Blogging Reflections

Apparently, this is the last required post for my teaching blog.  Since I have a mirror (ha, ha), I can reflect on my blogging experience.

BAD!!

Unfortunately, I did not comment often enough on my team's blogs.  This made it more difficult to connect with my wonderful Movers and Bakers team.  My team had wonderful insights.  Unfortunately, I did not often read them or comment on them in a timely fashion, making them wonder "where I was".

To paraphrase quote Tom Lehrer "A blog is like a sewer.  What you get out of it depends on what you put into it."  This quote is so true.  If I had gotten more into blogging, I could have given some interesting insights into teaching from my fellow team members.

GOOD!!

It gives me a chance to put my thoughts about a specific subject into writing, and into the blogosphere, so that others can evaluate my post, and comment on that post.  I appreciated the comments from by fellow bloggers.

WOULD I CONSIDER MORE BLOGGING?

Maybe.  If I taught a class, I may consider having my student following a class blog, and therefore, get instant feedback about chemistry topics.

However, I may consider a personal blog, since some of my interests and not necessarily mainstream, and therefore someone may want my to blog for a small amount of money (i.e. you seem interested in UGA volleyball, but no one talks about it).  I could blog about UGA volleyball (the players workouts, the interests of the players, what the players do on their free time, etc.)

UGA Athletics...I'm waiting for your call!!!!

Copyrights and old games

I had posted a link to the ELC discussion board about an article about copyright issues, and that it is likely you may be violating copyright and not even know it.

Back in my time (I won't say how old I am) the major issues were software piracy and "dubbing" of cassette tapes.  Most of my friends thought nothing of copying cassette or software.  In addition, there was lots of software "cracking" programs out there that actually facilitated the process.

One thing that is interesting is that most of the material is now online.  I could actually download an Apple IIe emulator and a Commodore 64 emulator, and play the games that I once played back in the heyday!  I am now able to play games like Archon, Black Magic, Phantasie, and many others on these emulators.  Yeah!!!!!

This is an interesting dilemma.  If these were illegal, would they have been shut down by now?  However, my impression is that these sites have some support from the software authors.  If that is not the case, then I better clean my computer.

One final question about copyright is this.  Let's say I buy a Britney Spears CD (yes, I have most of them).  I, like most Americans get tired of it after listening to it for 30 minutes.  I then donate the CD to a thrift store (love them thrift stores).  If another sucker (I mean, person) buys the CD, isn't Britney being cheated out of royalties for that sale?

Some corporations base lawsuits on profit.  If it costs our lawyers $2000 to recover $100 in lost royalties, most companies would not do it, even though pursing legal action is the right thing to do.  Even the police may say "it's not worth our time".

Social Media - How it Helped My Research

One aspect of my research is the ability to manipulate data.  I had looked up how to convert my three column data into a two dimensional array.  Most of the responses have been "Perl", "Access", and other strange ideas.  However, one idea which came up was "Pivot Table".  I had previously tried to use a pivot table in Excel, but to no avail.

So, I became a Google jockey and Googled "Pivot table".  One of my top hits was a YouTube video.  So I watched the video.  I was quite excited as the number of likes greatly outnumbered the number of dislikes.  Also, most of the comments were extremely positive.  Ten minutes later, (5 for the video and 5 for experimenting), I was able to convert my data into a pivot table.  After five more minutes, I was able to convert the data into a format that I could use.

It made me happy and also depressed.  Here I had wasted time on an inefficient process, only to find a really efficient process (and I did not have to learn a new programming language).

This shows you the wealth of information on the internet, especially YouTube.  I do have one question.  Has anyone been "Rick Rolled" on YouTube??

Eye Tracking

Looking back at my notes I took during the lecture about eye tracking, I remember a few things.

In a lot of cases, the eye tracking really did not show any distinct patterns.  However, in multiple choice questions involving chemical structures, student who got the answers incorrect really focused at the incorrect answers, apparently trying to eliminate one or more of the answers.  Students who got the problems correct often focused on the correct answer and did not spend a lot of time looking at the incorrect answers, trying to verify the correct answer.

In problems involving numerical answers (i.e. how many carbon atoms are present in 43.22 grams of carbon?) where extraneous information was given, lower ability students focused on the extraneous information quite intently, whereas higher ability students only glanced at the extraneous information.

I also am not sure if he will continue to do research in that area if he were to come to UGA, but it is very interesting.

I would also be interested in research using eye tracking software to perhaps detect Asperger's spectrum disorder, or prosopagnosia (face-blindness), the latter of which I am pretty sure I have (face-blindness).  I'm wondering if people with those issues spend a longer time staring at people, trying to "map" facial features.