Optimus Studio Blog

Do accelerated release cycles positively or negatively impact the pace of innovation? I will answer this question when I have more time — also known as after Christmas.

-Cameron

According to McFarland and Klopfer, the ‘knowledge domain’ seeks to benefit from the vast opportunities of various dimensions. However, the lack of “structure of ideas” prohibits this venture from being realized since the “multiple network-dimensions” (segmented, paradigmatic, star-stricken, and cohesive/permeable) are not readily available to academics. To make it possible for “knowledge artifacts” to effectively reach the broad scope of the educational knowledge domain (to “enable more efficient searches… facilitate individual comprehension… broaden access and participation…. enable direct empirical study… identify coordinations regions… and identify knowledge innovation mechanisms”), a “dynamic of form and content” must be accessible to those both within and outside the knowledge domain. This can be operationalized through the creation of a multi-variant collaborative knowledge artifact repository which is centrally located, free from restrictive governance, with dynamic aggregate capabilities to broaden the scope of access, contribution, and growth of the knowledge domain with defines education.

-Cameron

Seems like every day brings with it more obligations and responsibilities. My coursework has been intense lately, but I’m glad it’s that way and not the other way around (otherwise I’d say I’m throwing away valuable dollars). At any rate, I find myself constantly reading and absorbing information. At the same time, however, I find that managing my content in an easy way seems to have evaded me. The solution? An onine-based application that requests the course ID, session number, session topic, article titles with corresponding areas for both key terms and summaries, and an overall summary of the session. This collection of data could then be formatted to be printed and used as a physical reference to my already substantial printed article repository (also known as my filing cabinet FULL of print media).

That’s it! I’m not going to posit any additional features. This idea is well on its way to becoming part of my teacher tools (tbd).

“Patent pending, patent pending, patent pending… hey, who is this guy?” - Homer Simpson

No, really, patent pending!
-Cameron

It’s amusing, but I never thought that I’d feel the overwhelming urge to keep up with a blog. Here it is. Late at night and I couldn’t fall asleep without partaking in this reflective goodness.

In education, the notion of being driven is so unique that it isn’t viewed as normal within a standard educational environment. In a meeting with Harvard hopefuls, an attendee asked the right question. He asked what the typical student in their graduate programs all possessed. At some fundamental level they all had to have one unifying quality which made them unique. It was leadership. Leadership is the one quality that great men and women have. If you want to be a success and complete tasks, make strides, and contribute extraordinary things, then you must be willing to be constantly driven and always seek answers. If you have all your answers, then you’re not asking enough questions. If you’re asking a lot of questions, but fail to get sufficient answers, then either you’re speaking the wrong language or have failed to ask the right questions.

Ask the right questions and doors open, people reciprocate, and opportunities to continually prove brillance still exists in human form. Most people are bored and dulled. Brilliance makes all of that lack-lustre living a little bit more colorful, rich, radiant, and vibrant (sounds like a shampoo commercial, sorry).

Signing off,
Cameron

There is a principle in interface design that goes something like “the fewer clicks to get to a point, the better”. So why is it, after so many years of development on online learning systems, that I have to click on the ‘Reply’ button when I want to make a comment on a peer’s work? This one little, tiny detail stifles participation because the user has to ‘change states’ in order to go from ‘reader’ to ‘participant’. Yet this system is made ONLY for participants. So why should I have to modify how the screen is organized in order to easily, quickly and readily comment on a posting? This is not how an intelligent techology should function. The system should be built to encourage my participation from the start and simply allow the user to make the determination as to whether he/she wishes to contribute to a particular post or not.

Now some blogging systems have it right (unfortunately, not WordPress). Don’t get me wrong… I like this system. In fact, this system has made it possible for me to ‘jump on board’ without extensive training and get right into this new publication medium. However, the systems that are properly laid out let the reader, after skimming through the profound posting by the author, immediately post his/her statements directly below the posting. This lets the user (1) see the information previously written as direct reference for the posting and (2) encourages participation on that particular blog. A single click takes the user one step further away from the material and, consequently, sends a subliminal message to the user that he/she must be a part of a ‘unique club’ in order to contribute words to this blog. Web 2.0 (or the moniker associated with social networking) is built upon the principles of “empowering citizen media…, democratiz[ing] culture, buid[ing] authentic communit[ies] (and) creat[ing] citizen media” (Keen, 2006, The second generation of the Internet has arrived. It’s worse than you think.). In order to properly address the issue of ‘building authentic communities’, the system must allow for the user to make his/her thoughts readily known without the need to take an additional step. Conversations, in the traditional sense of two people talking, are not likely to have deliberate breaks interwoven within the stream on dialogue to denote entry and exit points. You wouldn’t say to somebody “say ‘reply’ in order to respond to my statement”, so why should you have to do the same in an environment which is meant to encourage continuous dialogues?

-Cameron

Where is the de-facto standard? Is it Blackboard? Moodle? WebCT (absorbed by Blackboard)? Why is it so difficult to develop a standard that is universally applicable yet scalable to accomodate the needs of a wider audience. Certainly Moodle has this capability, but the user base is limited initially by the stigma associated with ‘open source’ and ‘unsupported’. Blackboard has some great features but the mention of cost and academia in the same sentence send the majority running to their plan books.

Basically, I think there are some developments that need attention. In the coming year I will make the best darned effort that I can to develop some modules that will reinforce the extensibility of Moodle to the degree that what the user needs is available without a steep learning curve. I’d like a ticket-based assignment management system that is synchronized with a calendar (patent-pending). That’s what I think is severely limited. That’s the point of entry for my foray into the development of Moodle modules.

-Cameron

Today marked the end of semester one! In rounding out the semester, I felt it was important to have my oldest students reflect upon their time in my class and, more importantly, their performance. By being aware of how they did in a previous session of my class, the students were more likely to reflect positively -or- negatively on their performance and construct solutions for future improvement. This activity brought my position as a leader to the forefront since it became obvious beyond a shadow-of-a-doubt that my students needed some reinforcement on basic arithmatic skills. Specifically, my students were having trouble being confident about basic addition.

After twelve weeks of ‘hard’ work, my students were required to present their work to a panel of judges (made up mostly of various staffers from around the building). Each judge rated the students on a five-point scale (five being superior and one inferior). After the three judges graded my student’s work, I had my students add the totals together. Long story short — I had one student give me a sum which couldn’t possibly be correct and I found out, after light questioning, that the student had neglected to line up the decimals, and that confidence on the addition of two digits in the ones place plagued ALL of my students. In my illustrious wisdom, I relayed a story about my experience with gross idiocy and how it can negatively effect opinions on a particular subject.

Another abridged tale — in tenth grade I had enrolled in an ‘Academy’ where, after a disappointing Freshman year, I was encouraged by my father to take the easier courses so that I could ‘ease’ into my new surroundings. This ended up being severely detrimental to my high school career. In my english class we were asked by my new teacher if (this is serious now) anybody was not completely certain about the definition of a noun. That one inane question did it for me. I was through with this place. Even now (ten years later) I am plagued by that one point in time (which is obvious since I have devoted precious time on my Friday evening to discuss this matter in my blog). I hated that place before I stepped foot in the door and that one experience certainly didn’t help the situation. The rest of the year continued to be a series of disappointments and I haven’t forgotten how that one simple statement made me feel. My intelligence was insulted (indirectly, of course) and I had NO desire to continue at that school. Be that as it may, I had no choice in the matter and nine months slipped through my fingers and the dejected feelings have served me well.

So much for ‘abridged’

At any rate, this little situation needed some immediate attention before I let a dozen students leave my room thinking that a lack of confidence in this area was acceptable. Smith and Williams, in their article Ostracism by Cell Phone Text Messages, state that “even the slightest hint of ostracism is sufficient to sound a warning of alarm in humans, possibly because detection of ostracism has evolved as a mechanism to ward off threats to survival” (2004). After one student supplied the first answer (which was grossly incorrect), I took it upon myself to draw attention to this issue and reiterate the importance of being able to compute simple arithmatic in one’s head. My example on the board mirrored the one that was relevent to the situation at hand. After I reviewed how the supplied answer was wrong, I asked the class to give me the correct answer. One student very sheepishly answered in a question and I shot back (as never before) and said “NO! The answer is six. Be confident. Don’t inflect up at the end of your response. Be certain and KNOW that you are right.” It became immediately obvious that I had ostracised this one student by pointing out the error in a curt manner in front of all the other students. While I knew that it might’ve been better for the self-esteem of this student to gently respond; I knew at that one moment if I didn’t emphasize how important this bit of information was to them then I’d lose them to the greater evil — insecurity. Confidence gets MANY people far in life and I wanted to emphasize how important it was for them to be aware of this mistake and to know that they still need to become more certain if they wish to be successful.

-Cameron