exam review

COURSE REVIEW: Teacher and Technology


CONCEPTS / KEYWORDS

• Documentary. “Creative treatment of actuality”
• (TRIAD-MC)
• Communication theory: ABX=X’
• Synchronous / asynchronous communication
• Information/communication websites
• Web 2.0
• “social networking”
• “digital citizenship”: cyberporn; plagiarism, cyberbullying, etc
• ICT: Information and communication technologies
• Educational technology
• Blog
• Podcast
• Media. “extensions of man”. (senses). (popular definition: news media. ) Mcluhyan.
• Font: serif and sans serif. (body text vs presentation.
• Font size: 12 pt.
• Plow the broke the plains. Virgil Thompson.
• A35 only: Film music: mood, signature, titles, mickeymousing…
• A35 ony:Film composers: John Williams, Mancini, Eric Korngold, Bernard Herrmann (hitchock films, Gulliver)
• Importance: lies at the intersection of classical music and popular culture. Makes music approachable. Background.
• Powerpoint / keynote
• “Film Tactics” 1945 US navy Training film. Narrative.

SIGNIFICANT PEOPLE
List and identify key individuals whose names have been mentioned or discussed

• Marshall McLuhan
• Norman McLaren.
• Jimmy Wales
• (Leslie Halliwell)
• Al Gore
• Michael Moore
• John Grierson
• Ken Robinson
• (Garr Reynolds)
• Roman Kroiter
• (Eldon Rathburn)
• (Richard Dimbleby)

LABORATORY ACTIVITIES

• Blogger.com
• Google docs
• Nicenet.org
• Google notebook
• Google Scavenger Hunt

BIG IDEAS
Identify major themes developed or introduced in this course.
1. “Medium is the message”
2. Technology is ubiquitous.
3. Technology is more than computers.
4. Technology should be low cost or even no cost
5. Technology should have a low learning curve. You are not becoming programmers, or computer scientists or technicians.
6. Technology has a dark side. (cyber bullying, cyber porn, plagiarism.
7. Beware the technology hype.







SOME CLASSROOM TECHNOLOGIES IN SCHOOLS

• Computers: PC and Mac.
• Document Reader
• Overhead Projector
• Video Playback (VCR)
• DVD
• Digital cameras?
• PDAs?
• Cell Phones?
• Smartboards

Some Social Networking programs potentially available
∑ Blogger.com
∑ Nicenet
∑ E-Pearl
∑ Wikis
∑ Podcasts






VIDEO / FILM / DVD PREVIEWED
1. Opening Speech (1961) Norman McLaren. Canada
2. Begone Dull Care (1949). Norman McLaren. Canada
3. Paul Tomkowicz: Street Railway Switchman. (1950) NFB. Roman Kroiter
4. How to fold a shirt. Youtube.
5. Film Tactics (1945). US Navy
6. Ken Robinson. Creativity. TED
7. McLuhan’s Wake. (2003) Canada
8. Jimmy Wales. Wikipedia. TED
9. What is a documentary? National Film Board. Canada.
10. City of Gold. NFB. Canada.
11. Inconvenient Truth. (Excerpt) Al Gore. USA. 2006.
12. Bowling for Columbine. (Excerpt) Michael Moore. USA. 2005
13. Spaghetti Story (1957). “Panorama.” UK.







CLASSROOM RELEVANCE
Explain the classroom relevance of ideas introduced so far.

How to prepare for the exam (Thurs March 6)

Some hints to help you study...


The exam will ask you to write short notes on a series (perhaps ten) terms dealing with the course content. There will be choices. You don't need to know everything.

Be prepared to write at least two statements about each concept or name you select. For example, how many things can you say about Bowling for Columbine? That it was produced by Michael Moore. That it is documentary, in the contemporary style. It is characterized by the filmmaker appearing in person. That it is often "staged". That is uses humour to get its effect across. That it has moved a long way from the contemporary tradition. That is more than enough!

Be prepared to cite McLuhan's four laws and to demonstrate how they work. For example, what does a digital camera enhance? immediate photographic results. What might it make obsolete? Film. Also wait time to get pictures developed. What might it retrieve that we used to have? the picture album that we used to carry around, only now it is on FaceBook. Or Flickr. What does the digital camera reverse into? Spying.

For A35 only: Why is film music significant? Answer: It is a technology itself. It enhances the film story. It provides an important intersection between cinema and music. Cinema is popular culture. Music is something learned in school. Cinema makes music more approachable because of its popular appeal.

For all sections: Be prepared to write a short essay (expect to spend about 30 minutes) In the first paragraph re-state the question and explain how you are going to answer it. Summarize you response briefly in a final paragraph.

There may (or may not) be a short section of true/false questions.

Feb 21: The greatest teaching aid: UFOs.

The session began with a look at the trailer / titles to a 1951 hollywood film titled "The Day the earth Stood Still". This classic film sets the stage for the traditional view of UFOs and visitors from outer space. The music for this film was composed by noted film composer Bernard Herrmann, who introduced a new instrument, the theramin, to provide the eirie mood of the tense setting. (Note how easy it is to find relevant clips on YouTube.

Chris Rutkowski then took over and spent an hour exploring UFOs as a "teaching aid". He argued that teachers need to take advantage of topics with built in interest ... such as UFOs. He demonstrated how issues of scale can be demonstrated with such simple "teaching aids" as a poppy seed bagel, where the poppy seed and bagel can represent in scale the earth and the sun. Several demonstrations expanded this idea.

The demonstration also drove home the point that technology is more than computers. When we move towards new names such as ICT, something gets lost (a la McLuhan). In this case, simple "non projected materals" and "teaching aids" get thrown out as we attempt to move towards a high tech definition of educational technology.

Feb 19: The documentary tradition

Documentary is defined by Canadian John Grierson as "the creative treatment of actuality."

Feb 14: From Riel to Review

The class began with a consideration of the upcoming first-ever Louis Riel Day, on Monday Feb. 18. Working on the assumption that if we are going to have a holiday, that we should know what the holiday is celebrating, we took time out to briefly examine Louis Riel with a technology twist. We began with a speech by Riel from a 1979 CBC film titled Riel. The excerpt we heard came from a 1979 LP.

From there we used Wikipedia to find a basic overview of Riel, and then switched to Google Images to find a photograph of the Metis flag: a white infinity symbol on a blue field.

We continued our search for Riel info by moving to DAI, or PROQUEST, a source of digitized dissertations from Ann Arbor Michigan. Twenty-three Louis Riel studies were identified. It was noted that one could obtain the abstract and the first 25 pages free. An entire dissertation could be downloaded as a pdf for approximately $40.

While on the University databases, we stopped over briefly at the massive Oxford English Dictionary Online. We searched for Metis and found, among other things, a useful timeline of the word, indicating its first use back in 1815.

The second part of the class went back to the Wikipedia phenomenon. The TEDtalks presentation by Jimmy Wales explained the theory behind an open encyclopedia that can be edited by anyone.

We concluded the session by turning to a first step in reviewing the course content.
Several questions were asked and that review is on-going.

Outline for Tues. Feb 12: Documentary

One of the major components of educational technology is the genre of documentary. This class focuses on that important domain for at least three reasons:

1. It is a genre that has re-surfaced in recent years. However, like the third element of McLuhan's tetrad, the documentary genre has been retrieved from its past usage, but retrieved with a difference. That is, the contemporary documentary, represented by the films of Al Gore and Michael Moore, are significantly different from the historic approaches. This class will examine several documentaries in order to gain an understanding of what the documentary is all about.

2. The concept documentary has at least an implicit, if not explicit tie to education and instruction.

3. The documentary today is subject to much misunderstanding.

4. There is a significant Canadian documentary tradition and contribution.

This class spent some time exploring the issue of documentary as a film form particularly relevant to educational technology.

Some of the key points were:

1. What is a documentary? This NFB film explored documentary as the "creative treatment of actuality" from John Grierson.

2. Several documentaries were viewed, exploring the breadth of the concept as well as the development of the concept:
Example: City of Gold. NFB 1961. Pierre Berton. Music: Eldon Rathburn. Producer/director Roman Kroiter (Winnipeger who also created I-Max. as well as "direct cinema" style." Three basic components: visual, voice, music. Visual is the photography; Every frame is a work of art. Voice is either narrator or actors voices. Music melds it together.

The Spaghetti Story was a 1961 April Fools joke which used all the techniques of documentary to illustrate how the documentary conveys a feeling of truth and accuracy.

Contemporary documentaries were excerpted including :
Michael Moore. Bowling for Columbine. Style: in-your-face beligerent humour. One non-fiction film: Canadian Bacon with Alan Alda and John Candy.
Al Gore. An inconvenient truth.
TV reality shows demonstrate the latest post-documentary style.

Documentary modes may be grouped into four categories (Nichols 1991)
Expository (voice of authority) City of Gold, nature documentaries,etc.
Observational (fly on the wall) eg. Lonely Boy; most single camera student documentaries
Interactive (includes the presence of the documentarist) eg. Michael Moore
Reflexive (invents subject matter). Talks about itself. eg. Al Gore shows the making of Inconvenient Truth

A typology of information technology users: Where do you fit

The Pew Internet & American Life Project produces reports that explore the impact of the internet on families, communities, work and home, daily life, education, health care, and civic and political life."

This group has produced a typology of internet users. You can find out where you fit by taking their online test here

The study's pdf report is here.