Archive for March, 2007
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The ELI conference started out yesterday with a fantastic presentation by Rick VanEck of University of North Dakota. As all great presenters at the beginning of a conference do, he laid out a vision of the conference and why it is important. As the focus of the conference is immersive learning environments, the title of his talk was “Generation G and the 21st Century: How Games are Preparing Todays Students for Tomorrow’s Workplace.” He said a couple of things that really stuck out to me.
How Technology has changed our learners
Right at the beginning of the presentation he came right out and said that schools/institutions as a whole are out of touch with the way technology has changed the students arriving today. He gives a rough definition of technology that I found quite insightful.
Technology is what becomes available AFTER you were a teenager.
By this definition radio is technology for those born in the 1920’s-30’s. TV for those born in the 50-60’s. Internet for those born in the 80-90’s. But those entering education today don’t have anything that is new to them. NOTHING is technology to them because they are comfortable with all of it! Because they grew up with the internet, not to mention all those other ‘technology’ devices, they are intricately familiar with them.
This generation is absolutely saturated with media and stimuli from dozens of sources at once. Because they love games and gaming, it is easy to dismiss th as flighty, spoiled, unwilling to work… but they are probably what we are going to need in the 21st century. They are constantly on the cutting edge and innovating. They are all about interaction, collaboration and engagement.
Old Learning / New Learning
The way we teach and learn has looked the same for thousands of years… it’s still in place… but it just looks different than we’re used to. People still interact and learn from one another. People still need to learn skills and facts. There is still built in feedback and assessment. Everything is just packaged different than we are used to.
- Play is naturally employed, effective learning program (think of the way kids learn!!)
- Play requires interaction and participation!! (Engagement)
- Benefits of PBL (Problem Based Learning)
- Situated Cognition and Learning - “anchoring authentic context to learning” - Knowledge relevant in the field in which it is applied!!
- Questioning, Cognitive Disequilibrium, Scaffolding
Things that we see as useless may actually be very important learning tools! (Facebook, YouTube).
Why our Current Model Doesn’t Work
Students only typically have one stimulus in our teaching environment. Much less than the dozen or so they have in a gaming situation.
Fact - #1 reason for dropping out of high school - BOREDOM!
There is a large population of students that are falling through the cracks, not because they are not smart enough, but because they are not being challenged. This old world way of teaching is not engaging them. All you have to do is look at the copious amount of literature (websites, blogs, chat forums, and even literary guild’s in some cases) available online to see how gaming is motivating students. They are not getting any money out of their work. They do it because they find it rewarding.
Rick ends his presentation with a strong statement, which I will mimic here. Learners are changing and so the way we educate them also has to change. LEAD, FOLLOW, or GET OUT OF THE WAY!!
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I am sitting in another session of the ELI Conference given by Gary Bertoline of Perdue University right now and just had an AMAZING experience with an Haptic device. I am assuming that since I didn’t know about this before some of you don’t either.
Haptic devices are basically connecting the virtual world to the real world. The most common device now a days is the new Nintendo Wii. The devices react according to what you are doing on the program. I played with a device like the Novint Falcon that interacts with a computer program according to the laws of physics.
You move the little ball around and it moves in 3D on the computer. What’s more. When you move against an object it increases the feedback force in relationship to the object. It is incredible how real life it is. As far as you can tell, it is a real object.
You can then change the laws that control the feedback to mimic another planet… say Jupiter and the object reacts according to the new laws. Not only that, the feedback you feel in the device as you move it adjusts accordingly to. I just felt what it was like to move a box on Jupiter and Pluto… when I am going to get a chance to do that again soon? I’m certainly not heading out there any time soon. 
A great quote from Gary:
“Until you experience haptics, you just don’t know how to use it. Once you experience it you can see how it could be useful in teaching and learning.”
In addition to a device like this there are haptic gloves that mimic real touch. Gary makes a great point… he basically says that there is no excuse not to have one of these devices now. They are only $200-$300. They are becoming mainstream.
Imagine the potential with virtual worlds like Second Life. I have been in a long discussion with some of my colleagues the past couple of days trying to convince them that there is something to Second Life. One of the arguments the naysayers brought up was the inability to feel. Incorporate this technology and you have sight, sound and touch! AMAZING! So, everyone… go order yours today! Pre-order is only $189.
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So I am at the ELI Spring Conference on Immersive Learning Environments. I have been here since yesterday and have all sorts of things I want to post about the event… but perhaps I will post a couple of things at a time.
We just got done listening to Phillip Long, the Associate Director of Educational Innovation and Technology from MIT. His lecture was another great introduction to Second Life and MIT’s efforts there.
He gave a great institutional overview of getting into Second Life. They have set up a student competition to create the buildings and everything for their island. The question was brought up in one of our discussion groups about how this technology was going to be supported. Are we going to need to have a Second Life support team soon? I think the answer to this is no and let me explain why.
Phillip said that at MIT they now have alum that have heard about this project and want to join in and help. The support for these new environments will come from the users that are already in there. People will give anything to help out with something they are immersed in.
At one point in the presentation he also mentioned ‘actuators’ in second life. That is, a device in second life that actuates something in real life. Take your avatar, switch off a light in a room, and it switches off a light in real life. Amazing… imagine the potential!!
One link to share… MIT’s Second Life Wiki
Stay tuned… more to come.
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I have been absolutely amazed at the way my research habits have changed since I became familiar with the web 2.0, RSS feeds, Google alerts, social bookmarking sites and so forth. I am learning more, learning it faster, finding it easier, and in most cases, just waiting for it to come to me.
I have long wanted to write a blog entry about how to do some of these things and I probably will still do that to some extent but tonight I came across this AMAZING Research 2.0 wiki (Thanks to Vicki Davis). This is probably the best resource I have ever seen to show how the internet has changed research. I particually recommend the Changing your Research Mindset section. There are links to everything!
[On a sidenote... I am still amazed at how much blogging and instructional technology has motivated me. Here it is 12:30 at night. I should have been in bed a long time ago, but I couldn't go to bed without writing about this... and this... and this... There is so much out there! Man, I love technology! ]
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Imagine a website customized for all the different sites you use to research school related information. Welcome to schoolr.com. (The ‘r’ stands for research.)
Granted this site is probably not what teachers want you to use to research, but let’s be honest, this is what everyone is using. Schoolr includes the following searches right now:
- Google
- Wikipedia
- Dictionary
- Thesaurus
- Acronym
- Ubran Dictionary
- Encyclopedia
- Citation Builder
- Book Summary Search
- Text Translator
- Unit Converter
On a side note, the slogan is a randomly regenerated loop of pretty funny things regarding education today. “We might not be as cool as Facebook, but we’ll boost your GPA.” “Met Bob. Bob had an exam on Friday. Bob slept in. Bob failed. Don’t be Bob.” “Who still knows how to handwrite?” Funny stuff.
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I ran across an article today on kotte.org that made me think a bit. The article itself is about Web 2.0 and how it became important, but one thing said really stuck out to me in regard to education and technology.
A slightly related way of thinking about how to choose web projects is to take something that everyone does with their friends and make it public and permanent.
This is a great synopsis of what motivates students to use technology today. They have something they normally do with their friends and make it public and permanent.
Often (for good or bad) we as educators take over and try to take this ’something that everybody does with their friends’ that is not ‘public and permanent’ and apply it to the classroom. Sometimes that works, and sometimes it doesn’t. I will leave the examples up to the reader’s mind this time (I have to actually get some work done around here), but the article points out four good Web 2.0 examples… Blogger, Twitter, Flickr, and YouTube. I know at least three of them have been applied to education… still not sure about Twitter…
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Today I came across Firedoodle, a Firefox extension that allows you mark up ANY webpage with an ink like interface and save multiple placemarks on the webpage. This article reviews the extension and it’s educational potential.
What it Does
Here is a great video created by the author that shows some of the capabilities:
There are two basic features at this point (remember this is the first beta release… I’m sure more features are coming):
- Highlighting (including different colors, size, and opacity)
- Placemarking - for long documents.
Student/Teacher Uses: The applications in Education are immediate and apparent. More and more content is available online and presenting that content to a class in a way that is useful is crucial. Teachers could:
- Mark up a document in advance for class discussion
- Mark up a document during class to emphasize certain points.
- Have students mark up documents for assignments
- Save placeholders in long documents before class for easy navigation during class discussion.
- Save placeholders in documents for research.
Limitations and Hopeful Future Developments:
Right now there is no way to erase a single marking. You can erase the entire screen, but not a single marking. It would also be nice to have a pencil/pen tool for writing notes on pages for those with tablet PC’s.
The biggest development that I think is needed is a social aspect. Some way to share information with others. If there were a way to combine the inking capabilities of this program with the social capabilities of Trailfire… that would be perfect. Then students/teachers could harness the power of the net and share with everyone!
What other possible uses can you see in education?
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Ran across this great blog post today of a student doing research for her dissertation.
I was idly trying a search on “roads” to see what sort of a
literature would turn up for the period of my dissertation research,
1740-1850. I didn’t expect much. I’ve spent the last two years
wandering through the Yale, Harvard, and California libraries, the
British Library, Britain’s National Archives, and the immense reserves
of North American Inter Library Loan reading every book on London,
pavement, or travel I could get my hands on.
Surprise. In a single idle search I just added twenty extra full-text books to my list.
Which are, by the way, full-text searchable –
– and subject to word-count analysis –
– and replete with full illustrations –
– and instantly digestable into visuals for powerpoint presentations.
Hallelujah, GoogleBooks. And holy mackeral! Good work.
See, I’m not crazy when I say Google Books is amazing and awesome!! Check it out if you haven’t yet!
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Yesterday Google Book Search made a fantastic announcement for all those that work with some of the common foreign languages (German, Spanish, French, Italian, Latin). They have added the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek (Bavarian State Library) to the Google Books Library Project.
As one of Europe’s most important and renowned international research libraries, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek will add more than a million out-of-copyright books to the program, from well-loved German classics by the Brothers Grimm and Goethe to extensive collections previously only available to those able to consult the library’s stacks. In addition to German-language works, the library’s collection includes numerous out-of-copyright works in French, Spanish, Latin, Italian and English. Some of the works of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek date back to the very first moments of book printing and bear incredible cultural meaning.
What is amazing about this is the million out-of-copyright books that will be available (FULLY) online. Not only to be read, but searched and explored with the myriad of other tools Google offers through their books search. For those who are not familiar with these features, I wrote an article about them a couple of months ago here.
As we reflect back on Google’s ‘Unbound’ Conference, we begin to see how the new unbound literature will extend internationally. I’m so excited! Can you tell? It must be my Dutch heritage coming through… or perhaps all those years I spent reading amazing German stories!
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