Maxi's Portfolio for MITE6323

Concluding session

2006-08-20T03:26:00.000-07:00

I must express my thanks to all colleagues of MITE 6323, the community of learning, led by Dr Churchill. We've made up the constructivist experience which I've never had before. As a concluding session to my first blogging experience and this course, my final paper is published HERE with a brief description on the use of our learning object designed by Kelvin and me.

INSTRUCTIONS ON HOW TO USE THE LEARNING OBJECT:

It provides students a means to get familiar with the function of a laser-engraving system before they get their hands on the actual machine. It allows students to choose between two predefined figures (“A” with an oval as its outline, or “B” with a polygon as its outline) to engrave.

By specifying the two colors (black and red) to be vector or raster, students can effectively control the laser beam to cut through or simply creating an embossed image onto the piece of acrylic sheet.

The simulator also gives students the choice of altering the speed and power of the black and red colors, thereby creating different effect. Upon pressing the “EXE” key, the resulting effect will be displayed via a pre-recorded video clip on the upper-right-hand corner, and a conceptual cross-sectional view animation adjacent to the video.

Final project

2006-08-15T07:18:00.000-07:00

After days of hardwork, Kelvin and I are ready to present our final presentation.

It is over 30MB in size. You may download it from right-mouse-button-clicking on this URL, and select "save target as".

Click HERE for our source file.

A Preliminary Prototype

2006-07-28T00:15:00.000-07:00

This is a preliminary prototype for Kelvin and me. It is more of a representation of our concept. It shows you what knobs/buttons you can manipulate, and gives you a taste on what the resulting images/videos would look like.

Please give us some comments.

Summary of the screen interaction.

2006-07-18T17:30:00.000-07:00

This chart tells how the laser head movement can be controlled by the setting of the power and speed.

Feel free to comment.

Our one screen visual - a proposal.

2006-07-14T09:03:00.000-07:00

After communicating vigorously with my partner, Kelvin, we decided to proceed with storyboard and the one screen visual.

Here comes our screen first. Please comment.

My reflection of Session 7.

2006-07-08T20:08:00.000-07:00

I strongly agree what Dr Churchill stressed in the lesson, that we should try to rule out interactive questioning from the learning object. The teacher-student interaction should be left to the classroom context. I also understand that one screen presentation is a very good way to reduce the cognitive load of student during learning.

Thank David Lau. He led me finish the practical task to work out the Flash exercise in the lesson. David's idea of zooming effect on the map is exciting. This will be very useful for my group assignment too.

If we want to make a slider, it is very important to understand the concept of the definition of the location of an object. I'm longing for session 8 that Dr Churchill has proposed to demostrate how to make slider in Flash.

My Storyboard

2006-07-05T16:30:00.000-07:00

This is the first draft of my individual storyboard before I discussed with my partner Kelvin:

This is a preliminary draft. Hope you can understand. We'll revise the interface into one screen. Stay tuned.

My revised flow chart.

2006-07-05T16:29:00.000-07:00

FLOW CHART

This is the revised flow chart:

My initial flow chart for planning

2006-07-01T20:04:00.000-07:00

The Parameters & the Interface

2006-06-29T20:39:00.000-07:00

The parameters will be the speed of the movement of the laser head, the power of the laser beam, the pen mode.

The interfaces will be the control panel of the machine and the laser settings tab on the computer. The effect will be simulated by the virtue cutting table. Goggles will be put on for the safety measures.

A reference for this visual is
Edheads - Virtual Knee Surgery - Total Knee Replacement - TKR

Control panel of laser engraver

2006-06-28T12:31:00.000-07:00

Page 1 of the manual of the control panel & page 2 of the manual of the control panel are attached here for exploration.

In this assignment, I intent to include all the details in using the laser engraver to produce Design and Technology subject learning outcomes - the artifact of students' design in the lesson. Students have to learn from the visuals how to operate on the laser system. The concepts of setting up the machine of the correct lens focal length will be introduced first. Then the modes of cutting, i.e. the vector mode and the raster mode, will be introduced. The effects of power, speed and PPI settings will be shown. See the following pages of instructions.

They are to be condensed into the visuals. At last, the safety precautions are to be included. This will be a learning package for students with or without prior experience in using the laser system. If they want to use the system, they have to learn by self access to the learning module to finish the study before turning on the machine for CAM (Computer Aided Manufacturing).

Laser engraving process

2006-06-27T03:28:00.000-07:00

I've analysed the topics and come to a preliminary conclusion that the laser engraving process is the most exciting one for the visuals assignment.

If you want to have a glance on the features of a universal laser system, you may visit the following websites:

Universal Laser Systems, Inc. manufactures computer controlled laser engraving, laser cutting and laser marking systems:
http://www.ulsinc.com/...laser_systems/product_line/m300.html

Video
＊Plywood: 3mm, artwork on M-1200 / 250 W
http://www.eurolaser.com/video/wood_plywood_3mm.wmv

Application examples
＊A simplified process of placing words, signs, and symbols on virtually every imaginable surface.
http://www.alase.com/applications/index.htm

Task for this week: after lesson 5.

2006-06-25T12:07:00.000-07:00

To inform about what interactive visual representation you intent to develop as a part of your final assignment. Also tell us about reasons for your decision and purpose of the final representation:

There are several possible visuals that can be developed for facilitating my students to learn in my Design and Technology lessons.

How to make an injection molding artifact

How to engrave acrylic sheet in a laser engraver

How to design the program for controlling a Fischertechnik model

How to make a designed pattern on a T-shirt

These topics have common features of comprising a series of procedures and various modes for success in doing the practical work. Students need to familiarize with the procedures with the understanding of the underlying concepts for the task.

Self reflection: Lesson 4 - Interactive Visualization and Learning Objects

2006-06-23T03:29:00.001-07:00

Dr Churchill introduced different learning objects. There are too much to be studied at one time. There should take some time to categorize them.

Two questions are to be answered after the lesson:

Q1: How can visual and interactive material engage student learning in your discipline?
A1: I'm teaching Design and Technology subject in a secondary school. Students can familiarize themselves with the steps and the underlying concepts in doing the practical work in designing and making activities.

Q2: Can you think of a learning object in your own curriculum?
A2: Lab-Volt, a purchased self-directed learning module in which there are on-screen exercises. The exercise requires students to fill in the names of various parts of a robot arm or to fill in the experiment data for an electrical circuit. The computer programme can check out the answers for students.

Self reflection: Lesson 5 - Learning with Representations

2006-06-23T03:29:00.000-07:00

Dr Churchill has shown us how to organize learning from setting tasks which is very familiar by the student to difficult tasks which deal with misconceptions. At the beginning of the course, he asked us to make a one-screen presentation to introduce ourselves. The content is about oneself such that it one is most familiarize with. The second task was to make up one-screen visual about the atmosphere. I was totally unfamiliar with it. Then the Photostory was asking for subject content that one is also familiarize with. The fourth task was the raindrop which is also not my familiar subject.

The implication for me is to set some topic for students that can be alternatively familiar topic to attract and to challenge student’s ability so that they can expend their horizon when they attempt the problems.

If we want to design something for students to manipulate, we really want them to explore the different parameters so that they can grasp the concepts. If students don't know the parameter, they can manipulate and find out what is all about.

I’m thinking hard for the following recently. If I introduce the interactive visuals during the lesson, do I expect students to explore them by themselves? How do I organize the lesson so that when they are not one to one computer ratio but they can explore the visuals and the classroom activities can still be engaged by most of them?

NPAC/OLDA Visible Human Viewer: freezed body and put in liquid nitrogen, cut and scan and stored in a database. Whenever it is loaded, just call the data from the database.

Weather Bonk - Live Weather, Forecasts, WebCams: pulling data from 3 different sources: 1) library of Google map; 2) weather channel; and 3) web cam. This is a very good example of calling data from different sources and “remix” for a new application.

We must validate things before we accept them. This was realized when there are different descriptions about the changing shapes of a falling raindrop.

Dr Churchill mentioned that it is a descriptive model. Multimedia learning hypothesis: “People can learn more deeply from words and pictures than from words alone." (Mayer, 2005)

This induced me to re-examine the Photostory task I’ve made. I used narration but I didn’t use text to help me to consolidate the information to assist the picture. If I have a second chance to re-work, I’d like to add some text to the screen to assist.

I just keep on thinking about how to engage students to learn deeply as I initiate them with visual objects.

How do students learn deeply: beyond facts remembering, but they also understand the relationships between relevant concepts.

We must keep thinking about “How do we think?”, “How do we learn?” and “How is our mind work?”

There should be some investigation on “Depictive and descriptive Representations (Wolfgang Schnotz)” because I know little about this.

Our raindrop visualizer

2006-06-22T06:45:00.000-07:00

Our Raindrop Visualizer

Here is the very first FLASH program we (Kelvin and I) made. It is our raindrop visualizer:

Alternatively, you may run the program by clicking HERE.

Source of information:
http://omp.gso.uri.edu/.../raindrop.htm (Raindrop sound)
http://www.ems.psu.edu/~fraser/Bad/BadRain.html (Bad Rain)

Please don't laugh at our raindrop at > 4.5mm radius. Although it looks funny, it was the result of some very hardwork and countless cups of coffee in front of a computer screen.

It took us long enough to make this little program. We understand how frustrated an experience it is to try to use Flash for the first time. If you have any questions or difficulties in using Flash, feel free to ask. We would be happy to share with you what we have just discovered.

Here is our conceptual design:

This is my digital story.

2006-06-16T03:45:00.000-07:00

http://iln.cite.hku.hk/com/1238/users/pmmwat2/soldering.wmv

http://iln.cite.hku.hk/com/1238/users/pmmwat2/soldering.wmv

This is my Task 2.

2006-06-09T02:22:00.000-07:00

Please comment.
http://iln.cite.hku.hk/com/1238/users/pmmwat2/index.htm

My attempt to task 2

2006-06-07T09:16:00.000-07:00

This makes me realize that selection of content is an important task for success. Prioritize the concepts and familiarize the contents can reduce the time needed and hence raise the efficiency for production. This in turn will promote the interest in making learning objects for teachers. Thus increases the feasibility to incorporate IT into the curriculum.

Ruling out unnecessary information can help our students in understanding the key concepts without side-tracking their learning. Vigorous analysis should be done before and during the production.

At first, I was a bit greedy. I wanted to include the sun into the representation. But when I constructed the stage, I realized that I had to drop out the sun because I need the screen to be focus on the atmosphere contents of the earth.

My reflection after the second lesson.

2006-06-03T10:32:00.000-07:00

I start to recall how I learnt things in my secondary school life. It seems that I could perceive meaning of the words in a way that I guess the meaning without really understand word by word. The visualization power existed then. Through practicing the skill over and over, I could translate the text descriptions into visualization in the mind.

I start to think about the Design and Technology curriculum for next school year. I hope I can integrate IT into the curriculum. I plan to use "jigsaw approach" for grouping students and let them learn through reciprocal teaching activities.

As for Task 2, I used the "elimination" approach to narrow down the contents first. Then, I'll study the key concepts for the information design. Mind map or concept map are to be drawn to facilitate planning.

My first attempt

2006-05-26T05:40:00.000-07:00

What have you learnt in the first class of this module?
I learnt that to design an interactive activity employing ICT, there should be some key concepts in mind. Empowerment of learners can be achieved when we introduce infographics into the classroom is a new concept to me. However, the communication between the teacher and the student and among students is a key factor for quality learning to take place. At the same time, the incidents of conflict between family members happened recently in Hong Kong relate to using of computer remind me of the importance of personal relationship in this information era. If personal factors are excluded from the design of technology matters, problems are very likely to happen. The impact of educational technology to human relationship cannot be under-estimated.

In order to use ICT in the classroom, teacher and student should have a democratic mind such that all parties can contribute to the activities in the lesson. This is a very important issue. It should be addressed morally and culturally.

Producing interactive representations can be done in a short time. It requires skills and knowledge to accomplish. I believe that understanding of technology architecture can lead to competency after this lesson.
What do you hope to learn in future in this module?
I view of the great impact of technology to classroom learning and family life, I want to learn how to do things elegantly, neatly and accurately. This can spare time to deal with human relationship in the school and in my family.
Do you think that interactive visual representations are important for education?
Interactivity can be done with interactive visual representations. This can promote student’s empowerment in learning. I strongly believe that students can learn effectively if they can be proactive in the learning process. So, I agree that interactive visual representations are very important for education.

4. Let us have one slide / image that introduces yourself.

Upload a photo onto the blog.
Web Repository as webserver.
CLICK HERE.