Published on
April 19, 2010 in
misc..
Blog (short for weblog) is a self-publishing tool that allows its author(s) to regularly updates content. The logged content are archived and listed with the most recent entries apearing first. Blog entries can include other media such as images, sound, videos.
This makes blogging a great tool for students. As stated in the first post, I installed wordpress for a digital media class and I like to share some of the reactions I got. Even though the curriculum I was following did not include internet, however I made blogging a core part of the classroom experience. Since internet has become an active platform for production, collaboration, and distribution I was able to make it a requirement in my class. Here are some benefits of incorporating blogs into the classroom settings:
- Motivating students and encouraging students to work
- Students can share and discuss their ideas, drafts, concepts and plans
- Students and teachers can provide feedback before the next class
- Close interaction between students might result in collaboration
- Students can seek help from the group as opposed to teacher
- Documenting a question, problem, or concern can yield solutions
- Blogs reducing office hours through commenting
- Linking to World Wide Web is easy
- Blogs are accessible to the world
- Media content (photo, sound, video) can be embeded
- Files or projects can be inserted (referenced) in the posts
These are some of my motivation for creating a blog platform and I see that many of this goals has been met. While there are many rewards in learning any technologies (after all learning is good), you might want to think about how blogging would fit in the curriculum. If only a small part of your teaching plan involves blogging, then a wordpress blog might be an overkill and time-consuming solution.
Blogging requires a certain computer literacy which cannot be taught in any class. I think if students are not familiar with email and comfortable with word-processing software they cannot learn to blog in a few sessions. Concepts of mouse “click” and internet “browser” are unintuitive and difficult to learn (we learned them naturally because we were familiar with computer environments). Every blog feature that you expect students to use has to be explained, even if most of them know it. Publishing a post, make hyperlinks, and insert images all have to be demonstrated before they become problems. Problems make the best excuse for not writing anything. Students might have a difficult time creating a user-name and resetting the password. You would become administrator and a technical support representative. Many times you would have to access their accounts and change their password (heck I remember doing that to Shiffman when I was at ITP and he was very nice about it.) I had students who were not familiar with the blogging language and thought that by “writing” I meant they had to produce essays! You would have to emphasize that this is a personal tool to reflect, conceptualize, plan and document — that unclear thoughts and doubts are quite welcome. You can only smile when a student asks for a useful feature because you know how difficult it really is to implement a new feature. But this is still better than explaining why they are using blogs (and not emails instead!). I think it is a good idea to discuss Marshall McLuhan’s theories about TV (which applies to the web) and even come up with a question from it which makes the bases for their first post.
In the next post I will detail the process of setting up a new blog and adding useful features.
I always wonder about the presence of camera when filming. Camera can become an independent observer through which I and many others will see the world. More importantly because of the documentary nature of video, its permanence and liveness it shapes the activity around it. The camera is a powerful machine. However, in my hand the device becomes a cherished device, a lens through which I see the world and justify the complications and problems of the world. The camera gives importance to the moment and offers the cameraman the ability to see the world afresh. Camera as a lens through which I see the world. Camera as a looking glass for me to be able to see what I see.
I appreciate the feeling my camera-phone gave me when I was filming for the first time. I think my phone’s camera makes up for all the shortcomings the device has a phone. I will be teaching video-editing this semester and I think mobile-phones would be the most accessible equipments for filming. I will be teaching editing and will be using Sony Vegas video editing program which is largely unknown. I think having a very short learning curve qualifies Vegas to as PC’s iMovie.
My Powerbook G4 laptop is almost 5 years old and with the age comes a lot of dust and problems… one of which is heating up. When the temperature rises, the computer fan has to compensate by turning faster and the computer gets louder and begs me to stop. I used to close some of the applications, shut the case and give it the rest, or sometimes run and grab the icepack I had ready in the freezer. Base on the advice from my brother I decided to open it and clean it with an air duster. I learned that opening it is not easy at all.
Finally I decided to take the computer to a computer engineer for the task. Opening the case took us a long time and we searched for a bolt that holds the keyboard layer secured. As I began to looking at online documentations I realized opening the mac is really discouraged. Apple has changed the bolt places several times. In iBook G4 the bolts were hidden inside the rubber feet that keep the surface and in Powerbook G4 model there is a special mac tool to release the optical drive with ease. Looking at the two article the engineer quickly took out the rubber feet and tampered my combo-drive’s dust cover. The engineer finally discovered a hidden bolt beneath the memory slot’s dust cover.
Sitting there watching as he removed the parts I was thinking that the shiny, elegant exterior is so hard to get into. As it turns out, the idea of open-source hardware is not new. The concept coveys a broader range information than accessing the hardware to include a list of parts and circuit board diagrams.
I got introduced to know the parts and diagrams as the engineer dissemble the pieces… “This is the hard-drive”, “Guess what this one is…”, and so on. He had never seen inside of a mac (neither had I) so I think he got a little bit carried away. He cleaned the parts with a powerful air duster and cleaned the parts with different liquids. He entirely washed the clear plastic layer below the keys where I had spilled honey (ironically right below the comma key). He also replaced a part (GC5.5V0.22F) that is supposed to store the date and time. The comptuer had the problem of losing the date for a long time . Someone actually told me that they received a a email and when they browsed to the bottom they notice the email is from me and the date of the email was 1972. I hope I can use it for another few years.
Using the few keys I selected from my keyboard I tried to tell the story.
This is the first official post after installing WordPress and modifying it. I have had many blogs before, but for whatever reason they never felt right. Maybe I was not prepared to publish my blogs and underestimated (or over-estimated) the significance of being able to reach out to the world. This blog happened tonight because of the class I will be teaching in Tehran. For many reasons I felt that my students should be documenting their work and keeping in touch through a blog (just like I did in school) and since I did not feel comfortable sending them to the bigger websites I had to install WordPress Mu which was actually very easy. I will be writing a bit about the class, as well as other workshop I have been teaching.
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