Search Engines

I just heard about three new search engines that present your search results differently.

WolframAlpha is pretty cool. It comes up with some interesting information. Type in "meaning of life" and see what happens.

The Wonder Wheel is from Google is a type of visual search. I don't have a direct link to it, but here is a link to my "instructional technology" search. It lends itself well to exploration.

Lastly, Spezify is the one that is especially well suited for exploration. I did a search for "instructional technology" on that one, too (you might have to reload it if there are a bunch black boxes). The text field where you type in your search terms is just to the right of their logo on the header. I like how you can explore the visual results, but also there are search terms on the black bar just under the header/text field that you can click on and go to different results.

Cool protein folding game

Protein folding is such a complex, amazing, and beautiful phenomena. I have often wondered why someone didn't come up with a program where you can visually play with the globs and get a sense of how the pieces attract and fold. Well, someone has! Last year!

Foldit is a game using distributed computing a la SETI@home, and crowdsourcing. Too cool!

Introducing or teaching social media to newbs

I think the big takeaway message from the last class (which really just reiterated previous class discussions) is that when you're teaching people how to use social media, you need to make sure that your learners understand that they have to take responsibility for their actions. They need to be taught how to use proper 'netiquette, understand 'nethics, and how to protect (or kinda protect) themselves.

spreading the word

Well, I'm sure that you all know that today, 5/7/09, is odd day. But just in case, I thought I'd pass it on!

Final project revisited

Well, I realized that my interest in Second Life might have clobbered me. What I thought I wanted to do is way too vast given the time and resources at hand. I mean, people do Ph.D. dissertations on this stuff!

So, I backed up a little and gave it a little more thought. I'm working on a project for my 801 class on eating out healthily and I can't really build any of the main instruction out for it until I get more skills under my belt, but I can certainly work on the Web 2.0 aspects of it. That would be really rewarding and I can get that project at least a couple of inches off the ground. Whew! Aside from the Facebook page, and cheat sheets (that hopefully will be read on an eReader as well as printable) I've been told that WordPress allows users to build web apps for the iPhone. While that's not really an iPhone app, a web app is still OK in my book! So we'll see what happens...

last 830 class for instruction

Last week's class was a lot of fun. It's always fun, but we got to get into our little groups and brainstorm about Web 2.0 and education. Everyone designed their maps differently, and each one brought something different to the experience. While I am biased and thought my group's was really great, I admit that none of us are confident artists -- so it didn't look cool.

I was really impressed with the Web 2.0 learning cycle map -- the one that's like the nitrogen or carbon cycle in biology books. The names they came up with and the ideas that they attached to the land, sea, and clouds was really fun and FUNNY. Lastly, I think Ty's description that the information has to be filtered before being pumped to the individuals is like municipal water filtration was very thought provoking.

Rodney Dunican's Presentation on Project Management

I am amazed that people aren't taught project management as a matter of course while they're in school. Pretty much everything is a project of one sort or another and being able to manage it (either your own time and resources or a group's) is key to getting things done effectively.

I think that everything he went over was really helpful even if I've managed projects before. His presentation was so concise and broke things down in such a way that some very obvious things were clearly articulated (rather than just being fuzzy ideas floating around in the back of my brain soup).

Most especially, I liked his take away advice (parting notes & summary) which I've sort of listed here:

• Do celebrated work (do stuff you like & are proud of)
• Almost all jobs are project based
• Billing is critical (bill by milestones not just projects)
• When it comes to instructional design, the focus of your boss/whoever hired you is not learner-centric (the business' bottom-line and stats is what's important)
• Theory and practice don't line up. So the ADDIE model isn't going to match the real world well. It's a good guide, but not the rule.
  
• You may make more $$ contracting but don't forget the other costs, such as liabilitiy and professional insurance, as well as health care, home costs, dependents, marketing yourself, etc.
• Stay in contact with your classmates, even if they don't stay in this field or your field, since a lot of work comes from word of mouth