Saturday, August 26, 2006

How blogs are Changing the Way Teachers talk with their Students

One of the teaching challenges in computer-based laboratory is tracking student progress and giving assistance on an individual basis in the lab classroom. Designing specific systems to serve this purpose can be tedious and take great efforts. In addition, traditional web-based tools that help administer a course often store student works in a class-centric fashion. Once the class is closed, student materials may not be accessible to the students themselves any more.

Blogs have been used on campus for vastly diverse purposes. They are often seen as web publishing tools and social networking vehicles. Postings, tracebacks, and comments in the blog computing model usually happen without timelines in mind. Blogs interact with each other in a loosely coupled fashion as relations among blogs are usually nothing more than URL links or RSS subscriptions.

As a solution to the teaching challenge that the author has been wrestling with for years, blogs have been used in a novel fashion for three consecutive semesters at two hands-on computer lab classes, namely Java and Internet Applications, respectively. Our approach sees blogs from a more responsive point of view, and has them serve as catalysts for in-classroom student-instructor interactions.

First of all, the instructor creates a blog for the lab class at the outset. Every student of the class is required to create a blog for the lab when the semester begins. Instructor blogs are for posting lab materials in the curriculum and making announcements to the class. So they deliver lab sheets and hand-outs in electronic version. When finishing a lab, students are asked to submit their results at their own blogs and make a notice by placing a link at the instructor's blog right under the lab. Pursuing the links and checking out students' blogs, the instructor can grasp better immediate understanding of student progress such as how many have finished labs, how good the quality of the results is and what problems may have occurred. The blog is so responsive that instructors can make quick judgments on which students to walk by and initiate further interactions with. Through blogs, this can be done without students leaving their seats or even raising their hands, reducing interferences to others who may be still busy working on the lab. Reading the student blogs, the instructor has better chances to get better prepared before approaching them.

In this study, student feedback is collected and behavior patterns analyzed. Using blogs is found to simplify the tasks of reducing piracy. The tactics to prevent students from pirating in our study is by time stamping the lab works and making them public on the web as soon as possible. Blogs by design serve such a purpose. Anyone that pirates risks being caught by the instructor as well as virtually every other student in the class. We also have success with seeing students learning from peers through blogs. Traditionally, students turn in their works to instructors and have no easy way to learn how their peers achieve on the same assignments. By browsing the comments made by instructors on students’ blogs and the selected peer works, students have better chances to stimulate new ideas to be different from each other. The study shows students who took the lab courses are satisfied with turning in lab results through blog posting, getting instructor's walk-by interactions, piracy reduction, and learning from peers.

Keywords: Teaching with Technology, Blog.

How Blogs are Changing the Way Businesses Talk with Customers

Subtle

JONATHAN SCHWARTZ, Sun CTO's Blog

Less Subtle

王心凌部落格 Cyndi With U

Motorola

克蘭詩

亞培

Wednesday, August 16, 2006

國科會計畫: 結合無線定位技術之行動義工社會網路

社會網絡是由個別的人或專業群集間的關係連結而成,社會網絡也代表著這些連結的集合與彼此連結的強度。過去社會網絡研究通常在少許的參與者中進行,然而透過人手一機的手持裝置,加以位置資訊的應用,使得大範圍的社會網路研究可以實現。 應用此項技術於社會網絡上,求助者可以獲得及時且就近能夠提供幫助的人的位置資訊並請求協助。

結合資訊、電機、心理、社會福利政策、職能治療、管理等專業人才,本團隊致力於可應用在精神障礙者與成長遲緩兒之行動式關懷與非營利科技。近ㄧ年的努力,跨領域研究團隊於精障者就業輔導系統、認知障礙者導航、無線行動等技術已累積多項國際頂尖的研究成果,並於2007年獲得ACM SIGACESS 研究競賽獎項。本計劃網站請參閱計畫部落格

相關聯結
媒體報導
學術著作
獲獎榮譽
服務學習

Saturday, August 12, 2006

歡迎研究生使用 Applied Networking Lab

歡迎研究生使用 Lab 517, 目前空間仍多, 請多加利用.
另外最近剛剛加裝大噸位冷氣.
上網方式可分為有線與無線. 如使用有線, 目前 Lab 517 已經有
switching hub, 但須自行設定 IP.
如使用無線, 目前已經架設 EDIMAX 無線 AP, 速度為 54 Mbps,
因為內建 DHCP, 連線時無須設定電腦 IP, 即插即用.