E1n1verse

7 Degrees of Ein (That You Probably Never Knew)

Credit EduGlu-y JosieFraser for this posting on the seven degrees of Ein or things you probably never knew (and perhaps could have lived without) based on the Twitter meme currently making the rounds. If you'd like to participate and haven't been tagged, the rules are quoted below:

Kind of like high 5, but not. Thank you Mark Hawker for memeing me, & posting the rules (although feeling a bit Déjà vu on this one, wondering if black holes are really just meme collisions):

* Link your original tagger(s), and list these rules on your blog.
* Share seven facts about yourself in the post - some random, some weird.
* Tag seven people at the end of your post by leaving their names and the links to their blogs.
* Let them know they’ve been tagged by leaving a comment on their blogs and/or Twitter.

[From SocialTech: Random 7]

Now, on to the 7º of Ein!

1. 1st º: Most people are familiar with my pseudonym of "Eingang" or "Ein" for short. Most people, however, don't know that it comes one of my first trips to Switzerland where I saw "Eingang" posted on entrances to highways and parking lots all over the country. I discuss this more at length in the Evolution of Eingang and Cognomen Command blog entries on my personal blog. I strongly believe in the power of self-naming to control who we are and what we want to be.

2. 
   The Stargate Window Decoration

   
   Me Singing "Moonlight Shadow" (excerpt)

   2nd º: Although I'm very literal-minded and things can seem very black and white, ideal qualities in someone who is comfortable in dealing with computers, I also have a bit of an artistic side. I occasionally like to draw, write poetry, make handmade cards, and sing.

   
   Autumn Leaf

   Singing happens quite a lot when I'm happy. The other things when I have a lot of spare time or when I'm wanting to make something special for someone. This Christmas's artistic adventure was making a stained glass plastic Stargate window decoration for someone as a Secret Santa gift.

   Last year I made different Christmas cards for almost everybody. Some used stamps. Some were drawn. Some were layered. Some used recycled Christmas paper. It was a lot of fun to do, but it can be fairly time-consuming unless you're making multiples of the same card design.

   
   

3. 3rd º: Book storage is a problem many people I know have. I've solved it by storing my books in many different countries and many different formats. I have books stashed away in an apartment in Zürich (Switzerland), boxed up in Edmonton (Canada), and here in London (England). The vast majority of my collection is paperbacks, but I also have a sizeable number of electronic books (especially science fiction) and Audible audiobooks. I've been a member of Audible for five years. I especially love unabridged audiobooks for my weekly commute to the University of Sussex. They're also good for sending me off to sleep. I set my iPod to deactivate after 30 minutes and start the current audiobook playing on very, very low volume. I usually only manage about fifteen minutes before I'm gone. It's highly effective.

4. 4th º: I left home when I was sixteen prior to finishing high school. I was just starting grade 12, my last year of high school, when I left home. It took me another four years to finish that last year of school by distance education, night classes, and summer courses. Memo to kids: Be cool, stay in school! I did graduate with honours, but my way was a lot harder. I then self-funded my way through university, graduating with honours from honours computing and with a $32,000 NSERC post-graduate award, which I didn't end up using. At one point in my undergraduate degree, I was taking courses from three different universities located in three different provinces of Canada in the same term. After graduating, I started trying to find a place to do a Ph.D. I'm still doing a Ph.D. now. I've pretty much well continuously been in school since I left home.

5. 5th º: In my spare time, such that it is, I run a random acts of kindness World of Warcraft (WoW) guild called The One. My primary character is named Elsheindra and she's a healer; I'm not much into hack and slash. A guild is a collection of people who play together. The One has been together almost four years now. It's relatively small, but we still have quite a few of our original members, which is quite impressive, I think.

   
   Elsheindra, night elf

   
   Mr. IBM in the Park

   While I'm confessing about World of Warcraft, I might as well admit that I met my current partner while running a multi-guild alliance together. We've been happily living together (that's in real life, not virtual life) for two years. We bought a house together in London earlier this year, my first house ever, after a lifetime of renting. WoW and Plurk friends will probably know that I'm disgustingly happy with Mr. IBM (AKA Basil in World of Warcraft).

   Running The One is where I first started experimenting with Wikis. Atlassian was kind enough to donate a free license of their commercial, Java-based Confluence Wiki software for the guild to use. Although it's been difficult to get people collaborating on content, it has been very interesting trying to adapt a Wiki to all kinds of purposes, like forums and private messaging. It's given me an appreciation of the power of tagging and dynamic content display, too. I love things that tie my interests of community building with Internet technologies together.

   
   

6. 6th º: Although I like people and I seem to be an extrovert, I don't actually like lots of people in the same place at the same time or very, very busy places. As a result, I tend to stay in my home a lot. I particularly dislike London train stations during the commuter rush, where the train stations become a seething mass of humanity. That's way too many people for my comfort. I even have trouble with the local Sainsbury's sometimes. I'm most comfortable in small groups of five or six people.

7. 7th º: I love soups. I adore soups. I figure you can never have too much soup (sort of like garlic, another favourite). If I'm cooking and it doesn't involve soup, I think people are shocked. Some of my favourites include Spicy Bread & Garlic Soup and Thai Hot 'n Sour Mushroom Soup. I've also posted recipes for Pistou Sauce, which goes good on French vegetable soup, and 10-Spice Powder. I am a person who has a crockpot and loves using it!

8. 8th º (bonus): I hate having my picture taken. I've always hated having my picture taken. I'm not sure of the reason for it. On the plus side, I don't take pictures of other people normally either. Win-win, as far as I'm concerned!

Now comes the fun part: subjecting other people to this same adventure. I tag:

1. Tony Hirst
2. Martin Weller
3. Howard Rheingold
4. Jim Hendler
5. AJ Cann
6. Sarah Horrigan
7. Monty Paul

7 Degrees of Ein (That You Probably Never Knew)

Credit EduGlu-y JosieFraser for this posting on the seven degrees of Ein or things you probably never knew (and perhaps could have lived without) based on the Twitter meme currently making the rounds. If you'd like to participate and haven't been tagged, the rules are quoted below:

Kind of like high 5, but not. Thank you Mark Hawker for memeing me, & posting the rules (although feeling a bit Déjà vu on this one, wondering if black holes are really just meme collisions):

* Link your original tagger(s), and list these rules on your blog.
* Share seven facts about yourself in the post - some random, some weird.
* Tag seven people at the end of your post by leaving their names and the links to their blogs.
* Let them know they’ve been tagged by leaving a comment on their blogs and/or Twitter.

[From SocialTech: Random 7]

Now, on to the 7º of Ein!

1. 1st º: Most people are familiar with my pseudonym of "Eingang" or "Ein" for short. Most people, however, don't know that it comes one of my first trips to Switzerland where I saw "Eingang" posted on entrances to highways and parking lots all over the country. I discuss this more at length in the Evolution of Eingang and Cognomen Command blog entries on my personal blog. I strongly believe in the power of self-naming to control who we are and what we want to be.

2. 
   The Stargate Window Decoration

   
   Me Singing "Moonlight Shadow" (excerpt)

   2nd º: Although I'm very literal-minded and things can seem very black and white, ideal qualities in someone who is comfortable in dealing with computers, I also have a bit of an artistic side. I occasionally like to draw, write poetry, make handmade cards, and sing.

   
   Autumn Leaf

   Singing happens quite a lot when I'm happy. The other things when I have a lot of spare time or when I'm wanting to make something special for someone. This Christmas's artistic adventure was making a stained glass plastic Stargate window decoration for someone as a Secret Santa gift.

   Last year I made different Christmas cards for almost everybody. Some used stamps. Some were drawn. Some were layered. Some used recycled Christmas paper. It was a lot of fun to do, but it can be fairly time-consuming unless you're making multiples of the same card design.

   
   

3. 3rd º: Book storage is a problem many people I know have. I've solved it by storing my books in many different countries and many different formats. I have books stashed away in an apartment in Zürich (Switzerland), boxed up in Edmonton (Canada), and here in London (England). The vast majority of my collection is paperbacks, but I also have a sizeable number of electronic books (especially science fiction) and Audible audiobooks. I've been a member of Audible for five years. I especially love unabridged audiobooks for my weekly commute to the University of Sussex. They're also good for sending me off to sleep. I set my iPod to deactivate after 30 minutes and start the current audiobook playing on very, very low volume. I usually only manage about fifteen minutes before I'm gone. It's highly effective.

4. 4th º: I left home when I was sixteen prior to finishing high school. I was just starting grade 12, my last year of high school, when I left home. It took me another four years to finish that last year of school by distance education, night classes, and summer courses. Memo to kids: Be cool, stay in school! I did graduate with honours, but my way was a lot harder. I then self-funded my way through university, graduating with honours from honours computing and with a $32,000 NSERC post-graduate award, which I didn't end up using. At one point in my undergraduate degree, I was taking courses from three different universities located in three different provinces of Canada in the same term. After graduating, I started trying to find a place to do a Ph.D. I'm still doing a Ph.D. now. I've pretty much well continuously been in school since I left home.

5. 5th º: In my spare time, such that it is, I run a random acts of kindness World of Warcraft (WoW) guild called The One. My primary character is named Elsheindra and she's a healer; I'm not much into hack and slash. A guild is a collection of people who play together. The One has been together almost four years now. It's relatively small, but we still have quite a few of our original members, which is quite impressive, I think.

   
   Elsheindra, night elf

   
   Mr. IBM in the Park

   While I'm confessing about World of Warcraft, I might as well admit that I met my current partner while running a multi-guild alliance together. We've been happily living together (that's in real life, not virtual life) for two years. We bought a house together in London earlier this year, my first house ever, after a lifetime of renting. WoW and Plurk friends will probably know that I'm disgustingly happy with Mr. IBM (AKA Basil in World of Warcraft).

   Running The One is where I first started experimenting with Wikis. Atlassian was kind enough to donate a free license of their commercial, Java-based Confluence Wiki software for the guild to use. Although it's been difficult to get people collaborating on content, it has been very interesting trying to adapt a Wiki to all kinds of purposes, like forums and private messaging. It's given me an appreciation of the power of tagging and dynamic content display, too. I love things that tie my interests of community building with Internet technologies together.

   
   

6. 6th º: Although I like people and I seem to be an extrovert, I don't actually like lots of people in the same place at the same time or very, very busy places. As a result, I tend to stay in my home a lot. I particularly dislike London train stations during the commuter rush, where the train stations become a seething mass of humanity. That's way too many people for my comfort. I even have trouble with the local Sainsbury's sometimes. I'm most comfortable in small groups of five or six people.

7. 7th º: I love soups. I adore soups. I figure you can never have too much soup (sort of like garlic, another favourite). If I'm cooking and it doesn't involve soup, I think people are shocked. Some of my favourites include Spicy Bread & Garlic Soup and Thai Hot 'n Sour Mushroom Soup. I've also posted recipes for Pistou Sauce, which goes good on French vegetable soup, and 10-Spice Powder. I am a person who has a crockpot and loves using it!

8. 8th º (bonus): I hate having my picture taken. I've always hated having my picture taken. I'm not sure of the reason for it. On the plus side, I don't take pictures of other people normally either. Win-win, as far as I'm concerned!

Now comes the fun part: subjecting other people to this same adventure. I tag:

1. Tony Hirst
2. Martin Weller
3. Howard Rheingold
4. Jim Hendler
5. AJ Cann
6. Sarah Horrigan
7. Monty Paul

Conceptual Change

David Jonassen visited the IDEAs lab on May 11th from the University of Missouri to present a talk on "Model-Building for Conceptual Change (Cognitive Tools in Action)". While this isn't (or so I thought) related to my own research or interests in any way, we were all encouraged to attend if possible and I'm always interested in talks about learning in general. Here, belatedly, is a synopsis of my understanding of his presentation.

The key underlying principle seemed to emphasize having people fail in their problem solving attempt at some issue because then conceptual change has a change to be engaged and then students will learn. This failure need not be catastrophic; in fact, it probably should not be, I would say, or the failure would foster a strong sense of discouragement, which is not going to get a student into the "learning zone." So, how do you put students into a non-threatening environment where they can safely experiment and fail? David Jonassen's idea was to encourage them to engage in model building which demonstrates their conceptual understanding of the problem/issue at hand. When learners build models,their understanding of the problem domain is deepened because you cannot model what you do not understand. Model building also allows you, as the instructor, to view the learner's level of conceptual change as their models evolve. It is therefore possible to assess their underlying understanding without resorting to formal assessment tests. Finally, David Jonassen suggested that model building also improves critical reasoning and thinking because model building forces the model builder to examine the process and problem solving methodology.

David Jonassen researches (among other things) the use of technology in educational settings to improve understanding. More information on his approaches to problem solving are available from on the following web site page: http://tiger.coe.missouri.edu/~jonassen/PB.htm.

I think this is some interesting research, but obviously not applicable to every learning situation. Physical processes, like volcanos, weather, chemical reactions, etc. are very appropriate for model building. Or maybe I just need to change my understanding of what constitutes a model? For example, I'm teaching students how to program in JavaScript. In a way, a program is sort of like a model and we give students programming projects where they model some kind of answer to a stated problem to demonstrate their understanding of the process. Most students do not implement the solution correctly intially, so they need to refine their understanding of the problem and its solution over several iterations. Failure is forcing them into a state of conceptual change and as they repair their assumptions and their "model" code, they are learning valuable lessons about what works and the process of both developing and fixing. I guess, in fact, I've been doing this all along; I just didn't have a name for it!