Amistad

Several of the sites that caught my attention (Deconstructor: an Online Film Analysis Tool, Midnight’s Children, Film Language Glossary, Reading & Writing Women Wiki, World Theater) were all password-protected, but I did finally settle on Amistad: Digital Resource.  I was looking for sites that were outside my general area of expertise (i.e. education, mathematics) but subjects in which I still have a personal interest (i.e. reading, film, history).

It’s not immediately clear from the thumbnail what the site is about, but a quick glance shows that its intent is to present a compilation of resources focused on African American history and to provide not only a more inclusive retrospective of our collective American history but, as a result, a more accurate one as well.  When completed, the site is projected to “include hundreds of rare and iconic photographs, audio recordings, news clips, and excerpts of oral history interviews with a descriptive narrative text explaining significant themes and key events in African-American history, from slavery to the twenty-first century.”

Overall, I believe that the objective of the site is worthwhile, and many of the resources are fascinating.  It does employ several hypermedia aspects, notably images and videos.  However, it does seem quite linear in its approach – being able to click to related other articles/videos/pictures would be an ideal setup, but instead the sidebars give the indication of a very textbooky type of approach.  In some ways, I appreciate this organization.  It appeals to my typically sequential manner of thinking.  In other ways, it feels somewhat limiting in terms of where investigations might take you.

The more I explored it, the more I realized what a monumental undertaking it would be to truly realize the mission of the site.  Nonetheless, it doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be done.  If this project can be a resource for students and more specifically for teachers interested in presenting more authentic national history, it seems entirely worth producing.

Animation vs. Static Displays

I must admit that I tend not to be drawn towards animated displays over static ones online.   I find little dancing figures on a web page or flashing signs that say “Only $99!” to be distracting, and it honestly tends to cheapen the intent of the site.

However, I find animations to be incredibly effective when learning about science.  I love the TV show House, and one of the most interesting parts of the show is towards the end when the “disease of the episode” is discovered and then explained through animated graphics.  An explanation that would either be ignored due to complex medical jargon or stretched out for 5 minutes is typically displayed in a less than one-minute animation.  They are typically fascinating and appropriately horrifying all at once.

Even in math, which is rarely considered an animated subject, several concepts are much more easily explained with a quick graphic, as seen here with a couple videos on the Fibonacci Sequence/Nature in Numbers or the Pythagorean Theorem:

One area that I would be excited to see a true animation revolution in is weather reporting.  I see the animations that the local meteorologists use, and I know it’s supposed to help, but I still do not understand the whole high pressure/low pressure thing.  I’m convinced that with pertinent and yet innovative animation, this could be a revelation in the layman’s understanding of weather.

The Power of Words

As a math teacher, it may be strange for me to focus on the power of words, but I’m a reader, and I love how words can bounce off each other in surprising ways.  Even in my math class (as I mentioned in a previous post), I’m constantly talking about the influence of words.  So much of our communication in mathematics can appear to be a strange and arbitrary assignment and yet, with a shared consciousness, a seemingly multi-layered assignment of a word like “infinite” or “limit” or “irrational” can take on a very specific mathematical meaning.

Grammar Girl is one of my favorite radio podcasts.  It should be a weekly required listening assignment for all high schoolers, in my opinion.  This is Grammar Girl’s (aka Mignon Fogerty) foray into video which, while outdated and not the most professional production, I believe shows the value of short snippets of integral core knowledge incorporated with contextual relevance:

Her radio podcasts are excellent.  Check ‘em out.

Here are two more potentially useful videos regarding the power of words.

 

I think these videos could serve as great springboards for assignments with high school students for lessons on writing, editing, and even social justice.

And just to throw in a math video, here’s one I use EVERY semester when I introduce imaginary numbers.  I find it to be not only useful but may even mollify  those students who inevitably grumble, “Ms. Komandt…if they’re imaginary, why should we learn about them?!”

Are We “In Jeopardy”?

The videos “Did You Know” and “Pay Attention” are definitely designed to direct a teacher’s awareness to the needs and interests of our techno-savvy digital natives.  This line, in particular, caught my eye:  “Predictions are that, by the time children born in 2007 are 6 years old, a supercomputer’s computation capabilities will exceed that of the human brain.  And while predictions further out than 15 years are hard to do, a $1000 computer will exceed the computing capabilities of the human race.”

This reminded me of the computer Watson, built by IBM and designed to compete with the strongest competitors from Jeopardy, including its most successful player, Ken Jennings.  The first time out for Watson didn’t fare nearly as well, but more recently (January, 2011) was this indication of the supercomputer’s improvements and capabilities:

And this last week, Watson appeared in Boston to challenge teams from both Harvard and MIT.  Watson finished with $53,601, Harvard finished a respectable second with $42,399, and MIT third, with $100.

Watson takes Harvard and MIT to School

Computing capabilities are almost approaching the realm of AI science fiction storytelling.  Interestingly, I find myself not necessarily cheering on the Watson-esque entities but not necessarily rooting against them, either.

Tech Club Websites

My course project will be to create a web site for our school’s relatively new all-girls technology club, dubbed “Mouse Mischief” (a “mischief” is a collection of mice in the same way that a collection of wolves is a “pack”).  I have to admit that I had a difficult time finding good examples of high school technology clubs.  This one was particularly unappealing:

There’s lots of flashing and movement with the thought, I’m assuming, that more is better.  However, the animation is distracting and takes away from the intent of the site.  I actually appreciate the density of links and information, but the design needs to take advantage of more straightforward navigation and perhaps combine several categories into one.  In addition, the news is old, unedited and, in fact, it appears that it may be a now-defunct club with content such as “Seniors, we’ll see you at graduation on June 2^nd, 2006!”

To be fair, many high school technology clubs are integrating their information into their school web sites, taking advantage (or perhaps required to adhere to) the school site standards and design.  Alternatively, many are using Facebook as their communication forum.  This club took a different route and, while they utilized the existing framework of blogspot, their site is clean, easy-to-read and navigate, and it includes several videos and examples of their work on various tabs.

I’ll look forward to improving on the ideas and design put forward in several of these sites and perhaps re-characterizing the idea of kids becoming leaders of teachers’ professional development.

Parabolas and Beauty

Every year, when I teach quadratic equations in my advanced algebra class, I show this podcast.  It’s called Parabolas and is produced by Radiolab in New York City.  Typically, Radiolab does radio shows and podcasts, but soon after I started subscribing to their radio podcasts, I found this video alternative in my iTunes library.  Not only does it highlight the nature of quadratic forms and movement, but it also highlights the prolific nature of parabolas and paraboloids (the three-dimensional version) in the world around us.  To be accurate, I suspect that some of these shapes are hyperboloids, but who needs to nitpick when you’re trying make a connection between the classroom and the real world?

Every time I show this to a class, I don’t necessarily introduce the subject first.  It’s interesting to see impatience give way to a sort of zen contemplation in their faces.  It’s immediately evident to them that movement and momentum can be parsed and re-constructed on paper or in some digital format.  In addition, while math and science are intricately tied together, it’s useful to use the podcast to springboard directly into physics.  In addition, this video often is the catalyst for discussions regarding not only truth (a concept which students often tie to mathematics) but also the arbitrary nature of assigning words and numbers to events.  Creating order and laws from beauty and mystery (and vice versa) is a discussion worth having with high schoolers, I believe.

Most of all, I really enjoy the simple nature of the short podcast.  In a very short amount of time, the mood of the piece can conjure up silence and abstraction.  It’s a divergent space to occupy in a math class.

I Was Punk’d By Ashton Kutcher

I’m not sure anyone in the class is as heavily into pop culture as I seem to be, but I got caught up in the Ashton Kutcher controversy (not the one involving Demi Moore) about the fact that he apparently chose his new show (Two and Half Men) as an opportunity to showcase his online investments (see here for basic story: Kutcher’s Self-Promotion).  The sucker that I am, I actually checked out those sites, and I must say, I was impressed with the ones I was unfamiliar with.  Of particular interest was Hipmunk:

I think it’s a great new travel search engine, and the tabs (you can search by categories, including price, duration, departure, arrival, and agony (which is funny, in and of itself)) is a bit of a revelation.  It’s not surprising that you can categorize in these ways, but the visual layout is impressive and unlike any others (kayak, momondo, etc.) I’ve seen before.  The padding and “white space” is inviting, and the displayed choices are a novel way in which to see your travel plans.

Veering away from Ashton Kutcher, I checked out a lot of other travel web sites, in search of a poorly designed one.  I found one with the airport shuttle A Active Limo.

The pictures do not add any value to the site, and the colors seem to be haphazard and poorly chosen.  The layout, particularly the poor use of the table/column format, requires the user to scroll unnecessarily.  The animation (particularly the use of the clock) is distracting, particularly when it might be used to great advantage, if the animated pieces offered an incentive to choose their service (such as a coupon).  It needs to be streamlined and simplified if it plans to compete with both affordable options (like SuperShuttle) and high end services (such as limos.com).  In addition, the name A Active Limo is a throwback to the Yellow Pages when businesses needed to complete by leading alphabetically.  In the current market, the name makes no sense.

It’s a bit embarrassing that I chose to get caught up in a celebrity’s self-promotion, but for those who are interested, Chegg is particularly appealing, too.  Renting textbooks for a semester?  Sounds great to me!

Lists and White Space

While reading over the last few years, I’ve noticed how my capacity for concentration (especially in a curtailed leisure life) has changed somewhat.  I still love reading novels, but whenever I feel a shift in my long-term concentration, I tend to choose a young adult novel that one of my students has recommended.  Finishing one of these is fast and easy, and even entertaining.  I’ve noticed that the main design difference in these novels versus adult novels is the size of the font and the amount of words on a page, which is significantly reduced because of margin sizing.  I think web sites could take a lesson from this approach, and I think many of them already do.  Many of the newer web sites have larger font sizes, and it’s actually comforting to know that we don’t always have to squint at our screens; the main intent of the site is clear from the moment you launch it.  I noticed this in many of the sites that our classmates listed last week.  Trillian, which Krystal posted, is an example of this approach, as is the BBC web site, which Dan posted.  Both benefit from large, bold type with plenty of padding around text.

In addition, I find myself reading more and more magazines.  I think many magazines have caught onto two areas that increase the amount one feels she can read:

1. More Blank/White Space

The magazine Real Simple was founded on this premise.  More white space around stories and text make

s the whole experience more inviting and the act of reading feel easier.  I think many web sites (and designers) are capitalizing on this approach.  The most obvious example is Google.  Their main search page is largely void, and this makes the search process feel both unhurried and uncluttered.

Our blog templates (for this class) are another example.  Most of them feature a good deal of “white” space in the margins and take advantage of the padding between words and lines, making the text easier to read.

2.  Lists, Lists and more Lists

Text that is written in column formats and particularly in list format becomes easier on both the eyes and on increasingly limited concentration.  “Top 100 AFI Films of the Last Century,”  “Top 10 Superfoods,” “The Top 5 Neighborhoods in Denver,” “The Most Visited YouTube Videos in the Last 24 Hours…”  And so on.  Our eyes gravitate towards these lists because we know we can scan for the main idea and go deeper (through either attached paragraphs or, digitally, through hyperlinks), if we choose.  Our minds, I believe, want breaks that we can see and predict.  We look to see how many pages we have left to read, we look for a break in the chapter so we can grab a drink of water, etc.  We all have our little tricks, and more and more, I think we gravitate towards information that is compartmentalized or, at the very least, looks that way.

Shock and Awe or Bore to Tears?

Exceptional examples of hypermedia make me think, catch my breath, furrow my brow, cause my stomach to sink, or release in me a sense of wonder.  Here are a few that have surprised me over the past couple years:

1.  http://www.thewildernessdowntown.com/     

I don’t even know how to describe this web site, except that you have to try it.  Don’t get too freaked out by it.  Keep trying different addresses, if the first one doesn’t materialize (note:  the choreographed and overlapping windows are all part of the experience).  Perhaps it’s not the best example of a functional web site, simply because it doesn’t always work.  However, once it DOES work, it is an exceptional use of hypermedia.  It causes the interweaving of beauty and paranoia at the same time.  This is a complex impression to cultivate in ANY form.

2.  http://www.ted.com/

Their tag line is, “Riveting talks by remarkable people, free to the world.”  And it’s true.  I could watch these all day long and never fail to be inspired.  The site is relatively spare, considering all that is featured between the folds.  However, the home page generally serves to offer a tempting next click for varied and diverse interest levels.  The result is that you end up clicking and watching, clicking and listening, clicking and pausing, until an hour has gone by and you could swear it has only been 10 minutes.

3.  http://wechoosethemoon.org/

The first lunar landing took place on my father’s birthday, July 20.  I wasn’t yet alive when it happened, but I feel like I should have been.  I am fascinated with this site because the Apollo missions strangely compel me.  This site truly takes seriously the idea of putting the user in the driver’s seat.  It takes incredible advantage of all historical resources and seamlessly integrates sound, video, photos, and interactivity to make those of us who weren’t privy to the live experience feel like we were.

4.  http://interviewproject.davidlynch.com/www/#/all-episodes

I must admit that I was never a huge David Lynch fan (except for The Straight Story!)…until I discovered the Interview Project.  On a 20,000 mile road trip, taking place over 70 days, a team of documentarians criss-crossed the country, along the way discovering everymen and everywomen in bars, on the side of roads, and in various random locations.  Through the interviews, we learn that everyone has a story, that they are all worth hearing, and that every one of them is laced with a sense of dignity.

Can’t say these sites do anything for me:

1.  http://www.theonion.com/

I love the intent but find the web site to be a total drag.  It’s busy, it’s monotone, save the completely dispensable, yet front-and-center ads, and it scrolls too far down.  The bottom line is that I should be laughing within ten seconds of landing on the site rather than looking for reasons to leave it.

2.  http://denver.craigslist.org/

Seriously, we can’t do better than this, Craig Newmark?  Honestly, I would love craigslist if its notability didn’t stem from the fact that it has undergone virtually no visual change since it was conceived.  Sometimes we DO judge a book by its cover, and while form and function don’t necessarily depend on one another, perhaps they should.  I love the idea, and I love the grass-roots power that holds sway here, but generally, I boycott craigslist on design principle alone.

Digital or Immigrant? How about Homesteader?

I struggle with whether to categorize myself as a digital native or digital immigrant.  I think the fact of the matter is that, unless I am 22 years old or under, I am not a digital native.  I could live in Colorado, similarly, for the rest of my life, and I still wouldn’t feel legitimate sporting this bumper sticker on the back of my (might as well be the Colorado state car) Subaru station wagon:

The problem that I see with categorizing myself as an immigrant is the connotation that accompanies it.  In Prensky’s article alone, immigrants “grouse.”  Immigrants “have their foot in the past.”  They “speak an outdated language,” “have little appreciation” for newly acquired skills, and they protect assumptions that are no longer valid.  I feel that I can only be so self-deprecating about my interest and adoption (and yet, not my inherent absorption) of new technologies.  My friends here in town call me the “maven” based on Malcolm Gladwell’s coined term in his book The Tipping Point.  Mavens, according to Gladwell, are “information specialists”, or “people we rely upon to connect us with new information.”  I may not have Java programming in my blood (this may be the understatement of the year), but this week, I taught the girls in my junior-level precalculus class how to use a pre-installed Mac coordinate plane application called Grapher, take a snapshot of it (neither of which they had seen before) and paste it into their PowerPoint presentation on function transformations.

My students NOR my parents can I classify as true “opposites.”  I think we all exist on a digital continuum.  So, instead I’m going to call myself a Digital Homesteader.  The homesteaders were pioneers but were happy to retain their culture and customs.  I just spent part of my afternoon writing old-style thank-you notes and birthday cards.  And I am just as thrilled to get one in my own mailbox.  A thank-you video from my niece is fabulous, but I was taught to send thank you notes, and so I do.  If I don’t, it haunts me.  Homesteaders were willing to tend and farm the land, even if it wasn’t originally their own, and they were willing to commit.   They lived with intent, they settled, and they relied on their own self-sufficiency to adapt to changes.

But if I had to pick one, I’d be an immigrant.  Most homesteaders were immigrants.  I could live with that.