Where did it all begin?

Article posted August 23, 2005 at 10:27 PM GMT • Reads 1524

I thought this was a reasonable introductory question to kick off my 7th grade ICT classes but as soon as the question was posed I saw the writing on the wall and felt the quicksand begin to suck at my ankles.

I certainly don't see myself as someone who is on the far side of the generation gap but at that moment I had serious reverse tunnel vision. Lovely.

Of course it's to be expected, we work with young people afterall, but somehow I never feel they are THAT much younger than me (now who is fooling who!)

Naturally we had already discussed the curriculum outline for the year and so we all knew the context ie. the Internet and WWW. We were going to begin by deconstructing them - to look at where they came from and why - in order to become more media and politically literate. So off we travelled, back in time to the dawn of telecommunications. Well I did because I had several points of reference: the telegraph, the telephone, the Atlantic cable..... How silly of me to forget there was nothing before cable TV, cellphones, iPods and Messenger. Sigh.

Time, time, time

Article posted August 24, 2005 at 10:53 PM GMT • Reads 38

Last night I dreamt I had traveled back in time to the 1820s and was skulking around in Charles Babbage’s laboratory. I don’t know if this is a common trait amongst teachers – to dream about what they are doing in class – but I suspect I am not alone in my nocturnal travels. Anyway the point of this is, that despite having the Internet and WWW and multimedia reference sources why is it that we are continually thinking up novel ways to integrate ICT into the taught curriculum? The optimist rhetoricians hailed the Internet and WWW as revolutionary tools which would link classrooms with experts and provide a wealth of authentic learning opportunities for our students. Hmmmmm. They also said new technologies would help to reshape the face of education. Hmmmmm. But I think I digress. These are dialogues for another place and time, and perhaps for a different audience.

Back in class we have now a good grasp of the fact that there were three main phases in the history and development of the Internet and WWW. Broadly speaking there was the pre-history timeline: the events which created the appropriate climate for the emergence of the telecommunications industries. This was followed by the recent history of the Internet up to the point when the WWW was born. Everything after this date we are classifying as modernization. So far, so good. Now it’s just a case of untangling history and trying to put all of this in some sort of logical sequence. Why are most timelines horizontal and linear anyway?

Operator, Could You Connect Me Please

Article posted August 26, 2005 at 12:09 AM GMT • Reads 38

We were off to a cracking start this morning with more than one 7th grade group agreeing that the prehistory of the telecommunications industry began with the development of the telegraph. Other groups went as far back as signal towers but after reflection decided these were rather primitive and irrelevant in this context as there was no “tele” in these forms of communication. I couldn’t argue with this reasoning.

Overall most groups were rather nonplused about the underwater web - and the monumental efforts to put it into place - but when they began to consider this technology in context of today’s WWWeb, questions were asked and connections made. Discovering the extent of the early telecommunications network caused us to think about and consider the networks we have today. Although cables still exist under the Atlantic they are rapidly being superceded by satellite and wireless networks but we did discover that at the turn of the 21st century there were more than 500,000km of fiber optic cables in the world's oceans. Someone suggested it must look like a plate of spaghetti down there!

And what of the computer? Where did this come from and how and when? Like everything this is a debatable point according to personal perspective but so far we seem to have consensus on one point, they have changed a lot over time. Most groups are going with either Pascal or Babbage and their respective calculating machines – no one has followed the trail back as far as the Jacquard loom and its punch cards but I can live with this. Maybe when they find out how the first programmable computers worked this little trail will be followed back to 1801, if not I am quite happy to go with 1642, or 1822.

So I wonder if I’ll be sloshing around at the bottom of the Atlantic in my dreams tonight – better remember to find my goggles!

Space, The Final Frontier?

Article posted August 26, 2005 at 08:43 PM GMT • Reads 38

So the end of the week has rolled around once more and although I am looking forward to not anticipating the alarm and waking up 30 minutes beforehand, the chances are I probably shall. Then again considering the nature of my dreams recently, the pre-alarm jolt back into the present could be my saving grace. Who knows where I’d be if my subconscious left me to my own devices.

So where exactly are we in terms of our investigation? I would say we have swept through the pre-history phase and are now getting to grips with recent history. The Cold War has been mentioned, as well as Sputnik, these events paving the way for the establishment of ARPA. After this the dominoes began to fall into place and ARPANET was born. Then there was no slowing down.

Having the framework firmly in place I am confident we shall whiz through the modernization phase next week and comfortably cushion our timelines with interesting and pertinent snippets of information. In the meantime I shall be revisiting Ray Kurzweil’s “The Age of Spiritual Machines” this weekend in between orbiting the planet in one of the Sputnik satellites!

From ENIAC to Mac

Article posted August 31, 2005 at 06:15 PM GMT • Reads 38

Picking up the trail from where we left off last week, the 7th graders have romped through the ‘60s and 70s. They have a reasonably good grasp of the major events which culminated in the development of the internet and its subsequent evolution. We have not invested a lot of time sifting through the fine details as much of this is quite “geeky” and uninteresting, but we have found out that originally ARPANET was used by the military and academic institutions to communicate with each other. Afterall, this being the beginning of the Cold War, the development of this technology was partly to provide a communications network which would function even if some of the sites were destroyed by nuclear attack. Hmmmm. During this unraveling session we also found out about packet-switching theory and networks, where the @ sign came from and the names behind these innovations: Licklider, Kleinrock, Roberts, Tomlinson, Kahn and Cerf to name a few. These were the people responsible for helping to develop the early Internet and its protocols, not Bill Gates (thank you very much 7D!)

Although my 7th graders are beginning to understand how wildly different the Internet was way back in its infancy, it is still very difficult to visualize but then again isn’t everything from “the olden days”.

Alongside this line of inquiry you may remember we have also been tracking the history of the computer from Pascal and Babbage, to Eckert and Mauchly and beyond, as well as the development of the microchip – Intel and Zilog. Disappointingly, however, no one seems to have taken the initiative and followed these developments closely so I am predicting a few gaps in the information. Then again I must remember not everyone is as interested in this sort of rubbish as I am so I shouldn’t be too dismissive and judgmental, these students are only 13 after all!

Ho hum, back to the timeline.

Open House Looms

Article posted August 31, 2005 at 06:32 PM GMT • Reads 38

Tomorrow is Open House – yupi! – where the middle school parents come in to talk to us and find out about the taught curriculum for the coming year. Little do they know what I have in store for them, the parents that is. Being a very hands-on person who dislikes formal “speaker and audience” situations I shall be encouraging the five groups of parents to roll their sleeves up and either assume a position on the floor where they will be programing simple robots, or assume a position in front of a webcam where they will be making short stop-motion video clips. Now, however, I have to pull the activities together so without further procrastination I’d better get on with it; no more idling the hours away for me today. Bah.

Scale + Time = Yikes!

Article posted September 14, 2005 at 10:11 PM GMT • Reads 39

“Crivens” (as we would say in Bonnie Scotland, land of whisky and men in skirts!) the time since Open House has fairly flown and much water has trickled away to the sea. Wonder how all the cabling down there is bearing up………. But I digress, the aforementioned event was – as far as I am able to ascertain – quite a success. Although rather limited in terms of time there were some completed stop-motion clips and more than four groups managed to program the floor robots to draw a series of regular polygons.

That, however, was the last high point until yesterday.

Problems we have had a-plenty in our internet timeline project – partly due to my expectations and partly due to weak group cohesion and time management – but we prevailed and have all come out of the other end of the tunnel. Okay some of us were sporting soot-blackened faces but nothing serious.

Basically the hand-built timelines were all condemned to the bin. Ouch! Although some were better than others, only one had an obvious, logical and sequential scale and so according to the criteria outlined by each class in their respective rubrics, only this group managed to pass the project comfortably. It was one of those “sinking feeling” moments for all of us but there was a glimmer of light and we stumbled towards it.

Taking into account certain aspects of the group project (and stoically ignoring others) we managed to build ourselves an extension activity and now everyone is beetling away in Excel to construct individual timelines working with the researched information and now having a much more concrete idea about the importance of the scale.

Watch here for the latest tomorrow.

Hallelujah or bust.

Article posted September 15, 2005 at 10:34 PM GMT • Reads 648

I woke with Handel’s “Messiah” ringing in my ears, well the Hallelujah Chorus at least. Why, you may be wondering? Did I dream I was Handel last night, or that I was singing with some grand Baroque chior in a famous cathedral? No, it’s just that I am quietly confident the Excel timelines will be better pieces of work; more organised and complete with suitable and consistant scales than the cartulina ones.

Well they can’t go too wrong can they, afterall, having gridlines on the worksheets should be an advantage and will certainly help with the overall organisation and scale. Then again it all depends on motivation and time management so I’d better keep my expectations in check and not sing too loudly, I may find I am totally tone deaf!