Blue Water Silver Moon (Mermaid), 1991 by Kerry James Marshall. Photo copyright Dispatch.com.
I’m currently teaching one of my favorite classes: the Field Experience elective. In this class, I plan a series of field trips on and around campus so students can explore their community as well as English, the field they are studying.
One of our recent trips was to the Wexner Center for the Arts, the campus art gallery. The current show is Blues for Smoke, which explores Blues music as a “catalyst of experimentation within contemporary cultural production.” Works in the show span several decades and include a variety of media.
As part of our trip, I ask each student to identify a favorite piece, which we later discuss in class. One student chose the painting above. We had talked in front of the painting and I helped her understand some of the vocabulary in the information placard next to the work:
Marshall’s portrait of a mythical female nude lounging under the moonlight in a shimmering pond was inspired by a pulp comic book he was reading in the early 1980s. He notes, “Up until then, I had not considered that a black woman could be considered as a goddess of love and beauty. Even I took the classic European ideal for granted …. I wanted to develop a stylized representation of beauty that would be unequivocally black.”
We discussed how the painting includes faces from pulp romance novels that typify this “classic European ideal” for beauty and how the mermaid figure is beautiful and unequivocally black.
But what I interpreted as an interesting insight into the experience of African Americans was something that my student took to heart. The next day, she shared that this was her favorite piece because she, too, had felt the pressure to conform to this classic European ideal of beauty in her native China. For example, she and many of her friends stayed out of the sun so that her skin could be lighter and whiter. But, in this painting, she discovered that black is beautiful — an idea she could relate to and share.
I wouldn’t have guessed that this piece of art would strike this student in this way. But by exposing students to a wide variety of art, the opportunity for this to happen was created. Never underestimate the power of art. Or a good field trip.
We’re about a week and a half away from the fourth annual Exploring Learning Technologies Unconference (ELTU4). This year, we’ve moved the event to the start of the academic year because the spring was becoming crowded with other conferences and events. So, on Friday, October 14, we meet again from 9am to 1:30pm to unconference.
What is an unconference? There are lots of different variations, from Open Space to various camps (FooCamp, Barcamp, Mashup Camp, etc. — see Wikipedia for more.) Our variant resembles a traditional conference in may ways — there are meeting areas for different breakout sessions that begin every hour — but the biggest difference is that none of the content is set in advance of the meeting.
We spend the first half hour with introductions and generating session topics. From there, the group negotiates which topics go in which time slots and we begin. Being a technology-themed unconference, we use some technology to facilitate this process: we project the session grid on screens around the room so everyone can see and participate in the process. We also set up a wiki in advance with one page that lists the schedule and links to one page per session so someone in each session can take notes. (Visit http://go.osu.edu/eltu to see the wikis from the last three unconferences.)
Once organized, the unconference runs a lot like a regular conference, though participants are encouraged to move between sessions as a way of cross-pollinating the various discussions. In fact, we have traditionally hosted the unconference in one big open space or computer lab in order to facilitate this movement.
The beauty of the process is that, if everything works as intended, the discussions are all appealing to those in attendance because they were generated only by those in attendance (instead of presenters who submitted an abstract months in advance and then failed to attend the conference.)
The effect is intentionally a bit like the hallway conversations you have at a traditional conference — when you actually get to talk to someone with similar interests to you instead of just watching a speaker read their PowerPoint slides. By attracting interesting people from across campus and throughout Ohio, the discussion at the unconference is always a good one.
I’d recommend the format to any organization interested in hosting a stimulating conversation. I’d also welcome you to our next unconference on Friday, October 14 from 9am to 1:30pm. Details are available at http://go.osu.edu/eltu and registration is available (and free!) at http://eltu4.crowdvine.com.
Over the past ten or twenty years, the news media has become saturated with stories about genetics. But do you really understand how genes interact? A new genetics simulation being developed at Ohio State can help.
The simulation begins with a series of cartoon faces from which the user can choose to populate the gene pool for the next generation. (The term “parents” is used, but more than two can be selected.) This process can be repeated several times to create successive generations of cartoon faces.
Over 50 “genes” are incorporated into the faces (affecting everything from the dimensions of the head and other features to how asymmetrical the face is and whether the eyes follow your mouse or not) and the genes of the “parents” interact to produce the subsequent generation. You can also adjust the amount of mutation, which leads to a wider (or narrower) variety of offspring.
Another interesting feature is the ability to view genotypes. This allows you to view a graph under each offspring representing which genes come from which parent. You can also choose two faces and drag them to the Gene Exam Room to view to what degree each gene is represented in each face. This also allows you to see the effect of each individual gene. You can even increase or decrease the representation of each gene to see how it changes each face.
What can you (or your students) do with this simulation? Imagine the faces are puppies and you want to develop a new breed that is cute (or whatever other trait you’re interested in.) This simulation clearly demonstrates how breeders (of animals, plants, etc.) select for certain traits and refine them over generations.
Or imagine the choices you make in the simulation are not choices, but represent the effects of the environment. For example, say the Sun grows dim giving people with big eyes that can see in low light an advantage over people with small eyes. This advantage results in a higher percentage of offspring surviving and a wider representation in the gene pool. What effect would this have after several generations?
Think of how much richer students’ discussions of designer pets and natural disasters will be after they have “experienced” the process instead of just reading about it. In addition to genetics, this simulation can also stimulate interest in probability (how likely are offspring to have certain characteristics), design (ideas behind evolutionary design were the impetus for the interface), as well as all of the social issues behind decisions we are now able to make regarding genetics.
In terms of ESL teaching, I think giving students something interesting to do and then having them talk or write about it is a great way to get them to practice English. This genetics simulation is simple but interesting enough that it could generate lots of interesting ideas for students to talk about.
Ever since a $3000 bounty was placed on cracking open Microsoft’s fab new gaming hardware, the motion-sensing Kinect for Xbox, hackers and tinkerers have been putting the open-source drivers to lots of interesting uses on platforms that Microsoft never envisioned. I’ve written about interesting Kinect hacks before (and before that,) and I’ve written about my experience with the Wii-based $50 Interactive Whiteboard (IWB,) but I haven’t seen a fully-developed Kinect-based Interactive Whiteboard.
Perhaps an Interactive Whiteboard is too narrow a description. Many of the pieces are in place (see below) to interface with a computer using Kinect. So, as with the Wii-based IWB, any application you can use on your computer can be controlled by this hardware. If you connect your computer to a projector, you essentially have an Interactive Whiteboard.
Is the Kinect-based experience different from a Wii-based IWB or a Smartboard? Almost certainly. There would be no need to touch the screen at all, but rather to gesture in front of the Kinect to interact with the projection on the screen. Would this be an improvement? I’m not sure. A touch-based IWB is more analogous to traditional whiteboard that uses markers and an eraser. So, the touchless experience would be quite different. I need to try it myself to really wrap my head around the opportunities that this motion-sensing interface offers.
I’m not sure if anyone here at Ohio State is working with Kinect as an interface for non-Xbox applications. But I do know that the Digital Union has a Kinect which could probably be used to see if and how things work. If anyone else is interested in trying to pull this together, drop me a line or leave a comment.
I got to meet Dr. Jane McGonigal yesterday and hear her speak on her work on making games for good. I’m still processing a lot of the ideas she talked about, but wanted to share some of my notes. It’s a bit of a brain dump, but I’m sure more of what was covered will come up in future posts. These are not only things she said, but also my reflections and interpretations of them.
Narrowly defined games are not fun. This could be why many educational games are not very good. That and the fact that so much less money goes into making them than other games that are designed to entertain.
Off-the-shelf games can be a good option for educators and the classroom. Ask students what they are playing, go from there. Older versions of popular games can be cheap and online games are often free.
Augmented reality brings games into real world. But beware of gamification — adding game-like elements (points, badges) to something that is not a game. For example, see Foursquare.
Almost every game that exists has a wiki (the World of Warcraft wiki is the world’s largest after Wikipedia). This may be an opportunity for ESL students to interact with language by reading or even writing about a game they like. Gamers often use the scientific method to approach finding solutions in games. Teachers can ask students, “Is there an undocumented way to win?” which requires reading the wiki and then critical thinking.
Gamers have very few nightmares and a high rate of lucid dreams — dreams in which they take control — perhaps because they practice doing this in games.
Among the top ten emotions gamers want to feel when playing a game is love. Specifically the kind of love one feels when one teaches another how to play a game and be successful. Parents feel this kind of love for their children all the time. But children feel this love when they teach a parent to play a favorite game.
Edit (11/11/10): The rise of gaming coincides with the overscheduling of the millennial generation and changes to education such as No Child Left Behind. When kids are spoon-fed in school and by their parents, one of the only outlets they have to express self-motivated mastery is through games.
I’m a big proponent of extracurricular activities, particularly in an intensive ESL program. Of course, the curriculum must be good — that’s a given — but the extra curricular activities play an extremely important role in students’ learning by immersing students in English through trips, activities, and connections to other speakers of English.
Like many intensive ESL programs, we offer a wide range of activities to students: field trips, conversation partners, movies, lectures, and more. We have also started a Facebook page as a way to publicize our activities and to build community around these activities. We have also embraced an online course management system (CMS) which we use to interact with and disseminate curricular information to students. But, is there a way to integrate the two?
There is. I have recently created a widget for our CMS that instructors can add to their course pages in order to put extracurricular info in front of students on a regular basis. To do this, I took the feed from our Facebook page (originally I planned to use the RSS feed, but the atom feed displayed better on our pages) and fed it into feed2js.org to get javascript that I could configure to display the most recent items posted to our Facebook page. (Feed2js also allows various combinations of colors, fonts and sizes via cascading style sheets, but unfortunately CSS are not compatible with our particular CMS.)
The result is a list of 5 extracurricular (or other) announcements and reminders that students can click on to see more information on our Facebook page. As a bonus, the Facebook RSS feed only includes items posted by our page administrators. So, even if students post messages on our wall, which we encourage, they will not be able to send messages out to all of our course pages. And because our Facebook page is public, students don’t need to be logged in to Facebook to read these messages.
Does it work? We’re still rolling it out, so it’s too early to call it a success. But I think integrating our Facebook page into our course management system makes a lot of sense because it multiplies the usefulness and reach of our online presence.
There was a great turnout for the gaming brownbag at the Digital Union today. (Thanks to everyone who came and joined in the discussion!) In lieu of a handout, I provided a link to my blog. Most of the resources I talked about are relatively easy to find here, but I thought I could make it easier by posting them all below.
WERTi System – Working with English Real Texts intelligently, developed by Detmar Meurers and others.
The second annual (well, second ever) Exploring Learning Technologies Unconference is next week, Friday, May 21 from 9-1:30pm in the Science and Engineering Library at The Ohio State University. ELTU2 is open to anyone in Ohio who is interested in the intersection between education and technology.
What is an unconference? Think of it as conference 2.0. It will have the basic structure of a conference (3 rounds of 48-minute breakout sessions) but the content of the sessions will be decided by the participants on the day of the unconference. And because all of the sessions will be in one place, it will be very easy (in fact, participants are encouraged) to move between the different discussions, thereby cross-polinating them.
Last year this worked very, very well. There were lots of great discussions between an interesting cross section of people at Ohio State. This year, we’re opening it up to the whole state and already have participants registered from almost every corner.
Will you be in Columbus, Ohio on Friday the 21st? Join us. For more information, visit the unconference website tr.im/eltu2 or register at eltu2.crowdvine.com.
I’m not quite ready for football yet either. But this past weekend some students and I braved the wet weather to do some tailgating and join 65,000 of our closest friends at the annual Spring Game. Though not a “real” game — the Buckeyes split into a Scarlet Team and a Gray Team, which play against each other — it is a very good simulation for only $5.
In order to help ESL students understand American football, I’ve developed a football simulation that requires only one six-sided die (plural = dice). A coin helps, too, if you want to begin with a coin toss.
I’ve squeezed all of the rules for the simulation onto the first page, which may be a bit too brief (leave a comment below if something is unclear), but almost everything in the game of football is included: offense, defense, and special teams.
The offense has five different plays (Inside Run, Outside Run, Short Pass, Medium Pass, and Long Pass) and the defense has three (Run Defense, Pass Defense, and Blitz). Each play begins with one team’s offense and the other team’s defense selecting a play by and placing that card face-down on the table. Teams count to three and reveal the cards simultaneously. The quarterback (a player on the offensive team) rolls the die to determine the outcome of the play with higher rolls being more successful.
As in real football, if the defense has predicted the offensive play, the offense is less likely to gain yardage (or may even lose yardage). But, if the offense has selected a play that the defense is not prepared for, bigger gains are likely. The Run Defense will limit the running plays, the Pass Defense will limit passing plays, and the Blitz will disrupt the longer plays (Outside Run and Long Pass). These longer plays have a lower chance of success, but when successful produce bigger gains. Every combination has six possible outcomes, which depend on the roll of the die. These combinations are listed in a table right below the rules.
I’ve played this game with my class on two different occasions and the students really enjoy it. Playing the game is the best way to understand what downs are and that 2nd and 5 is much better that 3rd and 13. (There is room to keep track of each play on the back page of the simulation and twelve plays equal one quarter.) Students also enjoy the strategic element of predicting whether their classmates are more likely to choose a conservative play or to throw up a Hail Mary.
In my experience with students who were interested but had little knowledge of the game, a 30-40 minute explanation of the basics of football prior to the simulation was helpful. I also spent 10-20 minutes explaining the basics of the simulation and let the students see the table of possible outcomes before we played. This allowed them time to understand the simulation in their own way and to begin to develop their own strategies. I let the students take lots of time for the first couple of plays, because there is usually lots to discuss and negotiate, but play gets quicker as students get more comfortable with the process. I also make sure to record the outcome of every play on the board at the front of the class (i.e. 3rd and 2 on the 30) which is another big challenge at first, but understanding this vernacular really allows a student to understand and enjoy watching a real game. Students usually wanted to continue playing even after 30-40 minutes.
There are a few other details included in the simulation that I haven’t explained here (fumbles, for example). Download the .pdf file and give it a try. It’s a good way to introduce people to the game and a fun diversion for football fans. Feel free to share my simulation, but please give me credit when you do. If you have comments or suggestions for additions or changes, please leave them below.
The photo above is from a poster I see around Ohio State once in a while. The caption reads, “Someone stole my password… now I have to rename my dog.” I think it is an elegant way to state what is a very important message: choose a strong password.
What is a strong password? One that cannot easily be guessed. It’s easy to find lists of the most common passwords used online and, invariably, password and 123456 (or similar) is at the top of every list. When I see this, I’m reminded of the movie Spaceballs, which was released in 1987. In one scene from this Star Wars parody, Dark Helmet learns that the combination to the air shield around planet Druidia is 12345, which Dark Helmet observes is the kind of thing an idiot would have on his luggage. The punchline, below, occurs when the air shield’s combination is revealed to President Skroob (Mel Brooks).
Besides being a chance to insert a gratuitous Spaceballs clip, what is the point? Well, even before we’d ever heard of email, 12345 was a bad password. Adding a 6 didn’t make it much better.
But even the brightest among us — celebrities — haven’t learned this lesson. It seems like every couple of weeks, there is a story about how Paris Hilton’s phone, Sarah Palin’s email, or Lindsay Lohan’s MySpace, Blackberry, and Gmail accounts have been hacked. All of these attacks were due to weak passwords, or easy-to-guess password reset questions (according to Wired, Tinkerbell – password reset answer, Wasilla High – password reset answer, and 1234 – password, respectively.) Startlingly, trying the top 10 or 20 passwords (and their variants such as 123, 1234, 12345, etc.) could unlock as many as 20% of online accounts, according to John P. on One Man’s Blog.
So, maybe you’re not Lindsay Lohan, but you probably still have information you want to protect. And gaining access to one account can probably lead to access to all of them. So even if your Facebook isn’t important enough to warrant a strong password, what information in that account could be used to access your email and then your online bank account?
What makes a strong password? When students set up their OSU email accounts, I direct them to OSU’s password policy, which requires passwords to be at least 8 characters and some combination of alphabetic, numeric, and punctuation characters. Also, an OSU password cannot contain the same character three times or more in a row, fewer than four different characters, or easily guessed phrases and words. You can even rate your new password at the top of the page to see if your password is acceptable. 1234 returns the message “Unacceptable – Your new password is too short.” (Sorry, Lindsay Lohan.)
Still having trouble? John P. has some good tips in his article. One approach is to substitute numbers and punctuation in place of some letters in a word. This can make your password exponentially tougher to crack. For example, gobuckeyes could become g08uck3y3$. But even a n00b knows we could do better. Instead of starting with a word, consider taking the first letter of each word in a phrase or song to create an easy to remember, but seemingly random string. For example, the first letter from each word in the first two lines of Carmen, Ohio would give us oclsopastamr. Now substitute numbers and symbols for a few of these letters and you have a pretty robust password: 0c1$0p4$t4mR.
(Incidentally, I wouldn’t recommend using that or any of the passwords you read here because any one of the tens of people who read this could then guess your password, but you can see how a strong password could be generated.)
Not feeling creative enough to make your own password? Another approach is to use one of several password generators available online. For example, grc.com has a page that generates strings of random characters each time the page is loaded. Take as many as you need to create a strong password. Another resource is onlinepasswordgenerator.com which generates 10 passwords at a time and can be configured to include numbers, punctuation, and capital letters, depending on your needs.
One final concern is having to remember passwords for so many different accounts. Consider creating a simple algorithm that will alter the password slightly for each account. For example, once you’ve committed 0c1$0p4$t4mR to memory, you could use 0c1$0p4$t4mRe for your email account, 0c1$0p4$t4mRb for your bank, and 0c1$0p4$t4mRfb for your Facebook account. By adding the letters to the middle of the word and including the number of letters in the name of the account, each individual password would seem even more random, but all of them would be easy for you to remember.
I hope this post helps to make the internet a safer place for you. If you recognized any of the passwords I’ve included here (especially the ones near the top), go update your accounts. Or, change your dog’s name.
ESL Technology.com 