Chapter 31 Reflection and Activities

Chapter 31 presented some interesting things to me. First, I think that it is cool that Dr. Warwick had a capsule implanted in his arm as a computer to help him with everyday tasks like email and such. I don't know if I would do that, but I think that it is neat that something like that exists. The chip can program people to do things. I am not sure if I wanted to be "programmed", but I can see how the capsule can be useful for those with disabilities. If a person had like a learning disability, something like that could rewire the brain to process information like the brain should. But I can see where something like this could get abused very easily.

AI has come a long way since it started. Now it helps to determine learning styles, perferences, and needs and can tailor those things to the needs of the student. This is very valuable information for any educator. Educators needs this information to best meet the needs of their students.

I just think that we have to be careful in not let technology take over human interaction and feelings. While I do not see computers or robots taking over the world, I can see how technology can get in the way of social interaction. Take email for example. Don't get me wrong, email has been a wonderful and quick way to send messages. But phone conversations are not there as much. I have heard of people getting disrespected by someone breaking up over email. I am not saying not to use it or any other technology, but to use them that is helpful, not hurtful.

I learned quite a bit from this class and I am not sure which of the projects were my favorite. So I would like to address the second question by sharing how I used what I learned in my other class. For this class, we had literature circles and we had to do a presentation previewing the book. The book our group read was about a woman living under the Taliban in Afghanistan. Part of the presentation is showing a video. I pulling some up on You Tube through the campus laptop, but they lacked the Flash program needed. So I offered my group members to display videos on a blog. So I went home that night, got a few videos off You Tube and embedded them in a new blog and emailed the site to my group members so they can see the videos from home and give feedback via email. If you are curious, the site is http://joyantitaliban.blogspot.com/ . Not only I used Blogger, but I used what I learned to do a screen cast to make the video thing work. You see, the videos on You Tube can be downloaded, but are Real Player files. When I tried to convert it to Windows Media Player format, it only got the sound, not the video. (I wanted WMV because almost all computers can play this.) So I had to get really smart here. I did a screen recording while under my free trial of Camastia Studio and put the sound of the video (mp3 file at this point) on the time line right underneath the video. I locked them together and boom! It played both video and sound. (For some reason, the sound would not pick up when trying to record the video for the screen cast so I had to do that.) Then I was to produce it as the Windows Media file and it worked beautifully. The timing has to be right though. The video is displayed at the end of this posting. I also enjoyed doing the website and playing with the photos. They are easy to do and allow for creativity. I know I will use that for personal and educational projects in the future.