why we learn

My 18 month daughter loves my iPod Touch. Don’t believe me? Check out the audio…

Gracie_iPod.m4a

I don’t have any apps for her, though I believe there are some for children nearly as young as her. Typically I give it to her turned off, and she hasn’t been able to figure out how to “unlock” it. The UI is such that when she does have a chance to play with it unlocked she “gets it” to some degree, i.e., she understands that she needs to move her fingers across the screen to make things happen. Right now she’s playing the Disney Puzzle Slider game.

What does that clip say about the integration of technology into our culture?

I live in rural Ohio, in the heart of amish country. It’s a fairly conservative area, so I was surprised to see a barn painted with the Obama/Biden logo. Yesterday I went over to snap a picture of it, and over the hill trots a horse and buggy. Read what you may out of this juxtaposition.

And the title of the post…”Yes we can!” in Pennsylvania Dutch. (I think.) If you’d like a larger version of the image, click here

I’ve finished my spring coursework. The educational psychology/cognition, instruction, & technology combination was enjoyable. I did a lot more reading related to technology as it was required, but I was also able to read a lot about cognition, specifically models of memory, and the cognitive apprenticeship. I’m now in the middle of a four-week layoff before the summer months. It looks as though I’ll be taking a learning theories course, child and adolescent development, advanced qualitative research, and quantitative I.

I was planning on reading Luria’s The Working Brain: An Introduction to Neuropsychology, but I haven’t had the time. I spent a couple days this weekend messing around with Flash, as my brother wanted me to make a sortable list of team statistics from the MLS. You can check out my creation here. The application runs off a single XML file, and consists of three classes, a “season” class, a “team” class, and a “game” class. I’ve started to look at using Flex to do the same thing, as it offers the additional benefit of being able to represent data graphically fairly easily.

In any case, I plan on starting Luria’s book soon. I’m going to have too much to do once classes start again, and I feel like understanding the anatomy of the brain at some fundamental level would be advantageous as I continue my studies.