Cognitive Development

ZPD, or Zone of Proximal Development, is a range of things that a student can learn at a given point in time.  With the guidance of adults or peers that understand the object being learned, a student can reach the same level of understanding.  An important point to note about ZPD is that the pertinent range is bounded by the two extreme skill levels.  The minimum level corresponds to what the student can demonstrate without any guidance or assistance whereas the opposite is maturing cognition on the student’s side, which is the highest extreme of ability.

The guidance and assistance necessary in allocating one’s ZPD is called scaffolding.  Scaffolding is the technique of changing the level of support over a period of time that information is taught.  In other words, when a student is incapable of understanding a topic or concept, someone who understands the presented information guides the student to understanding it.  Once the student understands and can reiterate the same content, guidance is diminished and refocuses on a higher level of thought.  This enables the student to progress at a relatively constant rate with virtually no pressure.

Tutoring is a really good example of scaffolding.  In a tutoring session, the tutor gives enough assistance to allow the tutee to understand the information.  More information is not given as the student is able to do it him or herself.  If the student reaches a point that is not understood, then support can be provided.  Since the tutor is monitoring every moment of the session, it is a very effective way to implement scaffolding.

I have worked as a tutor with a foreign student that needed help in understanding how to identify complete subjects and complete predicates in the English language.  I knew what the student was capable of as I have worked with him for at least a month before we arrived to this topic.  I was aware he could read, write, and comprehend one sentence at a time; this is because a question directed at him regarding comprehension evoked nearly identical words from the read sentence.  Using this basis as his low level of his ZPD, I proceeded to inquire if he could identify nouns and verbs.  At the same time, I reminded the student what these parts of speech are.  In turn, the student replied with very slow progression as I assisted him in making sure the words he chose to answer were indeed nouns and verbs.

This was the first step in the scaffolding process.  The next would be to help him figure out how to group other words in the sentence with the respective noun or verb to form complete subjects and complete predicates.  For the first phase in the second step, I allowed the student to make mistakes to gain an insight into what he was looking for.  The second phase would allow me to point out what the correct answers were.  Finally, I started to list numerous examples in which a verb displayed a cut-off point to reveal the complete predicate in the sentence.  With much practice and constant supervision and critique, the student was able to grasp the concept of separating the two grammatical phrases.

Information Processing

In an educational setting, students must use a variety of cognitive processes to successfully learn presented material.  It is understood by most people that some students are visual learners, while other are auditory or kinesthetic.  However, what many people don’t realize is the importance of keeping students’ attention on track to retain appropriate memory.

Information processing is a major component of retaining information in terms of memory.  It is the ability of the human mind to manipulate, monitor, and strategize information.  This is a general definition for retrieving information from the outside world and turning it into a mental concept.  This concept can then be used to implement tasks at certain capacities and speeds relative to the age group and topic being learned.

Different kinds of memory such as short-term memory, working memory, and long-term memory determine what is learned.

Short-term memory only holds memory for about thirty seconds.  If, however, the subject of focus is rehearsed or processed repetitively, then it can be stored for a longer period of time.

When a person retains information for this short period of time, three kinds of working memory must be exercised in conjunction with short-term memory.  If the learner is capable of storing visual information, sounds of language, and combining those two with past learned knowledge, then the learner is able to store all the gathered information into long-term memory.

Long-term memory holds a lot of information over a long period of time.  It is possible to recall thousands of bits of information within only a few seconds.

Information processing is very gradual.  The capacity and speed of processing information is great in the younger years when people mature and grow.  In observing my assigned classroom setting for this class, I had the opportunity to watch the instructor present content.  I was paying attention to the way she spoke and what words she used.  The reason I realize this to be prominent factor in effective teaching is because I know that public speaking and effective communication is based on linking topics with correct transitions.

By the way, do you like strawberries?

Memory and thinking, two elements associated with information processing, can be applied to this method of teaching.  A generic example of how memory is applied can be described in three gradual steps.  The first is stating the topic and giving a general overview of the information that is to be presented.  The details in this introduction would serve in short-term memory to understand the basic idea of the material.  Second, the material must transition to a particular element of the topic through means of visual aids, speech, and references to past knowledge.  After each detail is touched upon, this information needs to be reviewed.  This is part of working memory, which is vital to learners for getting information into long-term memory.  Finally, when all the concepts have been linked together, it is possible to test the information the learner has supposedly retained to make sure it has been encoded into long-term memory.  If this does not happen, then the material must be covered again in a different fashion from the introduction.  Below is a diagram I made to help illustrate the point.

Privacy Policies in Professionalism

With the advent of online services such as YouTube, Vimeo, Twitter, and Flickr, the world is experiencing new ways to communicate. YouTube hosts videos which broadcasts them fluidly. Vimeo does the same. Flickr is created to share pictures with the world. Finally, twitter is designed to make textual messages about anything the user wants. Topics can include baseball games, burning CDs, driving 50 mph, or even about any of these accounts. As you can see, these online services, which are free, provide a lot of power to a lot of civilians.

Clay Shirky is a character with great public speaking skills. He gives many sophisticated speeches about Web 2.0. In one of his presentations called It’s Not Information Overload. It’s Filter Failure, he discusses about how information is easy to produce and spreads as an aggregate whole to the mass public. It is very prominent in our era and is always a topic for conversation. Everyone who uses a computer and browses the Internet, or World Wide Web, deals with spam, phishing, spyware, and most frighteningly viruses and worms. Because these are consistent, major problems in our technological world, they are always topics available for discussion. And as a result, the public is psyched to talk about them. What the public doesn’t realize is that it’s not the overload of information that’s driving the conversations, but that of failing to filter the barraging information.

Something that appears on every major site that is somehow related to presenting social media is a privacy policy. It can be found at the bottom of the homepage and every sub page of the website near the terms of service. This has become common to avoid suing charges. The way privacy is monitored online is still a relatively new phenomenon because the fact remains that privacy policies have been in existence for less than ten years, roughly the time when the World Wide Web became big enough to use such policies. Essentially, the current generation is molding the way these policies will be used by our grandchildren.  For an easy privacy policy generator, view the video below.

Digital literacy and Web fluency is the way people communicate effectively with each other in the early 21st century. This is because digital mediums, such as cell phones, web pages, and advancing technology, is prominent in developed countries such as the United States of America. As a musician and aspiring industry professional who attempts to upstart his or her career, understanding how to use these digital mediums to leverage him or herself is ever so important. Let’s look at a facet which drives what Clay Shirky was talking about: the rules. For a little background on the content of these written statements, below is an informal list of what is written and implied.

YouTube says that it can record information about the usage of the site including things like channels, groups, favorite videos, what the user subscribes to, what videos are watched, who the user communicates with through YouTube, and any information that the user displays on his or her account. Logging in associates information with users’ YouTube accounts to ensure the quality of service. However, this means that the service places a tag, called a web beacon, in any HTML client. Obviously, the user is voluntarily uploading video content. As a result, this is voluntary disclosure. That means any YouTube user can use this information as it is collected.

Vimeo says that they can collect information which identifies a user.  This is called personal information including the name, e-mail address, when the information was provided, IP address, browser information, a log of the visits, and cookies. There is a specific list on how they use this information. Just like most website services, Vimeo makes it easy to see, that is they do not hide it on their website. Even more importantly, Vimeo says it takes appropriate physical, electronic, and other security measures to prevent those who are not authorized to access it that may make it public in almost any way.

“Flickr is a photo sharing community which provides [people] with an easy way to post and share photos online, and add meaningful metadata and comments to photos.” The way Flickr collects information again is voluntary to users. If one chooses, he or she may make their photos public for anyone to see. Likewise, they can be restricted from observation up to as many people as the user chooses. One has the freedom to delete the photos by clicking the delete button and even deleting groups of photos using a batch delete feature. Finally, because Flickr works with Yahoo!, the privacy policy only applies if the user agrees to the Yahoo! Terms of Service and the guidelines.

Last but not least, we have Twitter. The way Twitter functions is based on receiving information from various websites, using SMS, APIs, and other third-party services. As a result, abiding with the privacy policy can get complicated. Like most accounts the user must provide some personal information. This is very basic which includes the user’s name, a username, password, and e-mail address. Additional information can be included which can either be made public or private. Any other information provided on the site, such as tweets, is not a private because the nature of Twitter is to make information public. This means that the privacy policy is limited to making only website content public made public by the user and not the website due to its Information Sharing and Disclosure section in the privacy policy. Nevertheless, Twitter will comply with all laws and regulations respective to the nation in which the user resides even if it means compromising the initial use of the service.

If you are curious about how to make your own privacy policy, view the video below.

According to all of this information, it is clearly visible that it is the freedom of the user of these services to leverage themselves. The pros are publicity with minimal effort, instant communication, and massive networking capabilities. The cons are non-visual expression, rival advancers, and continuous access to technological mediums. Just like pros and cons existed in the past the concept and rendition of challenge still exists. The difference is in the tools which shape the up-starting musician’s career.

Relationships Supporting Motivation and Acheivement in Education…you know you want it

The aspect of social relationships in which I participated in involved providing assistance to adult learners to read and write in English.  My duty as a volunteer involved assisting the instructor in a variety of closely oriented and social interactions.  I would memorize the names of the students making sure not to make any mistakes when calling on them.  I would make sure that I spoke in an equal tone to each student to render a neutral and polite approach when discussing complicated matters with them.  My goal was to keep a close, professional relationship with students as this method maximizes attentiveness and interest in the classroom.

In a professional setting between a student and a teacher, the student’s personal expectations rise.  By consistently reassuring that he or she can meet the goals and challenges that have been set for them, that person will eventually realize that the teacher can help to succeed.  The closeness allows the student to put forth considerable, honest effort into a given task.  Regardless of the level that the rest of the class many be in, the student will continue to progress in understanding the material.  Without this type of association with the student, low personal expectations will likely occur.  This is called failure syndrome.

Relationships support motivation and achievement for other reasons as well.  Sometimes it is necessary for the instructor to set the goals because the student will go for something physically unreachable at his or her current level.  Looking at a task as a whole could result in the student to stop performing at a seemingly impossible problem.   Procrastination and the feeling of anxiety can also occur.  Since close interactions with the students can usually relieve tension in a stressful situation, it becomes possible to discover the underlying causes of behavior to figure out why that behavior takes place.  This is called attribution theory, which explains why certain people have successes in one situation but failures in others.

An example of how attribution theory can be applied to my work in this class is the effort I put into making sure that the students understood what their expectations in the class were.  I had to explain why assignments were given, why it is important to come to class often, and why these actions result in a desirable reward.  Someone with doubt in their abilities would reconsider the option of attending class every time and consistently completing the assignments.  Establishing a relationship lowers the probability of doubt and initially develops a slight sense of motivation.

Another point that determines effectiveness in a close and professional relationship between the student and teacher is supporting the student’s motivation.  Since showing support and care for students shows them that instructors value the student, the student would be more likely to engage in academic work.  If self-efficacy is integrated, which is the belief that one can master a situation and produce positive outcomes, then success would increase resulting in a higher self-esteem.  Finally, simply showing a positive focus and determination in a task is a wonderful strategy to orient performance in a more desired direction.

Students prefer working in a challenging environment.  They have to realize that an assigned task holds something in store for them and that mastering a particular topic will benefit them in some way.  When the student is placed in such an environment, achievement tends to be prominent.  Not every learner is the same, so this method does not work for every student.  Still, the academic performance benefits from this approach, especially when the student is supported by the teacher in a number of ways.  Emotional, mental, knowledgeable, and meaningful support are just some examples of how helping a student can be beneficial.

In conclusion, the contexts in which students and teachers interact, as well as the perspectives on motivation, engagement, and achievement, significantly increase when the people working together set positive standards and realistic goals.  By working with students in a professional environment, students retain control in knowing that the process of making mistakes is not disastrous.  Working closely with the student displays an act of caring, which results in a more productive work ethic.  Finally, academic performance is benefited when achievement is recognized.

Midterms – ain’t they a beauty?

There are many reasons why is it important we learn to communicate effectively on the Web.  First, as social beings that communicate with others, we are constantly finding ways to deliver our messages.  To this day, we have found numerous ways of doing so.  They include face-to-face talking, physical postal mail, talking on the phone, sending information over the Internet, and even voice conferencing.  Of course, due to all of these combinations, there are various other forms of communication that may seem more plausible in a given situation.

Second, with advent of computer chips and the potential of their technological capacities, all types of computers have taken over the developed countries in the esteem that they will make business and personal lives more organized and easily accessible.

Speed is another big factor in determining the professional and cultural implications of the World Wide Web.  As industry professionals in a capitalistic environment, we expect to be able to get our content to the world as quickly as possible.  The Internet and the invention of the World Wide Web have expedited this possibility.

From the perspective of an artist, this technology can be used for a variety of purposes.  First and foremost it is what we have been talking about for the past four weeks.  It is blogging.  Blogging is a way of expressing and delivering almost any kind of information, whether it is text, images, videos, music, or links to other pages.  It is typically created in a chronological order, meaning the posts are organized by date with the most recent post being at the top of the list.  This method of posting facilitates an up-to-date agenda for people who have access to the Internet to view.  These blogs provide the necessary information to link people to reliable locations and view what the artist wants them to see.

Of course, since artists need to pull in their potential customers in our current pull economy, the blogs need be very fancy.  This is accomplished using another form of useful technology called widgets.  Widgets are online devices that are imported and directly anchored to an external website.  The website that supports the widget displays the information in a user-friendly manner.  It acts a lot like software on a computer offline, only is fully functional and accessible across many platforms.  This makes the power of the World Wide Web virtually infinite.

Finally, the last biggest use of Web technology is innovation.  In the past, before the days of computing and when information was transferred along books and newspapers, a lot of content was unidirectional, meaning that people obtained information from an authority or source that had credentials.  Now, not only are people able to reply back or post their own articles and books online, these people can critique each other in any direction cultivating a multi-directional network.  This truly augments the power of computing networking technologies because now information does not come in an only factually based form.  It is now a device that spawns opinions and various points of view.  Furthermore, all of this information can be access at nearly the speed of light.  Now that’s powerful.

As you can see, the globe is capable of harnessing the power of networks and the Web to assist all kinds of goals including business, personal lives, self-supporting artists, and more.  We can now communicate effectively on the Web and invent in a new world.

Multimedia is cool, everyone’s doin’ it.

I have a website called The Sphere of DJ Truby.  I created this website with the intention of displaying personal information about me.  It ranges from personal projects to thoughts about politics.  It includes random things I find online to work I have completed in school and explanations about interesting topics.  Unfortunately, I have not had the time to organize all of my files so I do not have the projects section fully completed.  For the purpose of my Web Fluency class, I must professionally inform you of my work at IPR oriented toward musical multimedia content.  Low and behold, The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening half completed!

One of my favorite video games of all time is the one that came on the Gameboy Pocket, which is in black and white, about a fantasy world and teenage boy.  He is a Hylian who winds up on an island with no sense of where he is.  He meets a girl who seems to have a serious connection with the island and can feel the positive energy.  The climax of the game takes Link, the Hylian, to a mountain called Mt. Tamarach.  The situation at the mountain is very intense and a result has very invoking music.  I chose to make a techno remix of it which unfortunately is only half completed.  Nevertheless, please listen to this track.  I love hearing it over and over even though it isn’t done.  That’s how awesome I think it is.

There was also an assignment we had to do that required us to make a biography of a producer.  We were each given a producer to write about and then turn that report into some sort of multimedia project.  I chose to make a video for the sake of redundancy and paradoxical creativeness.

Since I could not find a lot of relevant videos on Phil Ramone, I had to make do with as many pictures as I could find.  I finally decided that my goal would be to make the transitions between the pictures as creative and original as possible.  It’s possible that I did a poor job, but I like my final result a lot.

Finally, I would like to share with you another track I made.  This comes from another Zelda game called The Legend of Zelda; Ocarina of Time.  It is a remade version of the Requiem of Spirit and actually does not have the same feel as the original.  The introduction is the same, but it progresses into a punk-type scene.  Go ahead and listen to it.

Hyper me up, Scotty

HTTP and FTP are beautiful things.  They are the things that allow people to see exactly what you are seeing right now.   About twenty years ago, this wasn’t the case.  Millions of individuals were not able to log onto a bank account and process a bill or take a quiz hosted by a university to submit their grade.  This was a new concept to people at the time.  Even during the dot com boom, HTTP and FTP were not imagined to be the way they are now.

Everyday computer usage. As you can see in this blatant picture, a man attempts to connect to the ARPANET to download an iPhone application in the year 1923 to revolt against the future salt crash in the hopes that Wikipedia will reveal the deepest secrets of ferrets.

HTTP stands for Hypertext Transfer Protocol.  It is the way computers communicate with each other in terms of how browsers and servers function, how web pages are accessed and appear on the computer screen, and how people can potentially interact with each other.  The internet has been around for several decades now.  It evolved from the ARPANET which was researched and developed by the Unites States Department of Defense.  Once the concept of the internet became popular in the 1990’s, HTTP became the standard protocol for use in the World Wide Web.  Thanks to Tim Berners-Lee, who started writing the code for the application layer protocol, we now have a fully functioning communications system many people take for granted.

This is you in text form. Enjoy.

Eventually, there became a need for an organization to develop protocols and guidelines for how the World Wide Web should work.  In 1994, this organization was founded.  Now Tim Berners-Lee’s home page, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) took that responsibility.  Do not click here to visit the site.  It won’t work.  If you try clicking here, I will prove it to you.

Imagining a dialogue between two people in the English language is analogous to two computers communicating with each other.  The two computers speak a language called TCP/IP.  This stands for Transfer Control Protocol/Internet Protocol.  It is presently the standard protocol used for networking.  There are different types of application layers for this protocol for different types of “computer dialogue”.  Some popular ones, which are delivered though ports, are HTTP though port 80, FTP through port 21, and SMTP through port 25.  For a full list, click here once.  If you click more than once, then the world will divide itself by zero and implode…once.

FTP is a client-server system that functions similar to HTTP, but not quite the same.  The application of HTTP works with text transmissions linking to documents whereas FTP is oriented towards transmitting files significantly larger than small document sizes.  SMTP is for sending emails.  Both of these are analogous to sending mail and packages in person.  Watch the video below on the infamous chipmunk stare.  I could not find any dealing with TCP/IP and the assignment does not require I make my own vlog about this subject.

Artists and their models

Bands and artists work hard at their career to get out of it as much as they can.  The prime goal of any career is earn a profit.  However, in the music industry, it is also very important to make a connection with people to develop fans.  If an entity can do this, whether it is with a record label or individually, that entity is guaranteed to succeed.  This is because it is following the CwF + RtB model: Connect with Fans + Reason to Buy = success.  I will now give two examples of those who follow this model and two that don’t.

Lady Gaga is a professional artist in the rock scene.  She goes on tour all the time and performs several times a week.  She travels all over the world due to her popularity.  She became popular through a series of events, but mainly because she was and still is passionate about music.  She pursued it at young age after dropping her private school and now is known globally.  Her website is gets millions of hits by giving access to social networking sites including myspace, facebook, and twitter.  Furthermore, she has simple categories to sift through, one of which is an online store.  By providing access to her music and ease of communication, that is, whatever can be achieved in such large bureaucratic numbers, and products that can be sold through her high-traffic site, Lady Gaga succeeds with this model.

Looking into the Dead Kennedys, the band formed with the hopes of being able to play ska-punk and rock music.  Not too long after performing in venues, the Dead Kennedys made themselves known by their crude acts in their titles and performances.  To this day they still go on tour and sell their music.  They also travel around the world, and as a result are reviewed by many sources.  Because of their really good music, ability to expand in locations they play, can craft a different style of musical playing, and have always caused controversy in the past, it is not hard for this group to succeed with model either.

Nowadays, blogging online and leaving media on the Internet seems to be the best way to connect with fans.  One can sell thousands of dollars of music by doing this.  There are other social networking sites too that most people are not familiar with.  They include, but definitely are not limited to, eventful, last fm, purevolume, jambase, virb, bands in town, and mojam.  Rush of Fools took it many steps further and entertained fans on a cruise in the Lido Deck.  Since they are Christian band, their way of connecting with fans is by praising God.  Chances are, since they are there, they also like the music Rush of Fools plays.

A couple of examples of bands and artists that don’t succeed apparently don’t use this model.  This is also probably the reason not too many people know about them.  PovertyNeck Hillbillies don’t have their own website, but supposedly have good music.  They released three albums, but are not publicized enough it seems to get massive amounts of their content to consumers.  This appears to not follow the above model.  Also, The Postal Service.  This is a very good band because I have heard them myself.  I am sure they are popular, so I know that people have a reason to buy.  By looking at their website, though, I do not really see how they connect with fans on a massive level.  There does not seem to be any social networking online or tour dates section.  These examples explain why they are not immensely successful.