Besides working at the day job and noodling around on odd comics, I’ve got a big side project in the pipeline– my first graphic novel!

I’m working with an author from Houston named Kirk Blackard on a story tentatively titled Makin It. It deals with a young man who grows up on the streets, makes some tough choices, and lands in juvie. Along the way, he meets Christ and learns (with a little help from a mentor) how to break the cycle of violence in his life.

(Just coming off a year teaching high school English, this subject hits close to home– I’d be lying if my time with the kids didn’t inform how I’m depicting the protagonist and his world.)

We’ve got a piece on the book with an interview and some page previews coming up in the next issue of BLEEP Magazine, and I’ll post the link soon. Until then, I figured I’d show you a peak at the process of how we take things from script to page.

The Making of a Page:

We start with Kirk’s script. He writes in a unique two-column format. One side contains the protagonist’s narration:

We all stayed with my grandmother.
She seemed like my mother and my mother seemed like a sister.

I called my grandmother “Mama Ruth” and my mother by her name, “Mary.”

Mama Ruth was gone a lot. She worked very hard for long hours. Drove the metro and school busses. Sometimes she worked as a maid.

The other column contains action descriptions for the page, usually matched with a piece of narration listed in the first column. What we needed to depict on this page included

Perhaps picture of two of them (Grandma and Mother)

Buses, actually doing work

Working grandmother—tired look

After Kirk sends me the script, I break it down in really loose pencils and send it back to him for revisions and suggestions.

In this case, we were pretty much in sync (and usually are– it’s been a good match!), so I started blackening in panel borders and putting ink on figures. That way it looks clean and scans well.

(The above is actually an experiment in inking on my iPad. I thought the lines were too pixelated, however, so I ultimately stayed with traditional pen and ink.)

Finally, after all the ink is finished, I scan the page and type the captions and dialogue in Photoshop. For this book, we used WildAndCrazy, which is a font you can get at Comicraft for pretty cheap.

And that does it!

At this point, the first chapter is finished and polished, and we’re shopping it around to different publishers and agents. We feel pretty optimistic that we’ll be able to get it to market, so be on the lookout for updates!

 1. What is the one major point from this work that you would like to remember?

Technopoly brings a number of issues to the forefront, but the one overarching point that I will remember is that we need to be cautious and always aware of the technology that surrounds us. Postman tends to view technology in a not so favorable light, and I can only imagine what he would think of technology today. I believe his concerns are best illustrated in his chapters over medical technology and invisible technology. They both speak of the many technologies we rely on everyday and yet tend to think nothing about.

2. What are the educational implications of the work?

While Postman writes down some very interesting points, I have a feeling that he wouldn’t like technology to play a very big role in education. And it honestly is such a huge help to teachers, administration and school districts that it wouldn’t be feasible to eliminate technology from education. However, I think it is important to monitor the use of technology and not let it become something that overwhelms the classroom.

3. What are the personal implications of the work?

The book honestly made me sit back and look at all the ways technology is used in my life. I mean, let’s think about it- I am typing this up on a computer right now. So obviously technology plays a big role. But there are even smaller things that we don’t tend to think about. Like the alarm clock that woke me up this morning, or the microwave that warmed up my bagel, even the watch that I glance at periodically. All are little pieces of my day, and have a huge effect.

4. What questions does this work raise for you in your present situation?

The question that I have, is how will I apply this information in my classroom? We rely so heavily on technology, that I need to have some sort of plan in case the technology doesn’t work. How many times have we been in a classroom where the technology decided not to work, and the teacher couldn’t do their lesson because of this? I never want to be in a situation like that. I need to be able to operate with or without these pieces, so that nothing can disrupt my classroom.

5. If the author were available for dialogue what questions would you ask?

I would only have one question for Postman: What do you think of the technological developments that have come about since 1992?

For our big presentation, Ben and I chose to come up with something that we could actually take back to school and use. Especially since we are going to be working at the same awesome high school! I will be teaching history, and Ben English. But the problem was that we taught different age groups. So how can we come up with something that we can use together, that will work for both ages?

We decided that the best thing to do was build around what we learned in our own technology class, and make a presentation to use at school sharing these technologies with the students we would be teaching. And then encourage them to use these new ideas in our classrooms.

After this was decided, we had to pick which pieces of technology would be most useful to us that we could share with them. This is the list we came up with:

Google Docs

Prezi

Story Center

Poll Everywhere

By introducing the students to these at the beginning of the year, we will be opening doors for our classroom management and altering the way our classrooms are run for the entire year.

The presentation itself came together quite quickly. I got to work on the Prezi, building in the basics, while Ben created the awesome videos. Once we were done with that, Ben inserted the videos, we made a few last-minute fixes, and it was done! And if you don’t already know- Prezi is extremely easy to use.

Now we have a great presentation we can use with our students each year, to introduce them to interesting and useful technologies. And once we do that, we can begin implementing these technologies in our classrooms everyday!

The Presentation::

Group Project Experience

Over the past two weeks, my partner and I have been working diligently on a Prezipresentation that I will actually use in my first faculty meeting of the year.  The first thing we did was brainstorm different ideas on what type of projects that we could do that would benefit both of us in our personal situations.  Since my partner is a full-time graduate student she did not have specific lesson plans to develop for the upcoming year, so we decided to focus on Prezi since we will both benefit from having experience with this Open Source software.  After we decided that we wanted to use Prezi, the next thing we did was determine how to meet all three of the cognates of Baylor’s Technology Framework.  We decided that we would integrate all 3 cognates into my presentation that I will give my teachers at the initial faculty meeting of the year.

The next thing we did was create the presentation on Power Point to make sure that I had everything included in the presentation that I needed the teachers to know.  Once all of information was on the Power Point, it was time to try out the Prezi software.  Fortunately, Prezi.com has a great tutorial that helps users figure out how to use their tools.  It only took us about 30 minutes to become comfortable with Prezi. After all of information from the Power Point was transferred to the Prezi, it was time to create the video portion of the presentation.  We used I Movie to create a welcome video to be displayed as visitor enter into the font doors of the school.  The video consists of still frame pictures of our students and our new school and will play on the 55 inch digital display in the entryway.  We uploaded the video to YouTube and placed it in the Prezi.  The movie looks better in ITunes than it does on YouTube.

After the movie and all the data were embedded into the Prezi, we decided to spice up the presentation with random trivia questions, comic strips, and a youtube clip.  We also added a interactive component with the addition of the vote anywhere polls.  During my faculty meeting we will use our phones to vote for the new memebers of the campus council.  Finally, after everything was added to the Prezi, we added a path that would tell the presentation where to start, how far to zoom after each move, and what order to display the information.  In order to “publish” our Prezi, we embedded it into our blogs.

In conclusion the bullet points will point out just a few of the ways we covered the 3 different cognates of Baylor University’s Technology Framework.

• The welcome video covers the Communication Technology cognate because provides connectivity and shared meaning.  The communication portion of the technology spectrum extends beyond the physical connections provided by hardware to the abstract connections provided by community-adopted language, meaning, and culture.  We feel this video communicates facts, opinions, and ideas about the culture of China Spring Intermediate.
• The video also cover the Video Technology cognate because provides presence and affect.  The ability to simultaneously capture, modify, store, and transmit visual images is video technology‘s potent contribution to the technology spectrum.  I think this video will add to the visitor’s experience in a positive way when they enter the school.
• The Data (Computer) Technology is represented by the Prezi itself because it provides interactivity and control of a meeting.  The Prezi, just like the data technology, provides interactive (input/output) functionality to previously linear and/or passive processes. Interactivity dramatically alters knowledge construction and acquisition.  More speficially, the graphs that are embedded in the Prezi are more examples of data that draw from the Data (Computer) Technology cognate.

Eventhough the Prezi and the group project were very time consuming, we had a good time working together to get the job done.  We both feel very comfortable and plan to use iMovie and Prezi on a frequent basis moving forward.  The group project was a very positive experience for both of us, but to be honest we are so relieved that it is over.  The first link that will allow you to view our Prezi at http://prezi.com/pe5_dumcisic/copy-of-educational-technology/ & the second link will send you to You Tube and allow you to view our welcome video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4JSH8v1hhk

Brent & Elizabeth

Born Digital by John Palfrey

1. What is the one major point from this work that you would like to remember? Please identify a page reference in the text and write a brief statement about its significance.

• “The most important thing that schools can do is not to use technology in the curriculum more, but to use it more effectively.  We ought to experiment with ways in which technology ought to be part of the everyday curricula in schools, but only where it belongs. The technology should only be supplied in support of pedagogy,  not for its own sake.” (Pg. 251)
• Integration, not conglomeration.
• Overhauling education as a means to appeal to digital natives is not the answer. Teachers need to engage in the Web like it is a research topic. If they can cull the best information and available resources to augment their lessons, then the Web has been successfully integrated in the classroom, opening doors to digital natives and allowing the teacher to facilitate learning on the Web.  However, if the teacher simply uses a piece of technology because it is “new” or “cool”, the point of our pedagogical goals is completely lost–we have failed to meet our objectives in favor of appearing “with it”.  There are teachers who might do best, do their best teaching work, without implementing any technology in the classroom. The teacher has to understand their own approach to teaching before throwing bells and whistles at it. With an unstable foundation, a flashy looking house is still going to crumble when a storm hits. The methods of a teacher must stand the test of time, questioning, justification, and assessment. If technology does not fit these goals, it has no place in the curriculum.

2. What are the educational implications of the work? (How will this information effect teachers/classrooms/curriculum?)

• Interacting with digital natives using technology in the classroom is not always appropriate: developing lesson plans with technology cognates needs to be just as appropriate as age, content, and other standards for lessons
• Digital natives are on the Web all the time; teachers are not always aware of how to use the Web.  An easy way to engage students in learning tasks might be to have them search the Web for information pertaining to a subject.
• The ability to react publically to information obtained on the Web is a tool teachers should harness and use.  Students, prior to this point, only had a few venues they could use to react to stories or news they encountered. The Web has opened doors of communication that enable the student to give timely feedback which can be responded to almost immediately by others who have an opinion on the topic.
• The role of the teacher (which we are always encouraged to think of  as “facilitator”) truly fits the digital age. Teachers, news carriers, blogs, wikis, family&friends, etc. are all modes of information gathering for digital natives.  If teachers understand that they are in a position to help students appropriately harness the power of the Web to socialize and connect, the Web will become a powerful tool at the hands of the people, not the other way around.

3. What are the personal implications of the work? (How will this information effect my personal life/social networking/safety?)

• Born Digital opens the question of “diminishing attention spans” and the connection to the Web.  Given the amount of ADD/ADHD cases and medicated students in the classroom now, it is safe to postulate that “information overload” from the Web might be causing some students to lose their ability to process information on their terms rather than the Web’s.
• Given all the studies that have occurred about “the brain on the Web”, do we have adequate reason to be concerned about the way our future generations’ brains are being re-wired by the Web?
• Even though information gathering has become quick and  advanced through the onset of blogging and social networking sights, research has shown that people prefer old fashioned dialogue.  This fact tells us that we are not mindless drones controlled by the Web, instead we are the mind of the Web–using the information and processing skills we possess to pass on interesting topics for discussion through a new social medium.

4. What questions does this work raise for you in your present situation? (As a grad student pursuing job opportunities, how do I apply this knowledge to my future?)

• When I search for information on the Web, be it for a project or for personal use, how do I know that I am not shafting my ability to find the most appropriate and deepest research material I can by forgoing the traditional library?
• How can I learn more about technologies without feeling like I am drowning in the bytes of information? How can I apply what I learn when I am trying to develop learning styles and teaching styles in classrooms where technology is not integrated? Do we need to rethink how we teach teachers to teach in order for them to appropriately use technology in the classroom?

5. If the author were available for dialogue, what question(s) would you ask?

Q1: Are digital natives incredibly creative because of the access they have to new media, or are they creative in their own right?

Q2: Has the Web caused a gap between clear data and jumbled media/personal/political etc. opinions, or has it simply highlighted what always existed between people–varying opinions on topics and different personality preferences coming to bare?

Q3: Are we as teachers/digital immigrants/future parents/traditionalists worried about the Web because we feel like we are standing in the middle ground of a revolution where we battle between the “wrong and right” of internet usage?

Q4: How can schools partner with companies–software producers, computer manufacturers, etc–in order to make technology an option for students and schools who cannot otherwise afford it?

Q5: How could we develop professors in every classroom of higher education that teach by example–integrating technology into pedagogical learning so that teacher candidates can see how the Web impacts their own learning?

This week I was introduced to ‘Second Life’ a virtual world that anyone can take part in. While I am not an expert on the site, I can tell you a few of the basics.

In Second Life, you create your own person, or Avatar, decide where you want to live, build a house, travel, shop, meet new people, and tons of other things.  The capabilities of Second Life are amazing. Not only can you interact with others, the graphics are excellent, and it includes speaking capabilities.

Little did I know, Second Life has made an interesting impact on society. Many people take part in this virtual world, some you might not expect. Dell is in Second Life, but even schools can be found there. MIT has a virtual classroom that students have to attend. Pretty cool concept.

On top of all this, you can travel anywhere. Always wanted to go to Paris, London or Prague? Well take a trip there in Second Life. In addition to this, you can create your own business, sell your own merchandise and designs. And the kicker, you can actually make real world money doing it.

Yep. You heard right.

But, just like the real world, Second Life is not exempt from downfalls. The real world is dangerous, and so is Second Life. There are places you don’t want to go after dark, and since you can pick whatever avatar you want, things can get confusing when someone who is 14, chooses an avatar that is 24. You can imagine the problems with this.

Ultimately I think there are some issues within Second Life, from the inability to monitor the choice of avatars, to the possibility of pulling people away from real life, and causing social issues. Already there has been a real life murder because of events in Second Life. Something to be concerned about for sure.

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Reading for the Day: Why School Reform Is Impossible

The structure of school has become so deep-rooted that today, variations are heavily frowned upon in many cases. By having this set standard when it comes to education in general, and classrooms specifically we are tying ourselves to boring and worn out strategies. There are new things out there to try, and as educators we need to pick up some of these.

However, at the same time, education being so rooted in these beliefs means that it is impossible to reform the system. Yesterday I posted about virtual classrooms, of which I am heavily against. Short term, they are fine, but it is not something I believe we can completely swap to. Of course, I would be included in the group that Seymour Papert considers to be blind by assimilation. And I would have to agree.

“The structure of School is so deeply rooted that one reacts to deviations from it as one would to a grammatically deviant utterance: Both feel wrong on a level deeper than one’s ability to formulate reasons. This phenomenon is related to “assimilation blindness” insofar as it refers to a mechanism of mental closure to foreign ideas.”

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Technology Cognate: Communication Technology. Second Life is all about communication and sharing. The whole concept of a second world that people can live in and interact in revolves around communication. The virtual world is built around ways for people to communicate and interact with each other.

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Lesson Plan:  Holocaust Lesson Plan

There are many instances when you need to conference with other people who may or may not be local. For this, video conferencing is crucial. All you need is a webcam, and a video conferencing program. And today, almost all computers come standard with a webcam.

Tokbox and Dimdim are both free for you to use, tokbox with up to 20 people. These are great for working with others and collaborating from a distance.

Skype is another option for collaboration, but requires a download of the software.

These programs provide the capabilities to meet with people from anywhere. Maybe you had to travel out-of-town but have a lecture to give to your class. Well now you can give the lecture through video conferencing.

Maybe you run a Fortune 500 company and need to talk to investors half way across the world. well now you can talk to them instantly through a video conference.

These programs, allow for people to connect in ways never before imagined.

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Reading for the Day: Deschooling Society Ivan Illich

Chapter 7

While video conferencing is certainly an asset to companies and individuals, but can easily be taken too far when applied to education. Classrooms could be made obsolete with the expansion of video conferencing. And while video conferencing is excellent technology that can be applied in the school system, we must be careful that it does not completely take over.

Many believe that schools are cookie cutters, and that we don’t go to school to learn, but to model what the teachers repeat to us.

My question today is are schools cookie cutters? Do we simply require students to go to school and go through the motions along with everyone else? And how does video conferencing affect this?

I believe this can definitely be true. But what are the other options? Have everyone homeschooled? Have a web classroom? These are definitely an option, but at what risk to the students? By following these concepts, we could potentially be crippling children by removing them from a basic form of socialization.

We already have seen the effects of technology in the classroom. Students no longer know how to write a correctly formed paper using actual words. Instead, they use text message language, and colloquial language. This only hurts students.

Now, what if we were to expand this concept of technology in the classroom, to creating a web classroom. By removing students from schools, we are removing them from socialization. If they don’t spend time in school socializing with other students and teachers, this will hinder their ability to later socialize with other people. Yes they may be able to talk back and forth, but there is significantly more that occurs in classrooms than discussion and lecturing.

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Technology Cognate: Video Technology. With Video Conferencing, you are capable of having a presence and an effect on those watching you. This form of technology allows you to be present in the room with those you are talking to, connected, and interacting. Because of this, video conferencing is arguably the most extensive form of video technology, as well as the most effective.

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Lesson Plan: Glory of Greece Lesson Plan

In school, students have a love/hate relationship with presentations. They have the chance to show off all that they know about a subject with maximum creativity and minimal constraint (insomuch as a rubric prescribes). However, the time, effort, blood, sweat, gore, tears, and STRESS (this is what some presentations make me feel like) it takes to produce a presentation (not to mention if you are pulling the weight of the entire group) squelches the potential excitement. Poor teachers. All they want is to provide interesting new methods to broadcast information among students!

In a world where creativity is demanded, but traditionally discouraged due to restraints and rules, presentations have become the pain and promise of pedagogy. When I am presented to, I expect to see understanding, creativity, and interaction. A true presentation involves the audience; do not ask a group of people to be mindless, staring drones for thirty minutes. Instead, provide a platform for interesting discussion and expansion upon a topic. Everyone is interested in something; let your passions pour into your presentations! Find something extraordinary in the mundane, something interesting in the dull.

*Steps unceremoniously off of personal soapbox* Ahem… Now, to business. Web 2.0 has smashed apart the little black box of the Power Point presentation world. Farewell linear submission! Meet the new and improved asymmetrical theater! Sites offering free-trial subscriptions to software or discounts to schools for use of their product abound, and the product offerings are well worth any minute expense, but the plethora of free software is infinitely growing. We set out now to sample a few of the interesting presentation sites on the Web.

Slide Rocket

I dub thee, Power Point’s evil twin! Slide Rocket promotes itself as a “marketing campaign” for business communications, of which I am certain it is very effective. However, using it as a tool for school projects is also a prospect, especially considering the fact that you can share presentations online, or move them offline like Power Point. In effect, your presentation is in multiple secure locations, so there is no excuse like “the dog ate my jump drive”. Another kick to Slide Rocket’s promotion, the site analyzes the effectiveness of your presentation after it is complete. It is an organization tool, collaboration front, and data analyzer all in one! Geez, I sound like a salesperson…. Here is a sample of Slide Rocket’s sleek looking presentations.

Prezi

The rollercoaster of presentation formats, Prezi takes the audience on a ride through information. Think of this platform as the brain’s own thrill ride of neural proportions. Just like your brain flows through the incoming sensory information of your surroundings, Prezi moves information across divides, through visual wonders, and over barriers. Introductory videos guide you through the process of developing a Prezi (at first, the controls will drive you insane–but much like a video game console, you become used to the switches and knobs that are necessary to direct your creative juices). After creating a place to store your Prezi online, you can access it from anywhere a computer is available! My favorite Prezi (because I am now officially a Math geek) can be found HERE.

Wordle

The mysterious mist approaches…and suddenly, you are enveloped in words! Tag clouds are a favorite pasttime of many preteen and teenage girls at the moment (especially if vampire love stories are involved). Regardless of their pop culture use, Wordle clouds and tag clouds in general are useful tools for presenting important main ideas during presentations. Many teachers hate to see students develop Power Points and then stand with their backs to the class while they fast forward read through every slide. The End! Wordle removes the details and only provides the vocabulary prompts so students are coaxed into actually learning the informative details on their own. Note the patriotic colors and matching theme of vocabulary in this Wordle:

5 Frame Visual Storytelling

A personal favorite when I was in High School (I still have my Senior year 5 Frame 35mm black&white montage), 5 Frame Visual Storytelling featured on Flickr gives the author the rights to the information and the creative license to define the images. I admire the person who takes on this challenge; one of the most complicated and vulnerable presentations a student can make is an interpretation through a photographic medium of how they think. Imagine coming before your peers and describing how your mind works through the representation of five basic pictures. Frightening or thrilling? This story is just cute and I was hungry for strawberries when I wrote this anyway:

Om Nom Nom Nom…

Presentations can take the place of tests. When used correctly and with adequate guidelines (that do not crush creative ingenuity), a personal or group explanation of material can lead to better understanding and peer respect. With all of the Web 2.0 widgets and applications floating around in the stratosphere of our digital network, teachers should scrapbook and bookmark appropriate presentation sites for classroom use. This not only opens the door for personal student creativity, it allows for peer collaboration that garners a level of respect many teachers cannot teach; students must earn this respect by thinking outside the box. Presentations do not have to be limited to recitation; they can in fact become the stepping stones to exploration.

Here is my personal offering of a TEASe presentation developed for the attached lesson plan on a Rainforest Unit.

And the TEASe’s accompanying TEASe Lesson Plan.

Okay, I should begin by admitting my love for Dell, and hate for Mac. Blasphemy, I know. But it is true.

I have always had a Dell, and I love it. I can use a Mac when necessary, but ultimately I prefer the systems and software that Dell provides significantly more. Now saying all this, I used iMovie in class, and while I certainly don’t understand all of it, I must admit that it was nice.

The first step when using iMovie, is to have footage. To get this, we took Flips, and video taped different things around school.

Once this was done, we went back in and loaded the footage onto the Mac. From there, so many things can be done. You can splice the videos, add music, cut out sound, add pictures, change the speed, change the effects and even alter the focus of the shot.

So what began as a very simple home video, can easily be turned into a video that looks pretty professional.

Now, using this in schools, could be a little tricky. Who knows if you will have the technology. But the key is to check this stuff out. Go and talk to your media specialist, they might have alternatives, or while they may not have  a class set of Flips, they may have five that you could work with in shifts.

Another option that I am interested in, is using Flips for times when teachers have to have subs. Wouldn’t it be great to have your lecture taped!? So the sub could play the tape, and then answer any questions that came up. And if they can’t be answered, then the teacher can handle them when she gets back.

But wouldn’t this work so much better than worksheets while there is a sub? Couldn’t the students learn more this way?

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Reading for the Day: Time Frames

New formats in schools are always important. There are always going to be a variety of students in your class and as a teacher it is important for us to reach them through any means conceivable. To do this, we may have to look in surprising places.

As in ‘Time Frames’ the best way to reach a student may be through comics. Most students don’t believe that they learn anything from a comic book, but in fact, they do. By using sources like comics, teachers are opening new doors with students, and discovering new ways to reach, and relate to them.

Like the comic says “it all depends on your frame of mind.”

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Technology Cognate Framework: Video Technology. Video technology is about having a certain presence and effect. There is no better way to achieve this than through video. By taping, and then editing like I mentioned above, you can achieve significantly more when it comes to presentations. The presence is there by simply having the video, but you also gain the effect by editing and altering the footage.

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Lesson Plan: Using iMovie

While Prezi is amazing, sometimes all you need is a simple PowerPoint presentation sans all the bells and whistles. But there are several things you have to keep in mind when using PowerPoint.

First, keep it simple. A general rule to keep in mine is that less is always more. So, fewer slides, and even fewer notes on those slides. The goal of a presentation is to guide the listeners. If they look at the presentation, they shouldn’t be able to present based on what is on the slides.

And in the classroom, you want students to be listening and paying attention. So don’t give them everything in the slides. Force them to pay attention to what you are saying in order to get the information for the test.

While content is the most important aspect of PowerPoint presentations, ascetics are also important. Always keep in mine the room and surroundings you will be presenting in. If it is a large room, and the lights are going to be off, choose a dark background with light font. It will strain people’s eyes less.

Another point to remember, is that while PowerPoint has all sorts of fun transitions, you really need to keep it to one style for the whole presentation. Otherwise, the presentation could become overwhelming.

So, to recap- Keep it simple, and remember where you are presenting. If you keep these two points in mind, your presentation will be perfection!

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Open Source Note:

In the last post I talked about Open Sources, and I wanted to take a moment to mention a few for you to check out.

show.zoho.com is great for multiple people working on a presentation. In addition it can export in numerous formats.

Sliderocket.com While this is only a 30 day trial, you might decide you like it enough to purchase! You can embed twitter feeds, video conference, as well as have multiple people working on presentations.

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Reading of the Day: The Demo By Douglas Engelbart

In 1962, Engelbart and 17 other researchers began working on NLS, an online system. Six years later, Engelbart was conducting a live demonstration of the online system. “This was the public debut of the computer mouse. But the mouse was only one of many innovations demonstrated that day, including hypertext, object addressing and dynamic file linking, as well as shared-screen collaboration  involving two persons at different sites communicating over a network with audio and video interface. ”

This demonstration lasted 90 minutes, and was a live demonstration to the public. In the article linked above, the segment is broken down into 35 clips.

The concept of this demonstration is certainly an interesting one. During the 60s technology such as this was new and generally unheard of to the masses. By Engelbart presenting this demonstration, it opened doors for people to embrace technology in the future. Not to mention the audio and video interfacing that was done.

Not only was the concept itself inventive, but the capabilities presented were outstanding. Just the introduction of the ‘mouse’ was revolutionary in the computer world.

The videos help us see how influential Engelbart was to technology, and gives a great reference point for where technology was, and where it is today.

We did not have the opportunity to discuss this reading in our class so we instead discuss the videos through a wiki space. Generally everyone thought the concept was extremely interesting. One person commented about digital storytelling, and wondered what Engelbart would have thought about it. I think this is certainly an interesting question, and would like to know the answer as well. Others noted hope much easier Engelbart made it for masses of people to understand and comprehend the technological advances that were being made. And I wonder if we would have mad it this far had he not done this.

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Technology Cognate Framework: These concepts fall into the communication category on the technology cognate. The Powerpoint, and the open source are all about connecting people. And communicating information.

The videos and the Engelbart essay are a part of the video cognate, in their presentation of materials.

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Lesson Plan: Blog Post 7.19