CEdu 581 Computer Architecture Closing

On Value: It is difficult to comment on the value of anything until an adequate amount of time has passed to let us assess our experience objectively. I say this because I fully intend to discover some great use for a seemingly useless bit of knowledge from every class in the coming years.
That said if I had to nail down a piece of value from CEdu 581 I am quite certain that it is the information on the "how". I like computers and technology and I am often consdered to be pretty geeky but I had no real concept of what was going on in that processor or how a computer started itself up. The fact that I have little to no use for this information at the present does not deter me from the belief that this is useful information. Part of owning a Mac is the realization that I might not ever have to tinker around with my hardware and thus I accept a little be too much on what I'm being told. I now know better.
Also, watching the Cringley and Pirates videos were interesting because the drama that went with the personal computing revolution adds to the story and gives us a greater understanding of these companies that we have seemingly handed our wallets.

Devaluing: Honestly, I'd have to say that the Build Your Own PC ativity was lost on me simply because, as a Mac user, I'm pretty railroaded in. Also, as a Mac fanboy of sorts, I have spent free time idlely building a Mac Pro that I could never afford for fun. There was value to the excercise in that I was able to conceive a bit better why I was buying what because of the class, but at the same time I've done that before too.

And that as they say is that.

This is Quinn Loucks signing off. Thanks for all the fish.

Computer Architecture CEdu581 Week 5

What were the most valuable pieces of information that you learned from
presentations in class tonight.

Let's face it, Ron had the most obscure subject of all of the presentations in class. The holiday ads don't have Bios at low low prices and there won't ever be a Superbowl commercial extolling the latest big thing in BIOS flashing. On that level then BIOS held the most new information available. Unfortunately, there is little to take away that I can apply in the rest of my life. BIOS is so obscure that it usually does its job without making any waves, causing any problems, or even letting the user know it is there.
The one thing of value that I will take away above all others though is the following realization: there is a reason we wait fifteen seconds before restarting a malfunctioning computer. I have done this on everything from my laptop to my DVR box and never really understood why those ten to fifteen seconds made a difference. From Ron's presentation I surmised that the wait time will trigger the BIOS to do a full POST on the system components whereas there are items it might skip on a straight restart. It is always a good day when I can remove some of the voodoo surrounding the computer. Now if I can only figure out why I need to cluck like a chicken in order to get my printer to work... ... ...
As a runner up, the fact that flash drives have a limited number of read writes was a new bit of information that I have already passed onto a friend. I liken this to the unpublicized fact that Batteries have limited numbers of cycles. No one told me. (My laptop battery is at 270 cycles and 47% health. That isn't good and might explain a few abrupt shutdowns. Looks like I'll be needing to use AppleCare. Wait, does AppleCare even cover that?

Computer Architecture CEdu581 Week 4

Describe what actions a computer takes from power-on to Log-in screen.

Source: http://computer.howstuffworks.com/pc3.htm

As soon as power is fed to the computer with the On button being pushed the Basic Input Output System (BIOS) is started. On older model computers the BIOS information is displayed on the screen in text. New computers have sped up the process and eliminated the text. The BIOS will check the viability of various components of the computer in what is called the power-on self test (POST) This starts at the the video card.

The BIOS will also check if the computer is restarting or cold booting. If it is a restart the BIOS will skip many of the next processes. If it is a cold startup the computer will check the RAM, to ensure viability. It will also check the mouse, keyboard and any other peripherals that may be connected.

The next step is the hard drive. The BIOS will look for the boot drive where the operating system is located. The boot drive loads the OS and operations are handed over to the OS.

What are the essential "big picture" hardware pieces a computer must have to be a computer. Explain why each piece is essential.

A computer needs:

Central Process Unit: Makes all the decisions for the computer using arithmetic/logic decisions. Instructions are brought to the CPU from the memory, interpreted and executed.

Memory: There are two kinds of memory in the computer. RAM or Random Access Memory and Hard Drive Memory. The RAM is used to store short term information for the CPU. The more RAM that is available the quicker the CPU can work. The HD Memory stores programs and the operating system. These are collections of instructions that the CPU executes to perform the functions of the computer. Without HD memory when the computer is shut off the RAM is wiped clean and everything will be forgotten.

Input: Inputs are ways of getting instruction and data into the computer. This includes but is not limited to keyboards, mice and disk drives.

Output: The computer will perform actions based on instructions executed. The output displays the results. Outputs most notably include monitors that display a graphical user interface but outputs are also speakers and other devices.

Computer Architecture CEdu581 Week 3

DONE.

I just burned a compact disk (CD) with my portfolio for the completion of my Masters degree. After a little less than two years I have accumulated quite the folder full of documents and it took a good bit of wading, several text messages to Kristine, emails to Paul and watching Louis' video on the file structure six times to get it all done.

There is now only a month between myself and the degree. I have a few projects to wrap up for Computer Architecture class but compared to the Action Research and the Portfolio any in-class straightforward assignment is a picnic.

Don't worry about me though. I'll still keep myself stressed out in the spring even without having graduate classes. I still have to transition my lacrosse club from Junior Varsity to Varsity, recruit ten to fifteen players, play on Madcow lacrosse, get MARRIED, and grade some six to seven hundred papers before the end of the school year. Oh and did I mention we're going to Los Angeles for a cousin's wedding in April. Sigh, and you thought I'd relax... ... ... ...

Computer Architecture CEdu581 Week 2

1pt Install an OS

I've installed an OS... maybe two dozen times. Unfortunately there isn't much of a story to it. With the exception of the transition from MacOS 9 to X they've all been much the same. I suppose there was a bit of a difference between System 7 and 8 but anymore it is extremely easy on the latest Apple Computers.

1pt Upgrade or install a OS patch, Service Pack or Upgrade for your OS

As for patches, those come out so frequently I couldn't even tell you how many I've "installed". Of course by install I mean, click the button that says download.

1pt Use an alternative OS for regular daily tasks (stretch your comfort zone)

I have been a Mac Evangelist since Pre-Web era so I consider the use of an alternative OS as a pretty regular occurrence. I've never worked in a Mac environment and I've never had a roommate that owned a Mac so I've been in their world the whole of my adult life. My reflections on using Windows is and always has been that the the user experience is always slightly clumsy. It is almost trite to say it but I always say that Windows is fine as long as the user has an IT department. Unfortunately, the average user lacks this. For most computer companies tech support is a money drain so users are left to help each other.

2pts Watch "Pirates of the Silicon Valley"

I NetFlixed Pirates of Silicon Valley when this assignment was mentioned in class. I had wanted to see it but never gotten around to it for some reason. After I watched it I knew why. The movie is ok. I Like the story but it certainly could have been done better. For instance I would have liked for the movie to have explained Woz's memory loss more. Also while Jobs is clearly the more interesting story of the two because of his estranged daughter and explosive temperment, Balmer mentions that Gates yelled at everyone but Jobs. I'd like to have seen maybe more of the culture of his office. The movie never even mentioned Redmond Washington. Anyway. I'd like to have seen more of this. I read an interesting novel in college titled Microserfs by Douglas Coupland and while fictional it was extremely interesting.

Computer Architecture CEdu581 Week 1

Describe your previous knowledge of the concepts presented in class 1.
Our first Computer Architecture CEdu 581 class dealt with material that I have knowledge but no expertise of. I would say that I have very little first hand knowledge of it but I was in college during a time where there was talk of the inner workings of computers and I have thus been exposed to countless conversation with two of my best friends on these topics. Looking back it is actually very interesting to note that I had no intentions of pursuing technology at a younger age but the influence of friends who are geeks like me has helped push me forward. Also I listen to a variety of San Francisco technology podcasts that often delve into the more geeky end of computer technology. In fact, I was just getting into that right before I becamse aware of this CSU program and I attribute much of my interest in the field to these podcasts.

What did you learn through the activities (including links and resources) in class 1?
It is hard to quantify what I've learned from just the first class because I feel as if I knew a lot of it on a casual level. In effect, the first class was a fleshing out of those concepts that I already felt able to discuss somewhat ineptly even though I am far from experienced in the field.

I felt the activity of the simple computer was the most interesting since I have never considered the computer at that basic of a level. In fact it made me think about how I had a friend who dropped out of computer programming in college and now I know why it might have frustrated him.

What questions do you have about the material from class 1?
So far as yet there are no questions.

What I'll take with me

CEdu 534 as a class almost encourages ADD. There are just too many great services, sites, and tools out there. Prior to the class I was aware of most all of these in a general sense. That doesn't mean that I didn't take anything from this class. Far from it. I actually am taking a bit of frustration and angst that my place of business has a technology structure in transition to put it nicely. In order to implement around this barrier I have to think about what is viable.

For me that is screencasting in the immediate future and podcasting of a sort in the next year. As for screencasting, I can immediately see the uses for implementation and I can start to develop a library for the my coming semester. I can embed these casts into my class moodles as well as into my class website. For podcasting, I am holding off on my implementation because I am hesitant to add to my work load but also because I do not relish the task of explaining and implementing some new system of information dissemination in the middle of a school year. This is the sort of mid stream jump that jeopardizes my ultimate goal of creating a comfortable work environment that is about learning communication skills rather than learning new technologies every week.

That then is what I am setting my sites on in the coming months.

The Power of Video

My senior year in high school I had first hour AP Calculus. Apparently a smaller school district near my own rural hometown wasn't offering AP Calc for the one student who qualified. In 1998-99 distance learning was... well... I don't know, bizarre but my school and her school were capable of it so it was arranged. It did not go well.

My teacher wasn't a bad guy but I'm fairly sure he was completely untrained for the task. For the first week of school he started the class ten minutes early because the video announcements never started. What he didn't take into account was that the student from the other student didn't know he was starting early. Within two weeks she had dropped the class.

I relate this because over the past two classes I have been involved in what I guess could be considered distance learning. I experienced an Internet outage and other students have had their issues as well but ten years after my first experience things have changed. The advent of Amazon's S3, YouTube, and a host of other services has transformed the teacher's ability to conduct a class despite difficulties. I myself was able to watch the class that I had missed after it had been retained and then posted by my professor. Later in the week, my group conducted an assigned web conference call and one of the group members recorded a section of it as proof of concept.

With storage and hosting coming at such bargains schools should be reevaluating the use of distance learning and digital recording of class as a means of teaching. It is not hard to imagine a nationwide school district that employs certified tutors as primary contacts and a host of specialty experts contracted for specific topics. My head has just begun spinning at a rate heretofore reserved for the Bears in the Superbowl. The possibilities are limitless for this sort of infrastructure - unfortunately not so for the Bears...

Podcasting

Podcasting, how might I use thee?

Shall I... kidding, I'm not going to write poetry. I have little to no love for the subject despite being an English teacher.

Seriosuly, though. I'd love to have a system set up where I might record the meanderings I call lectures as podcast and them make them available to my students. The reality may be a few years away though. The digital divide makes this a difficult if not impossible task because while I can require tasks which might require internet use, I would be hard pressed to require tasks that require heavy daily internet use. There are a few of my students that have to use the school's library or a public library for their internet use and I can't rightly demand they do this nightly.

In fact, the worst of it is that they are so shy or reticent to admit this that I can't even say a precise number of students whom this effects. Similar to this, I had a student tell me that she had no way of getting her paper typed at an uncle's house to school because she had to borrow a friends' usb drive to do it. After she told me that I immediately contacted the tech department to see what we could do about identifying these students and getting them a cheap jump drive. I mean, if I've got students suffering this much from a lack of tech, how can I expect them to be online listening to a lecture? Not to mention we have less than adequate facilities for doing it as a class in the building. /sigh

In 3-5 years I bet I won't have this problem, but I guess a man an only play the hand he is dealt.

Google Reader

I have to say that I'm loving Google Reader this past week. I had used the Safari or maybe Firefox RSS subscriber for all of ten minutes over the summer and ditched it quickly. If I recall, the problem was that I signed up for the EnGadget feed which was a mistake. Talk about a fire hose. EnGadget probably has a new post every five minutes and that quickly overwhelmed me. I was conscious of that this time.

What makes me love it this time around is that I've been reading four or five political website that get updated throughout the day by several authors. My previous killer feature had been tab browsing (circa two or three years ago) which completely changed the way I viewed the internet.

What I was doing with these politics sites was tabbing open The Swamp, Poltico, Swampland, Mudflats and ABCNews Politics. Next I would go down to where I thought I had left off and start reading from the bottom up. OF course as I went these sites would be giving me more links to recent article from the Washington Post, NY Times, Chicago Tribune, YouTube, the Atlantic Monthly, Wall Street Journal and so on and so forth. You get the point. I usually did this at during my lunch time and usually I couldn't get through everything I wanted to read.

With Google Reader I'm able to see exactly how many new posts there are on each site and I only have to go to one spot for them. This greatly reduces my tab quantity and at the same time I am able to skip a few more of the articles because I get a list of their title and I can determine whether I want to actually read it.

Elgg'd

Wouldn't it be nice if every technology idea we had could be implemented... like, tomorrow?

This past week I investigated Elgg as part of the group work for CEdu534 and thought how great it would be for the school's sense of togetherness if there was a Facebook that was just the school. It could be accessed from within the school and used in many of the same ways. I won't belabor the point because we went into this in our forum discussion of the Think.com Podcast but I would add that my school is always talking about enhancing the community of the school.

At the moment, I am trying to push using Moodle in this way. We've created Moodle classrooms for clubs and we are talking about making a place for the Student Congress to collaborate on projects.

Hit the Ground Running

We read about the use of blogs in our text book and I thought I would touch on how I could start using that right now. At the moment I have a weekly assignment that is a response editorial to an online newspaper article. Essentially, I have been asking the students to submit a weekly blog but they don't think of it in that way.
The thought I've been having is, Why not open it up? Essentially, I could give the assignment a swift kick in the relevance by having it viewable by their classmates in our Moodle classroom so that each individual would know that others were trolling their opinions and reading the same articles. This would allow others to see excellent examples of the assignment done right and it would make it easier for me to point to credible attempts. Further those who as of yet have been doing a substandard job might find themselves shamed into doing better since they will be aware of the bright white heat of the audience.

8/18/08

Change is an ephemeral thing. So ephemeral that is made me just type that absurd cliche. The reality of the world is that everything changes and people who are unable or unwilling to incorporate it into their plan are left by the wayside. I would imagine the road to Val Halla is littered with Nordic warriors whose skill sets became out-moded faster than their heroic destinies could adapt.
The Leadership class I was involved with offered a board game version of this change within educational institutions. In a bizarre twist on role modeling my group was quickly whisked into the world that had been created for us and by the end of the three hours we had barely noticed the passage of time. It is a testament to the game that this was possible.
I took from this a deeper understanding of the angst I had at times felt when certain affairs within the school were not occurring quite as I would like them too. It also led me to question the motives of my colleagues. As school begins again I sit back in my meetings and realize how certain people are following along, ignoring the speaker, or displaying signs of obstinance. It can bee over generalized but I see the lay of the land more clearly than perhspas I did five weeks ago.

We Seek Answers

Loucks'd Mailbag:
Dear Loucks'd,
My mother is always telling me to "be a leader. Get out in front. Make yourself indispensable to your employer so that you are not dispensed with. Move out of the basement and find a wife." What do you think?

Loucks'd does not like to personally comment on the family life of its CEO but as communication's director for Loucks'd Unlimited International I can say our CEO does not live in his mother's basement.

Our CEO considers himself an unofficial leader in his current undercover position as a high school English teacher. As the youngest member of the English Department he is not likely to ascend to the position of department head any time soon. He has to keep that in mind when he steps out in front.

For our CEO, the more tenable situation for him is to make himself an unofficial - almost de facto - technology "go to guy." He is often sought out to solve simple problems that might otherwise go to the technology department's to do list (pronounced "next semester" list).

Also he has decided as of the end of the spring semester to try to counter some of the negative attitudes that are surfacing concerning meetings and expectations in the school. There is an old guard in the school that is continually and bitterly complaining about nearly every thing the school asks the faculty to do.

Oh, and I've just received a direct message from our CEO's Twitter account. He says move out of the basement but only find a wife if that is what you want. Marriage is not something to jump in to.

~Loucks'd

Critical Mass

Anecdote Hour: Ok this won't be an hour but I'd like to relate back an incident that the CEO of Loucks'd took part in several months ago.

Setting: Computer classroom -not to be confused with the computer lab because there is no computer lab, don't get me started.

Major Players: I dunno some teachers. Our CEO was nonspecific.

Story: The school in question is adamant about at least appearing technologically advanced even when it is clear that there is a old school mentality to most of the teaching methods, especially when it comes to technology. The new teachers were supposed to have made websites prior to starting school but they -including our fearless leader- had managed to slide by without it thus far. A new web design class teacher had been hired and he had been asked to hold an after school meeting to help remedy this.

Our CEO has pointed out how sorry he felt for this guy but nonetheless the meeting was a disaster. The Web Design teacher had the brand new staff members open up Front Page, told them it was a now defunct program that no one uses, and then starts to teach them HTML. Well first he assumed they all knew basic HTML. Of the seven teachers in the room three were under the age of thirty, despite being new hires. Of those three our CEO was the most tech-savvy and he did not at that time have a clue what he was doing. Teachers are the worst students. They are nearly always inattentive, individualistic, and self-starters. That means they are forging ahead -in seven different directions- before the guy up front can evaluate where to go next.

The meeting quickly turned ugly and the result was that each teacher did the minimum, put up 1994 looking websites and the web design teacher was left micromanaging problems.
During the course of this our CEO discovered that the WYSIWIG iWeb could be uploaded to the schools server and he shut off completely. It was not in the interest of his time and energy to continue down this path. Now what went wrong?

At the very top, the school's brass -much like our government officials- are committed to the advancement of technology, but they (or rather those at the top), do not understand technology's quickly evolving state. They've tied this poor guy down to a teaching session asking him only to help the new teachers make websites. They were nonspecific as to what that meant or what that might entail. Further, because they are not comfortable with the advancing technology they don't know that there are dozens of ways better to set up teacher websites. A CMS would be wildly more appropriate for these teachers who are unknowledgeable and unwilling to make HTML language writing a hobby.

At the web design teacher's level -he's new. He didn't fully know what the school atmosphere was but more importantly he assumed that because he had been in the IT business for several years that those in the room knew more than they did.

At the new teachers' level, they weren't prepared to work hard. The meeting was poorly timed in the middle of the school year making them unlikely to respond well to the proposition that they take on an added responsibility and predictably they responded poorly. The result has been a less than stellar web presence on the part of the school.

Why am I relating this to you today? Our CEO was recently asked the following: "Why is web design knowledge critical for instructional technology leaders in the K-12 environment?"

As this anecdote should highlight to some degree, teachers everywhere are being asked to web design. I do not need to tell you -the cultural and technological savvy reader that Loucks'd attracts- that teachers need help. If they do not have a ready resource that can provide them with easy and adequate direction, they're not going to do it. The meeting I have made you privy to highlights that need.

Perfect Worlds Do Not Exist

Community Submitted Question: In a perfect world what would be the best website solution for the school that you work at?

This is a threefold issue for Loucks'd International. As we at Loucks'd see it, there are the business interests, the parent interests and the teacher interests to serve. Of course this is not to say there are no student interests but we believe these three serve the greater interest of our students.

The school website as stated in a previous interview is the front door of our shop. The business end of our organization cares about this. Having too much of a serviceable site that is cluttered with schtuff will look less professional. We'd rather not spend too much time on that though.

Instead lets focus on the parent interest for a few words. I think that it should be the goal of high schools to encourage communication between parents to come increasingly through the net. It is easier to record and store. In a perfect world then we could store terabytes of information at ease. Further, in a perfect world the Internet would never fail. So I would like to see the school using a website based VOIP system. Yes, this can be done by apps like iChat, ooVoo, and the most popular Skype, but a net based one would be interesting because it wouldn't have the barrier to entry that often stops users from adopting VOIP. Parents could call the school and the Skype-like interface could push it to this website based system. This is just one in a myriad of opportunities we'd have with the emerging cloud-computing and thick client movement.

As for the teachers, our sites needs to be easy to update from home and work because many of us work... FROM HOME. That was in caps so that maybe our new tech director would hear us... Ahem. Now I think the thing that teachers need to do with their sites is make them destinations. That is really the goal for any site. What keeps students coming back? What does your site that makes them want to load it every day? Any site solution that we undertake must have something that allows, nay, encourages, teachers to always be adding content and engaging our audience. When teachers start to think like web developers they will get what we at Loucks'd mean.
In our heart of hearts this means a WYSIWIG as simple as Apple's iWeb with an easy to upload system that is as intuitive and straight forward as .mac's upload ease.
~Loucks'd

Good Web Design and Education?!?

We were recently approached by a mainstream media outlet about some inflammatory comments our CEO made regarding Catsup v. Ketchup. The following is an excerpt:

Wall Street Journal: Why does good web design matter to educators? Or perhaps I should say, why should it matter?

Loucks'd's Press Secretary: Intelligent and provocative question. I'd first like to mention that while it has never been the policy of Loucks'd to pass judgment we do have an office pool regarding the death of some of the poorer websites.

WSJ: By poorer you mean?

Loucks'd: Oh we've all seen them. The atrocious sites that have been assembled from some newbie's concept of the clear and simple web. Take most of the blogs on Blogspot for instance. Hideous.

WSJ: Getting back to the point then...

Loucks'd: I have two mantras or sayings or cliches or what-have-yous that I like to repeat to my athletic teams. First I like to tell them, No one wins by accident. Then I tell them, Amateurs work until they get it right. Professionals work until they can't get it wrong. Web site design is no exception to this. We're in an environment- especially in the Milwaukee area that supports choice programs- that is increasingly competitive. Schools may think that their website is just a website for teachers and the stray parent that forgot that Desperate Housewives was on but in reality it is an open sign. It is a fresh coat of paint. It's where people go to learn about you. When Loucks'd goes looking for work we go to websites. When Dick and Jane move from Toledo and they're looking for schools, they go to websites. This isn't a hard concept.

WSJ: Granted, but then Loucks'd isn't in any administrative committees that we know about. How does this effect him... or them... or you all... I'm unfamiliar with referring to the singular in the third...

Loucks'd: Aren't you The Wall Street Journal? Perhaps we should apply for your job. As an English teacher Loucks'd does not need to worry on a daily basis about the form and function of DSHA.info (that is DSHA dot INFO) but it is much easier to sell the real world to students if their school's website - the front door of the school - is as professional as we expect them to be. It is the same as a dress code for staff and students. We dress professionally because we expect professional behavior. End of interview.

WSJ: But what about Catsup?

Loucks'd: It's ketchup. Good day.

If you're reading this... You Are Lost

This is the second iteration of the Mr. Loucks Grad Class.  Deal with it.