Poster Presentations

On Monday 12.7 i was the audience for many of my classmates' presentations. I must say that I was impressed - I could tell that a lot of work went into the presentations and I was glad I got to see them. There were many I enjoyed, like BigDog and the carbon (i think) speakers...I was impressed overall with what my fellow 435ers did. Great Work! =)...

...But I digress, because what WASN'T great was that presenters had to stay WAY LATE after class. Rather than being upset though, I'd like to offer a couple suggestions.

I did something on a larger-scale for a different Purdue course, and we had a 4 hour block of presenting. We still did Tweets and all, but like I said, it was a larger scale. I really don't think that the TAs and Prof Kisselburgh had enough time to grade the work, so I'd suggest replacing one of the critical essays (or the elevator pitch) with this presentation as a 2-hour event. Since 435 will be collaborating w/EPICS next semester, I'd even suggest doing a trade-off project and having the EPICS kids come to be the audience too! I think LOTS of us did EXCELLENT work and not many people saw it =(. I think this would be a great way to solve it!

A final suggestion would be to do the project in groups of 3, and maybe slightly enhance what needs to be presented on the topic (to make it enough work for 3 people). In my other class, our group had five people and we were all very involved! I would love to see this project turn into a larger scale event than it has been, such as this one that I participated in: http://tltconference.ning.com/ ----> Check out the pics and you might even see me! Or, look at the WIKI from our work (this was required for our project) http://wiki.itap.purdue.edu/display/INSITE/Ta-Da+List and this is the link for the project, in general http://wiki.itap.purdue.edu/display/INSITE/Web+2.0+Tools all with more work from more student groups! And it was FUN!! =) Enjoy!

Cyborgdom. Wow.

We read Naam's article about technologically-enhanced humans and watched a video about how it could be considered art.

It was interesting.

I won't write much because it will basically be what I put in my essay. In all, studying cyborgs made me really appreciate the fact that I have all the limbs, brain etc. that I need (or at least I think I do). In my humble opinion, I don't think we should alter ourselves because we WANT to, and I used to be more anal toward "enhancements" given to those who were of need of it. Where I stand now is a place of more understanding, because I can barely imagine what it would be like to not have ten fingers to be typing with right now. I am very proud of the strides we have made in this area, because I don't really think there's a "normal"- we really should learn how to learn more about people who have been disadvantaged by adverse circumstances like those we read about, and be even more open to how their lives have been transformed by technology.

As for art, if we with all our appendages can be "art," i see no reason why prosthetics should not be produced in an artful way as well. In my opinion, a lot of the issues we have with one another stem simply from stifled expression. It would be a shame to create even MORE division in this world because we don't want people with prosthetic limbs and other pieces to limit their show of them. Just a thought...

Envision Center.

DISCLAIMER:

I am well aware that I will not have the required number of posts OR posts weekly. I'm sorry, I'm just horrible at blogging but I will take my deductions.

THE ENVISION CENTER:

So, I had been wanting to visit the Center for awhile, after a friend of mine named Jihad did a project on it for one of my other classes. After having gone, I can say that I simply wish I hadn't been so tired and unmotivated that day!

ECenter was cool in many ways. I've been interested in internet conferencing capabilities for quite some time now, so it was really cool to get to see what Purdue does with that in the ECenter.

I also thought the Virtual Reality room was awesome! It made me really wish that more of Purdue's programs were featured there (we went through one for the Pharm students). I think it could really enable students to spend meaningful, fun, and interactive time outside of class learning about whatever it is they're studying. A great alternative to the elevator pitch we did (lol, I'm just saying...)

Anyway, I actually enjoyed the class we spent there. I had been wanting to go for some time and if I get a chance to go back I would like to experiment more with the Haptics Lab.

It was a good day.

Prezi!

All right.

If you are familiar at all with my blog right now, you will probably comment on it being critical.

It is.

But Prezi...

I loves me some Prezi!

I was first intro'd to Prezi when taking an education course here (EDCI 270) which presented a Teaching and Learning Technologies conference and we had to all use a technology assigned to us to show how it could be useful in the classroom.

Anyway, it is presentation software that zooms...difficult for me to describe but PLEASE go to prezi.com and try it out!

It's very neat and can be used for both live presenting (like at PowerPoint would) and web presentation.

It gives the user a whole new perspective as to how they interpret and understand the presentation they are seeing.

It is really awesome!

Twittering @ Purdue (among other places...

Purdue SOOOOOOOO has the Twitter bug. OMG.

I was just searching for Purdue-related departments a couple days ago, and I found out that I can follow A LOT of departments on it. Here are a few:

Division of Financial Aid

Purdue Volleyball

Purdue Women's Basketball

Purdue Admissions

Purdue Alumni

...and MUCH (and I do mean MUCH more)!

I guess since I don't do this whole phone+internet thing, I don't have any desire to twitter. I think it's a really cool technology, especially for those who really need to be followed and are pertinent to our lives...

...can't think of too many people (I mean, not even the President needs me to follow him 24/7. He employs people to do that...)

I think in Purdue's case, I'm having trouble seeing how Twitter is really effective. I just don't know how many changes they could possibly make in a day that we won't get an e-mail about or that can't be found elsewhere online.

I hate to be overly critical, but yeah...I personally think Purdue on Twitter is doing a bit much.

But others are welcome to comment!

facebook.

So I know these blogs are supposed to be about emerging, technologies, but I'm probably going to be writing about ones that have emerged and just keep changing for awhile...

facebook, apparently, has been out for a very long time. It used to have another name, [the facebook], and was used for a lot different (and more simpler) purposes than we use it for today.

To be honest, facebook gets on my nerves.

The additions of chat, applications, and the mini-news feed are just not my thing.

However, I can see that people who really are into social networking can greatly benefit from these additions.

I also know that I can just change a lot of the settings and eliminate things like the news feed, turn off chat, etc.

But what will my "friends" think if I do that? I will probably fall out of the in-crowd.

facebook is a great place to meet people and sustain relationships, but I'm beginning to think all it's done for me is show me how much of a loner I must want to be.

So I deactivated my account. I hope my prospective employers don't think I'm crazy...but they might if I don't sign on soon!

A Nice 'Cache' -- Geocaching for Truth (The COM 435 Entry)

By Sheena Mitchell and Laura VanLiere, Lead Reporters

It was a brisk, sunny morning on Wednesday, October 7, 2009.

COM 435 students rushed through the hustle and bustle of campus with a change in trajectory. Our usual destination of Beering Hall had been changed for today, and so we scurried to make it to the Mechanical Engineering Building, Room 156, by 11:30 A.M.

It was almost like an adventure.

Little did we know, the adventure had just begun.

Upon arrival, we were met with smiles, sign-in sheets and labels that proclaimed our roles for the geocaching activity.

Professor Lorraine Kisselburgh and one of her Teaching Assistants, Zeynep Tanes ,began to tell us more about the activity.

After we were briefed on what to look for in the caches, the Earthmate PN-20 GPS Receiver, and the objective of the game, we were told to exchange contact information.

A Central Investigative Unit (CIU) of 2 Lead Detectives and 2 Lead Reporters stood at the front of the class while members of 5 teams came and exchanged contact information with them.

A few team members brought the CIU phone numbers. As a member of the CIU, I felt pretty confident that through the use of our cellphone technologies like text messaging, picture and video capabilities and even instant messaging we would have more than enough technology to solve the mystery that awaited us within the mean streets of Purdue…

But then, there was a surprise!

One team member walked up and handed us a walkie-talkie. Talk about prepared! We were overly excited to have this often forgotten piece of technology at our disposal. We quickly tested out the walkie-talkies to ensure they could communicate, and then the teams were off.

We were ready to win.

The CIU sat anxiously and excitement filled the air of ME 156. The only sound we heard for a 3-minute eternity was the static crackling of a lone walkie-talkie that lay tenderly upon one of the desks.

Finally, the silence was broken.

“It’s taking them awhile,” I said, speaking of the teams that were out searching.

“It will get more exciting in about 5 minutes,” Professor Kisselburgh responded.

We waited a few minutes more, beginning to worry because we hadn’t heard a thing.

And then, it happened.

The high-pitched beep of a Motorola enV2 cellular device pierced the thick tension in the room, and what followed was a flurry of technologies at their finest.

A confused team said they needed a hint from the CIU, but we had nothing to offer.

Shortly after, Laura VanLiere, Lead Reporter, answered her phone for the first clue:

Although few would follow in 50 years, the first student graduated this many years ago…Stewart Center, mural dated ‘56

We were all stumped as she asked the team on the other end of the line to clarify where they located the clue. They said they had gotten it from a Stewart Center plaque near the large mural over the Humanities, Social Science and Education Library (HSSE).

Laura quickly asked them to send her a picture message that contained the mural.

They did.

Other phones rang, and what had started as complete silence was now nothing short of an organized technological symphony. It was brilliant, exciting, and enthralling to uncover each new piece of evidence.

We continued to communicate with the teams.

One said they had a clue at the Black Cultural Center that was a flyer for the documentary Black Purdue.

The next team's spokesperson offered the following familiar question:

What year launched Armstrong into space and brought him fame?

Hmmm...perhaps we are getting closer. We began to revise old evidence and eliminate what we did not need as the caches kept pouring in.

Lead Investigator Vana Chiu and I frantically traded places Googling the information that the teams were sending us, attempting to make sense of it. The clicking of the keys on the keyboard had become almost as loud and frantic as the interactions the CIU was having with the teams in the field.

We continued to assemble the pieces.

Soon, we were introduced to Levi Coffin and began to research him.

Then, Laura received a text message with only the following: July 20, 1969.

It was crunch time.

We put together all the pieces of this puzzle, added knowledge of what the documentary Black Purdue was all about, and...

...at 12:14 p.m...

...concluded that the solution to this mystery was that it was the Purdue Black Cultural Center’s 40^th Anniversary!

We were astounded at how well our technologies worked in unison to provide us with the puzzle pieces we needed to put everything together, and after all of the teams returned, all we wanted to know was whether we were winning.

We found out that in only 25 minutes we had gone from a class of about 30 people who were looking for something completely vague to a class of 30 people who had allowed technology be our “mental prosthetic” (as Daniel Scott Poynter mentioned to us earlier this semester).

We found TRUTH in this activity, and believe it or not it wasn't the solution to the mystery.

'Truth,' in this instance, was that had we not utilized all of the communication technologies we had at our disposal, we would have never been able to solve this geocached riddle!

We learned that a picture can truly be worth “a thousand words,” whether it is via a paper photograph or a cellphone screen.

We also learned that sometimes simple is better. The technologies we incorporated allowed our teams to send us the bare facts of what they found, which was efficient for us. We put together the details.

All in all, we were ready to win, and collaboratively, using technology—we had a real shot at it.

Now let’s just hope we were successful.