Distributed Learning with Spiders

Interesting news article: http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/08/30/spider.web.ap/index.html

I am hoping the link doesn't break... but if it does...

The story is about a massive spider web (all of my close friends know how fascinated I am about spiders. They are truly the most amazing engineers on the planet! -- aside from their creepiness). I cut and pasted part of the story here and colored the lettering of the area in which I believe hints at distributed learning/cognition.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

WILLS POINT, Texas (AP) -- Entomologists are debating the origin and rarity of a sprawling spider web that blankets several trees, shrubs and the ground along a 200-yard stretch of trail in a North Texas park.

Lake Tawokoni State Park rangers Mike McCord, left, and Freddie Gowin check out a giant spider web at the park.

Officials at Lake Tawakoni State Park say the massive mosquito trap is a big attraction for some visitors, while others won't go anywhere near it.

"At first, it was so white it looked like fairyland," said Donna Garde, superintendent of the park about 45 miles east of Dallas. "Now it's filled with so many mosquitoes that it's turned a little brown. There are times you can literally hear the screech of millions of mosquitoes caught in those webs."

Spider experts say the web may have been constructed by social cobweb spiders, which work together, or could be the result of a mass dispersal in which the arachnids spin webs to spread out from one another.

Cool beans!

Wiki Wacky

I had my first wiki tragedy. As I was attempting to add the information I saved in my word doc. (I knew I didn't want to lose the information), I went to save it and all hell broke loose. Something happened to all of my writing and it deleted huge portions of the paper that I was not even working on.

I wrote about this in the discussion board on wiki and mentioned that I reverted the wiki back to the last person before me who has saved the information, Brent, and had to go back and re-type my information. I tried to cut and paste into the wiki but there were some font issues and wiki doesn't have traditional font to choose from (from what I know).

Regardless, what I was prepared to add and what I thought would only take me about 10 minutes ended up taking close to an hour because of the wiki going wacky.
(I plan to add this to EDC 641's forum posting too).

Looks like technology isn't flawless, even when I do everything I thought was safer.

Blackboard Forum Posting

WOW. Posting on the Blackboard is enlightening and... exhausting. It really is like having 100 conversations all at one time. You forget what other people were commenting to (you read it 3 days ago and they are just replying now) and can be lost easily without being perfect in expressing without ambiguity.

I didn't check BB for 1.5 days and I had about 75+ postings to read. I have a feeling that is how the rest of my year is going to go.

Don't get me wrong. The comments are thought provoking. I simply cannot comment on each one though.

Other than that, life's great. :) Still lovin' it!

First check. Yay!

For the first time, I feel like I have made a chip in the pavement (for lack of a better word).

I finished an assignment. My webgift is complete... including the writing. And I am entirely happy with the progress. :)

Although I enjoy this program so far, it's definitely weird not completing one assignment completely before moving on to the next. We work on everything all at once. While consuming and a bit overwhelming, I like the idea of keeping assignments open for a longer period of time and not limiting our minds to continue building on our concepts, ideas, etc.

Regardless, it did feel good today to complete something. Yay!

A little Overwhelmed...

I've got a lot to do.

I keep thinking to myself, it's Summer. You don't have papers to grade or lessons to plan for another month... but I'm a bit overwhelmed regardless. I am usually great at organizing my priorities but for some reason, I don't know what is more important, let alone what book I should be tackling next.

It's been a little bit of a whirlwind, but I really, really enjoy the readings and reflections so far. I like that the books aren't boring education novels/textbooks and rather books I can get into. I like even more that most of them don't directly target education rather more business practice.

Truth is, education is a business and it's about time everyone starts viewing it that way. Yeah, some may say that it sounds a bit callous and impersonal, but we really are SELLING the idea of content and learning to students.

Being a technology program, it's fitting that we actually take heed and join a generation of Web 2.0 "subscribers" and jump on the bandwagon before it passes us by (and man is it zooming).

Kudos to those who are seeing the need to change the way we view our education "business" and making changes to suit our generation of "customers."

Remember, we grew up in the ages of pong and atari... they have SO much more on us!


(if anyone cares, I still remember bits and pieces of the program code it took to boot up my Commodore 64 to get to the games!) .... comma-eight-comma-nine-return! (and wait forever because it took that long for the precious black and green-lettered screen to get the game going.

This is not my exact computer ... but it does bring back some sweet memories!