It’s Monday, February 28th, 2011 and welcome to episode 117 of TechTalk4Teachers, I’m Tom Grissom. A short month this month but an eventful one for the human race none the less, more on that later in the show.
Right Click Here to Download MP3 (28 minutes 45 seconds)
This month I had the honor of speaking at the opening session of the Students Involved with Technology Conference held here at Eastern Illinois University. This conference is held yearly in Illinois and also has concurrent conferences in other areas of the State for K12 students. In the past this conference was held in the Bloomington/Normal area and this was the first time to my knowledge that the event was held at EIU. The conference is setup by students for students and gives K12 students the opportunity to share their knowledge and skills with one another. We had several volunteer student presenters present on various technology topics as well as some adult experts presenting on topics such as making music on your computer and a session called computer guts, where students could learn more about what makes a computer work. Our School of Continuing Education organized this years event and did a great job.
We had an excellent turn out of over one-hundred and twenty K12 students participating in this years event. With a wide range of student ages ranging from 3rd graders to high school students I presented a talk called “We Live in Amazing Times” to share some of the history of computing that has occurred in my lifetime and how those trends will continue for the student participants as they grow older and experience their own amazing times ahead as technology evolves and improves in the future. Here is the recorded audio from the opening session.
http://www.sitconference.org/ SIT
Session Transcript coming soon….
We Live in AMAZING Times PowerPoint Presentation (PDF)
http://eiu.edu/techtalk/We Live in AMAZING Times_02122011PDF.pdf
We Live in Amazing Times PowerPoint (PDF) Alright, that was the talk I gave at the SIT Conference held on Saturday February 12, 2011 here on the campus of Eastern Illinois University. It was interesting talking to some of the students throughout the day about their understanding of technology and where they think it is going in the future. First I had to come to grips with the fact that we now have elementary students in school that were born in the 21st Century and will never have any first-hand experience at all with 20th Century technology and culture.
As we teach we must reach into the future world our students will live in but also provide a solid background of fundamental concepts and enduring truths. The students did get a kick out of the 30 pound laptop that I demonstrated but could not believe that such a device ever existed or that people would actually use one. I had a conversation with one of the students who observed that the Kindle ebook reader I demonstrated used less energy to turn to the page due to the e-ink technology that the Kindle uses. We need to encourage such thinking and curiosity as we need a lot more green energy development in the future to make devices as power efficient as possible.
Several students were very interested in how to make computer music and the conference had a session just for that. Many of the students were interested in the Microsoft Kinect and expressed interest in finding ways to use it including computer gaming and new uses not yet invented. There were sessions on Robotics, Facebook Privacy, Technology and TV News, Social Networking Safety, Flash Animation and many more. I remember the days of elementary and middle school where I would take things apart just to see how they worked. The challenge was always putting it back together so it would work again. This de-construction and re-construction is necessary to learn more about the way things work. Our students today need the opportunities like this to learn in a safe and constructive environment where the hands-on / minds-on experience of making things is encouraged.
Whether it be computer projects like creating computer generated music, drawing cartoons using Flash animation, or producing their own TV shows project-based learning activities are fun and the learning lasts over time. These types of projects and opportunities are where children make quantum leaps in their knowledge and understanding. It was a fun day and everyone learned something new.
IBM Watson
As a follow-up to the amazing times talk I gave at the conference I want to mention IBM Watson this month. The Watson Jeopardy show aired the week after I gave my presentation to the students but I hope that teachers across the nation took some time this month to discuss this amazing mile-marker in the evolution of technology. The IBM computer called Watson, named after IBM’s first President Thomas Watson, matched the abilities of two of the smartest humans in the world in a game of Jeopardy. The computer was up against the two best Jeopardy players in the world. Ken Jennings the 74 time undefeated champion of Jeopardy and Brad Rutter. Watson won the game with a total of $77,147 to Ken Jennings $24,000 and Brad Rutters $21,600 over a two day period.
It really was quite an impressive feat. I have provided a link in the show notes to a PBS NewsHour article complete with a series of videos about the behind the scenes story of IBM Watson and how scientist are working on the next generation of artificial intelligence.
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/2011/02/watson-wins-ibms-machine-rages-against-jeopardy-champs.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watson_(artificial_intelligence_software)
Smart Phones Outpace Sales of Computers
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/smartphones-tablets-sell-personal-computers-2011-deloitte-trends-20110118-054249-075.html
Alright, that was the talk I gave at the SIT Conference held on Saturday February 12, 2011 here on the campus of Eastern Illinois University. It was interesting talking to some of the students throughout the day about their understanding of technology and where they think it is going in the future.
First I had to come to grips with the fact that we now have elementary students in school that were born in the 21st Century and will never have any first-hand experience at all with 20th Century technology and culture.
As we teach we must reach into the future world our students will live in but also provide a solid background of fundamental concepts and enduring truths. The students did get a kick out of the 30 pound laptop that I demonstrated but could not believe that such a device ever existed or that people would actually use one.
I had a conversation with one of the students who observed that the Kindle ebook reader I demonstrated used less energy to turn to the page due to the e-ink technology that the Kindle uses. We need to encourage such thinking and curiosity as we need a lot more green energy development in the future to make devices as power efficient as possible.
Several students were very interested in how to make computer music and the conference had a session just for that. Many of the students were interested in the Microsoft Kinect and expressed interest in finding ways to use it including computer gaming and new uses not yet invented.
There were sessions on Robotics, Facebook Privacy, Technology and TV News, Social Networking Safety, Flash Animation and many more. I remember the days of elementary and middle school where I would take things apart just to see how they worked. The challenge was always putting it back together so it would work again. This de-construction and re-construction is necessary to learn more about the way things work.
Our students today need the opportunities like this to learn in a safe and constructive environment where the hands-on / minds-on experience of making things is encouraged. Whether it be computer projects like creating computer generated music, drawing cartoons using Flash animation, or producing their own TV shows project-based learning activities are fun and the learning lasts over time. These types of projects and opportunities are where children make quantum leaps in their knowledge and understanding. It was a fun day and everyone learned something new.
IBM Watson
As a follow-up to the amazing times talk I gave at the conference I want to mention IBM Watson this month. The Watson Jeopardy show aired the week after I gave my presentation to the students but I hope that teachers across the nation took some time this month to discuss this amazing mile-marker in the evolution of technology. The IBM computer called Watson, named after IBM’s first President Thomas Watson, matched the abilities of two of the smartest humans in the world in a game of Jeopardy. The computer was up against the two best Jeopardy players in the world. Ken Jennings the 74 time undefeated champion of Jeopardy and Brad Rutter. Watson won the game with a total of $77,147 to Ken Jennings $24,000 and Brad Rutters $21,600 over a two day period. It really was quite an impressive feat.
I have provided a link in the show notes to a PBS NewsHour article complete with a series of videos about the behind the scenes story of IBM Watson and how scientist are working on the next generation of artificial intelligence.
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/2011/02/watson-wins-ibms-machine-rages-against-jeopardy-champs.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watson_(artificial_intelligence_software)
Here is a question for you, after reviewing the videos do you call Watson a he or an it?
Technology Pick of the Week
My Technology Pick of the Week this week is a new smart phone app that I mentioned in the SIT keynote presentation called Google Translate. I really do believe that the Smart Phones that are coming on to the market today mark a similar point in history as the Altair and first Personal Computers in the 1970’s did for my generation. Smart phones are evolving very rapidly and are now being paired with cloud computing services that make the mobile devices as powerful as the mainframe computers not so long ago. In fact, they are increasingly being connected to mainframe type computers by high-speed wireless connections to take advantage of massive amounts of computing power that was previously impossible for the average person to access. All of this computing power is now in a cell phone sized device that many of our students carry with them all the time.
I have provided links in the show notes to the Google Blog that discusses Google Translate program as well as a YouTube video of a Google Translate demonstration. In the YouTube Video you will see an example of where a person that speaks English wants to buy a pair of shoes in Germany. The English speaker says that they want to buy a pair of shoes and then the Google Translate app that is now available on Android translates the English sentence into German. That’s pretty cool but in the next part of the video the German store keeper speaks into the Android phone in German and it is translated from German into English so that the English speaker can understand his answer.
Conversation Mode for Google Translate on Android (Blog)
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/01/new-look-for-google-translate-for.html
You Tube Video of Conversation Mode in Google Translate
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtMfdNeGXgM&feature=player_embedded#t=26m24s
Translate supports 53 languages, from Afrikaans to Yiddish, and voice input is currently available for 15 languages with more sure to come in the future.
Yes, translate does make mistakes from time to time but this really is absolutely amazing technology. We are getting closer to the Universal Translater that was used on so many episodes of Star Trek I watched while growing up, science-fiction is becoming a reality.
That wraps it up for episode 117 of TechTalk4Teachers. Show notes for this episode and archived episodes are available on the web at the EIU Instructional Technology Center website at eiu.edu/itc To leave a comment or suggestion, please send an email to techtalk@eiu.edu or leave a comment on the Tech Talk for Teachers blog. Until next time, this is Tom Grissom, keep on learning…
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