Author Archives: khopkins

Personal Reflection Post – Katherine

I’m actually a lot sadder to be writing this post than I expected to be. This class is hands down the most memorable and stimulating class that I have ever taken. To be completely honest, I signed up to take CDT 450 for two reasons. One was because Cole’s description of the class had mentioned not spending all our time in the physical classroom. As a second semester senior and a person who prefers naps to actually being in class, I thought this would be a pretty easy and not very intellectually stimulating class ( I was wrong). I wasn’t at all disappointed that Cole never once cancelled class (he even held a Google Hangout class on a school snow day). The second reason I signed up for this class was because I started to google “Cole Camplese” and read more about him as a professor and person. His reviews on ratemyprofessor we’re pretty promising even though they were for Penn State and not SBU. When I walked into the class on the first day, I was a little overwhelmed to see that there were so few people in the class and that I was one of only two females. I quickly became aware of the fact that I wouldn’t be able to sit in the back of the classroom and blend in while staring down at my laptop or phone screen. I realized right away that Cole wasn’t a “normal” professor and that this definitely was not going to be a “normal” class. We were given iPads the very first day which at the time seemed like a lot to trust us with after only knowing us for a few hours.

Cole very rarely stood up in front of the classroom and lectured us with powerpoints. He engaged us in conversation and had us get into sometimes heated and tense discussions on everything from technology to “future people” to “master bakers.” I usually hate classes where there’s no notes on blackboard or study guides or lecture slides to learn off of. This class changed all of that. Cole didn’t want us to learn old, recycled information, but to come up with new ideas and reach new, exciting conclusions. I feel like all classes should be taught by professors like Cole. If Cole asked a question in class, and no one responded, he wouldn’t just give away the answer. He would stare around the room until someone became uncomfortable enough to actually try to answer the question and come up with new ideas.

On the topic of the iPads, I think it’s a commonly held believe that technology is tearing our generation apart and has no place in the classroom. Our experiences in CDT 450 could completely turn that belief on its head. We used our iPads to collaborate and make presentations, present them, and to have knowledge right at our fingertips. I think we made 2 presentations so far. My group, Too Disruptive, only met for about maybe a total of 30 minutes to work on one of the projects. Everything else was done through our iPads or laptops using Google Drive. I never thought it would be possible to be able to collaborate on a project without physically meeting with my group. Having the ability to work with others from the comfort of my own bed was a great feeling and that wouldn’t have been possible without our iPads. The iPads really took our class from a community to a community of practice. I remember when we first started discussing the topic of community and Cole asked us if we felt our class was a community. Everyone was a little hesitant to say yes but I strongly believe we would all identify the 9 of us as a very strong community after the past 14 weeks. We were able to create common goals and reach them, all using our iPads as a tool and resource. I loved that our class grades didn’t come from essays or quizzes or tests, but rather from class discussion and our synthesis presentations that gave us the opportunity to illustrate what we learned and give us the chance to teach it in new and cool ways.

Overall, Cole is probably the coolest professor I have ever had and CDT has been an incredibly exciting and rewarding experience. I genuinely believe that all professors and students could learn a lot from CDT 450 and Cole Camplese.

Weekly iPad Reflection – Katherine

This week I discovered new ways to use the iPad to improve my productivity. Last Thursday, I helped set up and assist with SBU-TV’s Film festival as an intern. Part of my duties that night involved checking people in with their names and ID numbers. In order to speed up the process, I used my iPad to set up a spreadsheet using Google Sheets while another intern used a laptop to open up the same Google spreadsheet. I was able to have people sign in with their name and ID number and type it themselves using the iPad which made the process a lot faster. It was convenient to have both a laptop and an iPad and be able to have people sign in on both.

Google Drive and Docs have been a lifesaver this semester when I’m not able to physically meet up with the other interns or group members in person. Being able to work in Google Docs and have each group member highlight their text with a chosen color has greatly helped to organize notes and blog post ideas all in one place. Before the iPad, I rarely made use of Google Drive and had never used Google Docs/hangouts/sheets/slides in such a productive and fast manner.

Weekly iPad Reflection – Katherine

I think an iPad app that is missing from what students in higher education need is something like a clicker but an application for smartphones and tablets. The app would be able to be installed on a student’s cell phone or tablet and allow them to answer clicker questions in lecture halls, instead of having to purchase a separate clicker.

The app should also have a section for note taking, voice and video recording to record lectures. I think it would also be interesting if the application included a geolocation based chat where only people within that classroom or lecture room could share and exchange notes and lecture slides. It would allow for an open dialogue between students without having to actually disrupt the flow of the classroom. The application could work in the way that airdrop on Apple products does. Students near each other would be able to share their screens and/or airdrop files to one another, all while being able to answer clicker questions and interact with the professor in class.

The app would allow for students to schedule and meet with study groups with different people in their classes. Essentially, the app would be one main outlet for students to take and record notes, share them with others, and arrange study time outside of class.

 

Created with Tagul.comFor this weekly create I used tagul.com to make a word cloud with words that relate to design. I got to choose the individual fonts and colors of each of the words that I add it and even add small animations when you hover over the words. My personal definition of design would be an idea or plan that exists to create a final project. This design could consist of a blueprint or outline and include few to many specific details that attempt to explain the final idea. A design does not need to be a physical, written plan but can exist in the mind of a creator.

Created with Tagul.com

Weekly Create – Katherine

impressed with all that the iPad can do Now that I know I can make entire presentations just using an app I may never need a laptop #cdt450

— Katherine Hopkins (@kathopcdt450) March 24, 2015

Twitter can have a huge effect on shaping our identities. I believe that everyone has many selves and one of them is how we act on social media. People are usually either much more open on social media or much more reserved. For me, I used to be a lot more open and probably a little too open on Twitter to be completely honest. I would tweet almost every single thought I had, regardless of how appropriate it was. I think people are usually more open on Twitter than they should be. For me, Twitter was a way to say things that I usually was too shy or reserved to say out loud. I ended up getting into some trouble for my tweets, which is why I was apprehensive to even make a twitter again for class. Your identity is determined on Twitter by who you interact with, what you say, and how you say it in such a small amount of available characters. Your identity is also defined by whether or not you are an anonymous account, the topics that you tweets about, your follower/following ratio, and if you only interact with friends/people you know IRL, or you reach out to tweeters that you have never met.

Weekly iPad Reflection – Katherine

I learned a lot of interesting things about the iPad that I didn’t even know were capable of doing with only a tablet. We used a few different apps to create interactive presentations. We used BaiBoard to have a shared whiteboard space where you can add text, writing, clip art, send and receive messages and even have a live voice conference. We also used Keynote to create Powerpoint-like presentations. We used interactive links to link photos and texts to other parts of the presentation or links to the web. What we learned in class from the Apple team definitely altered my appreciation for the iPad. I’m much more aware now of all the things I can do with just an iPad, much more than I previously believed it was capable of. I thought the idea of creating an iTunes U class with all the necessary applications and pdfs that we need for class was a really interesting idea and I’d like to make my own for fun or even for a future project. I loved that we just downloaded the iTunes U package and it automatically downloaded all the Apple Apps we needed in one place.

Weekly iPad Reflection & Identity Video Project

I used the in app camera to record the short 2 minute video. I found it simple that the iPad allows you to upload recorded videos directly to YouTube. For some reason I was unable to sign into my stonybrook.edu Google accounts so I had to upload my video to my personal Gmail account. Since the video was such a small file format it uploaded to YouTube in less than a minute. The entire process of filming, uploading to YouTube and embedding to the blog took less than 10 minutes. Before the iPad i would’ve used my digital camera to record, transfer the video to my laptop and then have to upload to YouTube and embed to the blog. The iPad made the whole process a lot simpler and I’d probably be more likely to do it.