Harnessing the Internet in Education

While reading my daily news on cnn.com I found an interesting article titled, “Man Jailed For Creating Crosswalk, Vows More” (www.theindychannel.com/news/15181455/detail.html). The article sounded interesting and I read about the incident involving a young gentleman who believed he had a moral obligation to paint a crosswalk at an intersection for the safety of the local residents because the town government refused too. His actions and recent touch up work resulted in him being jailed for 10 hours. The article provided the exact intersection in Muncie, Indiana.

Intrigued by the topic and of the defendant’s belief he was morally obliged to perform this task; I wanted a first hand look of the crosswalk. I opened my web browser and went to maps.google.com I entered North St, Muncie, Indiana. The site brought me to W. North St. I knew the intersection was North and Dicks Street. I zoomed in on the area and moving from west to east I looked for Dicks Street. After locating the intersection, which is about 7 blocks east of Ball Memorial Hospital I zoomed in as far as Google Maps would allow. I clicked on Street View and was able to view the intersection as if I was standing in the middle of it. I scrolled left until straight in front of me was the painted crosswalk.

The crosswalk was very convincing and looked professionally painted. I’m sure with a little more research I could find information on the traffic in the local area. This intersection is near both a hospital and Ball State University, which tends to lead to more congested and dangerous traffic situations.

Try finding the intersection yourself. Below are a summary of the links I used plus the link to the final solution (the crosswalk view).

Article - www.theindychannel.com/news/15181455/detail.html
Map – maps.google.com
Intersection – North St. & Dicks St., Muncie, Indiana

Link to crosswalk view - The answer.

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Learning Something New - Wikis

As this new semester starts I was preparing to teach one of my night classes at County College of Morris, Routing I. This semester we are using an updated online book and I was reading through the first chapter to become more comfortable with the new content and organization of the book. I came upon the topic of wikis and I thought well this is a nice addition to the book. Wikis are something I do not have much experience with and had no intention of dealing with in the future. After reading through the books description of a wiki I clicked on a link that led to a video explanation of wikis put into general terms. I was so impressed by the video that I am now looking for a way to include wikis into our current technology production.

I've embedded the video I watched so that you too can have the opportunity to learn more about wikis. If you are interested in starting a free wiki wetpaint.com offers free accounts.



(credit: Lee LeFever, Common Craft)