Week 7

Ridden, P. (CC) 2014 Retrieved from: http://bit.ly/1ilCghq

This week I was doing my duties, looking through Feedly when I saw an article, “Custom prosthetic armturns student into a bionic drummer.” I had to look again to make sure I had read it correctly! Who, really, could see that title and just pass it by? I, myself, could not! It turns out that there is a student who was electrocuted at work and after many surgeries ended up losing his arm. He has a passion for drumming so he initially built his own “stick-wielding prosthesis.” Unfortunately it didn’t give him the kind of natural motion he had before. Luckily for him, Georgia Tech's Professor Gil Weinberg built a robot extension where the one stick can sense the movement in his bicep and the other is programed to go with the beat. Now, the student is not only able to play the drums like before, he actually has an edge on “regular” drummers. If that isn’t making the best out of a bad situation, I don’t know what is! Technology has allowed this young man to continue his passion in life even though he was dealt a not-so-fortunate hand of cards. THAT is what technology is all about! This week I will tell you about some technology that is just a little bit less life altering. J

This class has been very independent in working on our weekly tasks but this week we explored collaborative learning further. In an article we were suggested to read, it outlined the way I feel about working with my peers exactly. “Knowing that their peers will read their papers gives students a concrete sense of to whom they are writing, and why.” Through this whole experience writing this blog I have been painfully aware that all of my peers can see my writing. I am much more conscious of the way I say things and I triple-check (minimum) EVERYTHING that I post so I don’t embarrass myself. In our exercises we had the pleasure of exploring Google Docs, which I HAD heard of but never actually used. I honestly think this is one of the best tools we have used so far. I love that you can make a specific comment for your partner to see and then they can reply. I think that the more people in a group, the more valuable Google Docs becomes. There are some limitations, as it does not have the full functionality of Microsoft Office. Someone had a stroke of genius when they came up with this tool, so we can’t expect perfection… yet. J  

I am going to tell you right now that I plan on using Google Docs for another class of mine this week. I have a group of 5 to work with and I will install on them my newfound wisdom. We are required to right a report as well as do a presentation. For this I will create a document and a presentation to start. As of right now we have been using Facebook to send and receive files and there are MANY copies floating on everyone’s computer. Last week we actually were trying to figure out which was the most recent copy, that was a headache, as I am sure you can imagine! As Google Docs will help facilitate my creating in a collaborative environment, it will go in the “Create” portion of my PLE, just where is belongs!

TTFN