The Glass Bead Game

Proprietary Programs

2008-11-24T14:53:00.000-08:00

I keep wanting to post and have a lot to comment on but have been sooo busy. However, I feel that my post today must be on proprietary dental hygiene programs. Why do I hate them with such vehemence? I guess that it begins with the hegemonic hold that the ADA has over dental hygiene. We do not regulate ourselves and so we must suffer with whatever the ADA cooks up. This time they have decided that any Joe Blow dentist can open his/her own dental hygiene program anywhere at anytime. This is disgusting, a hygienist can't open their own program, but a dentist, without any background in education can open a program and pack it with students (after all, it is all about making money). These new business owners do not have any obligation to the dental hygiene profession. My concerns of course are centered on quality clinicians, contributing professionals and the fact that graduating grossly huge numbers of dental hygienists does impact the workforce.

At a time when we are fighting for dental hygienists to gain more responsibility and increase the education level for entry into the profession, these strip front mall institutions serve to enforce a lower level of education and respect for the profession. Our jobs and education are now analogous to nail technicians and beauticians who get their degree or certificate at a strip mall. The existence of proprietary programs undermines and invalidates the degrees that we have worked so hard to get in the past and those that will be awarded in the future.

Batman took me down!

2008-10-31T12:43:00.000-07:00

So, I showed up for class in the mask pictured above and the students laughed and thought that was my costume and then I took off my mask and was the Joker underneath. What a riot! I started to say threatening things and tell them that a hygienist created my scare when Carol Naylor (my team teacher) burst into the room as batman and saved the day. So funny! We had a great time.

Here are all the faculty with Stephanie pictured separate, we just couldn't get her to settle-down. You know how those biker chicks are.

Below, I have a brief video of our new clinic manager, the new Gail (since Gail decided to retire). He is just a tad different from Gail. He is over 6 feet tall, has a very deep voice, is a Meso American (native indian from Mexico) and speaks 5 languages. He is great! You must listen to his message.

Last, but not least here is a picture or our fun loving students. It is great to work with folks that enjoy having a good time and don't mind making a fool of themselves.

Oh My Word!

2008-10-08T08:09:00.000-07:00

I have been sufficiently shamed about my quiescent blogging practices. I must admit that I am just not as interesting as my uberblogger peers (ie: Breanna, Michelle, the now defunct Planet Maria etc). However, if folks will read I will continue to post my inane commentaries.

There are a couple of things that I would like to comment on first:

1) NBC is back on iTunes!

This is an event of great significance for me. I usually watch all of my NBC shows at my leisure on my iPod, so I was greatly distressed that iTunes and NBC had a spat. I lost a year of 30Rock and The Office. Nowadays, however, I have been in heaven catching up on past episodes. So funny, last season was a good season for both shows. Life is good for those that participate in electronic escapism!

2) I no longer have any retirement and plan to die on the job!

So how scarry is the economy! I lost a lot of money in my investments during the dot com bust but now have lost the rest in this latest debacle. I feel like I should change my name to Joad and rent a handcart (maybe even start producing some breast milk, lol).

3) I am tired of Sarah Palin!

I don't need my politicians to dumb down their speech to connect with me, however, I do need the occasional wink, at least two times in a 1 hour speech.

4) I love the Applications Feature on my iPhone!

I was quite ambivalent on making the choice to buy an iPhone. I mean, I felt very traitorous to move away from the Blackberry, but once the decision was made the applications quickly won me over. Cool beans man!

5) I am still working on my dissertation and hope to graduate, hell or high water, next semester!

If I am still typing about my dissertation this time next year, just shoot me, because I will need to be put out of my misery. I tell you, this has been a tough process, really hard. I should have just gone to a diploma mill and paid out large sums for my degree. I am sooo over the shame of doing that and the disrespect that a PhD from Indiscriminant Obscure University.com would get me.

6) Breanna is pregnant and I just found out, plus Bryan is graduating!

I am happy for Breanna, but how did I become so disconnected that I missed her pregnancy post. She has posted about 5 times since her announcement post. Yikes! I have been remiss. Also, if Bryan is graduating (which is kudos to him) then my time to use them as a hotel in the big city is greatly diminishing! Yikes! This is about me, I have not time left and no money! Perhaps Bryan can do some post doc work, yea? What is that potential of that? Think of your western locked friends Bre and Bry, we are not ready for you to come how. However, if you do, we have a lot of posters to present in your living room, lol.

7) My son is growing up!

My son is so fun to be around and watch grow at this age. He is writing a novel that is quite creative and changes daily, he has gotten into movie making and has posted to YouTube and he just recently wrote a short story on why the super continent Pangea broke apart. Two words: toilets and groundhogs. The story is available upon request. It is fun to experience a stage with your child where they are actually fun to interact with on a more adult level, even though he is still 13.

8) AND, Crystal is pregnant!

Thanks for reading, I hope to post again soon.

Gloating

2008-02-01T10:31:00.000-08:00

I read on the Weber website today that school was closed due to inclement weather. Yikes! I decided to take a picture from my hotel room window just to let you know what life if like for me right now. Do you feel sorry for me?

Anyway, I am at the coolest conference in Long Beach, California. I will blog about it next when I have a little more time.

Virtual Community of Dental Hygiene

2008-02-01T10:14:00.000-08:00

Wow! I checked my blog again today and am always stunned that there are graduates coming out of the woodwork. Ashlee Reader Ward blogged me and I have now added her as a link. She is living in Grenada now! Holy smokes. I wonder if she can do hygiene there. Perhaps she will comment back. I love that we have grads in many states. Also, Natalie Lloyd let me know she has a blog and she is now on my links as well.

The funny thing is that a lot of you bloggers blow me away with your blogs, they are so technically sophisticated. And...what about these amazing backgrounds and slide shows. You have all eclipsed me with your talent. I stand in awe. Especially Natalie because she was sooooo resistant to the idea of blogging in the first place and now she is some uberblogger. Ha ha. We should have an uberblogger award for our dental hygiene community. Of course, Breanna would have won the first award and then MaryAnn, then Crystal, the list goes on.

I keep trying to update and improve my website. So please visit so that you can see the aggregated list of student bloggers. They would be shocked and pleased to hear from you all!! I LOVE that our community is growing and connected. Yeah!

Reading, Reading, Reading

2008-01-09T17:07:00.000-08:00

It was fun over the Christmas break to have the time to follow-up on reading and topic paths that I wanted to further investigate. I posted lately on the book "The World if Flat" which is a must read for the decade. Well, after reading that I followed up with "The Shock Doctrine" which is pretty much the antithesis of the first book. It was interested to read these books concomitantly because each text provided dramatically different viewpoints of the same world events and economic climates. This left me with a million unanswered questions about right/wrong, capitalism/government intervention, globalization/isolationism, foreign policy/state of the union and who should be the next president of the United States.

I decided to read Alan Greenspan's "Age of Turbulence" to get some answers and another perspective. While Greenspan's book is interesting, it did not provide the answers that I wanted. I have even considered emailing Greenspan to have him clarify some issues. I think that he tried to be too politically correct that it prevented him from getting to the meat of anything in the body of his book. In any case, Greenspan kept mentioning Ayn Rand and her literary works and philosophies. As a result, I turned to reading her most famous books starting with "The Fountainhead" and then her magnum opus "Atlas Shrugged." Wow, never have a read a book that was so timely and relevant to the issues that our nation faces today. I recommend reading both books if you have time. In fact, I wonder what Ayn would say about John Edwards and Huckabee. It is interesting to hear their platforms in light of the concern for socialization and government sponsored welfare that Ayn proports and for that matter Thomas Friedman in "The World is Flat." So, while I still need to do some more historical research on clarifying some of the world economic events that I have concerns about, Ayn Rand has provided me with some much needed philosophical background to understand the issues presented in the most recent books I have read. In addition, it as helped me to clarify what I am looking for in my next president.

I can't wait until I have another break from teaching and school, for now I am back to reading that which is necessary. However, I am finishing up a fun book called "The Black Swan" which I am almost done with and will be my last read for awhile.

Blogging Getting a Favorable Response

2008-01-09T17:04:00.000-08:00

I am excited to see that others are interested in my website and list of alumni bloggers. I need to fix some links, (sorry Jamie). I will do that soon. My skills at website development and maintenance have gotten rusty. I have to say that I am proud of Weber graduates because they are the smartest and most techno savvy ever!!!! They are pretty much the coolest people that I know.

Globalization!?*__

2007-12-11T19:44:00.000-08:00

Do you remember when you were a kid and your parents would say, "eat your food, there kids starving in India and China." Well, Thomas Friedman, the author of "The World is Flat" would say to tell your kids, "eat your food so you can grow to be strong and healthy because there are kids in India and China who are starving to take your job when you grow older." Yikes!

When I read "The World is Flat" I was stunned at just how quickly our world has become integrated, mainly due to cable fiber optics and globalization. However, I just don't think I realize how much this change was going to directly effect me or my children. I tell you what, go out and read this book and then plan a career path for your child that will make him "untouchable" and thus employable in the next decades to come.

I like that Mr. Friedman points out all the issues, pros and cons, of this new globalization because in most cases, we (Americans) have greatly benefitted. However, with a workforce that is growing larger and smarter in other parts of the world, we have to redefine what we view of "value added" skill. As you know now, many jobs and skills are being outsourced to India and China, as well as everywhere else on the globe. This trend will only get bigger with more and more skills being considered doable outside of the United States. At least we can sigh with relief that dental hygiene can never be done through an Internet cable. Ha ha, but what about our kids. They better not want to do entry or even midlevel accounting, financing, research, etc. because those tasks will be taken care of in developing countries while we sleep. We must be creative in the future and define new roles and occupations for tomorrow.

My Website and List of Bloggers

2007-12-11T19:17:00.000-08:00

I have to say that recently I toured a few blogs and was stunned to count up just how many of us dental hygienist's are blogging. Our numbers are bigger than they were two years ago. I have developed a way for the dental hygiene students to gain access to each others blog addresses, but that resource is password protected and registered hygienist's can't post on the student blogs. This is a sad outcome, because I really value and so do the students the communication that the students get from registered hygienists. Also, I needed to aggregate a way that I can link to all those who have a blog. So, I decided to fire up my website again, faculty.weber.edu/khanson4, to list all of the bloggers, you know who you are, so that we can all have a place to go to find each other. Yeah!

Actually, I don't have everyone's address and Melissa (not Leger) has become elitist and will not let just anyone read her blog. I can guess the impetus for this move but do not know for sure (mystery). Anyway, let me know if you do not want to be list on this aggregated list. Moreover, let me know of anyone that you know of who is blogging that I have not listed. Also, as soon as I get permission from the students at the beginning of next semester, I will add their urls as well.

Also, on my site I have listed current research projects, presentations and a "what's new" section. The students and I have had fun with mashups and podcasting and now you can too. How exciting! However, the last two podcasts are still being edited so are not linked to the site yet. Please check back.

I would like to make my website a place that has interesting and pertinent information. Please give me any ideas that I need to include. Be patient, I meant to have it published tonight but then I ran into a hyperlink situation and so my developed pages aren't linked and the template pages (that are written in greek) still are. So, don't be confused. By tomorrow or the next day, I will be done.

In addition, I would like to revisit the dental hygiene community of practice research dealing with online blogs. Let me know if your interested. This would be the continuation of the research that Melissa and Ashley helped me with that they presented on at the ADHA meeting.

The Lowdown on Mashups!

2007-11-14T13:21:00.001-08:00

My students and I are investigating the educational use of "mashups" in dental hygiene. The use of podcasting and vlogcasting has become mainstream practice for educators to present students with classroom information. Conversely, students have started to create their own pod and vlogcasts for both personal and/or academic gains. With the creation of YouTube, students are able to post their created media to the web and get a variety of responses. As such, a new phenomenon has developed where people are utilizing the existing media available on YouTube and redeveloping it into something new or better than the original. This reworking of existing media has been dubbed a “mashup.” Our investigation into “mashups” has been centered on the ease at which they can be created, the potential gain in esoteric knowledge of mashup content and the educational benefits of student created mashups.

We have discovered that it is not so easy to use other people's videos on YouTube as we had assumed. As such, we have had to go to other websites that have less restrictions on the use of content. We discovered jumpcut which allows users to copy and grab the video of other members to edit. We created a very simple rudimentary dental hygiene mashup there and would like you to see it. Follow the link: brushing mashup. Tell us what you think!

Happy Feet 300

2007-11-13T13:55:00.001-08:00

Rick Noblenski: Blasting Caps Expert and Wiki Advocate

2007-10-07T10:50:00.001-07:00

I love this mashup!

2007-07-09T21:49:00.000-07:00

My Amazing Eyeglasses! (I cannot seem to put a REAL title on this post, how irritating and highly illiterate is that!)

I have not bought a new pair of eyeglasses for years...a reality, that I am sure that most of you have noticed. However, I now have had to purchase new glasses because my prescription changed so significantly that I can barely see anymore. Anyway, I ordered new glasses finally and they told me it would take about 2 weeks for them to come in. In the meantime, my "darling" dogs chewed the ends off of my existing glasses, Yikes! I have requested that my order for glasses be expedited (a request which I now believe has fallen on deaf ears) so that I have something decent hanging off of my ears. As it is, look at the current state of my eyeglasses (regular and sunglasses)! I think I should get some sort of award for ingenuity. Plus, I think that you should be given some sort of super geek award if you have super glue on the bridge of your glasses and still exhibit two other forms of ersatz connections, ie: the tape and floral wire. That is three types of bonding agents on just one pair of glasses. I think that I should be awarded some sort of Mensa status, ha ha. Or just an award for super self-esteem for going out in public daily with my amazing nerdette glasses.

Stayed tuned because when I actually do get my new glasses, I am going to post my new look!

New Orleans Part Deaux

2007-06-24T15:52:00.000-07:00

Remember the last time that I went to New Orleans...I groped hot, ripped men and partied on Bourbon street. Ohhh, those were the days...this trip I got to grope a porcelain commode and guzzle gallons of gatorade (see proof below).

I know, I know, you are insane with jealousy. I was the fortunate host of a wicked parasite that chose to lodge itself in my intestine and cause me pain and grief for days on end. Seriously, I was INDISPOSED for all but one day of my seven day trip. I tell you what, when you get to be on a first name basis with the hotel housekeeping and room service staff, you know that your trip has gone horribly awry! I now have the highest room service tab in history and have watched more movies than I have done in the last year! Who goes to New Orleans and looses weight? Who returns from New Orleans with knowledge that allows them to audition for Mr. Moviephone as a movie critic?

There was one day that I took Immodium which allowed me to leave my room for about 3 hours to be present at our Virtual Reality presentation. I don't look so bad in the pictures, but my stomach is having a war inside during each one of these pictures. I am sure that I ran to the bathroom after they were taken. Thank god that Michelle and Tatiana are such good presenters because they really did well presenting our research! You will have to visit Tatiana's blog for more details on what the rest of my posse did while in New Oreleans. I can guarantee that her blog will have more exciting details than mine.

Now that my complaining is over, I did enjoy the Hurricane Katrina Devastation Tour that I took the first day of my trip and the movies that I watched. I will have to blog again to talk about what I saw on the Katrina tour. It was an eye opening experience to see, first hand, just how devastating that storm was and just how far New Orleans has to go on their recovery. I tell you what, restoration is not as far along as you would think. There are still huge areas and communities that are entirely empty and destroyed. Only 7 of the area hospitals out of the original 22 still operate, most do so at limited capacity. Feeling sick and vulnerable at this time made me realize that the healthcare is not nearly equipped to deal with the needs of the population. It is really shocking to see New Orleans outside of the French Quarter. As far as the movies that I viewed, I saw all the Oscar award nominee stuff that I could never watch with my kids like, Blood Diamond, Notes on a Scandal, Babel, and Breach. I tell you what, I will think twice before I ever buy another diamond, before a trust a friendly stanger, before I take for granted my American rights and before I think that American can't be taken down from it's first world status as a world leader. After these shows I was sick to my stomach with emotional/socitital remorse and sickened by American greed and hubris. Thank god for Drew Barrymore who can always provide the levity needed (Music & Lyrics) to restore my complacancy and false sense of security with my sheltered existence. Once I followed Music & Lyrics up with The Big Lebowski, The Shooter and The Sentinel, my faith was restored in the fact that humor can solve anything, that lots of guns in the hands of Americans is a good thing and that the good guy wins in the end. Whew, I almost had a personal epiphany during a time of mental and physical weakness, I almost realized that our nation and the world is in the middle of a huge moral crisis that has already wrecked havoc on millions and has the potential to devastate the future of millions...but then, my diarrhea stopped, my electrolytes were restored, I was able to eat again and my vacuous concerns for the day returned. All is well with my world again...I am ready to go home!

My Darling Sister

2007-06-12T10:40:00.000-07:00

I have three sisters that I love and adore, however, we don't always have a lot of time together. So, when one sister, Barbie, rode her cool Ninja bike up for a visit I had to take some pictures. I just love that Barbie is riding a bike because she is all of about 5 feet and about 100 lbs. I believe that this bike could take her. Ha ha. She had to put a lowering kit on the bike so that her feet could touch the ground. So cute. I had to post these pictures for fun. Just so you know, I am the big one in the picture BUT she is OLDER.

6th Grade Celebration!

2007-06-03T18:00:00.000-07:00

Wow, it is hard to believe that my son and Amanda are done with Elementary school. As soon as I can find all of my pictures of him going to school throughout the years, I am going to build a video montage like BreAnna. What a great idea. Isaac and Amanda were so proud of themselves at the celebration held to honor the sixth graders. It was fun to see their enthusiasm for school and achievement and their hopes for junior high school. I REALLY can't believe that I have lived in Utah for this long. It still feels like I have just moved here, but wow, what a big life event and turning point for me and my son, and Amanda; our little family.

Birthdays, DARE & Shakespeare,

2007-05-27T17:43:00.000-07:00

We have had a crazy time this last month. Isaac had his 12th birthday, Amanda is already 12, both Isaac and Amanda graduated from the DARE program against drugs and they both starred in Shakespeare skits. Wow, and now they only have 5 days left before summer. Yikes!

We celebrated Isaac's birthday at Tapanaki in Layton. As soon as I can upload more pictures to my flickr account I will add more birthday pictures because I had to take several pictures of my son before he would behave. I guess that when he turned 12 he would be less zany. However, with both him and Amanda, I am afraid that my zany days are just beginning.

Amanda's DARE essay was chosen to be read at the DARE graduation. She wrote it herself and it was from the heart. She knows a little bit about how drugs can ruin your life. She did a great job. Included are some pictures of Amanda and Isaac with Miss Utah. She was funny and let them wear her crown. Yes, even Isaac, I wonder if I should be worried.

Last, Isaac and Amanda were in Shakespeare skits. Isaac was the King in Hamlet and Amanda was a princess in Romeo and Juliet. Aren't they cute in their costumes?

Isaac is such a ham and he does not shy away from attention so he was a great king and performed an elaborate death scene. Amanda was a demure and sweet princess, unlike her real life persona, ha ha. Just kidding, Amanda is adorable!

New Orleans Flavor!

2007-05-07T13:18:00.000-07:00

I am not really in the habit of groping strange men on the street, but look at him, can you blame me! This guy was a street performer who worked with a troupe that was so amazing in their performance of strength, balance and acrobatics. They will be on TV this summer on America's Got Talent. Make sure to vote for them because they are amazing AND this guy let me grope him. That has to count for something, right.

Graduation 2007

2007-05-07T07:14:00.000-07:00

Wow! I have been so busy with graduation and getting everyone ready to graduate that I haven't had time to post lately. I have really enjoyed this class and wish them the best. I tried to upload more pictures but it was taking too long. I will post more soon. Pictured below are my EI students, they made it! They worked so hard, I appreciate all that they have done.

Good Luck! Onto boards!

New Obsession!

2007-03-31T21:32:00.000-07:00

My son has been studying Greece in school and has learned about the Spartans. When he saw the advertisement for the movie about the Spartans, "300." He insisted that we had to see it. At first I sighed because I don't exactly relish spending my weekends watching the juvenile fare appropriate for preteens. However, when I saw this show with my son, my interested was piqued immediately. Wow! I became a fan of Gerard Butler with his performance in "The Phantom of the Opera" and have now cataloged him as one of my favorites. I REALLY appreciate his dedication to the role of Leonidas by honing in on that amazing physique. It is worth watching that movie just to see Gerard's rippling thighs as he stalked toward his opponents. Aaah, I swooned.

My office is a mess!

2007-03-30T14:04:00.000-07:00

After I took a picture of Kimmie in my office, I just had to take pictures of the whole thing. I knew that there would be those of you who would appreciate just how cluttered my space is nowadays. I don't have any amazing students who are willing to help me make sense of the mess like I used to, so sad :( I think that this is a real cry for help! The question is however, is anyone listening?

Notice:
- the 2006 Calendar on the wall from JWo that I have been too busy to replace
- the wholely inadequate ball calendar on my desk that is more mobile
- the ever present Diet Coke
- the scattered papers of research
- grant documents
- my blackberry (which is really a cranberry color, ha ha)
- 4 computers (all necessary)
- numerous presentaton posters
- makeup bag with makeup I don't use
- weekend reading stacks (my social life is so sad)
- phallic looking bookend (again, my social life is so sad)
- VR system and dissertation materials
- huge ass beanbag for my tired body and mind, mostly my mind!
- NYC Jekyl and Hyde artifact (can you find it Bre)

Hello Old Friend!

2007-03-28T17:32:00.002-07:00

I just have to do a shout out to an old friend! He is the greatest in every way! With as peripatetic as my life has been in the past, it is nice to know that I have made some lifelong friends along the way. This is difficult to do with today's mobile and transient culture. I am now in the strange situation of being the one who stays put, geographically, and have others move in and out of my life. In doing so I have made some fabulous new friends that have stayed in contact with me. How fun! My friends are the spice of my life!

Virtual Project a Reality

2007-03-28T17:11:00.000-07:00

I want to provide a status report on the Virtual Reality (VR) project to teach techniques for local anesthesia. We have finally completed phase one, which is the development of a "proof of concept system" that allows for the manipulation of 3D objects in virtual space for the inferior alveolar (IA) injection only. Tatiana is our model demonstrating the system. She is wearing the head mounted display (HMD) as well as a tracker on her head and handling the sensor embedded syringe while she palpates our anatomical model. We had to simulate haptics with a real anatomical model covered in liquid rubber due to budget constraints.

This is a picture of the computer to show what the user sees in the virtual world. The 3D cranium has several layers of obfuscation to promote iterative learning of spatial and dimensional relationships of the anatomy. This is really cool to see demonstrated live!

Here is Bob reviewing the system. You can see our boxy "flock of birds" in the background, which is our electromagnetic human tracking system. Very swanky!

I am very pleased with our deliverables at this point! Yeah!

Puppies!

2007-03-26T19:16:00.000-07:00

Amanda and Isaac have been waiting for six weeks to get their puppies. We were able to bring them home this weekend. Both dogs are Dachshunds, Amanda's dog, Coco, is chocolate and Isaac's dog, Mohawk Junior, is the traditional black and brown. We are really enjoying them!

My nephew, Jack, is trying to feed Coco a leaf. ha ha. Below is picture of Jack after playing with the dogs.

American Dental Educators Association (ADEA) Annual Session

2007-03-26T18:46:00.000-07:00

Our research project was on Emotional Intelligence and Success in Dental Hygiene Student Clinical Practice. This was a huge project that involved a lot of data and we had to work hard to pull it together in time to present at ADEA.
With this being said, just image how diappointed we were when we discovered that our flight to New Orleans was cancelled. Delta assured us that they could fly us out the next day, however, this would ensure that we would miss our presentation. Yikes! We decided to try to catch any flight possible throughout Sunday and Monday. To make a long story short, we all had to fly seperately and got very little rest in over 24 hours. With all of that we still missed our presentation time. However, we worked it out with ADEA to present at another time the next day. Yeah!
After we presented, we indulged in some much needed relaxation and fun on Bourbon St. I had never been to New Orleans and so was pleasantly surprised by how enjoyable it was. Plus, the French Quarter really looks good, they have worked hard to rebuild it since Katrina.

Undergraduate Research Symposium 2007

2007-03-26T18:36:00.000-07:00

I have to say that my students represented well, we had three oral presentations and two posters. However, I think that we could have done better had they not been so preoccupied with thoughts of their national board which is tomorrow. It is unfortunate that the UR symposium always lands on the day before dental hygiene board exams. We will have to trouble shoot how to strategize for next year.

I would like to see the UR Symposium supported better with other students and faculty. As it was, there was limited support for the presenters. Although, thanks to Angelique and Yeunjong for your time and support especially the day before boards. Very Cool!

New Orleans with Friends!

2007-03-25T16:50:00.000-07:00

I am going to start posting again to my blog!!! Yeah, yes, I know that you are all so pleased. This is just a quick start. I went to New Orleans for a conference and had an absolute blast! I have great colleagues, friends and students!

Our Very Own Mickey!

2005-11-11T08:29:00.000-08:00

AECT Presentation

2005-11-10T15:14:00.000-08:00

I presented again on the topic of "Blog Enabled Peer-to-Peer Learning" and was excited at the level of interest expressed for this concept. We had a great representation of educators from Britain, Germany, Australia and the United States. Shelley and I were able to find another doctoral student with which to collaborate out of Indiana University and are excited to work with her on the next generation of the project.

ADEA Women's Conference

2005-11-10T15:08:00.000-08:00

Strategies for Mentoring Undergraduate Research

ADHA Presentations

2005-11-10T14:58:00.000-08:00

NMC Presentation

2005-10-03T13:29:00.000-07:00

This is me with my presentation poster in Hawaii. This presentation was a great success!

This is me with my favorite collegue Shelley with our poster at the actual presentation at NMC.

Diva Outing!

2005-09-27T16:49:00.000-07:00

I had so much fun with all of my diva buddies! What a blast!

Amazing Hairdo by My Niece

2005-05-28T21:51:00.000-07:00

My wonderful niece offered to do my hair yesterday, and what a result! She worked long and hard on it (my head is just now recouperating) and the sad thing was that I had nowhere to go, ha ha. Just where does one sport a hairdo such as this? I considered dressing up as a Star Wars character to stand in line at the cinema, but I don't really look like any known character. Hmmm. Watch for a picture of when I do my niece's hair. That should be interesting, however, I don't have the imagination that she does.

Research Presentations

2005-05-12T17:15:00.000-07:00

Yeah! I successfully posted the pictures of our research presentations that were made this spring. We, my collegues, my students and myself, had a great year this year. It was fun to pull together our research projects and disseminate our results. If you click on each picture, my flickr account will have more specifices of each presentation. Watch for more pictures to come as we all present at a national meeting for dental hygiene in Las Vegas in June!

Resurrection and Retribution

2005-04-04T00:04:00.000-07:00

I am writing this post having suffered the consequences of not maintaining a current blog. I am no longer a link on two of my favorite blogs, Planet Maria and the Flying Car. I can't even bring myself to check my status on Blogshares, yikes! I guess that I deserve it since I have not posted since December. However, for those who know me, it is not for lack of having an opinion.

So, here are the amazingly cerebral things that have been on my mind:

Rob and Amber should not win the Amazing Race. They should come upon a small villiage in the middle of the African desert and find yet another horde of fans that want to help them. In this crowd, someone such as myself should take the hand of the narcissitic Rob and lead him and Amber off a cliff. Of course, once Rob stops grinning with his digusting "I am super cool" sneer, he will put up some resistance, however, Amber will follow along without a thought in her head.

I don't mind daylight savings time. In fact, I rather like it.

The image of Spiderman should not be used to encourage oral hygiene with the slogan that Spiderman will clean up "one tooth at a time."

Ok, ...so....that is really all there is...for now. Wow! it's a no wonder that I haven't posted lately.

Hmmm, a less than auspicious return...

If You Build It, They Will Come

2004-12-05T22:54:00.000-08:00

The concept of self-organization is a compelling topic. I liked the simulations on NetLogo with the birds, ants and slime. It was especially interesting to be able to read the information that related to each simulation. I was not aware that birds followed rules for flocking, that ants left a pheromone scent that would direct the efforts of other ants, or that slime (whatever that was) would eventually group given time. After observing these simulations, there was a greater “ahaaa” moment for me when Dave related the phenomenon of self-organization to OSLO and educational practice.

As it was, I was thinking that it would be nice to identify rules for the self-organization of learners. I appreciate Dave’s efforts to create such rules which he implemented with the simulation. These rules are much more complicated than those listed for the birds, ants and slime.

The following is an account of my experiences using the OSOSS NetLogo simulation:

I manipulated the variables multiple times and then set my screenshots. However, being the genius that I am, I did not capture my images correctly and had to start all over. This was the best thing that happened with this simulation, because, when I re-entered the simulation, it ran with the variables shown in the screenshot below. In my previous attempts, I had always ran it with more learners. In the attempt shown, it seemed that the outcomes were far better than any simulation I had run before with an inverse number of learners to learning objects. I was surprised to see such a positive effect on the knowledge of the average student; in addition to the far greater number of peer questions answered and posed, and the reduced number of “show-offs” responses. Refer to first screenshot posted below.

As a result, I ran two more simulations, one with the inverse relationship of learners (high) to learning objects (low) and the other with an equal relationship of learners to learning objects (high). In the first simulation, the average knowledge per learner reached a plateau just barely above where it was set. Furthermore, the number of peer posted and answered questions was moderate and the wait time for responses was low but steady, there was no decline in this rate.

In the next simulation, pictured below as second screenshot, there was an increase in learner knowledge, peer posted questions and answers and a decline in response wait time. However, the number of “show-off” responses was high, where they were lower for the other two simulations.

While these results seem good, I got the same results with the same number of learning objects and less learners. I would have thought that I would get a greater result with a greater number of learners. It may be that the combined knowledge of the learner is directly related to the number of learners. What does this mean? How can the variables be manipulated for the greatest outcomes? How can a simulation like this be used to improve education?

I don’t know. Those were the questions that Dave posed that I now understand and will continue to explore with my research and educational endeavors. In the end, I was most interested in the concept of the ants and the pheromone trail that they left to assist other ants in their quest for food. While humans can’t leave a pheromone trail in an electronic environment, they can leave a history trail which I think would be interesting to capitalize on to assist other learner in their quest for knowledge.

2004-12-05T22:51:00.000-08:00

First Screenshot

2004-12-05T22:49:00.000-08:00

Second Screenshot

Teaching and Learning with MMOs

2004-11-28T21:02:00.000-08:00

Teaching and learning in a Massively Multiplayer Online game (MMO) environment is different than that of a real-world classroom. The following is a discussion of why this statement is true utilizing Merrill’s five components of effective instruction, educational theory and examples from my own gaming experience.

Merrill listed the following components as effective methods for instruction:
Learning is facilitated when learners are engaged in solving real-world problems.
Learning is facilitated when existing knowledge is activated as a foundation for new knowledge.
Learning is facilitated when new knowledge is demonstrated to the learner.
Learning is facilitated when new knowledge is applied by the learner.
Learning is facilitated when new knowledge is integrated into the learner's world.

This list resonates with my personal epistemic beliefs because I believe in the tradition of constructivism and learning by doing. Merrill’s list contains some of the philosophies posited by educational theorists such as Dewey, Ausubel, and Bruner. All of these theorists tout a general belief that learning comes about as we construct our own understanding of the world in which we live through personal experience and reflection. This type of learning cannot take place in an inert educational setting where the learner is seen as passive, and information is transmitted in a decontextualized setting. Learning is best gained via hands-on experiences, problem-solving, and the cognitive development of causal relationships. Most classroom settings do not foster this type of education. In this setting, it is difficult to foster instructional methodologies that are learner centered that support constructivist learning. However, virtual settings such as MMOs, can support learning that is learner-centered.

In a virtual environment a learner does not have the same time and physical constraints as one would have in a real classroom setting. In an MMO, a learner is able to learn according to their own orientation. It was my experience in Lineage that I could address different aspects of the game as I felt comfortable in doing so. This was very helpful for me; I was able to learn without the stress of keeping up with my peers. In addition, I was able to seek tutorial advice when I needed it. In Lineage there was a great tutorial that I could take at my own pace and return to as needed. Another great aspect of the game was that I could explore and experience the environment according to my instincts and at any time I could consult with a NPC to help guide my efforts when I needed assistance.

Another attractive component of MMOs for the learner is the multiple opportunities for engagement with cause and effect scenarios where one can learn and build their skills for the game. This allows the user to practice their readout strategies over and over and modify their methods as necessary. This allowance for practice isn’t always possible to do in a real-life setting. In my experience, I was grateful that I was able to be resurrected after the first time I was killed. And to my relief, I came alive again after every death. I was grateful for this opportunity to correct my wrongdoings in previous acts. This would be a great attribute for learning if it could be fostered and supported in a real-life setting.

In Lineage, users can learn to solve problems by addressing real issues related to survival in the game. They are able to learn according to assimilation or schema theory where the user incorporates new knowledge into their current understandings of how their environment works, virtual or real. Because users are able to quickly apply their new knowledge, the successful application of such can be integrated into the learner’s world.

I am Imak, hear me Roar!

2004-11-20T22:12:00.000-08:00

How fun was that assignment! I played a character named Imak, who was a female knight that reached level 5. I had originally chosen a different name, but as a group we decided to use names that were anagrams of our real names so that we could identify each other in the game. I explored and hunted with Ramion, Roehaun, Gracelyn2, MasterP, Xee, Taggart and Bing (don’t remember online names). We even had a couple of players join our hunting parties that were not in 7150. I did not die often when I played with my classmates, however, when I played the game on another day, I got killed quite often. My most horrible deaths were when those ugly Cockroaches from the underground dungeon ganged up on me and when two Orcs attacked me from behind in the forest. Only once did I get attacked by a PC player.

One of the most interesting elements of the game was that user names can change according to the acts that they demonstrate in the game. A red name would indicate evil acts and blue would indicate benevolent acts. I would love it if we could have this kind of indicator in real life.

At the time I wrote this post, I was at level 5, and had quite an arsenal of weapons (most of which I cannot use yet because my class or level is too low) and supplies. I plan to play again with my cohorts over the holiday break so that I can learn to trade, cast spells and transport. I can’t wait to hunt, fight and be merry as I gain more experience.

Last, thanks to Dave for giving us this assignment in week 11, just when we want to slaughter everything around us as we persevere to the end. This has been a long and arduous semester; the perfect time to meld escapism with education.

Kami, no Kaye, who cares…so sue me

2004-11-14T19:58:00.000-08:00

I am currently reading the book “the blank slate: The modern denial of human nature” by Steven Pinker. The thing that I find most interesting about this book is that human beings are not born with a mental blank slate, that there are innate circuitries present as the beginning of each person’s existence. Pinker points out that while the argument of “nature vs. nurture” has not be resolved, it has been societies response to accept that “nurture” is responsible for most human action. However, upon experimentation, scientists have learned that the “prefrontal lobe and the limbic system (the seat of the emotion) anticipates the consequences of one’s actions and selects behavior consonant with one’s goals.” It may be that due to our inherent wiring so to speak, we are simply incapable of performing the type of behavioral acts that others would expect us to perform. Further, if an individual is raised “right” and taught “right” then the response will be “right.” As a result, we don’t understand when there are those who insist on doing wrong.

Now let me back up a bit, I am not saying that we should excuse all aberrant behavior and learn to live with it because others cannot control themselves. Moreover, I am saying that we need to be more cognizant in our encounters with other people; not everyone functions from the same paradigm or with the same level of capacities as others. In addition, both physiology and psychology play a big part in who and what people become.
With that being said, how does this relate to identity, deception and accountability? Well, first of all, human nature is what it is, in a virtual world or a real world. I know, Donath addressed the issue of how deception is more difficult in the real world, but I have to say that for those who are innately “good” they will not abuse the virtual world and for those who are innately “bad” they will be opportunists in any environment.

I think that it would be interesting to do research on the behavior of trolls in a virtual world and then study their behavior in a real world. I would hypothesize that there would be a strong correlation between their behaviors in both worlds. However, I acknowledge that accountability does have an impact on the behavior of people who need societal constraints to behave correctly.

It is my opinion that trust, accountability and deception are societal constructs and one’s ability to adhere to them is both psychological and physiological. Last week I had a conversation with a girl on IRC, who as it turns out was a teenager. At the beginning of our conversation, I assumed she was just like me, around my age and with functioned with my same value system, etc (I know, very egocentric of me). However, as our conversation progressed, I could tell in her conversational patterns and use of colloquialisms that she was much younger and immature about a lot of the topics on which she was professing expertise. I don’t think that she was intentionally trying to misrepresent herself, but rather, that the self she was representing was the only one she knew and that she knew that she was correct and right. I didn’t want to break it to her that it was actually me that was all omniscient, not her, ha ha.

For me, my interactions online are short-lived and so I do not have the time for a person to build up a history of trust with me. It is for this reason that I have to acknowledge the Internet for what it is, and that it provides a venue for communication for people from every walk of life. I cannot assume that everyone has the same purpose in their interactions with me and so must consider their comments and information with some degree of suspect. Donath’s comments are helpful as guidelines on how to identify trustworthiness based on some of the subtle signs that she recommended. Further, these guidelines should be headed until more time can pass to establish a history of credibility. And, this is done by demonstrating accountability overtime to build trust, which in turn enhances cooperation.

IRC and ME

2004-11-07T10:23:00.000-08:00

I connected to the network IRCnet. Some of the channels that I hung out on were #beginners, #casualchat, #casual, #cafebleu and #AllNightCafe. It took me quite a while to engage in some conversation because lots of folks were signing in and then out, but were not involved in conversant activity. What is that all about? Do people sign in and then immediately go to a private chat? And another thing, to the left was a list of people who were signed in to that channel; the list was huge on all channels. However, I have no idea where all those people were unless they were just observing and not participating at all. Another interesting experience was when the spammers were kicked of the channel, in fact when I signed on to #allnightcafe I was immediately kicked off because I was viewed as a spammer. I think that it is sad that spammers infect this form of communication, what a distraction. It seemed to me that the spammer’s comments were in a different color and I just ignored that color. In any case, I did engage in two rather lengthy conversations on two different channels. This was an enjoyable experience.

Since I had opportunity to converse with other chatters, I can definitely say that it was different from my interactions on LambdaMOO. First of all, there was not the same degree of arrogance with the interlocuters on the IRC chat as there was on LambdaMOO. In addition, the objectives of both types of interactions was different, this had a huge impact on the way that people communicated. IRC chat was a venue for socialization only, while LambdaMOO was a game where people could socialize or just play. I thought this comparison was interesting because in LambdaMOO conversations were easy to start because I could ask questions about the logistics of the game, where on IRC chat, it took effort to start a conversation that would engage others. I would say that most of the conversations on IRC chat were vacuous at best. In fact, I would posit that a younger generation of people frequent IRC chat, while LambdaMOO is filled with older, more experienced interlocuters. In any case, both experiences were interesting and if I frequent one of the forms of communication again, it would be LambdaMOO.

I Couldn’t Pick up the Damn Coffin or Get out of the Damn Closet!

2004-10-31T13:13:00.000-08:00

First of all, the other environments that we have studied thus far have not had the synchronous presence of other individuals in virtual space. This week working with MUDs & MOOs has been an incredible experience because it was so different. Most of the interaction we have experienced for this course has been asynchronous. Nevertheless, we have still engaged each other and strangers in our dialog. Having strangers respond to my posts has been very surprising.

However, having people respond to me the minute I entered a virtual room was shocking! To start, I’ll talk about my experience in LambdaMOO. When I signed in there were 83 people in the game. As you know, you start out in a closet filled with people. I was stunned that I was engaging with others as I was trying to fumble my way out of the closet. I found this interaction to be very uncomfortable. While the people that I met were kind and tried to help me understand what to do, I was doing so much wrong that they had to constantly coach me. When I told them that I was new to this, they said that they could tell. It all seemed so incredibly surreal, and I felt so vulnerable. Then I remembered Bartle’s paper on social interaction in MUDs and wondered what category I would be labeled as. I all of a sudden envisioned that those who were speaking to me in the closet could be “killers” who knew that I was at best a “socialite” and vulnerable to attack. I worked harder to get out of the closet, while those who watched kept telling me that I couldn’t complete the actions that I was trying to perform. In addition, I kept putting emote signs before every comment, which was irritating to others. This is an example of how the use of speech modalities are important and need to be adhered to for the novice MUDder/MOOer. I had to laugh, this was a hilarious experience. I logged out and tried again a couple of hours later. This time I remembered the directions better and immediately left the closet and was able to go from room to room. While there were others in the rooms, I tried to focus on what I was trying to do rather than socialize with others. I have to say that I was not able to create any artifacts. I tried everything that I could think of, but was not successful. I found it frustrating that I could not see what I was typing and did not have a log of things I have tried before. Anyway, I will try it again later, but for now, I did not create artificacts, but did watch an exchange between “assman” and “cookatu” regarding an ancient suit of armor. They ignored me and were having a debate on racism. I am not sure if the artifact brought on their interaction, but they were well engaged with what they were doing.

My experience with Zork was different from LamdaMOO because I was free to investigate the terrain and figure out the game without the presence of any other players. Also, I had a guide sheet to help me figure out my objectives from room to room. I still got lost and wasn’t able to always complete the task that was scripted, like pick up the coffin. But, I still had fun trying to figure things out. It was interesting again, that the rules for speech modalities are important and that your success will be limited unless you comply. I had to laugh because I continued to try to pick up the solid-gold coffin until the program told me that it was obvious that I was not having success, and that unless I knew something that it didn’t, I should discontinue with my methods. It was very funny and I felt like I was interacting with an actual person. Maybe I was, I did not see that presence of any others in Zork but myself.

In summary, I loved this experience and found myself laughing at Bartle’s article regarding the categories of characters in MUDs and MOOs (killer, explorer, socialite and achiever) and realized that these categories exist in real life and that each has a synergistic relationship. It would be nice if we had a moderator in real life that kept the balance of societal interactions at optimum. Hmmmm

Trust in Electronic Trade

2004-10-24T14:08:00.000-07:00

When I first thought about my own experience with on-line purchases, I could only think of eBay, however, after some consideration I realized that I have purchased a lot of things on-line and have dealt with a variety of scenarios. I have not only purchased from eBay, but also from Amazon.com, Jewelry suppliers, Best Buy, Palm Pilot, eReader and a “groups” sales list. On all of these purchases, I was wary of my first transaction on eBay, after which I haven’t worried since. After reading our assigned articles, I asked myself why I haven’t been more concerned about purchasing on-line.

Kollock, Resnick and Zeckhauser brought up some convincing comments regarding trustworthiness of sellers on-line. So, with some obvious concerns why haven’t I taken heed as a consumer and proceeded more cautiously with on-line transactions. The reason, because I did not feel vulnerable in completing these transactions, I did have a sense of trust that I would be protected.

In retrospect, there were several reasons that I felt this trust. One, companies that have name recognition like Amazon.com, Best Buy and Palm Pilot offer a link on their websites that explain their payment protection policies. Most of these companies have some group they list that offers encryption and failsafe support that protects the use of a credit card for payment. Even though I am not familiar with the group that is offering this protection, I believe that its existence is so and that I will be protected. In addition, I’m sure that I trust Amazon.com and the other companies listed because they are well known and reputable, which relates to the ways that trust is built in brick-n-mortar commerce.

On the other hand, my experience with eBay involved the use of a third-party-payer system, PayPal. I have to admit that I didn’t even think twice about the safety of PayPal, nor did I ever check into one of the seller’s approval rating. I have made purchases from Pokemon cards to digital cameras. In all cases, I have had a positive outcome of my transaction and feel lucky that I was not taken advantage of by one of the “bad apples” that dwell in these venues.
Last, I purchased products from members of a list group that I was on and wholesale jewelry items from unknown vendors and didn’t even question their trustworthiness at the time. I think that, at times, computer mediated communication can provide a sense of intimacy thru interactions that one feels like they know their interlocutors as well as they would had they had face-to-face interactions. During one interaction where I was purchasing gem stones, I misunderstood the price and in doing so sent the wrong amount of money to the seller. I am grateful that she communicated my error to me by calling me on the phone instead of flaming me on the Internet. It is so easy to make mistakes and have misunderstandings like this, but with the distrust that we have in electronic transactions, misunderstandings can escalate out of control.

I think that it is interesting that Kollock, Resnick and Zeckhauser compared on-line commerce with traditional brick-n-mortar commerce because I don’t necessarily see them as radically different. In addition, I think that we should include mail order companies. At any time, with any group, a consumer could feel duped. Because the Internet is new, there has not been sufficient time to establish name and brand recognition like that experienced by brick-n-mortar companies. In the future, there will be better ways to ferret out the “bad apples” so that trade can be made more reliable and satisfactory for the consumer.

Let Me Start Over…Now Really…Hello World!

2004-10-19T17:16:00.000-07:00

Now that I know that the “world” (perhaps that’s extreme, maybe a select few) are really reading my blog, I am writing this post with the humblest of hearts. I have just realized that the individuals whose Blogs I viewed during the assignment, Blogs part I, took the opportunity to view my response on my blog. As it turns out, my comments were less than flattering and reflects my insensitivity and inexperience more than it truly reflects the content and purpose of their blogs. I am afraid that I have offended those individuals whose blogs I viewed and would like to ask, no BEG for their forgiveness. I behaved as an egocentric smuck!

There are a couple of things that I have learned since then: 1) that the comments that I put on my blog truly are sent out to the world, others will read them, 2) it is hubristic to state comments such as I did without considering the feelings of others and without acknowledging my limited understanding of the blogging culture, and 3) while blogging supports spontaneity and informality, a blogger must be responsible.

Another comment that I wanted to make is that I have been getting quite a response to the story that I posted to FanFiction. Again, I have to say that I found this to be unexpected. I can’t believe that people are reading my post and actually care enough to make comments and critique my work; one person has even asked me to continue. Yikes! I kind of feel bad that I posted my story as a class assignment and that there are individuals out there giving of their time and opinions who spent time on my story. I don’t know what I was thinking, but I almost felt like this blog posting was an exercise, simulation if you will, I didn’t even imagine that I would be involving strangers in the material that I produced. I feel like my actions have been so insalubrious! Quick! Someone, quell my anxiety, I want to feel better about myself, even if it is only transitory.

Fan of Fiction

2004-10-18T08:12:00.000-07:00

Wow! What a trip down fiction lane! I was surprised by the quality of the stories that were posted. In addition, it was interesting to see the many different directions that one person can take the story line of an established set of characters. My first thought was that reading fanfiction was fun, but how in the world do people have the time to participate in this pastime? I mean, the movie Star Wars has 9,764 fictional stories posted and the book Harry Potter has 158,287. These numbers are phenomenal. In any case, I can see why Dave has asked, “what makes fan fiction so popular?”

My thoughts are that fan fiction offers people, or would-be-writers, an opportunity for anonymity, an honest critique and an outlet for “legitimized” creativity. On several of the stories that I read, the author stated that they wanted honest feedback from the reader and that they had not let anyone close to them read their writing because it was too personal. They would state that it was easier for a stranger to read their document than someone that they knew. I think that this is human nature to protect oneself until one is confident enough for exposure. The great thing about being exposed in fan fiction is that the readers there seem to really stick close to their code of netiquette in respecting the author and providing positive constructive feedback in their reviews. The peer review process is one of the critical building blocks that make this culture a success. People, who know your genre, know your paradigms are the same one’s evaluating your work. How often does that happen? This type of honest critique is an incredible resource for anyone who is writing. Last, fan fiction provides an outlet for creativity and it legitimizes the effort of the ingénue. I know that if I had access to something like this when I was a teenager, I would have posted to it often. It would have made me feel like I truly had more to offer because it was out there being viewed by others, and yet there was no risk to me. I think that I will engage my son with this culture of writing so that he can practice his skills for writing when he is old enough to post.

I read the stories written by the following authors who can be found at:

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/2088407/1/
“The Artificial McCoy” by Gadrin

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/2093458/1/
“It’s Not the Absence Fear” by daydreamer4

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/1768737/1/
“The Ties that Bond” by Magus101

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/2099714/1/
This is where my story can be found

At Last Something Substantive

2004-10-10T14:08:00.000-07:00

This week was spent viewing blogs that contained educational content for instructional technology. I found this to be a lot more enjoyable then viewing the ones that I perused last week. However, with that being said, I am glad that I spent time familiarizing myself with the blogs of the average Joe. Between Blogs Part I and Part II, I developed a much broader range of exposure as to how blogs can be and are used.

The thing that struck me most about visiting the Edublogs this week was that doing so made me feel like a real insider with an elite cadre of instructional technologists. Could I ever imagine myself to be on the same level as Dave Wiley (no, I’m not trying to be obsequious), Brian Lamb or Stephen Downes? Well, participating in reading and commenting on these blogs made me feel like I could contribute to a higher collective cognition within my profession than I ever knew possible. And, I must say that the aggregator makes a world of difference. I find that I can’t wait every day to go into SharpReader so that I can see “what’s new.” The following were some of the things that I found exciting on some of the blogs that I visited.

http://scottadams.blogs.com/handheld_instructional_te/
It was exciting to read in Scott Adam’s blog on handheld technology that “Podcasting” with iPods could actually make subscribing and listening to RSS feeds easier and more convenient because you could download the information and listen to it when you have time. I am going to look into this more. In fact, I will be doing a research project on mobile learning and was looking into PDAs as the handheld device and will now make sure to consider iPods before I make a decision.

http://wiley.ed.usu.edu/
Dave Wiley doesn’t just post content on his site, but also poses compelling questions that he really wants a response to. This is fun as a reader because you feel as though your opinion will be respected. On Dave’s blog he broaches relevant topics such as collaborative book publications, the future of intellectual properties and the impact of technology in schools. I was especially interested in the link to Lulu for on-line publishing. I didn’t realize that it would be so easy to put out a publication. Also, I choose to get an advanced degree in instructional technology because I believe the future is technology and that the impact on education will be great. Therefore, as an educator I want to follow the trends of the next several decades so that education in a formal setting can continue to remain relevant, even if it looks different from what we know today.

http://www.reusability.org/blogs/trey/
One of the things that really caught my eye on Martindale’s blog was that he posted a daily summary of the instructional technology conference at Utah State University. I don’t know anything about T Martindale, perhaps he is local, however, it was fun for me as a graduate student to see others validate the quality of the IT program at USU. Also, unfortunately, I was not able to attend the conference so his summative review and comments on the participating parties was educational for me. It is on this blog that I followed links that informed me on what a “wiki” was. I didn’t really understand the difference between a wiki and a blog until now.

http://www.downes.ca/
One of the things that I enjoyed most about S Downes’ blog was the portfolio of beautiful and interesting pictures that he posted on Australia. Second, I was surprised by how intelligent and yet down to earth Downes seems to be. As far as the content of his blog, Downes is a big player in IT and has a wealth of information and links on his blog. Most recently, I read his article on learning networks and was especially interested in the concept of “leaving language.” I had never heard the verbiage “digital immigrant” or “digital native” and found it interesting to conceive of a paradigm that would be radically different than what we presently know. Downes also is the only one that I found who could define the acronym RSS (Rich Site Summary) for me.

http://carieo.elearning.ubc.ca/weblogs/brian
It is off Lamb’s blog that I learned about redlightgreen as a resource for research on the Internet and gained a greater understanding of metatags. However, while I enjoyed B Lamb’s blog I really liked his wiki: http://careo.elearning.ubc.ca/wiki?GoGoGo
Ha ha, that sounds so...salacious, who knew I would ever put a sentence together that would sound so foreign. On Lamb’s wiki, I found myself following every link because they were all interesting and relevant for some of the topics that I hope to research in the near future. I felt like a kid in a candy store, I just couldn’t absorb it all at once.

Time Spent this Week
10 hours: I spent about 2 hours a day for 5 days surfing blogs.

My Week as a Blogophile!

2004-10-03T21:24:00.000-07:00

Before I sat down to write up my summary of this week’s voyeuristic exploits I read my latest e-mail from Dave Wiley. As recommended, I followed the link provided to read Russkoff’s comments on blogging. While I was reading, I realized that the blogs that I have followed this past week were greatly inferior to blogs such as Russkoff’s. Then I went on bloglines to read the posts of my fellow classmates to see the links to the blogs that others were reading. My horrors were confirmed. Somehow others, well…Murat, found blogs to view that were interesting and worthy of time spent. Yikes, wait ‘til you see where I’ve been.

The blogs that I read this week were created by amateurs; these are the links:
OfficeSmileMan
Meatball Fabulous
Diary of a Stay at Home Mum
Dr Finnerty
Carlos’ Realm

Similarities of Blogs:
Links, links and more links
Almost each blog has links that are both personal and political
Most of the blogs stated political viewpoints after the presidential debates
All of the blogs except one had pictures of a personal nature
Four of the five blogs posted emoticons daily
Three blogs had a writing style reminiscent of conversing with a family member while the other two were writing to the world

Differences of Blogs:
OfficeSmileMan – changed his template mid-way, has a category for each area of his life (work, home, play and photo album), photos are totally random and silly
Meatball Fabulous – host of blog comes across as very juvenile, however, person is old enough to have a 12 year old son, had pictures of tattoos, I found that I could change the design of the “skins” on her blog, once I changed the skin I found her site much more tolerable to view and much less juvenile
Diary of a Stay at Home Mum – daily picture of the weather where she lives, very personal and intimate, interesting link to a blog on Taxi Vignettes
Dr Finnerty - Not as interesting as I thought it would be, I thought would be the best of the five, but it was the most pretentious and boring, no profile information
Carlos’ Realm - Travels all over Europe, leaves pictorial journals, his Mom is currently visiting him and we get to see her on her vacation

My Reflections:
I think that Russkoff’s comments (below) are hardly applicable to blogs that are as informal as the ones that I visited.
“I believe that the most dangerous thing about blogs to the status quo is that so many of them exist for reasons other than to make money. A thriving community of people who are engaged for free, to me, have a certain authority that people doing things for money don't.”
When I viewed some of the blogs that Murat linked to, I could understand better the context of Russkoff’s post. I tend to relate his viewpoint to the recent Dan Rather “memo” issue, where it was the bloggers that identified the hoax of the memo. I think that it is a good thing that there are individuals out there who are intelligent and willing to post their viewpoints to the world with no monetary gain. However, at least in my experience, the majority of blogs are simple journals of everyday people with inane content that will most likely, not affect the status quo."

I found that blogs provide an avenue for anyone to post anything to the Internet, that blogging can be addicting, cathartic and informative, that bloggers feel the need to share information and are not afraid to incite a negative reaction and response. I was stunned at the amount of personal information and pictures that are posted and that people don’t flame the bloggers in their comments. However, I can see that with a good blog, like Stephen Downe’s, blogging and viewing blogs can be an engaging and worthy endeavor.

Time Spent this Week:
Forever…really, I searched and searched for worthy blogs. I need to find a better way to find good blogs. I would like Murat to post his blogging reconnaissance strategies.
10 Hours spent (at least)!

My Time at the Bazaar

2004-09-27T08:43:00.000-07:00

I know, I know, visiting a discussion thread that works to support list members problems hardly qualifies as “the Bazaar” but I saw a lot of similarities in the group dynamics that were highlighted in “The Cathedral and the Bazaar” that I drew the correlation anyway.

First, a short summary, I choose to investigate a discussion thread, misc.health.diabetes that related to the management of diabetes. The first comment was posted by an individual who had a friend that was recently diagnosed with diabetes and wanted information, diets and recipes. What followed were multiple replies from caring and concerned list members. Consequently, there were follow up problems and questions that persisted and kept the list alive from 1996 to 2004. I was surprised at the quality of the recommendations and support of this group. I wonder what their individual backgrounds are as far as illness type and occupation. Some of the list members sound like health care professionals. The following is a list of the topics that were discussed: diabetic symptoms, medications and side effects, treatment alternatives, products and research into new devices and pleas for help with financial advice, monetary gifts and insurance information.

Wiley’s question was: What motivates the responders to participate in the discussion?
Well, Eric Raymond listed what he called lessons throughout the body of his paper on the Delphi effect that applies to what I believe were the motivations of this group. For example, lesson one state that “every good work of software starts by scratching a developer’s personal itch. Obviously, all of the participants on this list either had diabetes or had a loved one who had diabetes. They were very interested in discussing those methods that would improve their quality of life and improving the life of others. This, in my opinion, is a big “itch” to scratch. There is a large intrinsic motivation for these members to participate. In addition, I think because all of the list members share a commonality with diabetes they also have great empathy for those listers that share their problems with the group. Moreover, because the group shares a common disease they have experiential knowledge to share and have become experts in this category. This relates to Eric’s lesson 10, “if you treat your beta-testers as if they’re your most valuable resource, they will respond by becoming your most valuable resource.” There were several times that members posted that even though they had access to literature and research, they found the comments from their fellow members of the list to be more informative and valuable for them in the treatment of their disease.

The thing that surprised me as this group worked to answer questions and support each other was the level of respect that they had for comments that were made. I felt, as a reader, that every post was treated as legitimate (not stupid) and of concern to the member who posted it. So, responses were made with great care to not offend but to graciously educate. I have copied some of the posts to illustrate some of the verbiage that was used. These quotes help to substantiate my claims of the groups empathy, commonality, experiential knowledge and expert advice that I mention in the above paragraph.

This was the first post that started this discussion:
Help! I'm a new diabetic, monitoring my bg for about 7 weeks. I havelost 30 lbs, work out everyday now, eat "right", and am still running bg 175-220. There seems to be no rhyme or reason. I can eat EXACTLY the same and workout EXACTLY the same 2 days in a row and have tremendous fluctuations. I am desperately trying to stay off medication as it would significantly change my life (can't scuba while on medication). HELP!!!!!
The responses were caring: It sounds like you are exercising your self into exhaustion. Losing 30 lbs in 7 weeks is also a bit excessive. My advice would be to talk to your doctor and ask him/her about your options. Not being able to control your diabetes will significantly change your life as well.

With that, the person with the problem responded with:

Thanks for being so caring.
There were three problems that were posted that the group members spent time on helping out the other person. One was when someone needed to know about a certain medication, the second was when a distraught member felt responsible for causing this disease in his loved one because of medication he had given her and the last was when someone posted that they wanted to treat their disease with Chinese medicine. In all cases, these problems were met with empathy and concern. One group member asks for clarification: What is "VYRTEC"? Is it a medicine? What is it used for? What is the chemical name? (Even in Portuguese this would be a help.)
Another states that the group member cannot blame himself: My son's experience prior to diagnosis sounds very similar…I can't speak for your case but in mine I know there was nothing that we did that caused his disease - if it didn't occur when it did surely it would have shown itself soon after.
A group members comment on Chinese Medicine: The first thing to do is to get your treatment handled via Western medicine. Once this is being done and everything is fairly stable, if you have interest in supplementing your Western allopathic treatment with othermethods, such as Traditional Chinese Medicine, go see an experiencedacupuncturist who also is well-versed in herbs and have a consultation.They may be able to help support the treatment you're already receiving.Are you inquiring about type 1 or type 2 diabetes?
I thought that this last post was interesting because I would have told the person that they were crazy to try to treat diabetes with Chinese medicine. Instead, he handled it with great respect. There were more responses to this person’s query but I cannot list them all.

One last thing, it was sad to note that in 2002 and then again in 2004 there was a continuous post from someone who claimed to be in great peril in Russia. Of course the post was a plea for money, and it was constant with multiple postings a day. It took over the group several times and then in 2004 all together. I felt this was perfect example of someone who blatantly abused the use of the commons (in reference to “Managing the Virtual Commons”). The post was obviously a scam for money, but because it was posted so often and was so offensive to those who had a real need, the group members chose to go elsewhere in their dialogue. I was very sad to see this happen. It is an egregious act when someone takes advantage of the common space that we all share.

Time Spent this Week:
3 Hours Online
2 Hours Reading and Assimilating Information
Total of 5 Hours

Kami Hanson

Google Groups Quagmire

2004-09-20T08:34:00.000-07:00

My Journey through Google Groups

I have not participated in an on-line group in a long time, so this was an eye opening experience for me. There was a time that I was part of the old “eGroups” which I found to be very user friendly and understandable. However, I found USENET to be confusing. Perhaps I wasn’t using it correctly and perhaps it was not intended to be a “new and improved” version of eGroups. The following is a description of my experience, maybe you can tell me what I did wrong.

My journey took me through several phases as I learned how to focus in on my searches and refine my interests. I spent the first two hours, 4:30-6:30 pm, doing what was assigned, exploring the archive. The most important thing that I was looking for was that the “group” was active. I discovered that you could see by the dates on the posts that a certain thread was “dead” but I found it frustrating that I kept going down defunct paths. I realized that the “advanced search” feature could locate posts that were more recent, but I wasn’t very good at the searches that way. I would put in a subject of interest in the search box and would find information, but often times it would be an article from some professional source instead of an actual group. I found this to be interesting because I thought that the “groups” would be much more defined, but basically, as near as I could tell, “groups” were just threads that related to a central comment. I couldn’t tell that there was an official group, just a lot of miscellaneous conversations that loosely related to the topic or group name that google had given it. I found it even more difficult to tell how you would know as a user how to get to a specific conversation of interest and how you would return to that exact same place later. I searched a variety of topics and groups which I can list but that seems superfluous to my actual experience. Around 6:30 pm I signed up for a user account.

When I signed up for my user account at 6:30 pm, I was informed that I would get an e-mail soon to verify my account status and then I could post to the group conversations. I was excited because I wanted to post on a conversation that related to Dan Rather. However, I did not get my e-mal, so I waited and surfed and waited and explored. During this waiting time I discovered a lot in my explorations. I found that there were several conversations related to Dan Rather’s “memo” issue and most of them got quite heated, off topic and insulting. Yikes, in fact, most of the political conversations ended up with “you moron” followed with “fascist pig.” So, I decided to explore some topics on the more inane side of celebrity. I found that some people hate Owen Wilson’s nose and some love the look of it. I moved on to women’s rights and activism, antifacism and education. I had to be careful and choosy in my decisions of what threads to follow. It was like going to a consignment store and having to pick the quality items out of the junk that was available. I am not in to thrift store shopping and sifting through scrap to find the one gem item. And, I didn’t like it any better in Google groups trying to find the one or two valid conversations in which to participate. I kept rechecking my e-mail for my confirmation message so that I could post, but to no avail. So, I continued to explore, but this time I clicked on every possible link that I could on the Google groups page. I had no idea that Google offered so much. I had always used Google for just a web search. So I was thrilled to see the “Images” feature and “Fruggle” and in the more section, there were all sorts of features. I was especially pleased to know that you could put a mathematical equation in the search box and have it solve problems for you and the word define feature was cool. I didn’t know about this. In addition, I read everything about posting etiquette which I though was interesting and relevant. And, it seems like most people adhere to these recommendations in their posts, except for the real heated political conversations. Last, I discovered that the Simpsons had the most threaded and active discussions of them all.

Alas, at 9:00 pm, I signed up for a different user account using a new computer and was able to get in to post immediately. I felt pressured to post where I knew there were current threads, so I posted to a conversation related to the Apprentice on NBC. I know, not the most cerebral, but the most entertaining. I had watched the last Apprentice show and was excited to comment on the firing of “Bradford” so I found a link in the “groups” section of rec.arts.tv. I found a comment to post to and when I did, it looked to me like my post was going to go somewhere different than intended because the comments in my draft box had to do with free iPods and not the Apprentice. Anyway, I wrote my comments and posted. To my surprise, the computer said that my post was successfully done but that it could take 6 to 9 hours to post. Yikes! I was so surprised. I knew that this was an asynchronous discussion but this time delay was unexpected. I guess I thought that there would be more opportunity for interaction. That someone would read my post and respond with-in at least half an hour. I’ll have to check back next week, if I can find it again to see if anyone responded. I continued as assigned and posted everywhere that I could where there was a current conversation. I posted on a review of “Sky Captain and the World of Tommorrow”, participated in more Apprentice review and the breading of bearded dragons and same sex marriage and who would win at the Emmys. I got so caught up and lost about where I was at that I cannot tell you now Dave how to get there. Today, before this note, I tried to pinpoint my exact location for you but I could not discover again exactly where I was and I don’t think my comments have yet posted because I know I was somewhere close to where I posted for the Apprentice. Anyway, you’ll have to be patient with me. I haven’t participated on Google groups before and I’m sure there must be a more organized way to do things. All in all, I ended my Journey about 11:00 pm, with 5 ½ hours of haphazard exploration and episodic posting. My final feelings were, why go to Google groups when you can participant in more interactive chats on-line?

Interaction Hours

2004-09-13T09:08:00.000-07:00

I spent at least five hours this week on the subject matter at hand.

Intro to Internet

2004-09-13T09:02:00.000-07:00

“We have no troubles here…in here…Life is Beautiful!”

It wasn’t until I discovered that I could feed my passion for escapism via the Internet that I decided to become a regular user. I lived in New Jersey at the time, just outside of New York City, and was an ardent theatre patron. When the revival of the theatrical production of Cabaret opened, I was hooked. As my personal life was falling apart, I connected on a personal level with the idea of denial and escapism that was so prevalent in the psyche of the people in this play. I became obsessed with the performer that played the emcee of the show and discovered that there was an entire world dedicated to him on the Internet. Now I have to say that this type of “groupie” behavior was foreign to me, it sounds rather sophomoric in fact. However, I can’t tell you how fulfilled I began to feel as I joined up with listgroups and participated in chat rooms that were totally dedicated to Cabaret and the emcee. Those of us on the listserve referred to each other as “listsibs” and began to plan events and get-togethers in the city. I was on the Internet daily to view my listsibs posts, to look at pictures they had taken of “our” emcee and to find out what was new or upcoming so that I could plan it in my schedule. I felt like a patron of the Cabaret, that if I stayed entranced in this debauchery I would not recognize the evil that was brewing in my midst. As was the case with Nazi fascism, the trouble in my life became so paramount that it could no longer be ignored. I eventually had to move with my son to Utah leaving everything behind me.

This was a very dramatic beginning to my Internet usage. When I moved to Utah, I didn’t even have a computer, so I would go to Kinkos to use their computer and Internet almost daily. I felt very lost at first after I left the New York City metroplex and was trying desperately to still feel connected. I have to say that it was the Internet that saved me. I was able to keep in contact with my friends via e-mail, my listsibs via the listserve and participate in other virtual communities that were going through a situation that was similar to mine. This provided me with a support system, albeit virtual, that helped me to deal with the challenges that I was facing. Once I started to pull my life together, the Internet and the computer became even more an integral part of my existence. I started the process of applying for graduate school. I took the GMAT exam and used the computer to complete practice tests multiple times a week. I learned how to use excel and powerpoint, how to complete my banking on-line and sign up for communications about information in which I was interested. I began to see knowledge of the computer and related software as a benefit to myself in my personal and professional life. I took classes and worked to learn everything that I could about data management software, web development software, graphics software, and other relevant hardware.

I no longer feel the need to track a famous Broadway performer on the Internet. My time is spent doing research on the Internet and finding out new and exciting things related to instructional technology. I do, however, find myself tracking the movement of my ex-husband now and again in the news on the Internet. He has been served with a life sentence and will not have the opportunities that I now have learning in a new era of technology.

Hello World...

2004-09-01T16:16:00.000-07:00

Ready get set, gooooooo......