Change of Pace

Bare with me for a second as I set up the preface to my posting. This was a very big weekend in College Football. I am a huge University of Southern California (USC) football fan and enjoyed the weekend because USC was dominant on both sides of the ball. I have a good friend who is a big Ohio State University (OSU) fan and needless to say he was quite disappointed after the game.
Now on the substance of my posting; my OSU friend posted a reflection that he had about the game on Facebook. My own reflection and evaluation of his posting and the game got me to thinking about a concept much bigger in college football. First let me add the posting by my friend:

“All right, all right. I admit it. Yes, after last nights crushing defeat at the
hands of a superior USC I admit the Big Ten has become a "cupcake" conference, a
new MAC if you will. We just cannot compete with teams running a "21st century
offense" while we continue to run out "3 yards and a cloud of dust" predictable
style. Are all you SEC, and PAC 10 fans happy? Fact is I don't care. I am not a
fan of 21st century football, this find the fastest guy you can and send him
down the field style of play just does'nt excite me the way that real hard nose
football does. Sure, there are great, exciting, big plays every two seconds, but
it is still the same damn thing over and over. I prefer the discipline of hard
nose football. Fight the war in the trenches! Discipline your players, make them
wear suits, make them cut their hair, keep your mouth shut and just play
football. This new style of football just gets on my nerves. College football is
just becoming more and more like the NFL, a bunch of overpaid guys running their
mouth like Chad Johnson and Terrell Owens. I can't stand it. We have teams like
Miami, LSU, USC(Sorry Garey) full of showboats and loudmouths. So go ahead
Michigan, make the transition with Rodriguez, I'm sure in the next couple of
years you will be back to beating the Buckeyes year after year as long as Ohio
State stays "predictable." I'm still a Buckeye fan for life.”

After reading this I immediately got defensive. But I came to my senses and realized that this was just my friend’s point of view of not only the game but football in general.
As I stated above about my own reflection and evaluation of his posting I thought about what is the nature of his posting. Essentially his dislike for 21st century football and his approval of the old smash mouth football.
On the football side of it I ask what do you expect? In this day in age the importance of college football to the different college and universities and the coaches running these programs to keep their jobs, do you really think that old school football will get it done anymore? Obviously with OSU recent struggles in big games the results speak for themselves.
But to gain deeper meaning into his theme I would like to expound on that a bit. My friends thought process are much similar to that of our societal mindset. I look on what he said and relate it to our current educational situation. That is, teaching 21st century students with old school methods. If I stick with my OSU friend’s philosophy then I should be completely comfortable and content with teaching my students with the methods of yesterday. However, in this ever changing world I need to meet the demands of today. This would include use of technology in the schools. Should I neglect the use of technology in my classroom because I may be partial to change? What about this shift from Teacher-centered instruction to student-centered learning? Should I stick with Teacher-centered instruction with lecture and discussion or have my classroom set up for more interaction and collaborative work? In this case I believe change is for the better and I should welcome it to help my students prepare for the real world. If you go against the grain in which the world is moving then you will not progress. That is, if we educate with anti-technology or anti-collaboration techniques our students will not succeed in a world that is technology based.
I would like to close by saying the odds are not in favor of OSU to when the big one without including 21 century football techniques. Therefore the products of today’s educational system will not be prepared to tackle this technological age if we are not including aspects of the 21st century our educational strategies and techniques.
Many of my questions may be rhetorical but they do generate thoughts. In the words of pop singer Lyfe Jennings “only two things are constant in the world, change and change.”

Google Pages vs Google Sites

Change is good in most cases. What about the case of Google Pages versus Google Sites? I help teach a technology course at the University of Northern Iowa. I recently learned that Google Pages is no longer accepting new users and all users are being directed to Google Sites. I received my crash course today on Google Sites and have a week to get familiar with the program. This is what I observed and evaluated about the program so far. Keep in mind modifying the HTML is not an option.
Google Sites allows the user to use different forms of editing that was not available in Google Pages. For example, if I copied and pasted an already prepared table in to Google Pages I would be unable to do any modifications to the table. However in Google Sites a user is able to make modifications like adding and deleting rows and resizing the table.
Another change that I noticed was is in relation to deleting websites. I noticed that I have the opportunity to delete websites on Google Sites. Google Pages did not offer this change and once you created a website you were stuck with it. I originally began my Google Pages when a user was able to have 5 websites eventually it was changed to 3. The only negative I was able to learn about deleting a website is once you delete it you no longer have the ability to use that same site address again. Maybe it is something that take 24-48 hours to update and will have access to once again.
Google Sites does have some limitations. Google Pages allowed the user to "View Live". That is the user was able to view their page as if they were looking at it as a viewer would on the Internet.
On a personal level I enjoyed the use of the Site Manager page where the user was able to switch between the Grid view and List view. I liked the list view because I was able to view my last modifications, the name of the page, and the page address all on this view.
I started this posting by stating change is good in most cases. This is a case when I feel that Google Sites is a much-improved program to that of Google Pages.
On a side not I recently downloaded Google Chrome; check out my post on that within the next few days. Well here is hoping that I get to it anyway.

Emerging Tech Class - Week 2

This is my thoughts on class so far. I had an assignment to do in class on researching a new emerging technology. While doing some research I was able to locate this new phenomenon called Web 3.0. After joining the master program for Instructional Technology at the University of Northern Iowa I was just now getting used to the idea of Web 2.0. Talk about emerging technology!!!


Check out this Youtube video called Kevin Kelly - "Web 3.0.