Category Archives: Weekly

The Star Wars Kid

From Wikipedia

Star Wars Kid is a viral video made in 2002 by Ghyslain Raza[1] in which he wields a golf ball retriever in imitation of Darth Maul’s lightsaber moves from the Star Wars films. At the time, Raza was a 15-year-old high school student from Trois-Rivières, Québec, Canada. He had not intended for the video to become public, but its subsequent release led to ridicule during which Raza chose to distance himself from the video. Raza since has affirmed his identity and has used the video to help speak on the effects of bullying.

On November 3, 2002, Raza made a video of himself swinging a golf ball retriever around as a weapon. The video was filmed at his high school studio, and he accidentally left the tape in a basement. It was taped over a portion of a basketball game (as seen extremely briefly at the end of the clip). The video was discovered by a schoolmate, whose friend created an electronic file from the video tape. The video was distributed amongst his school’s students. A student uploaded it to the Internet with the title Jackass_starwars_funny.wmv. The video eventually became a viral Internet meme through P2P services. According to court transcripts, the video first appeared on the Internet on the evening of April 14, 2003.

Raza states he was a victim of cyberbullying, as his video also attracted negative attention and comments. Online commenters responded with critical or bullying messages. In a 2013 interview, Raza states, “What I saw was mean. It was violent. People were telling me to commit suicide.” Among the comments online, “One commenter called him ‘a pox on humanity.’ Others suggested he commit suicide.” He was bullied in person at his school, and he left the campus to pursue private tutoring. He claimed to have lost friends because of the ordeal.

Weekly iPad Reflection Chris W.

About two weeks  ago Apple came to visit our humble class. Here is a short summary of what I learned.

 

Keynote

If you are anything like me you grew up using Microsoft Word and its cousins Excel and PowerPoint. While Keynote cannot replace word or Excel, it does a whole lot more for you than PowerPoint ever could. Adding links to your presentation and accessing links is both easy and smooth.  Creating a dynamic and professional presentation is all at your finger tips. You can even use Keynote to design a UI for apps or make a mock Web page. You can do what you want but if there is ever an option between Keynote and PowerPoint, I’m picking Keynote.

 

Quip

Quip is an app our visitors asked us to use. I did not fall in love with it, but other people seemed to like. Quip made it easier for us to follow along with the lesson plan Apple had for us. Perhaps I need more experience with it to truly appreciate what the app can do.

 

GarageBand

GarageBand  on the iPad is very easy to use. I can see myself spending countless hours making a song for a video using the drum pad interface. I also never realized how easy it was to include a song made on GarageBand in a movie or trailer made in iMovie. In my future YouTube videos I’ll be sure to check out GarageBand before searching the Web for royalty free music.

 

There were other great apps Apple showed us but these are the free that stood out to me. If you have an iOS device give Keynote a try, make a song in GarageBand, make use of Quip. There are so many tutorials online!

Week 8: Spring Break

I understand last week was a very positive experience … I’m thrilled about that and I look forward to hearing more next week when we get together. I am not going to assign anything new this week, but I will remind you to wrap up the assignments by the posted due dates.

Out of Class — All Due 3/24/2015 by 5 PM

  • Weekly iPad Reflection — what did you learn from the Apple visit and what did you create? Did what you learn alter your appreciation for the iPad?
  • Weekly Create — Time to Tweet! Everyone needs to Tweet something interesting about this class using the hashtag #CDT450. I’d then like you to post about what Twitter can mean to shaping your identity and embed your tweet in the post.

Week 7: Apple is Back!

I am on the road this week so I cannot be with you … I promise I lined up something good for you in my absence. Apple will be here to talk more about the iPad and take you through some really interesting activities. I can’t believe we don’t get to hang out for three weeks! Speaking of Break, since next week is Spring Break I am going to make the tasks to do a bit lighter than what we’ve become accustomed to. I’m hopeful that you will enjoy today’s time with Apple and have a safe a restful Spring Break! 

While on your iPad, please click this link to download the iTunes U materials for class today. 

Before you leave class today, I’d like you to write a team definition of Identity, just like we did for community a few weeks ago. Be ready to defend it and discuss it when we get back together after Spring Break. Please choose one person to post it to the blog.

Out of Class — All Due 3/24/2015 by 5 PM

  • Weekly iPad Reflection — what did you learn from the Apple visit and what did you create? Did what you learn alter your appreciation for the iPad?
  • Weekly Create — Time to Tweet! Everyone needs to Tweet something interesting about this class using the hashtag #CDT450. I’d then like you to post about what Twitter can mean to shaping your identity and embed your tweet in the post.

Week 6: On to Identity

Today we embark on our second theme, identity. The readings I had you do might seem strange in the context of identity, but I think they start to lay a deeper groundwork toward moving from looking at things from a pure perspective on community to how identity shapes what we see and feel. They really truly make perfect sense in the context of the team video project and based on the amazing conversations we had last week. Speaking of last week, you guys were terrific! Thank you for generating an exceptional learning experience for everyone.

Today we would have done quite a bit in class, but given the snow has conspired against us we will have to improvise. So what I am going to do is convert what we would have done in class to additional individual work that you will do here on the blog.

Had we been in class we would have started with a brief reflection on the synthesis presentations and answer any follow up questions. Given we aren’t together I am happy to answer anything either here in the open or more privately in a Yammer group. I would like everyone to take a minute and log in and give it a try. Do yourself a favor and get the Yammer iOS app … it makes it so much better on the go.

Speaking of Yammer, I posted some general thoughts on your work so far in our Yammer group. Please view it and leave a comment on it in Yammer so I know you looked at it.

We would have also watched your videos — Team Right Shark and Team Too Disruptive. Since we can’t discuss them in class, please respond individually to the other team’s video — specifically in the context of McLuhan!

To make the jump into our next theme, I want you to watch a video that explores an incredible story that will quite literally build a bridge for us from community toward identity. Share your reactions as comments to that video on that post.

After that, I want you to self record and publish a short video (no more than two minutes) using your iPads and iMovie for iOS is free for owners of iPad Airs). Please post it to YouTube and embed it in the course blog. In the blog post where you embed the video, please write your weekly iPad reflection to focus on the process of creating the video. The video itself should address the following questions:

  • How do you personally define the word identity?
  • Who are you?
  • What you do?
  • What shapes and makes up who you are?
  • Are you the sum parts of your online and offline identities?
  • When you post the video write our weekly iPad reflection to focus on the process of creating the video.

Out of Class

Preparing for next week — remember I will not be here (sadly), but a team from Apple will be here to teach you some more specific iPad skills. I will post a Week 7 overview, with assignments, readings, etc. Take care and be safe. You will need several free apps from Apple. Please make sure you get them. Go to the App Store on your iPad,scroll to the bottom and tap “Apps Made by Apple” … there you will be able to get that group of apps. Thanks!

apps

Hangout on Air

Week 5: Your Time to Shine!

Quick Hitters

This week the stage is yours … Teams Right Shark and Too Disruptive get to present their synthesis of the first four classes with an emphasis on Community. I am really excited to see how you pull together the notions of community that we’ve discussed in the first block of the class. I did my assigned readings, did you?

Before we dive into the presentations we will look at a few quick items and talk a little bit about what they might mean to us going forward. I know that you are all hard at work on your videos and I promise I will let you wrap up early so you can take some time work more on those. Next week we will be looking at those as we also kick off the “identity” phase of the class. But enough about next week, let’s get to work on discussing the first big artifact of the class!

Out of Class

Readings

Assignments

  • Continue working on your Team Videos and post them to the course site via a YouTube or Vimeo embeds with a short overview of what technology you focused on and why you chose to explore it by noon on 3/5/2015
  • Weekly Create using Phoster or another like app for the iPad that illustrates your initial thoughts on identity. Post your artifact and share a short thought in the post about why this speaks to our next theme. Due by 5 PM on Tuesday
  • Weekly Team Post … what were the biggest takeaways from the readings? Please cite at least two core ideas from both The Medium is the Massage and The Web is a Customer Service Medium and discuss them in the context of both community and identity. Do you feel differently about your team video now that you have read McLuhan’s work? Due by 5 PM on Tuesday

Week 4: Preparing for the Synthesis!

Quick Items

Today

We will be doing lots of team work this week. I will be asking you to work within your teams to construct a couple of artifacts. We will start with an informal presentation by each team of their work on rounding out the SWOT analysis of the iPad in education exercise we did last week (Right Shark & Too Disruptive). I want to push you to the front of the room so you get comfortable for your synthesis presentation next week. After we talk a bit about that work, I am going to ask you to individually identify your three top thesis from the Cluetrain manifesto and why and post them to the course blog … then do the same as a team, but I want you to add in a reflection/refraction with/about the Cluetrain New Clues piece — this time synthesizing your work together and make a single post. That will provide a nice basis for a discussion of those readings. The remainder of time will be for you to work together on the Synthesis Post and Presentation … if you have questions, I will be available.

Out of Class

  • I am not assigning any readings for next week as you should be doing that in your synthesis posts (be judicious)
  • Continue working on your Team Videos and post them to the course site via YouTube or Vimeo embeds with a short overview of what technology you focused on and why by noon on 3/5/2015
  • Construct your team’s first synthesis post, post questions for the class to consider, post any readings you want us to do (or videos to watch, etc) by 5 PM on Tuesday
  • Weekly iPad Reflection by 5 PM on Tuesday
  • Give me some early feedback

Next Week

  • Present Team Videos
  • Present your first Synthesis

Week 3: Community, The Bloomsburg Daily, and the SWOT

This week we will be our first real deep dive into community. Now that you’ve experienced a little bit of Wenger we need to unpack what you learned there. Let’s talk about your reactions to the chapter you read and discuss some of the big issues embedded in his writing. I am going to ask you to write your own definition of community in teams and post it to the blog.

After that we will take a look at the curious case of The Bloomsburg Daily. We will look at it through the lens of community and disruption.

The second half of class we will be conducting a SWOT Analysis in class around the question of the iPad as an enabler within the context of higher education — teaching, learning, and community engagement.

BTW, we will be done early today!

In class

  • Define Community
  • Conduct SWOT Analysis

Out of class

  • Readings:
  • Begin working on your Team Video project: This will be due in two weeks — by noon on 2/25/2015
  • Complete the iPad survey
  • Leave a comment on the other team’s definition of community
  • Team Post: Select one strength, weakness, opportunity, and threat from the class SWOT activity and expand upon each to make a persuasive argument. See post holding our SWOT outcomes. Due Tuesday 5:00 PM.
  • Weekly iPad Reflection: How are you utilizing the device now across all of your courses and academic life? Due Tuesday 5:00 PM.
  • Weekly create. Due Tuesday 5:00 PM

Reflections on Wenger's Community of Practice

Chapter 2 of Wenger’s book discusses “Community of Practice”.  As definition, a Community of Practice (CoP) is a learning partnership where people engage in such partnership and start creating a learning environment by sharing common interests and needs with a set of tools.  This correlates directly to one of the classes themes, Community, and certainly indirectly to the other two themes, Identity and Design.  Wenger, a Social Learning Theorist, discusses the different dimensions of practice that embody community of practice; mutual engagement (identity), a joint enterprise (identity, design), and a shared repertoire (design).

The author goes in detail about how a CoP gets created, what are the necessary components, ground rules, its resources, governance, etc.  Conditions, resources, and demands shape the practice.

A CoP does not necessarily need to be “healthy”, meaning,  there will be fighting, disconnects, arguments, but at the end, it will still be a community of different and diverse personalities, learning and sharing valuable content.

I found this not to be an easy read.  I complemented the reading with other articles from the web, as well as a few videos in YouTube.  Time permitting, I will read chapter 1, as there were a few references in chapter 2 to this chapter.

Here are a few examples of a CoP in the Higher Ed space:

CoP

The questions I’d like to pose;

  • Are there learning environments that lack a community of practice?
  • Are there non-learning environments where a community of practice is present?
  • Could the same have been said in a simpler manner?