Interview Q's for Class Documentary

So Jake, Maggie, and I are working together to make a documentary about the experience of the students in the Digital Civilizations class. We are going to focus most of the short film on interviews with people. So in this post I am going to put up a tentative list of questions to ask. We NEED feed back on this. Please add more questions that you think would be good to ask or comment on questions that you think would unnecessary, redundant, or in any other way just not good questions.

Questions to Ask Students:
What did you think after the first day of class?
Prior to attending the first day of class, what where your expectations?
How is this different than a normal history class?
What was the hardest thing about this class?
What has been the most useful thing you have learned?
How did you personally fufill the learning outcomes and Consume, Create, Connect?
What digital tools did you use doing the class?
What was your favorite historical content from the class?
How did you take control of your own learning?
How was keeping a blog?
       Had you done it before?
       What did you learn about blogging?
What did you find most valuable in this class?

Questions for the Professors:
What were your expectations at the onset of the course?
How did you come up with the idea?
What are your individual backgrounds?
What do you hope the students will take from this class?
What challenges did you see the students face?
What good stuff did you see the students accomplish?
What would you change if you were to do it again?
What did you learn?

These questions are meant to give an overview of the class and to help someone outside of the class see the benefits of this class. There can also be more questions that deal with the draw backs of the class but the documentary is not supposed to be a review of the class. It is meant to draw people into what we all experienced.

Thanks

Panoramic Pics

So I just wanted to put up a quick thing on a neat tool that I found the other day. Its a tool to make panoramic pictures from a series of digital shots.

I really enjoy hiking and I usually bring my camera along with me. The only thing that frustrates me about taking pictures of hikes is that I can never really capture the scenery around me. I think that it should be that way and that is one of the reasons I continue to hike because you can't get the full experience just from the pictures, but I have been looking for some way to make panoramic photos from some of the pictures that I have taken.

So I searched the web to find some type of free software to do that and this is what I found:
Panoramic Plus Starter Edition
It is free software provided by Serif. It is mainly free so that you will buy the better edition. This video is for the newest edition. The starter edition does not have this many features but it does have the same basic set up.


I shared in class how the starter edition works. It walks you through everything which is nice.
Here are some pictures that I stitched together:

The Abacus

So I am pretty sure that most of us have used or at least seen an abacus before. I had one when I was growing up and I mostly just played with it. I don't think that I even tried to make any type of calculations on it. I just used it as an imaginary prison for my little brothers or a futuristic weapon of my imagination or one of many more variations that I could come up with.

Recently the discussion we had about computing in my history class went way over my head. We were talking about Turing machines and whether problems are computable or not. I had been doing a little bit of reasearch before class and I even went to one of my friends who is a math major but none of that really seemed to help me get my mind around the concepts. Talking about it in class did help me understand the general concepts a little better but I decided that I needed to get a better foundation to be able to understand.

So that is when I thought back to the abacus. The abacus as we know it today actually originated in Asia around 1200 AD. There were many precursors to this device the first one around 2700 BC in Mesopotamia. That device was based off of a sexagesimal number system. It uses 60 as a base number as opposed to our decimal system which uses 10 as a base number. These devices aided in calculating large numbers. All though they do not compare to modern computers and calculators they helped dramatically in simple arithmetic operations.

So after I looked up some of the history of the abacus I decided that this my chance to learn how to actually use an abacus for it's intended purpose. I found this great site that explains fairly clearly how they work. It is very simple and can accomplish some very cool things. Also, check out this video


So I learned a little more about primitive computing. Maybe this is what my parents had wanted me to learn when I was a little kid. Well I guess better late than never and I think my childhood use of this intrument was probably a little more entertaining.

From Philosophy to Psychology

Psychology ids the study of the human mind and behavior and even though psychology as we know it today has not always existed the study of the mind and behavior can be traced back to many ancient civilizations and especially to the writings of the ancient Greeks. Their writings are typically thought of as philosophy but really modern day psychology is based off of philosophy. So what is the difference between the two? It is the use of empirical data. The shift form thinking about human behavior and the human mind to the actual use of empirical means to study it marks the creation of modern psychology as we know it today.

So who is the first historical person that comes to your mind when you think of psychology? I think that most would probably say Sigmund Freud; which is a perfectly fine answer. I think that most people bring him up because he had some crazy ideas that are way out in left field. I will come back to why I think he was important but first I would like to draw some attention to Wilhelm Wundt.

Wilhelm Wundt was the first person to set up a experimental laboratory in psychology. He was the man who applied the scientific method to psychology. He ran experiments that focused mainly on the conscious experiences of people and many of the modern psychological fields sprang from his research. He used introspection and asked people how certain stimuli made them feel. He recorded his observations and provided a model of testing for others to follow him.

This is a great timeline of some of the major events in psychology and this gives a great description of a few of the key players in its early development.

So now back to Sigmund Freud. What was his greatest contribution? He was the first to try to apply what had been learned in the field of psychology to help people with mental disorders. He might have been wrong about many things but he got us going.

Great Literature

I have recently been thinking about some of my favorite books and what really surprised me was that many of the books that came to mind are from the modernism era. I am not sure exactly why that is. I like the books because they are not full of fluffy words but rather each word is chosen carefully and has lots of meaning. I also like them because they are depressing. Not because I think of myself as a depressing person but I like it because it is more realistic. I also enjoying thinking about how glad I am that my life is not like the book I just read.

Here are some of those books:

The Sun Also Rises

Great example of cutting the flowery nothingness out of prose. His writing is direct and to the point so be careful you pay attention or you might miss something

Slaughter House Five

Probably one of the craziest books I have read. It is fun to read even if you can't understand what Kurt Vonnegut is trying to say. 

1984

Note* This book is super depressing. Great book but there is no hope at the end of it. There is not even a martyr. If you like happy endings this might not be the book for you.

Brave New World

Huxley also wrote The Island. I have only seen the movie version of that book. This book is great if you like science fiction but feel like you should read something with a little more substantial meaning.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Great book if you like psychology. Shows many of the horrendous things that were done in early psychiatric institutions.

Where the Red Fern Grows

I loved reading this book as a kid. I have read it multiple times and I cried every time.

To Kill a Mockingbird 

Harper Lee's only book. It is a masterpiece. Every American should read this book. I think that most do. The movie is not a good enough substitute. It is not completely true to the book. Notice how they make Miss Atkinson, a white neighbor, the kids' mother figure in the movie where as the in book Calpurnia, their African American cook, is their mother figure.

Great books. What is your favorite literature?

Let me step in your shoes.

The phrase to step inside someone else's shoes is commonly understood by most English speakers. It has many different variations but all generally mean to look at something from another person's perspective. In my experience this usually gets brought up in an argument when someone is trying to convince another person that they are right. But my question is how can you be right if it is totally based upon your perspective?

Look at this picture. Do you see a young lady or an old woman? I see a young lady. Does that mean if you see an old woman you are wrong? Maybe, it would probably depend on you perspective.

Bringing perspective into discussions seems to take the absolutes out of the solution. The entire thing becomes more subjective and right or wrong is based off of whether or not your personal perspective aligns with that viewpoint. This is called perspectivism.

This idea was proposed by Friedrich Nietzsche. He lived in second half of the 19th century and wrote and proposed ideas during the Modernism era. His works cover many topics but some of the most interesting ones are in the field of morality and moral thinking. In his book On the Genealogy of Morals he explores the evolution of morals and proposes ideas of where they came from. He makes the point that moral behavior evolved from certain social situation and that it is impossible to reach any absolute moral truth because a persons morals are based off of their own situation, or in other words their own perspective.

So what do you think? Is truth really just based off someones perspective?

Animated Music

Digital technology creates some pretty incredible possibilities. It allows us to link with one another but it also allows us to link ideas an concepts that were previously separate. One of my favorite is when visuals are linked with music. I do not mean when music is placed over the top of video; I am talking about when visuals are used to add depth to audio. When both are integrated together it is really amazing.

I really think this is just the beginning. There are great things out there that combine ideas and concepts that on the surface are unrelated but when put together make for amazing works of art.