CSCI 8970 – Colloquium Series – Fall 2010 – Eight Event

Robots and the Human

Monday, November 1, 2010

While Robotics is not as advanced in the United States as it is in Japan, the University of Minnesota had the privilege of hosting Oussama Khatib, a professor and researcher at Stanford University whose job specializes in increasing the sensitivity of robots to increase their reactions to and safety in relation to the environment. Robots are complicated in both their hardware and software development. Dr. Khatib began his presentation by showing a video of a machine trying to feed a person over and over again and how without proper engineering the robot hindered rather than helped the human.  Currently robots such as the Puma 560 have a payload 22N or 1.16 which is much higher than the human average payload of 62n or 0.04. Dr. Khatib is currently working on robots that have a safety payload even better than a human at 60n (DM2) and 33n for the S2p robot.…

Bolman and Deal: Chapter 6 Notes – Human Resources

Bolman, L. G., & Deal, T. E. (2003). Reframing Organizations: Artistry, Choice, and Leadership. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

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–        Following a scientific approach to industry, men were originally seen as pieces in a Taylorean sense,  yet when businesses try to cut down labor expenses and be “lean and mean”, they at times created a short term gain, but over the long run the workers would be discouraged, demoralized, and depressed

–        GE despite paying workers well was recently faced with a strike. The redundancy and repetitiveness of the work led the workers to strike against the management.

–        In an example, even when a tough foreman was introduce to replace a worker friendly foreman, after a while, he was forced to give some slack to the workers as they began to sabotage the industry.

–        Some businesses such as Southwest have benefited from recruiting a good hard working labor force, but it has not been emulated by other airlines.…

CLASSICS OF ORGANIZATION THEORY

November 8, 2010

#9 – The Economy of Incentives – Chester I. Barnard (Pg. 93-102)

What is an incentive? Which incentives are most useful and when? Those are some of the questions that Barnard work addresses. In his work, he divided incentives into personal inducements or incentives that could be given to an individual and general incentives or incentives which required a greater more general change. While money is influential and is one of the changes that can be used as an incentive, many individuals do not work for material gain. Prestige, power, pride, desirable physical conditions can motivate an individual to work or to cooperate. An individual can cooperative by being coerced, rationalizing the opportunity or having the motives inculcated (Barnard, 2005).

Reading Notes

– “Regardless of his history or his obligations he must be induced to cooperate, or there can be no cooperation.” – pg 93

– “Given a man of a certain state of mind, of certain attitudes, or governed by certain motives, he can be induced to contribute to an organization by a given combination of these objective incentives, positive or negative.”…

Hiring Superman

November 7, 2010

Regarding whether or not to hire Michelle Rhee, I would probably not hire her. While I agree with the need to reform the current tenure system and promote a form of student achievement reward system, her attitude is very confrontational and promotes animosity. Yes, she is not concerned about “being liked”, but labeling teachers as the primary source of student performance problems is overly simplifying a larger problem. Surely, some individuals need to be laid off, yet including rather than excluding the teacher’s union in those decisions would be helpful. She seems like a bulldozer rather than a compromising or charismatic figure.

While Chapman et al (2000) concluded that only minor changes resulted from China’s pre-service teacher training program, it is difficult from those results to conclude that pre-service teacher training would also have marginal results elsewhere. Chapman’s (2000) article mentioned that a previous study had concluded that pre-service teacher training “was positively related to student learning in only 12 of the 26 studies that included amount of teacher schooling as a variable.”…

CSCI 8970 – Colloquium Series – Fall 2010 – Ninth Event

Exploring the Structure of On-Line Social Networks: The Role of Positive and Negative Interactions

Cray Distinguished Speaker Series

Monday, November 1, 2010

Is there a relationship between friends and our relationships with others? What can be extracted from social networks and the newly accessible data they have accumulated regarding people’s interaction? Jon Kleinberg, a well known scholar in computer science is trying to answer this question by looking at variables such as reputation, recommendation and ranking. Things were previously invisible are now leaving traces. Captivated by Stanley Milgram’s six degrees of separation study were letters were at randomly dispersed in Indiana to see how many of them reached Boston (1/3^rd actually made it). Where he came up with an estimated distance or optimal exponent of 2.Now with data from online social networks  such as Facebook and LiveJournal research resulted in 1/rank (v,w)^1.05 or  1/rank (v,w)^0.95 and a distance of d –> rank – d^2.…

Alfonso Sintjago – EDPA 5144 – Dr. Arthur Harkins – DramaTech

10/31/2010

INTERNATIONAL DRAMATECH INNOVATION SIMULATION #1

Please choose a country to which you are consulting within the near future (Dominican Republic). Your proposal is to introduce simulation learning games into representative samples of the school-age population (or other populations/cohorts) (Give every child a mobile device with augmented reality capabilities, learning games, and set up a repair shop, the device will be only usable through a particular phone network and through a particular security system which will reduce theft of the equipment). Clarify why simulations (or games or simulation gaming) have been chosen by you, the consultant, as viable tools for improving learning in the host country.

TIME FRAME: WITHIN THE NEXT 2-5 YEARS (5 years into the future)

THE INDIGENOUS PLAYERS ARE: Every child under 10 years old in the Dominican Republic from the start date of the program (Oct 30, 2015).…

Is a shorter attention span increasing our creativity?
What style of leadership is more likely to be emulated?

10/21/2010

Lebron James, Mahatma Gandhi, Warren Buffet, Mark Zuckenberg, Andrew Carnegie, etc? Do people want to emulate you more when they see you as financially successful or is a person who is altruistic more likely to be emulated? Recently a visitor from Uganda spoke to one of my classes. Beatrice had risen from being one of eighteen children in a family, from being a woman who could not own property to someone who has a school and is a leader in the community and is a strong promoter of women’s education and women’s rights. During her lecture I continued to wonder how success and being a community leader had transformed her lifestyle and how were her living standards in comparison to her local community? Does she now live in a larger house? Does she own a nice car?…

Initial Interest in Researching iPads

10/19/2010

Dear Dr. Ernst

As incoming PhD students, we were encouraged by the news that CEHD will begin a pilot program and provide iPads for 450 incoming students. We believe mobile learning and augmented reality devices will increasingly play a role in the education of tomorrow. CEHD innovative and forward thinking initiatives will not only increase the incoming student body satisfaction, but it will also allow them to remain up to date with one of the most current technological advancements. While the iPad itself may not be the tool of the future, augmented reality mobile devices will only increase their processing speed and power over the next few years. In addition, the interrelationship between technology and the environment will increasingly become ubiquitous and invisible.

As PhD students and researchers we are particularly interested in the implementation details of this initiative and the particular goals of the study.…

Applying for a Small Grant – Global Spotlight

10/19/2010

Dear Carol,

As International (from Venezuela and Guatemala respectively) students of the OLPD department we find it difficult to engage with the work done by scholars in Latin America. We are interested in bridging this gap and increasing the  dialogue between the University of Minnesota and the global south. The Global Spotlight focus for the upcoming two years on Latin America and Urbanization, as well as our appreciation of the various events the OIP office hosted during the  previous Global Spotlight initiative, has inspired and motivated us to contact prominent Latin American scholars to hopefully engage with them as part of the event speaker series within OIP. Furthermore, we intend to engage with these scholars by inviting students to respond to the talks in two ways. First by providing them with the chance to discuss with scholars they would not have the opportunity to meet.…

Bridging the Digital Divide – Educacion Gratuita en Linea (EGL)

Midterm – Johnstone – October 19, 2010

In recent years, the Dominican Republic (D.R.) has attempted to modernize its education system through a series of overhauling initiatives, among them the Plan Decenal or Ten Years Plan, which lasted from 1992-2002. Through this plan, the country promoted the modernization of the educational structure, the introduction of new technologies, the promotion of literacy, the strengthening of vocational education, an increased investment in education, and increased community involvement (OECD, p. 104). Implicit in these reforms was the belief that integration into the world economy will benefit the D.R. and contribute to its development.

The Plan Decenal (1992-2002) reforms yielded various positive results, for example, the number of children between 6 and 17 years old attending school increased from 71.3% in 1991 to 86.4% in 2002 (OECD, 2008). In addition, D.R. has made significant inroads in meeting the UNESCO’s “Education For All” goals by increasing access to primary education as well as promoting an increase in the literacy rate from 70% in 1990, 78.5% in 2000, and 81.6% in 2008 (World Bank, 2010).…