TechIntersect

Last summer, my daughter & I measured shadows cast by our basketball goal on the first day of summer. Today is one day before the first day of winter, we are doing the same experiment to make a comparison. The sun is shining but it was only 14º outside! Needless to say, we were not terribly excited to try to make a video or collect 3 hours worth of data. Instead, we collected five data points and found where the shadow was at its shortest length.

Last summer, the sun at mid-day was at an elevation angle of 73.25º. Today, the sun’s elevation angle was only 27.19º. I wish we would have recorded the temperature that day last June. I recall it was quite warm, probably in the 80’s or low 90’sF. Today, the temperature was in the teens, so there is about as big of a contrast as you can get.

We haven’t had a chance to discuss what we found yet, but it will be interesting to see what a first grader thinks is causing the different shadow lengths. Stay tuned.

I just finished a wonderful little book entitled Human Connection and the New Media edited by Barry N. Schwartz. Sounds like an appropriate title for the end of 2008, doesn’t it? The amazing thing is that the date of publication is 1973!

I have often thought it would be interesting to record the campaign promises of presidential candidates, then at the end of their term, go back and see how they measure up with what they actually did. (Perhaps there’s a web site which does this, but I’ve not found it yet.)

Although I haven’t found presidential promises to review, this book I discovered lets me review the promises of futurists from the past. The Human Connection is a compilation of several writer’s vision of the future as seen in the early 1970’s. Some of these people were amazingly accurate in their predictions. They discuss the video phenomenon we see today with technologies such as YouTube (although they only had videotape at the time) In a number of the articles, the Internet was clearly anticipated, although it was brand new and not widely available to the general public.

For example, the chapter Tomorrow we will communicate to our jobs was a reprint of a Peter C. Goldmark article originally published in The Futurist April 1972. He was a man after my own heart, because he calls for a New Rural Society to help offset the growing problem of urban expansion.

We would like to give all Americans an opportunity to work and live in small but attractive rural communities. The persons who chose to settle in these communities will become the new rural society.

The society that we envision does not now exist because, in general, people do not want to move into a rural area, no matter how attractive, unless it offers jobs, adequate educational and health services, opportunities for cultural pursuits, entertainment, social contacts, and so on.

Wow, he’s describing me. I live in Clyde, Kansas, population 700. People who visit us always comment on my town and how it’s residents take pride in its appearance. Yet our population continues to decline in the region. Our best and brightest head off for greener pastures. Yet each year a few expatriates return if they can find anything at all which offers a promise of earning a living.

I was one of these prodigal sons, going off to the Navy for six years, only to return at the end of my hitch. But the question of earning a living always nags at me. I’m currently commuting 70 miles one way to my K-State job. It’s a great job, but there is something special about living in the community where your father and grandfather grew up; I don’t think we’ll be moving closer anytime soon.

Not everyone is as committed to living here as I am, and many jobs aren’t as flexible as mine making the 2.5 hours of daily commuting even more daunting.

Goldmark proposed that improvements in communications technology could halt the migration from rural areas to cities. He suggested developing a network which would:

accommodate voice, data, and two-way video-phone. This would be the most basic urban “nerve system” which will be as vital as streets, water, or power… The network can be looked upon as provideing a pipe into every home, office or library through which one can not only converse, but also transmit and receive written materials, pictures, data, etc.

Hmm, this guy is good! It only took us thirty-five years, but what he is describing is finally happening. A year ago, Twin Valley Telecommunications began installing Fiber to the Home (FTTH) technology in Clyde, and all of the other communities which they serve. We jumped from a primarily dial-up Internet access town to a community with the very best broadband technology available in the country.

Now that we have the infrastructure in place, we now need to educate the citizenry about its potential uses. Knowledge workers of all kinds now have the ability to “communicate to our jobs“. My problem is that I view my profession, teaching, as primarily a hands-on profession. Sure there is always distance learning, and we have made great inroads into improving online learning over the past decade, but I did not become a teacher to spend all of my time behind a computer screen. Perhaps something of a compromise can be reached in which some of the time I take advantage of the telecommunications tools available to me, and some of the time I appear with my students in person.

Anyway, I just wanted to share with you this idea that sometimes old technologies can still be useful. In my case, the technology I am referring to is the book. People don’t seem to be reading as many of them these days and I worry we might be hurtling towards the vision of humanity as depicted in the movie Wall-E, where the people float around all day on chaise lounges equipped with personal video screens. Don’t do that to yourself! Get up! Walk around! Go to the library. Browse the stacks! Maybe you will find a very cool, old book as I did, which outdated, is still very relevant to today. You might even want to request Human Connection and the New Media through interlibrary loan if your library doesn’t have it.

Yesterday I had lunch with Dr. Chris Sorensen, who calls himself a “simple country physicist” but in fact is Kansas State’s 2007-08 University Distinguished Teaching Scholar. His list of accomplishments during his 30+ years at K-State is quite long, and some of them I cannot even pronounce. But certainly not the least of these is Outstanding Doctoral and Research Universities Professor of the Year.

So why would such a distinguished professor take the time to have lunch with and visit with me, a very junior and nontenured assistant professor from a different campus?

Because I asked him to!

One of the most important things I have done since I began my career in higher education is developing a network of mentors. You could think of it as old-school social networking. There is an old saying that goes something like this: “People who matter don’t mind, and people who mind don’t matter,” and I have found that it’s usually true.

Last spring, Chris was to give a talk at K-State called “A University Without Walls“. I had never heard of Dr. Sorensen before the talk was announced, but I became so excited when I read his abstract calling for a more interdisciplinary approach I e-mailed him to tell him I was coming. He must have thought I was some sort of nut, but he was gracious and suggested I introduce myself at the lecture, which I did.

These things often have a strange way of progressing, and I wound up running into him a number of times in unexpected places throughout the year, and he always remembered me! I don’t know if he’s read Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People, but he lives it because he learned and remembered my name.

So What Did I Learn Yesterday?

I think it is absolutely vital that as teachers we all find someone to talk to every once in a while; someone who resonates with us and shares our outlook on life. Even though I’ve only known Chris a very short time, and only been able to visit at length with him once, I feel like we do have similar philosophies in spite of our different backgrounds.

For example, we discussed our respective military careers and how the experience shaped who we are today. Chris said because of his, he can eat a lot of $!&@. Hmmm, I thought. I’ve eaten a lot of $!&@ too. In fact, nothing that the university has been able to serve up compares to that which the Navy provided me with, but sometimes I forget to remind myself of that fact. Talking with Chris, and having that shared experience helped me to see things in proper perspective again.

We talked for over an hour. He seemed to be interested in my presentation at K-State’s Faculty Exchange for Teaching Excellence next month. I will be presenting a talk called “Teaching In The Intersection: Playing In The Street Without Getting Run Over” and our conversation seems to be stimulating some ideas for that.

Don’t Isolate Yourself

I guess the point of this post is to encourage you to seek out others where you work who can help you become better at what you do. Don’t be afraid of the “movers and shakers” because so often they benefit from knowing you as much as you benefit from knowing them. But you must be sincere in your efforts, and not superficially choose to interact with people just because you think it might be helpful in advancing your career. I seek out people with whom I have a genuine interest in knowing. Usually there is something that they have said or written that sparks an interest in my learning more, and it develops from there.

Tags: networking, professional development

This clip is a good example of multi-track audio mixing. I wouldn’t have thought to screen capture the editing environment as it plays; pretty clever!

My digital media students will be doing this sort of editing with the free program Audacity. We have a new digital media degree, and this semester will be the first formal introduction to non-linear editing.

Tags: audio

You read the headline correctly. Copying is not illegal… provided that the owner of the copyright give their consent to have the work copied. That’s the kicker. It is not necessarily a straightforward process either.

I am not an expert in copyright. I have merely had a passing interest in what is happening with copyright for several years now, extending back more than a decade when I first discovered the open source software movement.

Teachers Should Know This Stuff

Earlier this week, I read a very sad tale of a teacher who did not fully understand copyright, especially those aspects pertaining to open source software and similar usage licenses. Long story short, the author of the aforementioned tale receives an e-mail from a school teacher accusing him of illegally distributing software to her students. Not taking this accusation lying down, the author shares the e-mail on his blog and a firestorm of controversy ensues. The Linux community is outraged and direct it’s ire towards the teacher.

(Let’s just say that to have Linux lovers mad at you is not a good thing. Just ask SCO Group, Inc which tried to claim ownership of Unix technologies used in Linux, and implemented a licensing scheme that would require Linux users to pay for the priviledge of using Linux. SCO filed for bankruptcy last year.)

At least the author of the controversial blog post had the class to apologize for what he had done after the teacher contacted him for an explanation. The blog author is even taking steps to protect the identity of this teacher after being offered huge sums of money to identify her. His intent was not to assassinate the character of a teacher, but to defend himself against a clearly wrong accusation, and it got out of hand as these thing often do thanks to the power of the internet. A less scrupulous person could have made this teacher’s life a living hell!

Teacher, Teach Thyself!

There is growing concern that copyright law as it currently exists is stifling creativity. The current system provides for fair use, but people using content legally under the fair use guidelines still must defend themselves against large corporations with deep pockets if they ever get sued.

To educate yourself, I recommend starting with the Creative Commons licensed e-book “The Public Domain” by James Boyle available for free download. I also recommend the book “Free culture : how big media uses technology and the law to lock down culture and control creativity” by Lawrence Lessig.

I plan to require my students to read Chapter 8 of “The Public Domain” to get themselves up to speed on Creative Commons and GPL licensing. If nothing else, do yourself a favor and read that. You don’t want to accidentally find yourself falling into an alligator pit, like the teacher I described earlier!

Tags: copyright, creativecommons

If you are reading this, you are most likely already familiar with the term “Web 2.0″ aka the “read/write web”. But I wanted to take some time to document my own growth in understanding the concept.

The Machine is Us/ing Us is a video that was first released on YouTube in January of 2007 by Dr. Mike Wesch, a K-State professor of Anthropology. The video simply describes what this new web is all about and what it means to us. It quickly went viral, meaning it experienced explosive, exponetial growth in popularity as people shared with others through the internet. (It currently has over 7 million views!)

My wife and I were fortunate enough to meet Mike for lunch in Aggieville just a few weeks after people began to take notice of his video. It’s a good thing we met with him when we did because since that time Wesch has been racking up the awards– most recently the Carnegie/CASE national professor of the year– and his time is in very high demand.

Of course I had heard of web 2.0 technologies such as blogging, YouTube, and so forth, but until we met Dr. Wesch, I had never really considered the full extent of its power. In talking with him, the lights began to flicker on in my mind about the possibilities. But I am often slow to comprehend, and a year later (last spring) I was still slogging on in my old ways.

Then came SXSW. I had heard about it mentioned the Boagworld web development podcast, so I signed up to attend last March and it rocked my world! I can remember one session I attended a young lady was describing the importance of blogging. Blogging? I thought to myself. Isn’t that just vanity publishing for narcissists? She mentioned that companies were paying people to blog about their products. What?!? You have to be kidding me. She even said that you should do multiple blog posts each day, because your followers are eager to learn what you have to say next! You have to be kidding me, more than one post a day? (I’m still lucky if I fire one of these off a week.)

Slowly, the veil that was limiting my vision about how this all works was being lifted away, and I could start to see how all of this could apply in my life. I’ll have to admit that I’m still learning, but I’ve come a long way in just a short time, I think.

Applying what I’ve learned

As a computer systems technology professor, I have always felt that it’s important to stay engaged with the subjects I teach. I don’t think there is a better way to do this than helping with the technology side of a business. The latest evidence that we are learning are these recent web statistics for my wife’s business http://www.wendyspartytreats.com.

Take a look at this traffic graph I just downloaded.

I developed her site a year ago over Christmas break, and launched it in January to see what would happen. There is a jump in unique visitors in April, which coincides with one of her busy times of year, school graduations in May. People were looking at her graduation cakes and other party treats. But that was also about the time I returned from SXSW, and started this on this blogging journey.

Throughout the year, I continued adding technologies to my repertoire including Facebook and Twitter. This is in no small part to what I learned at SXSW, and later with the book Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies by Li & Bernoff.

You can see a dip in traffic over the summer, which is a typical pattern for businesses such as hers, but there was not a return to the pre-SXSW traffic levels. And look at what has been happening this fall… wow! November was the busiest traffic month of the year!

I realize that this traffic means nothing without corresponding sales, but trust me, Wendy is BUSY this season! She has spent lots and lots of hours lovingly preparing her treats to help people celebrate the holiday season.

Much of this growth has simply been word of mouth, but the internet side of things is starting to catch on as well as she begins shipping her goodies to the far reaches of the USA. Someday, I imagine, she may even begin to have clients around the world.

Advertising is shouting. The groundswell is a conversation.

One thing I have learned from the Groundswell book is that advertising is akin to companies shouting at people about how great their stuff is. But the groundswell which comes from using web 2.0 technologies isn’t about shouting, it is about conversations.

I have always been turned off by high-pressure sales and the last thing we want to do is be seen as in league with these types. Instead, we want people to be surprised by the excellence of our quality for the price, and hope that surprised customers and friends tell their friends, and so far it seems to be working.

When Wendy left the corporate world to be a stay at home mom, she began putting her creativity to work in the kitchen. When I saw how talented she was, I just knew that her friends would enjoy her skills too. I encouraged her to start sharing with people she knows and we seemed to stumble right into the Seth Godin Holiday Shopping Guide’s #1 recommendation: Buy handmade items from people you like.

We are still learning about how best to participate in the groundswell, but I think the little traffic graph I’ve shared and the booming little home-based business gives us a hint that we may be on the right track.

Over the Christmas break, you can be sure I will be busily trying to incorporate some of these things I have been learning into the second semester web development course I will be teaching. My question to you is, what are some of the most valuable lessons you have learned about the new read/write web? What would you share with students just beginning to learn about web development and how it fits into the world of web 2.0?

Tags: blogging, e-commerce, groundswell, web2.0

It seems that 2008 will be remembered as the year that many companies are scrapping the annual holiday party. You may ask, “Why not?” Many people do not like the the company holiday party for a variety of reasons. From being boring, even uncomfortable, to downright offensive and insensitive to other cultures, the company holiday party is a tradition that may not be worth keeping in these times of economic uncertainty.

However, in a story I heard on NPR, business consultant John Challenger, the CEO of Challenger, Gray and Christmas, thinks that companies would do well to rethink canceling the party outright. He says:

Canceling parties altogether is a very tough statement about where the company’s at. It can only be damaging to morale. It makes people even more insecure about their job.

Challenger continues:

Parties are the canary in the coal mine. They are symbols of where the companies stand, how they see their future, how they think about workplace culture.

A lot of people get uptight this time of year, especially in multicultural environments like where I work at the university. People come from all different cultures and traditions. Maybe it is simply better to cancel the party, especially since money is tight. Many of the holiday parties aren’t all that well attended anyway with so many other things going on this time of year.

But I think we need to look closely at Challenger’s observations. What does it say about our workplace culture if we cancel one of the main ways we come together as a working community? Where I work, we only have one other gathering that everyone attends; the fall semester kickoff, which is usually more of a working meeting than a celebration. Sure we have graduation, but this is attended primarily by the faculty only, not the entire campus.

If we don’t do the holiday party, we need to have something to replace the tradition that enables the entire campus faculty & staff to get together in a fun way. It doesn’t necessarily have to be expensive either. It could be as simple as having a picnic in the park. Play some softball and have a pot luck lunch; something that tries to recognize and build community. In tough times, I think this is more important than ever.

Paul Bogush is pleased with the work of his student Katie in her recent assignment of writing to President Elect Obama in which she calls for increased use of technology in education. Intrigued, I headed over to her blog to get it from the horse’s mouth. I agree with Mr. Bogush, this girl does indeed know how to think critically. I especially enjoyed the money-saving plan she has devised:

I think we should replace these school supplies with laptops… Last year I spent about eighty dollars on school supplies. If I complete fourteen years of school I would have spent about $1120. The laptop I’m writing this letter on cost about $800. If I buy a laptop and use it for the fourteen years I would save about twenty-three dollars a year.

Way to go Kate! Math is a lot more fun when it is personal and relevant, isn’t it? She does one of mathematics’ dreaded “story problems” without even being asked!

Her suggestion that students could use the same computer for fourteen years made me smile because I think our throw-away society tends to discard things far too easily. Since I was using computers fourteen years ago, I decided to look into what we were using back then. Here is some of what I found on computerhope.com:

• The Web Standards W3C was founded by Tim Berners-Lee
• Netscape was founded by Marc Andreeson
• Al Gore coined the term “Information Superhighway”
• Iomega Zip disks were introduced
• IBM introduces the first laptop computer with an integrated CD-Rom drive
• Microsoft Windows version 3.11 was released
• Popular PC processors were the 486 and original Pentium processors

In 1994, the Internet was just catching on and most schools did not even have internet access available yet. A new laptop computer easily cost over $3,000 at that time. In 1997, I was one of the few students at K-State who even owned my own laptop. It was a 486 with 4MB of ram and a 12″ black and white screen. I bought it when it was already old and cheap for only $600. My how the times have changed!

Katie, I like how you are thinking about something that is important to you, and how you have come up with some possible solutions with your assignment. Keep up the good work. I have some questions for you which I hope will stimulate some more thought on this. I’ll post them on your blog.

While I rarely read a fictional novel, I will sometimes read biographies and other works of non-fiction for entertainment. This week I’m reading Alan Alda’s “Things I Overheard While Talking To Myself“. The book caught my eye in the school library because I’m a fan of the TV show M*A*S*H, in which Alda starred. I wasn’t really expecting to find much there to write about in my blog, only something interesting to read.

But I had forgotten that Mr. Alda hosted the PBS series Scientific American Frontiers and has a keen interest in science. While reading his book, I discovered a new brother– someone who appreciates both art and science, and constantly looks for connections between the two. I discovered a kinship with someone who shares with me a similar view of the world and of life. He writes:

Allowing this childish curiosity to continue on through my whole life has given me satisfaction and maybe even a sense of meaning. It stimulates a part of my brain that registers pleasure; and whether it has meaning or not, it feels as though it does. No matter how old I get, I have the feeling that if I can keep this curiosity flame lit, I’ll see the world in a way that never gets stale…

That’s it! That is precisely how I feel! I never want to stop learning and I don’t care if what I am learning about has a practical value or not as long as I am enjoying what I am learning. How can I convey this love of learning to my students? I can certainly identify with having apathy. I wasn’t always an eager student. It took me many years in the “University of Hard Knocks” to discover that I did have what it takes to be a successful student and an eager learner. How can I help my students bypass the drudgery and get to the love of learning straight away?

Interestingly, in a graduation speech (Alda’s book is full of graduation speeches) to a group of CalTech graduates, Alan Alda has some recommendations:

I’m asking you today to devote some significant part of your life to figuring out how to share your love of science with the rest of us…

Like the young man so head over heels about his sweetheart, he can’t stop talking about her; like the young woman so in love with her young man, she wants everyone to know how wonderful he is… show us pictures, tell us stories, make us crave to meet your beloved.

Don’t just tell us science is good for us and therefore, we ought to fund you for it… be lovers!

Look, we’re accustomed in our culture to know when a commercial is coming. We know how to turn it off. But love we can’t resist. (read the full text of his speech here)

This is where so many teachers go wrong; it’s where I’ve gone wrong. We get so caught up in being taken seriously. We want to be viewed as the expert. We want to wow them with our knowledge, and we forget to show them our love and our passion for what we are doing.

I have decided that to show my passion for what I do, I will no longer be afraid to have a little fun and to be a little silly to make my love for my subject known to my students. If I lose some credibility with some because of it, I’m not worried because I am being my genuine self. I am a little silly, I do like to have fun, and I do love learning! I want my students to see that the stuff I teach doesn’t have to be tedious and boring. I think we can have deep, serious learning while still being a little silly at the same time.

It is an interesting paradox. Recall the young man and young woman in love that Mr. Alda speaks of– few people are sillier than when they are first enjoying a new love, but few people are more serious at the same time. Somehow if we can only convey the romance, the excitement, and the true joy of learning, how can we fail as teachers?

Thanksgiving

Elizabeth Layton was a Kansas native artist who battled depression until she took up drawing at the age of sixty-eight. Her work has been exhibited at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American Art, and numerous other exhibits around the USA. Although she is gone now, her memory continues on. You can visit her website at http://elizabethlayton.com/.

One of my favorite pictures by Grandma Elizabeth Layton is the one shown here entitled “Thanks-giving”. She doesn’t like to cook, so the family gets carry-out Kentucky Fried Chicken for the holiday meal. How many harried mothers and grandmothers dream of doing this one year, saying to heck with it, I’m not cooking this year?

Although I am typically not one for discarding traditions, I am starting to wonder about this holiday we call “Thanksgiving” and it’s associated myths. Native Americans don’t like the holiday and what it represents to their people. They don’t like how it perpetuates stereotypes about Indians, and they certainly don’t like how Europeans went on to treat the indigenous people on this continent after that first “Thanksgiving” feast.

GENOCIDE OF AMERICAN INDIAN

Judging from this picture, one can guess that Elizabeth Layton probably would not have a problem with taking the Pilgrims and Indians completely out of Thanksgiving. She was a person of great empathy for the plight of others, providing much in the way of social commentary in her work.

Here’s the thing about Thanksgiving with my family. I don’t recall ever having any discussions of Pilgrims and Indians and that “First Thanksgiving” meal. Any of those sort of myths in my recollection were perpetuated at school, not in my church or in my family gatherings. For my family, Thanksgiving has always been a special time of coming together as a family, and truly being thankful for the blessings we have received.

In a world where people are increasingly feeling entitled, having a holiday that fosters an attitude of gratitude can’t be all bad in my mind. And as Grandma Layton shows us, it doesn’t matter what the meal is, as long as families and friends can come together and be grateful for what we have been given.

Perhaps it is time to think about ways in which we can reinvent the Thanksgiving holiday. I’m not talking about a complete abandonment of traditions, but only a change of course that acknowledges and tries to fix some of the flaws in how we celebrate. For example, in the USA, November is Native American Heritage Month. Instead of keeping the Pilgrim/Indian myths alive, why not replace that tradition with learning something about actual Native American history and culture?