Encyclopedia of Life

A very interesting website described as: "an online evolving library of all life on the planet," the Encyclopedia of Life is a source of podcasts and articles useful for many types of listening, reading and discussion activities.

Link: http://eol.org

The podcasts are about 5 minutes long, so they're very practical to use in the classroom or to assign for homework. The narrator is easy to understand, speaking very clearly and at a balanced tempo. In addition, each podcast has a downloadable script in pdf-format.

Very useful for teachers are the educational materials in each section. The EOL Podcast Guide for Educators includes "an overview of the podcast and features of each episode and links to relevant educational materials."

There are also interviews ("Meet the scientist") of the people involved in each of the topic areas.

An example I used was the segment with an interview of Edward O. Wilson, in which he talks about how he became interested in ants. My robotic engineering students found this interesting because we had looked at material about how "robotic swarms" were inspired by the swarm behavior of ants. My biomedical engineering students were interested in segments focusing on scientists in their field. This material led to a discussion of how scientists and engineers become interested in their field, and this, in turn, inspired students to talk about how and when they became interested in their own field of engineering.

Podcast with E.O. Wilson: http://education.eol.org/podcast/eo-wilson
Podcast script: http:education.eol.org/sites/default/files/EOWilson.pdf

Cheetah Robot text to improve reading skills

I often have students read articles about innovations in their field. This promotes class discussion and helps focus them on model text types (for example, process descriptions: see Posts 2, 7, 16, for example). In addition, I use these texts to work on students' reading skills. An example I used recently is an article from MIT's website: MIT 'cheetah' robot rivals running animals in efficiency (March 8, 2013), which describes their "Cheetah Robot" and the energy-efficient motor they are developing for it.

Link to article: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2013/mit-cheetah-robot-0308.html

When I assign an article for students to read, I also give them a list of questions about the topic as well as language features to look for in the article. This helps to focus them on features they might not otherwise notice, and also provides points of discussion for the classroom. And, quite frankly, it also increases the chances that students will actually read the text carefully before the lesson!

The language features I like to focus on are those that are somehow related to the text type (description, process, explanation), and the innovation itself (in this article: movement, energy, improvement, e.g.). Here are some features that I had students identify in this article, with only a few examples of each (there are many more for each feature):

Areas of the text that explain or give examples:

• about the size and weight of an actual cheetah
• such as a push, or a change in terrain
• such as energy lost through a heavy-footed step
• simulating the structure of tendons along a bone
• also known as cost of transport

Words/phrases that collocate with "energy":

• wasted energy
• minimize energy waste
• energy dissipates
• capture this energy
• reduce energy loss

Verbs of what researchers "do":

• design
• propose
• analyze
• simulate
• hypothesize

Examples of language that indicates change:

• quickly adjust
• respond to outside forces
• minimize
• (further) reduce
• made a huge difference

Comparatives/superlatives:

• fewer gears
• less machinery
• more efficient than
• more powerful
• simpler

Verbs of movement:

• outpace
• trot (continuously)
• gallop
• traverse
• move along

The feedback I've gotten from students indicates that they appreciate the focused work on vocabulary and how it helps them learn vocabulary relevant to their field. In addition, they practice a way of reading a text that they hadn't done before.

Ethical consumer to ethical engineer

An article in the blog “Ask Jack” in the technology section of The Guardian focuses on an interesting question: how can an ethical consumer buy an ethical tablet, or is there any such thing as an ethical tablet?

In my university’s engineering programs all students take courses in ethics. This is fairly standard now, since all types of engineers have to consider the public’s health and safety along with technical concerns in their profession.

However, my students sometimes find it difficult to see how ethics is relevant to them. So I try to find cases and information that they can relate to.

This article allows the group to consider ethical issues from the point of view of the consumer (which students are) as well as from that of the engineer (which they will be). In fact, there are so many issues involved in buying a tablet, that it is very difficult to be an ethical consumer in this case.

Issues raised in the article include the conditions in the factories where tablets and their components are produced, the companies supplying the raw materials, tablet design related to recycling, and marketing considerations. Of course, the features of the tablet itself are very important for the consumer, so these issues must also be taken into account.

The author ends by suggesting various ways to improve working conditions in factories that produce these devices, but adds, “…the whole consumer electronics industry needs to clean up its act.”

At this point students can brainstorm ideas for how this could be done. This can lead to a greater awareness of ethical considerations of their future (or current) workplace, and which issues are most important to them.

Link to article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/askjack/2012/apr/19/ask-jack-ethical-tablet

Biobots

North Carolina State University’s iBionics Laboratory has developed a way to create “cyborg cockroaches” to help find victims of disasters such as earthquakes.

The cockroaches are fitted with wireless control systems that let a human operator hear sounds of distress or see via the camera system.

The National Geographic website has an article with an interview with Assistant Professor of Engineering, Alper Bozkurt, who led the cockroach biobot project.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/09/120907-cyborg-cockroaches-video-science-remote-control-robots-bugs/

My robotic engineering students found this extremely interesting, and the article generated a lot of discussion of further uses of such a biobot, and ideas for other animals that could be used in similar projects.

Innovations in communication technology

Since the beginning of the year, there have been three innovations in mobile phones that my IT students have been interested in: Samsung Galaxy S4, Polytron Technologies transparent mobile phone, and BlackBerry Z10.

The website of The Guardian has short videos of each innovation.

The Samsung Galaxy S4 video is 02:28 long, and lists the features that are innovative: eye-tracking technology, 5-inch full HD AMOLED screen, 13-megapixel rear camera and the latest Android operating system. http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/video/2013/mar/15/samsung-galaxy-s4-video

The innovations of the transparent mobile phone include images on both sides of phone, conductive glass, 4.3-inch screen, and that it’s 25% lighter than iPhone 5. The time of the video is only 00:53.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/video/2013/feb/20/transparent-mobile-phone-developed-video

The video of the BlackBerry Z10, presented by Charles Arthur, Technology Editor of The Guardian, is the longest at 06:03, but also includes questions about how competitive this innovation will be on the market, concluding that it’s more likely to be successful for corporations rather than private consumers.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/video/2013/jan/30/blackberry-z10-video-review

Which innovations and features did my students find most interesting?

The video of the transparent mobile phone generated the liveliest reaction from my students. Some said it seemed unbelievable, and would need more input before they could understand how it worked. This inspired some of them to search for more information to present the following lesson.

For BlackBerry Z10 they felt that the most interesting feature was the separation of private and work areas, but added that Android was planning to add this to.

They were not very impressed with the Samsung S4, saying it was too much like the S3 (which some of them have). They felt that the new features were interesting, but not really necessary. But students who do not have the S3 model said they would definitely be interested in this new model.

The information about these innovations in mobile phone technology is useful for IT students, as well as students of business and marketing. But since so many of our students have mobile phones, this topic could result in an interesting discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of each model, as well as speculation about innovations of the future.

The videos themselves are short process descriptions, and focus on innovation, marketing, and comparison of features of mobile phones.

Technology to catch cheating on online tests

As more online courses are being offered for credit, the problem arises of how to monitor online exams for those courses. Such issues include knowing whether the test taker is cheating or not, and whether the test taker is really the student who registered for the course.

A New York Times article from 2 March 2013, “Keeping an Eye on Online Test-Takers,” focuses on developing technologies to deal with these issues. These technologies are for both monitoring test takers by remote proctoring, and also for determining whether the student taking the exam is the same person that has been participating in the course.

The topic of this article could lead to an interesting class discussion about what the students would design for this purpose. Many students might be motivated to cheat on online tests if they could get away with it, but as future engineering professionals they would also be aware of the consequences of passing a course through cheating rather than personal ability and expertise.

Students could brainstorm their own solutions to the problem, including the kind of monitoring they would design. It’s like having expert hackers design software to prevent hacking. Then they could compare their ideas with those presented in the article.

In addition, they could the discuss the advantages and disadvantages of the different techniques presented. These techniques could be rated according to which are more efficient, practical, effective, ethical, economical (for student and for testing institution).

Some of the ideas also raise ethical issues. For example:

• Cheating itself is, of course, an ethical issue. Professionals who earned a degree by cheating might not be able to fulfill their professional duties as well as colleagues who earned their credentials legitimately.
• But developing eavesdropping technology for tests could also lead to abuse in other areas (see my blog post “Big Brother is tracking you,” 26 February 2013).

A computer science professor is quoted in article, “Having a camera watch you, and software keep track of your mouse clicks, that does smack of Big Brother,” he said. “But it doesn’t seem any worse than an instructor at the front constantly looking at you, and it may even be more efficient.” Would your students agree?

The article: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/03/technology/new-technologies-aim-to-foil-online-course-cheating.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20130303

Source of information about innovations

Innovations report is a website that collects articles about innovations in technology from industry websites and professional journals. The description on its website includes: “With content from more than 8,200 partners and 201,000 publications, innovations-report offers up-to-date R&D results and information on leading-edge technologies, processes, products and services from innovative companies and well-known research institutes around the world, thus making us a key driver of global innovation.”

The site has a list of 20 engineering areas to choose from, and within each area there are further subdivisions with a long list of articles. Examples of engineering areas include: architecture & construction, business & finance, health & medicine, information technology, power & electrical engineering, transportation & logistics.

Within the area machine engineering, “innovations-report offers informative reports and articles covering technologies such as automation, motion, power train, energy, conveyor, plastics, lightweight construction, logistics/warehousing, measurement systems, machine tools and control engineering.”

The articles are complete and detailed, but short and focused enough for intermediate students and above to be able to read. The article, “Technical update for embedded industrial PC’s” (from Siemens) in the machine engineering section is only 297 words. The information for the third-generation Intel Core i7 processors includes a technical description and a description of the features that make it innovative.

The list of subject areas is extensive, and within each area there are so many articles that information can be found for any type of engineering class or student.

Not only can these articles be used for reading and class work, but students can be encouraged to visit the site on their own to focus on the specific areas that are of interest to them, either personally or professionally.

The website: http://www.innovations-report.com/index.php

Big Brother is tracking you

An article in The Guardian (10 February 2013) reports on software developed by defense firm Raytheon that is able to track people through the social media sites they use.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/feb/10/software-tracks-social-media-defence

As part of the article, there is a link to a video showing a step-by-step demonstration of the software program by a Raytheon employee.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/video/2013/feb/10/raytheon-software-tracks-online-video

Raytheon claims the software (named RIOT for Rapid Information Overlay Technology) has not yet been sold, but the capability is certainly there.

Here is yet another example of technology that has been developed before any guidelines are in place for controlling it. I think this issue is an extremely important one to discuss with our students, who will be the innovators of the future. What applications can they predict for this software? What laws or guidelines would they want to see made to ensure that it won’t be misused and abused?

For another video related to this topic, see “Plurality” – a short film (14:15) written by Ryan Condal and directed by Dennis Liu. It takes place in the year 2023 when “The Grid” is able to track everyone even more efficiently than RIOT can. The purpose of The Grid is to reduce crime, but the film raises the issue of the extent to which we lose privacy in order to increase security.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IzryBRPwsog

Obsolescence

In the various fields our students are working in, there are so many new developments that will make items we use now obsolete. And I’m sure many of us can think of items we grew up with that are obsolete now.

An interesting website is Museum of Obsolete Objects: http://www.youtube.com/mooojvm

Although the narrator’s voice might be a bit difficult for students to understand (sounds robotic), the clips are short (generally ranging from 1 to 2 minutes). The format of each object is a short description of the object and its use, then an example of it being used. These short clips are good examples of process descriptions.

An example: The typewriter (1829-1993):

“A typewriter is a mechanical device with keys that, when pressed, cause characters, numbers or punctuation to be printed on a medium, usually paper. Example...”

Interestingly, the final object is the computer mouse, listed as obsolete since 2015 (not sure why this year was chosen). Would your students know when the mouse was invented (1964)?

The description is: “The mouse was a human-controlled pointing device that detected two-dimensional motion relative to its supporting surface. The mouse was used most commonly to control graphical user interfaces of computer systems. Example.”

A total of 15 objects are pictured, ranging from the quill (obsolete since 1860) to the computer mouse.

Possible activities:

• Students describe an object and its use, then compare it to the museum’s description.
• Students think of other objects in their field that are now obsolete and create a description for this website.
• Have students choose a current object and add an “episode of the future” (see example of Computer Mouse 2015).
• Students can also research why a particular object became obsolete: what happened by the year of obsolescence listed?  Was the object no longer necessary for some reason, or was it replaced by something else?

Innovative glass for electronic devices

Corning has developed an innovative product called Willow Glass™, which is extremely flexible and will allow the development of curved electronic devices.

Corning’s website says the glass “will help enable thin, light and cost-efficient applications including today’s slim displays and the smart surfaces of the future. The thinness, strength and flexibility of the glass has the potential to enable displays to be “wrapped” around a device or structure.”

Corning Willow glass: http://www.corning.com/displaytechnologies/en/products/flexible.aspx

Students can brainstorm ideas for how this glass could be used in a variety of electronics products. Then, compare their ideas with the applications listed on the website for PCs, Handhelds, and TVs:

http://www.corning.com/displaytechnologies/en/products/applications/index.aspx?linkidentifier=id&itemid=5093

The website also makes available various technical presentations related to the glass, such as “The strength of thin, flexible glass sheets”

http://www.corning.com/WorkArea/showcontent.aspx?id=51177

Students can use this not only to gather more information about the product, but to comment on the use of visuals to present information and aid understanding – a very useful skill for presenters to develop.