Group items tagged

No hard news here; but this reminded me of Sherry Turkle and her (misguided, I think) argument that parents are too caught up with their phones to pay attention to their kids. There's a lot more subtlety in this piece. And even though this is literary and not academic, I think there's valuable food for thought re: T561 because of big questions about "real" experience vs. digital or "virtual" experience.

ARTLAB+ is a digital media studio that gives local teens the opportunity to become integral members of a design team. They create new visitor experiences at the Hirshhorn, taking their inspiration from its permanent collection and temporary exhibitions. ARTLAB+ designers hone crucial twenty-first century skills as they make videos, animations, wikis, games, podcasts, and more. By the end of every project session, the design team has created a unique product that enriches the museum experiences of other visitors and showcases each teen's creative growth. After-school, weekend, and weeklong ARTLAB+ workshops are held year-round to accommodate a wide variety of schedules. We welcome all teens, regardless of experience. Looks like a great way to help introduce twenty-first century skills- BB

This is really cool- combining mobile, situated learning in the real world, with creative group projects, and letting kids direct their own active, learning 'flow'.. Can this scale up to schools (or after-school programs), without access to museum artifacts and mobile devices?

Consider the possibilities for a performance assessment while playing through this simple "escape the room" game. The validity of the experiment involved in the solution is questionable.

Escape games are very big in the publishing industry right now due mostly to their inquiry based assessment and the low development cost compared to highly immersive first-person games. The biology lab escape is one of the better ones that I've seen out there. Thanks Chris!

I played for about 8 minutes and then grew tired of the game. I am curious how assessors would have graded my performance. I found the easier way to "escape the room" was to close the browser window.

In India, classroom goes 3D and technology is used to make classroom learning more interesting and simple experience for students.

This is an opinion article that talks about immersion and the first-person camera angle in video games. He argues that game developers should re-evaluate the assumption that the first-person viewpoint is inherently more immersive than other gaming experiences.

This paper presents the first experimental evidence on the effects of live versus internet media of instruction. Students in a large introductory microeconomics course at a major research university were randomly assigned to live lectures versus watching these same lectures in an internet setting, where all other factors (e.g., instruction, supplemental materials) were the same. Counter to the conclusions drawn by a recent U.S. Department of Education meta-analysis of non-experimental analyses of internet instruction in higher education, we find modest evidence that live-only instruction dominates internet instruction. These results are particularly strong for Hispanic students, male students, and lower-achieving students. We also provide suggestions for future experimentation in other settings.

The authors are very misleading in their claim that this study is the first on live versus internet. There is a huge literature on this topic stretching back decades. The claims about the generalizability of the study are also very suspect.

Chris, I think the authors are claiming it is the first experimental trial where participants were randomly assigned to a treatment or control condition. They contrast their study with the DOE meta-analysis, which I don't think includes experimental studies--at least as experiments are defined within econometrics. My problem with the study is that they are aren't really comparing live vs. internet so much as live vs. recorded video. They are very careful to not take advantage of any of the potential affordances of internet mediated instruction, except broadcasting a lecture, to preserve the "purity" of their experiment. Of course, that's not a terribly interesting experiment. The more interesting experiments, which they deride as "not apples-to-apples," is to compare a traditional lecture format with an online course that takes full advantage of the affordances of the internet. These studies would confound the carefully balanced design of an apples-to-apples comparison, but no serious education technologist thinks we should just record all the lectures and post them...

This article talks about how handheld technologies such as android and iPhones can make the museum experience more educational by providing tour guides. Very few museums currently have apps for this purpose but the trend is growing. The actual museum experience can be much more educational when it is supplemented with self guided tours that handheld technologies can provide.

Is the online experience important enough to warrant this?

This strikes me as a case where technology is being implemented without enough thought as to how the technology actually furthers the learning goals. "Having an online learning experience" doesn't seem to me like a good enough reason to require students to take a course online, especially for students who do not have easy access to the internet. While I think it's important for students to get experience with an online learning platform, I hope that they are learning more than just how to use the technology -- what is more important is that they learn how to be part of a collaborative Community of Inquiry (I am borrowing the phrase Community of Inquiry from Garrison's "E-learning in the 21st Century"). This requires them to think and write critically and collaborate effectively with their peers.

In Missouri, online learning, such as, webinars, workshops, etc., from peers help farmers - beginners learn from experts. "It's farmers learning from farmers," says Mary Hendrickson. "People like to talk to others with lots experience and great information and who can say, 'I've been there before and had these problems.' It's a great way to bring both the farmers' experience and all the expertise we have in MU Extension to the table together."

A new iPad app uses immersive technology to convey a richer video experience.

Looks like a great app. I can imagine it being applied in a lot of ways. I see that "The app turns specially encoded video into a virtual reality experience", which means that you need specially recorded video. This may limit the absorption of the app.

AR experiment and research for archeological sites, utilizing a head mounted display.

AR experiment and research for archeological sites, utilizing a head mounted display

AR experiment by Georgia Inst. of Tech. superimposing Second Life Characters in a real life office environment.

AR experiment by Georgia Inst. of Tech. superimposing Second Life characters in a real life office environment.

Are we transliterate enough when we are learning and experimenting things.  Another example I can think of for transliteracy is the awareness of updating one's status messages in various places. For example, a status message on one's FB page is quite different from one's LinkedIn Profile to one's style of tweeting to one's IM status message.  Being aware of what kind of thoughts go where is an important transliterate skill to have. Thoughts?

"School of One uses technology to develop a unique learning path for each student and to provide a significant portion of the instruction that is both individualized and differentiated." I liked the definitions of individualized (pacing), differentiated (learning preferences/methods), and personalized (pacing, preferences, and content/objectives).

From the point of view of a policy maker (particularly in developing countries), incorporating technology in education mostly means finding an affordable technology resource and just giving it to schools. The cost of the technology becomes the focal point for these policy makers, and the actual teaching/learning takes a back seat. Michael Trucano proposes a little thought experiment to force us to think about what we want to achieve in the first place.

This article describes a new iPad app that turns reading into an interactive learning experience by interjecting activities related to the book such as games and interludes where the reader plays songs on the iPad piano. The child can be read to by the app or read the story on their own. 

Interesting thoughts of the cultural shift in schools required for blended technology

Really good article about one teacher's experience with a flipped classroom, why she stopped using that model and how the idea of flipping made her a better teacher.

Wow, really interesting article, thanks Heather! Love how the teacher also learned from the experience and changed her in-class teaching style...

Thanks Heather, for posting, and Lauren, for suggesting...anybody who is taking T440 and loves the concept but feels skeptical about its real-world plausibility should read this article.

This is a great article about the need to integrate mobile learning into mathematics learning. The article claims that right now there is a divide between personal experiences and mathematical problem solving that students learn in school. The article suggests much work and opportunity in using mobile technology to bridge the divide of formal and informal math learning, putting math learning into personal contexts. The article sheds light on how this will help students see mathematics as a discipline they will use outside of school. It is a very good, comprehensive look at the role technology can play in teaching math the "right" way.