The Diigo group that I joined this week is Michael M. Grant’s Viral Notebook. Michael M. Grant is a professor at the University of Memphis, focusing on learning environments, graphic and instructional design to support learning, and specific learner characteristics. There are a number of really good posts about education and technology in this group. Dr. Grant also maintains a blog viral-notebook.com and a well-organized wiki that others might find useful.
Social media sites have a great deal of appeal to both young and old. Individuals use social networking sites like Facebook to connect with friends and family, share pictures, play games, and commemorate life events. Individuals use other social networking sites like Twitter to share brief posts, pictures, news stories, and comments about events and news stories. Twitter is becoming an important site for users to advertise their business or promote their blog or website. There are a number of photo and video sharing websites, and social networking sites for practically any interest. Social networks allow individuals to share what is interesting to them.
Social media websites can have tremendous potential for use in the classroom. They allow users to share, collaborate, and create a learning network. Networks allow people to make powerful connections with one another, connections that can enhance learning. Many schools block access to social media websites, and there are security and privacy issues that must be addressed when using social media. Some people and schools view social media as time wasters, so this perception needs to be altered if social media is to be used for educational purposes.
I do spend some time on social networking sites, like Facebook and Twitter. I use Facebook to check out what kind of posts and pictures my friends are sharing, and sometimes to share pictures, check-ins or posts of my own. On Twitter, I read the posts of those users that I follow. I have many users that I follow organized into lists, by interest, location, or type or user. I have several lists on Twitter, from locals to foodies, celebrities to members of the media. Twitter is a great place to follow breaking news stories. I have to admit that it’s kind of cool if someone influential retweets a tweet that you posted, or acknowledges your response to a post of yours. By the way, did you know that actor Hugh Grant became a father again today? He announced it on Twitter.
There are some benefits to participating on social media sites. You can get a lot of information quickly, read about what other people are interested in, learn new things, and become acquainted with others in virtual ways. There is so much information available, it is easy to get lost in it, and it can be difficult at first to determine what is meaningful and what is not. Like anything else in life, a balance between the virtual world and other interests with people and activities and the real world are important.
Saturday, February 16, 2013
Saturday, February 9, 2013
Gaming
What do I think about gaming in the classroom?
Gaming in the classroom is not a subject with which I was at all familiar before this week’s readings. Sure, I was familiar with on line gaming, and games on social networking sites, but had not considered gaming for educational purposes very much. Prensky (2007) distinguishes the difference between simulations and games simply. Simulations are about the behavior of things or systems, while gaming is about a fun user experience. As this was the first article I read this week, I would have agreed with that differentiation and not though much more about gaming for education. After reading more about games and simulations, I would have to argue that they are much more than that. Games and simulations definitely have a place in the classroom.
ROAR, The Radford Outdoor Augmented Reality Project, uses GPS receivers on handheld devices to engage students, who adopt different roles, in collaborative games to promote teamwork and problem solving skills. Students also learn science or history content. The Powerhouse Museum Augmented Reality Application allows individuals to use their smartphones to explore Sydney, Australia as it appeared 100 years ago. The layars app can be downloaded for use on a smartphone. I have been unsuccessful so far in customizing the app in order to use it with the coordinates for Sydney, as identified on the website, in order to do some exploration of my own. The Future is Wild uses augmented reality and a user’s own imagination to learn more about animals and the world far into the future. A number of different components allow the user to view and review the materials in a variety of ways. YouTube has a number of The Future is Wild videos available for viewing.
Games offer students a variety of unique opportunities when contrasted with traditional classroom experiences. Games keep individuals engaged. Goals are generally part of the gaming experience. Prensky (2007) mentions the nature of games allowing users to “level-up” to improve and perfect their skills. This encourages users to persist in their practice, with the reward being the ability to move to the next level. Games often require the gamer to adapt and change strategies frequently, and the gamers progress provides them feedback on the decisions or changes they make. Gamers learn from their decisions. They also learn that they can make different decisions and receive feedback pretty quickly on those decisions and whether they succeeded or failed, and they can try again. Games give the gamer a sense of control over their environment. If used for education, games can give students more of a sense of control over their own learning experience.
Augmented reality is used for highly interactive and visual forms of learning. It has a unique ability to respond to human input, and it can be effectively utilized in scenarios where participating in the actual activity is prohibitive. Johnson, Smith, Willis, Levine, and Haywood, (2011) note the power of augmented reality to allow users to construct their own learning and more easily transfer learning from one context to another. The ability to construct one’s own learning and relate it to prior learning makes the experience more meaningful to the individual.
Strangman and Hall (2003) reference research suggesting that students with learning disabilities who used simulations perform better than students with learning disabilities who did not use simulations. This could have significant implications in designing learning strategies for students with learning disabilities. The United States military has used simulations for years as a practical alternative to train their members. Chang (2009) cites military spokespersons claiming that simulations are the “next best thing” to real world training.
Gaming holds real potential for application in education and beyond. Gartner (2011) challenges businesses to take the opportunity for their world to emulate gaming rather than the other way around. The characteristics of games and simulations result in more engagement, and organizations can benefit by having more engaged customers and employees alike. As gaming becomes more prevalent in education, we will see it used more creatively in business and we will see a different education, business and world culture as a result.
Chang, Hiro (2009). Simulators always valuable in military training. Retrieved February 9, 2013 from http://www.army.mil/article/19599/
Gartner (2011). Gartner Says By 2015, More Than 50 Percent of Organizations That Manage Innovation Processes Will Gamify Those Processes [Press release].
Retrieved February 9, 2013 from http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/1629214
Johnson, L., Smith, R., Willis, H., Levine, A., and Haywood, K., (2011). The 2011 Horizon Report. Austin, Texas: The New Media Consortium.
Prensky, M., Sims vs. Games: The Difference Defined. Edutopia, March 9, 2007.
Retrieved February 9, 2013 from http://www.edutopia.org/sims-vs-games
Strangman, N., & Hall, T. (2003). Virtual reality/simulations. Wakefield, MA: National Center on Accessing the General Curriculum. Retrieved February 9, 2013 from http://aim.cast.org/learn/historyarchive/backgroundpapers/virtual_simula...
Gaming in the classroom is not a subject with which I was at all familiar before this week’s readings. Sure, I was familiar with on line gaming, and games on social networking sites, but had not considered gaming for educational purposes very much. Prensky (2007) distinguishes the difference between simulations and games simply. Simulations are about the behavior of things or systems, while gaming is about a fun user experience. As this was the first article I read this week, I would have agreed with that differentiation and not though much more about gaming for education. After reading more about games and simulations, I would have to argue that they are much more than that. Games and simulations definitely have a place in the classroom.
ROAR, The Radford Outdoor Augmented Reality Project, uses GPS receivers on handheld devices to engage students, who adopt different roles, in collaborative games to promote teamwork and problem solving skills. Students also learn science or history content. The Powerhouse Museum Augmented Reality Application allows individuals to use their smartphones to explore Sydney, Australia as it appeared 100 years ago. The layars app can be downloaded for use on a smartphone. I have been unsuccessful so far in customizing the app in order to use it with the coordinates for Sydney, as identified on the website, in order to do some exploration of my own. The Future is Wild uses augmented reality and a user’s own imagination to learn more about animals and the world far into the future. A number of different components allow the user to view and review the materials in a variety of ways. YouTube has a number of The Future is Wild videos available for viewing.
Games offer students a variety of unique opportunities when contrasted with traditional classroom experiences. Games keep individuals engaged. Goals are generally part of the gaming experience. Prensky (2007) mentions the nature of games allowing users to “level-up” to improve and perfect their skills. This encourages users to persist in their practice, with the reward being the ability to move to the next level. Games often require the gamer to adapt and change strategies frequently, and the gamers progress provides them feedback on the decisions or changes they make. Gamers learn from their decisions. They also learn that they can make different decisions and receive feedback pretty quickly on those decisions and whether they succeeded or failed, and they can try again. Games give the gamer a sense of control over their environment. If used for education, games can give students more of a sense of control over their own learning experience.
Augmented reality is used for highly interactive and visual forms of learning. It has a unique ability to respond to human input, and it can be effectively utilized in scenarios where participating in the actual activity is prohibitive. Johnson, Smith, Willis, Levine, and Haywood, (2011) note the power of augmented reality to allow users to construct their own learning and more easily transfer learning from one context to another. The ability to construct one’s own learning and relate it to prior learning makes the experience more meaningful to the individual.
Strangman and Hall (2003) reference research suggesting that students with learning disabilities who used simulations perform better than students with learning disabilities who did not use simulations. This could have significant implications in designing learning strategies for students with learning disabilities. The United States military has used simulations for years as a practical alternative to train their members. Chang (2009) cites military spokespersons claiming that simulations are the “next best thing” to real world training.
Gaming holds real potential for application in education and beyond. Gartner (2011) challenges businesses to take the opportunity for their world to emulate gaming rather than the other way around. The characteristics of games and simulations result in more engagement, and organizations can benefit by having more engaged customers and employees alike. As gaming becomes more prevalent in education, we will see it used more creatively in business and we will see a different education, business and world culture as a result.
References
Chang, Hiro (2009). Simulators always valuable in military training. Retrieved February 9, 2013 from http://www.army.mil/article/19599/
Gartner (2011). Gartner Says By 2015, More Than 50 Percent of Organizations That Manage Innovation Processes Will Gamify Those Processes [Press release].
Retrieved February 9, 2013 from http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/1629214
Johnson, L., Smith, R., Willis, H., Levine, A., and Haywood, K., (2011). The 2011 Horizon Report. Austin, Texas: The New Media Consortium.
Prensky, M., Sims vs. Games: The Difference Defined. Edutopia, March 9, 2007.
Retrieved February 9, 2013 from http://www.edutopia.org/sims-vs-games
Strangman, N., & Hall, T. (2003). Virtual reality/simulations. Wakefield, MA: National Center on Accessing the General Curriculum. Retrieved February 9, 2013 from http://aim.cast.org/learn/historyarchive/backgroundpapers/virtual_simula...
Saturday, February 2, 2013
Open Content and Ethics
Open content, the sharing of information as well as instructional practice and experiences, offers many creative alternatives to accessing learning resources in education. The use of open content is appealing as a means to control the increasing costs of printed materials and to address the lack of educational resources in some geographic regions.
Networks promoting open content believe in a philosophy of creating a community of collective understanding, insight, and experience that is shared with others. Open content allows users to modify textbooks to customize, modernize, and combine them with other materials to create a tailored learning resource. The Four R’s of open content address licensing or permission rights and are defined as the ability to reuse, revise, remix, and redistribute the materials.
It is important, when using open content, to find useful resources, to assess the quality of the content, and repurpose the materials for learning. Most teachers customize open content resources. The ongoing use of open content may decrease teacher workload in developing coursework and educational materials. Schools are beginning to feel a social responsibility to share content. It is now a mark of a world-class institution to share content, not merely an experimental practice to do so.
Free content is any kind of work or creative content that meets the definition of a free cultural work. Free cultural work has no significant legal restriction on people’s freedom to use or redistribute the work. Free content can be used and studies with users free to apply what is learned from the content. Users can copy and distribute free content and can change and improve the content, distributing the modified work. Free content includes all work that is in the public domain and copyrighted works whose licenses have expired.
Creative Commons is a website that has created an infrastructure for sharing one’s creative work while enabling the user to preserve their identity. It has developed tools to help individuals determine what type of copyright license they want to apply to their creative work. Various types of copyright licenses are available, to permit commercial use or not, to permit derivative work or not, and to share alike or not. These license types can be combined, allowing the individual to refine the level of copyright that they determine is appropriate for their work, and as open or restricted as selected by the individual.
Johnson, Adams and Haywood (2011) identify the Open High School of Utah, as an example of how open content is used today in schools. The school’s mission purports their focus to be on student centered learning using innovative technology while promoting personal responsibility. David Wiley, a professor at Brigham Young University and founder of the Open High School of Utah, has made it his mission to promote lower cost, high quality education. I was fortunate to locate a slideshow presentation of Professor Wiley’s on the cost and use of textbooks in education. The slideshow presentation is available on SlideShare, an online community for sharing presentations.
Flat World Knowledge provides electronic textbooks for open use that launched five years ago as an ambitious start up. In January 2013 Flat World discontinued offering free access to electronic textbooks, citing increasing costs and maintaining that their $19.95 access pass is still a reasonable alternative to the cost of textbooks. Their announcement was met with some critics who accused them of trying to artificially drive down the cost of textbooks and questioning their credibility. What the future holds for Flat World and the availability of free open content remains to be seen, but Flat World has been a trailblazer in open content, and as the demand for accessible, affordable open content increases, there are sure to be competitors entering the marketplace.
The increased use of mobile devices like smartphones and tablet devices has contributed to the increase in the popularity of electronic textbooks. The use of these devices makes the materials easily accessible, portable, and also available on multiple devices. Johnson, Smith, Willis, Levine, and Haywood, (2011) note that the University of Phoenix requires their faculty to assign electronic texts. As more educational institutions promote their use, increase in the electronic books will grow. Standards for eBooks are still in development, with the current focus on the text itself and not on interactivity.
Johnson et al (2011) suggest tremendous potential for interactive and immersive applications of electronic textbooks. One such example is Alice, an interactive reading application that engages the reader in the storytelling narrative experience. Learn more about Alice and other products developed by IDEO by watching their video The Future of the Book.
Open or free content, public domain, copyrights? It can be confusing to know what resources are free to use, and are worth using for learning. Organizations like Creative Commons aim to simplify issues of copyright licensing in the hopes that more creative works and materials will be shared. Sharing of resources is a common thread linking organizations and websites that promote and foster the use of open content. The use of shared and modified free and open content for learning and eBooks will continue to grow. Technology will evolve to support these trends as educators and students alike look to reduce costs, find high quality accessible learning materials, and share and collaborate in new and innovative ways.
Networks promoting open content believe in a philosophy of creating a community of collective understanding, insight, and experience that is shared with others. Open content allows users to modify textbooks to customize, modernize, and combine them with other materials to create a tailored learning resource. The Four R’s of open content address licensing or permission rights and are defined as the ability to reuse, revise, remix, and redistribute the materials.
It is important, when using open content, to find useful resources, to assess the quality of the content, and repurpose the materials for learning. Most teachers customize open content resources. The ongoing use of open content may decrease teacher workload in developing coursework and educational materials. Schools are beginning to feel a social responsibility to share content. It is now a mark of a world-class institution to share content, not merely an experimental practice to do so.
Free content is any kind of work or creative content that meets the definition of a free cultural work. Free cultural work has no significant legal restriction on people’s freedom to use or redistribute the work. Free content can be used and studies with users free to apply what is learned from the content. Users can copy and distribute free content and can change and improve the content, distributing the modified work. Free content includes all work that is in the public domain and copyrighted works whose licenses have expired.
Creative Commons is a website that has created an infrastructure for sharing one’s creative work while enabling the user to preserve their identity. It has developed tools to help individuals determine what type of copyright license they want to apply to their creative work. Various types of copyright licenses are available, to permit commercial use or not, to permit derivative work or not, and to share alike or not. These license types can be combined, allowing the individual to refine the level of copyright that they determine is appropriate for their work, and as open or restricted as selected by the individual.
Johnson, Adams and Haywood (2011) identify the Open High School of Utah, as an example of how open content is used today in schools. The school’s mission purports their focus to be on student centered learning using innovative technology while promoting personal responsibility. David Wiley, a professor at Brigham Young University and founder of the Open High School of Utah, has made it his mission to promote lower cost, high quality education. I was fortunate to locate a slideshow presentation of Professor Wiley’s on the cost and use of textbooks in education. The slideshow presentation is available on SlideShare, an online community for sharing presentations.
Flat World Knowledge provides electronic textbooks for open use that launched five years ago as an ambitious start up. In January 2013 Flat World discontinued offering free access to electronic textbooks, citing increasing costs and maintaining that their $19.95 access pass is still a reasonable alternative to the cost of textbooks. Their announcement was met with some critics who accused them of trying to artificially drive down the cost of textbooks and questioning their credibility. What the future holds for Flat World and the availability of free open content remains to be seen, but Flat World has been a trailblazer in open content, and as the demand for accessible, affordable open content increases, there are sure to be competitors entering the marketplace.
The increased use of mobile devices like smartphones and tablet devices has contributed to the increase in the popularity of electronic textbooks. The use of these devices makes the materials easily accessible, portable, and also available on multiple devices. Johnson, Smith, Willis, Levine, and Haywood, (2011) note that the University of Phoenix requires their faculty to assign electronic texts. As more educational institutions promote their use, increase in the electronic books will grow. Standards for eBooks are still in development, with the current focus on the text itself and not on interactivity.
Johnson et al (2011) suggest tremendous potential for interactive and immersive applications of electronic textbooks. One such example is Alice, an interactive reading application that engages the reader in the storytelling narrative experience. Learn more about Alice and other products developed by IDEO by watching their video The Future of the Book.
Open or free content, public domain, copyrights? It can be confusing to know what resources are free to use, and are worth using for learning. Organizations like Creative Commons aim to simplify issues of copyright licensing in the hopes that more creative works and materials will be shared. Sharing of resources is a common thread linking organizations and websites that promote and foster the use of open content. The use of shared and modified free and open content for learning and eBooks will continue to grow. Technology will evolve to support these trends as educators and students alike look to reduce costs, find high quality accessible learning materials, and share and collaborate in new and innovative ways.
References
Johnson, L., Adams, S., and Haywood, K., (2011). The NMC Horizon
Report:
2011 K-12 Edition.
Austin, Texas: The New Media Consortium.
Johnson,
L., Smith, R., Willis, H., Levine, A., and Haywood, K., (2011). The 2011
Horizon Report.
Austin, Texas: The New Media
Consortium.
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