Crowdsourcing & Human Computation

If Google were a nonprofit organization motivated to serve the common good, I would not have a problem with them using games that takes advantage of individual vanity, pride or some other unfulfilled  psychological need to exploit labor out of the unsuspecting. There is no doubt that Google provides a public service to people across the globe, but one must keep in mind that Google primary goal is not to provide millions with email accounts, messaging services, etch but to make a profit. It is great that Google found a way to make what would ordinarily be boring and weary tasks fun and exciting but they are still tasks. There are those who labor at these tasks for over 20 unpaid hours per week. If one discovered a way to make flipping burgers fun and exciting and opened up a restaurant, would one be justified in pocketing all the profit simply because the workers enjoy flipping burgers? The federal and state labor departments would not think so. We are in a period of time where laws have not caught up with technology. Crowdsourcing might one day find its way into the lexicon of America Jurisprudence   

Although Google is stealing labor, technology is still being advanced. Exploiting these workers will make searching the web for information more efficient and effective. The field of artificial intelligence might even be advanced. Still, these achievements could still occur without the exploitation. Crowdsourcing can be good and allow mans’ to revel in altruistic pursues. Working for a nonprofit organization playing a similar game as ESP is not exploit if the profit of ones' labor was used to fund cancer, aids, etch research.  

Private Universe

Socrates knew centuries ago that teaching involved guiding learners though their misconceptions. By methodically exploring and dispelling misconceptions, Socrates was able to help learners’ modify their defective mental modes. With social media, a modern day Socrates’ influence would extend far beyond Athens.

It is far easier to hold onto concepts that one has already worked to encode into long term memory than to go to the process of modifying or encoding new mental modes into long term memory. If I were not a ship captain or planning a long trip, in the middle ages, it would have been far easier to just believe that the earth was flat than to try to grasp the concept of living on a sphere. Social media makes it difficult to hold onto misconception because ones beliefs are constantly being challenged. The same concepts are stated over and over by different persons, some in more complexity or simplicity than others. The concepts can be examined in text, video or audio and more often than not linked for further explanation.  We all live in our own private universe, but it is a universe that being invaded by social media.

   

Wesch - Thinking Differently, Doing Differently

Web 2.0 and Social Media-- Blog

Video 1

MEANING:

Text used to be linear, static and passive. Today digital text is multi-dimensional, dynamic, and active. Using digital text, learners can independently construct their own understanding of the world by linking to a variety of competing opinions.  Learners are more freely able to randomly access instruction. Learners can go back and forth selecting parts of the instruction that is relevant or needed and skip parts of the instruction already mastered.  Instruction is individualized. The individual has the freedom to choose what he needed to know to achieve his goal. Learners are no longer prisoners of instructors’ biases who consciously or subconsciously select text books that are in alliance with their own political and socioeconomic viewpoint.  Digital text, especially hypertext, affords learners a method to seek clarification of complex ideas by linking to several different sites where the ideas might be expressed better. In essence, learners are now in control of their own learning experience.

OPINION:

Digital text can link video, audio and graphic files that expand the depth of understanding but more important, digital text has the potential to link minds to minds. Ideas proffered have the potential of standing on their own merits without being prejudged due to the race, sex, sexual orientation, etch of the originators. Digital text might do in a few years what thousands of years of social evolution has failed to do-link humanity to humanity. A six grade kid in the southward of Newark might discover that he is not unlike a six grader in Beijing, China or Russia, for education can no longer be confined within the walls of a loud underfunded classroom nor does it ends with the ringing of a school bell. While there will always be a need for classrooms, gone are days when what comes out of instructors’ mouths is the gossip according to the local board of education. Instructors can no longer assume what they say will not be instantly goggled and challenged by learners. In the past, instructors were education commanders who took control and guided learners to the official version of the truth. In the future, instructors will serve as facilitators who set the stage and unleash learners to discover their own truths.

Video 2

Meaning

While we have the technology, it is not being used to its fullest potential. There is no need for students to be sitting in that classroom at a specific date and time scheduled months in advance by school administrators. With the current technology, students could optimize instruction by individually selecting a date and time in which they are in the right frame of mind to receive instruction. Instruction no longer has to be spoon fed to students in a series of sessions that does not allow them to pause and rewind at their whim. Instead of sitting in uncomfortable chairs in crowded classrooms, Students now have the option to lie in bed or chose any spot of their likings and receive instruction on their laptops or even cellular phone.

Opinion:

Virtual classrooms are also cheaper to maintain than traditional ones. Research has shown Virtual classrooms to be just as effective. Web 2.0 offers a mean that allow  talented instructors to reach a wider group of learners than possible in traditional classrooms. The interactivity and the flexibility of web 2.0 and future technology will eventually move the bulk of instruction out of classrooms and into homes and offices where learners will be readily access the information at optimal times. Children in low socioeconomic school districts will no longer be held captive in low performing neighborhood schools. Web 2.0 and future technology will make it possible for quality teachers to be in every classroom as well as in every living room. Technology is the hope for the future.   

link to COGNITIVE FLEXIBILITY THEORY

Position

Charter school teacher needed with web 2.0/Social Media experience

 

He or she must be able to teach in the classroom as well as online using the latest in instruction technology and pedagogical methodology.   He/ she must be able to use web 2.0/Social Media to create contextual and interactive instruction that is complies with local, state and federal guidelines.  He/she must be able to keep pace with new and developing changes in web 2.0/Social Media and appropriately incorporate these changes in the classroom and/or online.

 

Objectives

I was a Baltimore school teacher for several years. I taught in one of the poorest areas of the city. With a recent back injury, I am thinking about teaching again. I will always seek to teacher in a title one school so my objectives are as follow:

·         Learn how to use Web 2.0 and social media to develop instruction that is interactive and engaging.

·          Learn the history of Web 2.0 and social media and how they are evolving as instructional tools. 

·          Learn how Web 2.0 and social media might be used to take advantage of students’ different learning modalities.

·         Learn how Web 2.0 and social media as a motivational tool

 

Standing at the gravesite of one of this nation greatest educators, Booker T. Washington-- the founder of Tuskegee University.  

 

 

Web 2.0 and Social Media-- Blog

I am excited about this class because I enjoy producing videos and publishing them on the web, and I enjoyed watching the introduction videos posted by fellow students. I have a busy life and the slow pace of the class is fine. The world has changed so much in the last couple of decades; more people meet their mates in social media forums than in traditional ones. Social media contributed to the Arab spring, and continues to be used as a political tool around the world to give voices to those seeking their inalienable right to be free.

There is no denying the potential use of Web 2.0 and Social Media in developing effective instruction. In The Republic, Plato concludes that what people call truths are merely shadows projected on the wall by things passing in front of a fire behind them. They negotiate meanings to these shadows and call their negotiated meanings truths.  If knowledge is negotiated social constructs, the effective use Web 2.0 and Social Media has the potential issue in a new era in human understanding by expanding learning communities, providing more diverse input. So as this class progress, I look forward to learning the technology and how to effective use Web 2.0 and Social Media to facilitate instruction.