Posted on 16th March 2006 by Judy Breck in Mobile Learning
content, learning, mobile, podcasts
Added recently to the listings down the left column of the front page of the online New York Times, under is Podcasts. Clicking Podcasts takes a reader to this page. Any mobile phone that plays mp3 files can, of course, be used to listen to these podcasts. Cock your learning ear, and you’ll hear a friendly “Hello, Future.”
At GoldenSwamp.com, our focus and mission is virtual learning. What that meant until very recently was sitting down at a stationary computer, opening a browser, and connecting with webpages containing some content to learn. Laptops, of course, made it possible to tuck the virtual learning tool under your arm and carry it with you. Mobile phones are now beginning the transition to putting the tool into your pocket.
Podcasts are turning out to be the pioneering content for the arriving learning transition. A mobile phone is, after all, in its soul a voice device. It is fitting for a learning app that speaks to the tool’s soul* to flood first into the learning venue. In the same sort of soul vein, the MP3 in its soul, is musical. Fitting therefore is the project here titled Stanford on iTunes. No, this is not a music app from this venerable California intellectual bastion. It is university faculty lectures, interviews, music and sports. (Well music is in there.)
Although in the examples just given, learning seems to be piggybacking on a device made for something else, it is beginning to seem likely that the mobile phone will become the most-used, most effective device on earth for delivering learning content. Sound is pioneering learning on the mobiles, as would be normal. Texting learning interactively is under way in early stages. Some mobile browse the Internet effectively, and that trend is deepening. For now, the pioneers are very impressive, as these samples show. News from the New York Times and lectures from Stanford are top drawer content.
* The reality of a tool soul is beyond the scope of this blog 
Posted on 15th March 2006 by Judy Breck in Schools We Have Now
age, agricultural, conceptual_age, industrial, information
OK, folks, here is a quiz on the above chart: In which age is education? I would say most K-12 schools are transitioning from agricultural or industrial into information. If so, that is a major problem for students because they will be living in the conceptual age if we go by this chart. See the full chart here, along with a second related chart. They are both MindMaps created by Steve Richards based on Daniel Pink’s new book A Whole New Mind.
Posted on 15th March 2006 by Judy Breck in Emerging Online Knowledge
blog, global, learning, map, visitors
The map shown above displays a dot for each of the last 100 visitors to the GoldenSwamp, which is a blog about global learning. At least one visitor has dropped by from each of Earth’s seven continents. When I write about “global learning” on this blog, I am writing about something very real that is already here. Most classrooms — especially pre-college — are isolated from global communication. Yet the youngsters in those classrooms are preparing to live in the world illustrated above. Please think about how much sense that does not make, and what we can do to connect the digital natives to their future.
Posted on 14th March 2006 by Judy Breck in Subject Sampler
images, landsat, texas, wildfire
The “Landsat 5 Thematic Mapper (TM) outgassing event is scheduled for March 14-15, 2006. This is a periodic maintenance event to improve mid-infrared band performance. During this time, normal operations will be suspended. Imaging will resume on March 16, 2006.” Thus report here the USGS keepers of Landsat 7. She is grand old lady of land imaging satellites, who has been taking pictures like the one above of this month’s Texas wildfires since 1999. For the past 22 years Landsats have been sending images of Mother Earth to us from high above the surface of our planet. Earth sciences
Posted on 13th March 2006 by Judy Breck in Connective Expression
compare, gospels, harmony, jesus, life
The life of Jesus is told in the four Gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. The animated, interactive chart here lets you study the telling of this Life comparatively among the four Gospels. The comparison demonstrates a marvel of abstraction which could be a framework for using this kind of digital expression to teach many topics. As the designer observes in the title, “God is in the details.” via Information Aesthetics
Posted on 12th March 2006 by Judy Breck in Subject Sampler
american, gothic, grant_wood, painting
In the virtual exhibit here, take a look right back at the these Daughters of the Revolution and others of the marvelous characters painted in American Gothic by Grant Wood. The online highlights are from the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s current show called Grant Wood’s Studio now at the Renwick Gallery in Washington. Arts
Posted on 12th March 2006 by Judy Breck in Carnival of the Mobilists
carnival, mobilists, work_goes_mobile
This week’s Carnival is hosted here on Martin’s Mobile Technology Page. Visiting the Carnival each week is not only a way to catch a review of the best mobile blogging posts. It is a way to meet mobilists, like host Martin Sauter. I found myself reading through his blog and ordering a book he recommended called Work Goes Mobile. I plan to investigate in the book what education can learn about the success work has had in going mobile.
Posted on 11th March 2006 by Judy Breck in Schools We Have Now
21st_century, education, fun, guilt
At the significant risk of appearing to fawn over Kathy Sierra’s education insights cloaked in marketing words and images, I once again recommend her post here titled Reducing guilt is the killer app. In reading that post, I began to realize:
Kids feel guilty because they don’t like school.
Parents feel guilty because their kids feel guilty and (worse) don’t do as well as they obviously should at school.
Teachers feel guilty because learning doesn’t happen the way they wish it would.
Administrators feel guilty because their schools tend to mediocre.
Politicians feel guilty so they spend more money.
If we have proven nothing else in the last couple of generations it is that all that guilt hasn’t changed anything. In fact, we have to feel guilty because education keeps giving us new reasons to feel guilty.
What if none of what any of us feel guilty about is our fault? We keep trying to make things work that were designed for a learning world now more than a century past. We don’t have to feel guilty because pencils and papers are obsolete and children are now in touch with each other digitally and globally. What could be more fun than forgetting all that guilt and creating the 21st century learning apparatus? Yes, Kathy, guilt’s gotta go.
Posted on 10th March 2006 by Judy Breck in Emerging Online Knowledge
guidelines, mcdonald\'s, tutor
McDonald’s has created this top-of-the learning line digital tutor to help people learn about and check their GDAs relative to the company’s menu. GDA stands for Guideline Daily Amounts.
Why not use the format of the GDA tutor to help people learn about DNA, H2O, XML, NATO, FDR, and/or other subjects? What makes us think students would learn anything that way. For one thing, McDonald’s would not have gone to the expense nor made the public relations step in distributing their GDA tutor unless they had checked pretty carefully about whether it would teach some lessons. via Information Aesthetics
Posted on 9th March 2006 by Judy Breck in Subject Sampler
animations, chemisty, organic, spectrometry
The page here from Colby College lists 16 tutoring animations for organic chemistry. The illustration is from the very lively (and noisy) Mass Spectrometry tutorial. Basic chemical ideas literally bounce around these pages, and readily jump out at an inquiring mind. Chemistry
Posted on 7th March 2006 by Judy Breck in Subject Sampler
marx_brothers, new_york_public_library, vaudeville
These handsome young men are the Marx Brothers, shown in an image from the collection of the New York Public Library — from the time when their gig was Vaudeville. The online exhibit here titled Vaudeville Nation is an example of the superb work done by the NYPL in bringing its grand collection into the virtual world. Once again stroll the sidewalks of New York, stopping into the vaudvillian theaters, in this interesting retrospective. Arts
Posted on 6th March 2006 by Judy Breck in Emerging Online Knowledge
brain, heart, practice, simulation, surgery, virtual
If a surgeon were going to operate on my brain, I would hope he or she had practiced in every conceivable way. The article here from Case Western Reserve University describes a virtual reality simutlation to train brain and heart surgeons. Including virtual training for surgeons is a growing practice.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if kids in high school and in lower grades could use these same tutorials? Too young? I don’t think so. Did you ever have a classmate — say in the sixth grade — who had decided long ago to become a surgeon? I think of my friend David, who did just that when we were students together at Crockett grade school in El Paso. He is a professor of orthopaedics and wrote the standard hand surgery textbook used in medical schools. I can tell you that by the sixth grade he would have been a whiz at the tutorial descibed in this above link.
Posted on 4th March 2006 by Judy Breck in Schools We Have Now
mediocrity, school, standards
Kathy Sierra, who writes for Creating Passionate Users, is a learning guru disguised in marketing language like “sucks” and “kick ass” — which would get big frowns at an education conference.
Her illustration (above) from her post today demonstrates, in my opinion, that teaching to an “acceptable” level is leaving yet another generation of school students in limbo below the Kicking Ass Threshold. Success at school these days is to be above the Suck Threshold and failure is entering the drop-out zone. Our school system passes kids on to the next grade and gives them a diploma when they suck. I know I am twisting the language here, but I do so as a wake up call. The euphemisms of education are among its causes of mediocrity. We owe it to our kids to teach them how to kick ass. I would not attempt to explain Kathy’s brilliant analysis of her chart shown above. You can read it in her words here.
What then lets students move above the Kick Ass Threshold? First is to accept that essentially every kid can do it — which you have to figure out for yourself. Maybe you cannot accept that idea, in which case mediocrity (sucks) is the expectation for any generation.
For those who see the budding kicker in every kid, the new networked world is full of hope. In Marc Prensky’s new book, Don’t Bother Me Mom, I’m Learning, he mentions (p. 59) the “leveling up” factor as a reason kids work for hours with digital games. That Prensky says:
. . . means feeling yourself getting better at the game, and achieving mastery over something difficult and complex, something you couldn’t do when you started.
Compare that with the Kicking Ass Threshold:
I’ll keep pushing myself. There’s always some way to do it better . . .
Myself, I think moving learning into the kids’ own digital medium will move them past the era of the Suck Threshold.
Posted on 3rd March 2006 by Judy Breck in Carnival of the Mobilists
harlequin, mobilist, pink
The beautiful pink lady graces the midway of this week’s Carnival of the Mobilists, hosted here at Textually. org. Click on the featured posts at the Carnival for the week’s best sketches from the mobile world.
Posted on 2nd March 2006 by Judy Breck in Subject Sampler
conservation, exhibit, florida, lemur
Stop by here to visit a project in Florida where lemurs are studied and concerned humans work to protect them into the future. One of the lemurs you will meet there, either if you go in person to the Florida location or virtually online, is Bud whose picture is shown above. The website also links to many other online lemur virtual lairs. Animal Sciences
