Author Archives: John

Exercising Schema Theory: “Powers of Ten: A Film Dealing with the Relative Size of Things in the Universe and the Effect of Adding Another Zero”

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Assignment:

Consider how schema theory might be applied in the design of other instructional situations. For instance how might you apply schema theory to the teaching of using a library database or the benefits of a learning management system or cooking or minecraft or making cider?  Or how have you seen schema theory applied on a website, in a video, on a handout, in a group discussion…. 

I have chosen to answer this assignment by describing the use of schemata in the 1977 film by Charles and Ray Eames, Powers of Ten: A Film Dealing with the Relative Size of Things in the Universe and the Effect of Adding Another Zero.

I am going to rely on this part of our reading to inform the use of schemata in the design of the film –

Readers comprehend a text when they are able to bring to mind schemas that match the particular content and structure of the material. As they begin to read, readers search for a schema to account for the information in the text. On the basis of this schema, readers construct a partial, tentative model of the text’s meaning. This model provides a framework for continuing the search through the text. The model is progressively refined as the readers gather more information from the text. Reading comprehension thus involves the progressive refinement of a coherent model of the text’s meaning. According to schema theory, therefore, meaning does not reside in the text alone, but is a product of the interaction of reader and text. (Armbruster 1986)

for the purposes of this assignment, and with no permission whatsoever, I’m going to take the liberty of altering a portion of the text to suggest that when watching a good instructional film, especially one such as the Eames’s, that “meaning does not reside in the film alone, but is a product of the interaction of viewer and film,” by breaking down segments of the content in coherent schemes. Powers of Ten uses one schema (chunk) upon another to create an accessible and compelling piece of instructional design.

Ten to the Power of One

Movie still from Powers of Ten: A Film Dealing with the Relative Size of Things in the Universe and the Effect of Adding Another Zero

Powers of Ten: A Film Dealing with the Relative Size of Things in the Universe and the Effect of Adding Another Zero, uses narration, film effects, and a logarithmic scale based on the power of ten to explain the relative scale of the universe in both outer and inner space.

Watch the video and consider schema theory as you ponder the vastness of our universe within and without:

Armbruster, Bonnie B. “Schema Theory and the Design of Content-Area Textbooks.” Educational Psychologist (2009): p. 254.

Digital Divide Much More Than About Access

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The Atlantic Magazine has an interesting article about inequality in the virtual classroom and that while internet access has become more available to students, courseware is not keeping up to the promise of providing disadvantaged students equal access to challenging and relevant online education. According to the article, “studies have found that online-learning resources had trouble attracting low-income students—or, in the case of school-age children, their parents—and that those who did participate in online classes performed more poorly than their peers.”

Among the impediments for students with limited means to access MOOCs are:

  • less likely to use learning for recreation
  • less likely to know where to find quality courses
  • reduced support network from friends, institutions, family, and co-workers
  • parents education level
  • lack of digital skills

A public library or a public school can provide digital resources, but it’s expertise that’s missing. Perhaps as in the way that lawyers have organized Legal Aid, technologists from ITEEA or ISTE could help develop the network that is so terribly needed to bring those who can’t take full advantage of online courseware.

Search for an Open Source/Free HTML Editor

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atom

I’ve used DreamWeaver as my default HTML editor for over 15 years. I really don’t like it, but I know it, so I use it, but I’m on the search for something new. I found, Atom. Atom is open source, therefore free, from Github.

I think Atom may have too much horsepower for me – I want something more simple…

I could use an online editor, which seems workable, but maybe too light and it’s way ugly.

aptana

So I’ve decided to try AptanaStudio3. It seems a little more manageable to me, but still way complicated for my skill level. Does anyone else have an idea for something a little more simple?

 

FOL Self-Assessment

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Nagasaki Elementary School Student Cleaning the School Hallway

Nagasaki Elementary School Student Cleaning the School Hallway

Self-Assesment for Moodle Course
Japan: an Integrated Study

The topmost thought in my mind is that I am very proud of the work that I’ve done in creating my course. So much of it fell together the way I wanted it to: the look and feel of it; the micro/macro of the integrative process; the general idea of the course as a whole: and the amount of learning that I obtained while creating in the VLE Moodle.

Having said that, there is so much missing from it and so much more to build on if I wished. As I said in my presentation, I have no natural constituency for this course. It was built for a phantom audience beyond my classmates. I will export the course to my server and I hope to continue to build on it, but without outside accountability there is a strong realty that some other project will push this one aside.

With the positive notion that I will move the course forward, without question I would reiterate and strengthen my course alignment worksheet/rubric. I would use the document to inform my course by going back to the worksheet to rethink and add to the objectives, the activities, and the corresponding assessments. It was just in the past few weeks when I was able to tie in all of what I learned to bring the course up to a higher level and more again as I focussed on course alignment.

This section:

Screen Shot 2016-04-12 at 10.51.21 AM

is the most important to me and also the weakest. This is where I would begin to enhance the course. There are many more examples of the use of creative thinking asked for within the course activities, but I didn’t put in enough time or effort to draw those out and reinforce them.

I would also find ways to emphasize personal meaning and theme creation – finding ways to ask students to think of what they do well already and adding it to an ITI matrix.

Random thoughts:

  • Some of the modules were just outlined and need complete development.
  • I relied too heavily on discussion as assignment and would rethink how to mix up the activities more.
  • I really wish I had a place to use this.
  • I like the idea of incorporating food and using it as a practical function in assignment but would really have to rethink the approach and the way of sharing the creation. I would also emphasize the cross-cultural nature of food within themes.
  • It seems to me from my experience and from the other students that a good course belies the time that went into its creation. At first glance, just as I open it, even I have a difficult time recognizing the amount of work that went into it – this feeling was magnified even more so when I reduced the file for back-up and export and it weighed in at a measly 6.6 MBs.

Nagasaki Elementary School Student Writing the Word River

both images:
CC0

LED Sequence – Breadboard and 123D Circuit

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Today I built my new prototype on the breadboard and tested it. I had a few problems along the way but was able to debug them fairly easily. I would sometimes put the wrong leg of an LED in or have a resistor touch a leg of an LED and I missed a bit of the code expanding it to 10 pins.

The sequence is for the first LED to light up, a delay of 1/4 second (250), then the next until all ten are lit, and then the first goes off with the rest following. Changing the various delays is easy of course, but I haven’t experimented with that yet.

The prototype is up at the 123D site. There you can see a simulation and the code. One thing about the site that is difficult is the gestured zoom feature – it’s finicky, so if you find yourself stuck with no where to go press refresh on your browser. Using 123D is easy and intuitive. I could easily see using it to curate students’ circuits without the fuss and expense of the Arduino. Without empirical evidence, my guess is that you could function nicely in a class with 4-5 actual Arduinos in a class of 16-20 students using 123D.

 

After testing my sensor, and getting a clearer picture of how the four LEDs circuit works, I returned to the breadboard and rewired my circuit.

The diagram for the circuit came from user ‘shinibix2022‘ at Fritzing.org.

fritz

As did the code:

const int green = 13;
const int amber = 10;
const int blue = 12;
const int red = 11;

int buttonState = 0;

int brightness = 0;
int fadeAmount = 5;
void setup(){
Serial.begin(9600);
pinMode(green, OUTPUT);
pinMode(amber, OUTPUT);
pinMode(blue, OUTPUT);
pinMode(red, OUTPUT);
pinMode(6, INPUT);
pinMode(7, INPUT);
}

void loop(){

if (digitalRead(6) == HIGH && digitalRead(7) == LOW) {
// Green LED on:
digitalWrite(green, HIGH);
digitalWrite(amber, LOW);

}
else {
digitalWrite(green, LOW);
}

if (digitalRead(7) == HIGH && digitalRead(6)==LOW) {
// turn LED on:
digitalWrite(blue, HIGH);
digitalWrite(amber, LOW);
}
else {
digitalWrite(blue,LOW);
}

if (digitalRead(6) && digitalRead(7) == HIGH){
digitalWrite ( red, HIGH);
digitalWrite(amber && blue && green, LOW);
analogWrite(amber, LOW);

}
else {
digitalWrite(red,LOW);
}

if (digitalRead(6) && digitalRead(7) == LOW){
digitalWrite(red && blue && green && amber, LOW);

}
analogWrite(amber,brightness);
brightness = brightness + fadeAmount;

if (brightness == 0 || brightness == 255){
fadeAmount = -fadeAmount;
}

Serial.print(“Photo 1: “);
Serial.print(digitalRead(6), DEC); // Display Out 1 value
Serial.print(“; “);
Serial.print(“Photo 2: “);
Serial.println(digitalRead(7), DEC); // Display Out 2 value
delay(100);

}

My goal was to also save this to my collection at Autodesk 123D Circuits, but unfortunately the components list didn’t include a six pin 4-Direction tilt sensor.

Tilt Sensor

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2

As you can see in one of my previous posts, I need to have much further understanding of how the tilt sensor works so I can debug when things go beyond my knowledge.

I poked around to find something that simply describes the sensor I’m working with and found bare bones explanation from a teacher at the School of Creative Media in Hong Kong.

I followed the directions there and did succeed in getting my serial monitor to read the correct outputs – so I know the sensor is working.

Screen Shot 2016-04-02 at 10.13.42 AM

Serial.print(“Photo 1: “); Serial.print(digitalRead(6), DEC); // Display Out 1st value Serial.print(“; “); Serial.print(“Photo 2: “); Serial.println(digitalRead(7), DEC); // Display Out 2nd value

a

So my next step is to see if I can continue the circuit to get different LEDs to light up depending on the sensor’s state.