Interacting with media and technology

I would like to share with you this new project that gives light a new dimension to education using the social media as tool to increase the interaction between teacher and students. The Flat Classroom Project is an innovative approach where educators have built social-networking sites specifically for use in class and home assignments. This project allows communication for students in the classroom, but for them to interact with students in far away classrooms all around the world can reach and learn from each other. A recent survey (http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2010/Social-Media-and-Young-Adults.aspx) from the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that 73 percent of online teens use social-networking sites. Updating their Facebook or MySpace page has become a regular activity for teens as is using these services to catch up on what their peers are doing. Using similar tools will encourage students to interact with each other, using many of the same techniques they do when away from school but focused on their educational goals. Hope for someone will be useful

Its is very interesting to see that new technologies are more and more taking part of the class as being a tool like any other ones. It is very important to let them get in the class and not leave them out as new media and new technologies are used on a everyday basis by most of the students. One of the most important point of this article to make sure that the use of tools should be customized depending on the students. It is also in my opinion that the more customized the process of learning is, the better will be the learning. Customizing a class lead to a better motivation for the students and so lead to a better learning and more important remembering of what is done during the class. Moreover, I agree with the authors when saying that new technologies should be used and learned from the very beginning of school. As I said, new technologies should not be let outside of the school as it takes a great part of our lifes nowadays. And the earliest it is learnt, the better the students will know how to use them to make them as most efficient in their lifes (private ones, during their studies, careers...) as possible. It is said in the article that this project is used in different countries. However, besides Spain, the rest of them are english speaking countries. How could this project be developed in order to touch more and more countries? Or could it be used during english classes in other countries than the one mentionned?

As I mentioned during the class, I read this article to know media are embodied within activist group, or by their opponant i.e. gouvernments, polices... But what is interesting in this article is to analyze how new media had an impact in the transformation of activist groups, such as for example going from being more local to becoming global. Interesting article when it comes to see how people are in practice interacting with these media.

I agree with Cecile that, this article shows very good results of the interaction of social action with social media tools. The use of social media tools have a greater and faster impact to the society. The information about what is happening around you about a lot of injustice is spreading so quickly. I want to give a very recently example. And International organization was posting via email, fb, you tube concerning a cause in South Africa. They got the signature for this petition in very short time and the reaction of the government very soon and everyone is informed about the future actions to help this cause. It´s amazing when you think how quickly can happen, and imagine if these tools didn´t exist, most probably we will not even know what is happening around us.

This article shows how the language learning process is integrated with the technology. Different social media tools create different interactive possibilities to improve the language skills of the students. This article emphasises the use of voicethread as a tool of Web 2.0 that combine different methods in itself that allows students to use their creativity and skills. I have already use voice thread the last year during the class of Telecolloboration. It´s very interesting for the ones that didn´t take this class and also for others that want to integrate different social media tools into education.

Even in Montana social media has become important. It's true it is "en train de changer" the way politics is run. In a place with so few people, each person could really have a direct line to candidates and I suppose a more direct dialogue with the people is much easier. However, as the article states, could this lead to a more polarizing political field--meaning only strong supporters of a candidate would follow them through social media, and thus the candidate is really only talking to people on one even extreme side? Is social media used in politics in Luxembourg? It could have a strong impact here, seeing as how there are even half as many people in this country as in Montana! Oh and off the subject, Montana is so small. The senator Baucus referred to in the article bought my grandpa's car from us after he died.

First of all, to understand what this article is about, we need to ask ourselves the question: What is parasocial interaction (PSI)? It is the relation that individual makes with media persona (TV characters from TV shows, TV programs…). 'This present study examines how specific social and emotional tendencies (i.e. belongingness needs and solitude experiences) are related to specific social and emotional forms of media involvement, namely, PSI with media characters and transportability into media programs'. Specific social and emotional tendencies can be seen a negative experiences as well as positive experiences (i.e. being alone can increase creativity in art, philosophy, or else). After reading this article, I asked myself: is engaging in a parasocial interaction a consequence or a cause of these social and emotional tendencies? I think this article is talking about an interesting concept that is growing more and more with the evolution of technology and it shows the shift occurring when coming to define what is interaction.

More and more universities around the world provide online, e-learning programs that enable the long distance education to interested individuals. The website that I propose is one of my favorite options in terms of creative education related to arts, performing, liberal, media and communication arts. The SCAD eLearning environment encompasses an online global community, where students learn from SCAD faculty and one another, participating in critiques, meetings and collaborative projects. Students complete undergraduate and graduate degree requirements completely online or in combination with on-site courses. SCAD eLearning provides comprehensive university services including career coaching, research workshops, counseling services, SCAD libraries, and resources such as the Virtual Lecture Hall, SCAD.tv, and the Visual Resources Center. Recipient of numerous awards, SCAD eLearning has been recognized for its outstanding and comprehensive online learning curriculum. Vigorous, well-designed coursework, combined with exceptional instruction, ensures a world-class online education. Enjoy!

Current methods for controlling one's avatar in a virtual environment interacting with intelligent virtual agents (IVAs) are unnatural, typically requiring a complex set of keyboard commands for controlling your avatar, and dialog menus for interacting with IVAs. Recent advances in markerless body and motion tracking, speech and gesture recognition technologies, coupled with intelligent agent/behavior modeling and speech synthesis technologies, now make it possible to naturally control one's avatar through the movement of one's body and to interact with IVAs through speech and gesture. These capabilities are now just beginning to emerge in the arena of computer gaming, and offer great promise for military training. In this paper we describe our recent work integrating motion capture, gesture recognition, speech recognition, natural language understanding, and intelligent agent/behavior modeling technologies to produce more natural mechanisms for avatar control as well as IVAs that are able to understand relatively unconstrained speech and recognize human movement and gesture. We illustrate these capabilities within the domain of roadside security checkpoint training, where trainees are able to gesture (e.g., wave forward, stop, point to a location) and speak to IVAs (drivers and passengers) in the scene.

This shall be one of our main inspiration within the framework of our experiment for LEARNING WITH MEDIA, during which we performed a session of "Start the Party" for "Playstation Move" on the Playstation 3, in comparison to our previous experiment with "Wii Sports"…

This article retraces the use of new media and new technologies in a class of Oral History. It shows that by using those new tools, it enhanced learning through a more interactive, participative and collaborative way. During the Oral History Class, the students were engaged in a collaborative project aimed at giving the "opportunity to play an action-research and community service role". The use of new media and technologies were used in class (using computers) as well as outside the classroom. For this project a "Class folder" was created where students and teacher could put their work as well as knowing about the assignment or the advancement of the project. This "Class folder" developed a conceptualization of "centralization" of the work: the access was free, any time and it was for the student a good way to share their ideas, comments and work. It also enhanced the "decentralization of knowledge": the students were more autonomous and the teacher became a "facilitator rather than a singular authority in the classroom".

The authors of this book provide concrete examples of activities for using constructivism and technology to allow students to construct knowledge, to think and to learn. Constructivist learning emphasizes the five different attributes of meaningful learning which are (i) intentional learning, (ii) active learning, (iii) constructive learning, (iv) cooperative learning, and (v) authentic learning. Real learning requires combining the different elements of meaningful learning. The authors describe six ways to use technology and constructivist learning to allow students to construct understanding and learn. The authors describe the types of technology in very basic terms and the specific hardware and software that are required for the classroom in order to partake in the activities described in the book. For each technology, the authors describe activities and projects that can be used to facilitate learning. They also describe the learning process, the role of the student, the role of the teacher, and ways to assess the learning process. The goal of this book is to advocate educational reform and change through constructivist methodologies by demonstrating specific examples of how the tools of technology can be employed to empower students to construct knowledge and meaning. What I found interesting (and possibly useful for us) is that at the end of each chapter, the authors pose "things to think about" and list numerous questions for further discussion.

LLT is an international journal (published exclusiveley on the web) with an editorial board of international scholars in the fields of second language acquisition and computer-assisted language learning. LLT publishes articles that report on original research or present an original framework that links second language acquisition theory, previous research, and language learning, teaching, and testing practices that utilize technology. It aims at reaching a broad audience in a timely manner, providing a multimedia format which can more fully illustrate the technologies under discussion, as well as providing hypermedia links to related background information. It is published three times per year and it was ranked in the top 20 Education Journals. Important: Besides the very interesting articles, it also contains a section of general guidelines for both quantitative and qualitative research!

About online groups