wanted his character, a female half-elf, to have a good history within the game. When he felt bad about selling an important artifact another character had given him, he started back from an old save point so he could redo it. He compared it to the fact that if a children has identified himself as "someone who hates math", he's going to have a disadvantage in the classroom.
Another good point he makes is the fact that video games are made to teach. If they're too easy, they're boring and if they're too difficult, they're no fun. They are inherently designed to introduce challenges at a level that players can deal with and rewards them for learning within their self-contained universe or "semiotic domain". Games also offer "psychosocial moratoriums" - that is, a learning place where risks are lowered. If you mess up, you can start back at a save point. This is very conducive to learning.
The book has a lot of great points and I liked approaching it from parts I wanted to read rather than trying to sit down with it and just read start to finish. It's not a fiction novel and not every word contributes to a plot. I skipped ahead to a Tomb Raider example that seemed interesting, then went back to Pikmin, and started reading in between to fill in the "why". That makes this kind of book way more readable.
1. James Paul Gee explains to us why video games are not "a waste of time"
2. He does this through his personal experiences with video games. You can tell he's played a lot because he uses examples over several genres and consoles.
3. He relates these learning experiences to difficulties children face while learning in the classroom.
For example, he writes about how a player might want to make certain choices within a video game because of an identity he or she has assumed. JPG played Arcanum and decided he wanted his character, a female half-elf, to have a good history within the game. When he felt bad about selling an important artifact another character had given him, he started back from an old save point so he could redo it. He compared it to the fact that if a children has identified himself as "someone who hates math", he's going to have a disadvantage in the classroom.
Another good point he makes is the fact that video games are made to teach. If they're too easy, they're boring and if they're too difficult, they're no fun. They are inherently designed to introduce challenges at a level that players can deal with and rewards them for learning within their self-contained universe or "semiotic domain". Games also offer "psychosocial moratoriums" - that is, a learning place where risks are lowered. If you mess up, you can start back at a save point. This is very conducive to learning.
The book has a lot of great points and I liked approaching it from parts I wanted to read rather than trying to sit down with it and just read start to finish. It's not a fiction novel and not every word contributes to a plot. I skipped ahead to a Tomb Raider example that seemed interesting, then went back to Pikmin, and started reading in between to fill in the "why". That makes this kind of book way more readable.
Sunday, November 3, 2013
Remix and Copyright:The Punk Collage of the Internet
My husband used to be really involved in the underground SLC punk scene, which has been interesting to learn about. A big part of the culture is making your own punked out denimn jacket with patches of bands you like and lots and lots of studs. I read parts of a book about punk culture that he has and it talks about how a lot of iconic punk looks come from collage because artists were too broke to do anything but cut stuff out of magazines and glue it together. Fans have a very collage look to themselves as they piece together outfits from stuff they find from friends, at thrift stores, or on the streets.
The salt of the internet is populated with people who have a basic understanding of a photo or video editing software (even ms paint). The internet has thrived on people digitally cutting out things and pasting them back together in interesting ways. Sometimes the result is a polished artist like Pogo, who has become well known for sampling. (His music is entirely made up of sound fragments from movies. He's done a lot with Disney movies.) +Derrick Clements might appreciate some of his Pixar songs.
This is called "Boo Bass"
For a while my brother was really into "YouTube Poop", which has grown to be a whole genre of videos you can find where people take footage from different shows and make them really, really weird. This is mostly done through mixing up the footage (not in a musical way like Pogo), repeating phrases or sounds, and zooming in on a face in silence or even something in the background. There are even some running jokes through all of them with sound bits from well known old videos, like an old episode of a super mario brothers cartoon that everyone quotes. I would link to some examples but the majority of them have vulgarities at some point or are just loud and upsetting at parts. The thing is, they don't claim to be masterpieces. That's why they're called "YouTube Poop." They know they're garbage. There's something about their admittance to the fact that they're trashy and the artistic quality of their mixing at times that I would almost argue that they're truly avant-garde. I almost hate myself for trying to put YTPs in with Dada works, but what's more experimental than some 17 year old turning an episode of Blue's Clues into a trippy nightmare? (Okay, I'll link, but content warning.)
As ugly as some of this remix art can be, it's very Dada. We come up with the same questions here as have been discussed in a million art classes when faced with Marcel Duchamp's "Fountain."
Can a urinal signed "R. Mutt" really be considered art? Where do we draw the line between beautiful things and gross slapped together garbage? I'll let you think about that while I move on to the next point.
How does Copyright fit into this puzzle of collage culture and remix? I really like some of the discussions we've had so far in class and on the blog. I'm not sure who posted this (I think it was in a book review but there have been so many posts it all kind of runs together in my head) but someone in our class mentioned how Copyright law might not be so bad and that people should take more advantage of the Fair Use act. +Mary Wright Layton even wrote this post with a very helpful, basic puppet video to help us understand when we are allowed to use the materials of others.
I liked how in class we talked about when copyright infringement is actually harmful. That is, when a product is meant to compete with or replace an existing product. That's when artists turn to copyright to protect them.
I'm still not sure what the answer is for cover songs, though. My husband is facing a situation similar to the experience +Gideon Burton related about his wife being forced to shut down her cover songs on her blog. My husband created a chiptune cover of the Pixies song, "Where is My Mind?" He has gotten a ton of views on the video and was making money through YouTube until a content flag thing happened and realized it was a cover song. The Pixies would not be hurt if Chris made some money with the views from his video. It's not really a competing project. But is it right to make money from a song that you have performed in your own way, but you didn't write? As obnoxious as it is to pay the 1 cent per video view for the rights, doesn't that make sense if someone worked really hard on that song? (New argument for songs people didn't work hard on.)
Bonus: My husband and I went to our friend's house downtown this weekend and made some collage art.
 |
| This was painted over a print of a flower vase originally meant to be hung in the home. Is this copyright infringement? Nope. |
 |
| These collages were made from video game manuals but the materials are completely unrecognizable from their original form and they're not meant to replace what is being sold. |
Friday, November 1, 2013
Musings on Copyright
Copyright is one of those topics that I'm a little hesitant to touch simply because I know there are a lot of details that go along with it that I'm not familiar with. However, I do believe that the safest route to take in most cases is a nice middle ground. I don't think that we should abolish copyright entirely or enforce it militantly. In fact, my experience has been that a little copyright violation actually benefits the original artist.
About eight or so years ago, I stumbled across a musician named Vienna Teng on YouTube. Technically, the video was probably a copyright violation, as someone other than Vienna Teng had posted the video. However, it caught my interest. I clicked on other songs of Vienna's that had been posted (also likely without her consent.) The more I listened to her, the more I liked her unique style. Eventually, I ended up buying a handful of her songs on iTunes and recommending her to several friends. None of this would have been possible without the dozens of videos that had been uploaded to YouTube by random fans of her work.
I also discovered BBC series Merlin on YouTube. Someone had posted the first season in segments of about 8 minutes. After watching several episodes, I decided that this was a series I wanted to continue watching. I then switched over to Netflix to watch the remainder of the seasons. Again, I recommended this series to others who ended up watching it. Once again, the copyright holder (in this case, the BBC) profited because of copyright violations.
I understand that not every situation works out so nicely where copyright is concerned. However, I also believe that this issue is not nearly as black and white as the extremists on both sides would like us to believe.
Have any of you had similar experiences?
About eight or so years ago, I stumbled across a musician named Vienna Teng on YouTube. Technically, the video was probably a copyright violation, as someone other than Vienna Teng had posted the video. However, it caught my interest. I clicked on other songs of Vienna's that had been posted (also likely without her consent.) The more I listened to her, the more I liked her unique style. Eventually, I ended up buying a handful of her songs on iTunes and recommending her to several friends. None of this would have been possible without the dozens of videos that had been uploaded to YouTube by random fans of her work.
I also discovered BBC series Merlin on YouTube. Someone had posted the first season in segments of about 8 minutes. After watching several episodes, I decided that this was a series I wanted to continue watching. I then switched over to Netflix to watch the remainder of the seasons. Again, I recommended this series to others who ended up watching it. Once again, the copyright holder (in this case, the BBC) profited because of copyright violations.
I understand that not every situation works out so nicely where copyright is concerned. However, I also believe that this issue is not nearly as black and white as the extremists on both sides would like us to believe.
Have any of you had similar experiences?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)