Jim (and others),
I find it amusing that your announcement about student uses of social
networking technologies illustrated one of the flaws of using technology for
education at all...
Your message was sent Thursday, 12/3 at 11:47AM...it was received by my
email account on Saturday, 12/5, at 10:38AM, and viewed by me at 5:21PM on
the same day. That an electronic message would take two days (47 hours!) to
transit from the listserv machine to the email machine, when they are most
likely sitting next to each other in the subbasement of the library
illustrates one of the problems of using technology in education (or in any
application that values timeliness and reliability)... If your message had
been urgent, I would have failed to respond properly, and if I were one of
your students, would have been penalized for a technology failure (eg if a
test had been moved forward two days).
The phone company generally seems to have the best handle on reliable
technology, having set a standard (and generally hitting it) of 5 nines
(99.999% availability) but even they have trouble meeting this standard at
times (for example the NYTel fire of 1975 in the Second Avenue Exchange
Building). As access and control of technology becomes more distributed, it
becomes more fragile. (If I am able to set up a DNS server on my machine
but either through ignorance or malicious intent, misconfigure it, how much
damage can I do to the network infrastructure?)
How can we, as educators, deal with this? We face issues ranging from
judging whether a late assignment really WAS late because of some technology
failure (network outage, SAMBA outage, Office outage in the lab, etc), on up
to much more serious ones...so do we have to add expertise in technology
infrastructure issues to our expertise in subject matter in order to be
effective teachers today? And even if we acquire that expertise, how do we
get the information we need to apply it effectively, when most IT support
organizations do their best to hide any details of how things work behind an
impenetrable curtain? Locally, for instance, did any of you receive
notification or an explanation for the Banner outage at 3AM one morning last
week? I noticed it when I tried to log in to answer a student's question,
and couldn't get the spring course list through the web (the only way the
list is now accessible), but wasn't able to find out if it was a normal
outage or if there was a problem with Banner. This is just one (real-life,
recent) example...
don
From: Teaching Breakfast List [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf
Of Jim Greenberg
Sent: Thursday, December 03, 2009 11:47 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Invite to Social Media Final Presentations
TBers,
Today's discussion on student use of social networking technologies was
excellent, thanks to all that attended. Since there seems to be interest in
student's use and perception of social networking technologies, anyone from
the TB group who is interested is invited to the final presentations from my
Social Networking class. Groups from this class will be making
presentations that center around how social networking technologies have
impacted privacy, relationship building, dating, stalking, and cyber
bullying.
The presentations will be in Physical Science 228 at the following times
and dates:
Dec 10th 4 pm - 5:15 pm
Dec 15th 11 am - 1 pm
Space in limited in this room, so drop me an email if you would like to come
so I can be sure we don't out grow the room! Thanks and have a great end of
semester.
Mr. James B. Greenberg
Director Teaching, Learning and Technology Center
Milne Library
SUNY College at Oneonta
Oneonta, New York 13820
blog: The 32nd Square at http://32ndsquare.blogspot.com
wiki: The 32nd Square at http://32ndsquare.wikidot.com
email: [log in to unmask]
phone: 607-436-2701
fax: 607-436-3677
IM: oneontatltc
Twitter: greenbjb
"Ignorance is curable, stupidity lasts forever"
P Think before you print! Please consider the environment before printing
this email
|
