Group items tagged

Dr Jane McGonigal (a professional game developer) talks about the time spent playing video games (which approximates to the span of human evolution), and that this time has to increase to make any major changes to the world. I have selected this resource partially in relation to week 3's Clarke's lecture (and others), which talks about using our idle time to do something meaningful - participate in citizen science games, for example. Dr McGonigal's talk very much illustrates this point - except that it talks about solving global issues through indirect games, e.g. a World Without Oil online game simulates a world in which you have to survive oil shortage. Creator's research shows, that people maintain the skills and habits they have taken up after playing this intense game, which include making better choices for our changing environment. The only difference here from actual citizen science games is that Dr McGonigal's games are fictional (rather than providing direct data / input for actual scientific research), however, they empower people to influence global change, which is the topic of the other lectures this week, especially Morozov's thoughts about the power of internet and connectiveness to create "revolutions". Although Morozov has taken up a rather critical view, suggesting only those who want it, take the best from the Internet, Dr McGonigal's ideas might be what bridges the two - taking games, which are integral part of many people's lives, especially in the younger generation, and turning them into real "life schools" may help more people get the idea and the essential skills to "fix" their environments. In all honesty, this is a video I would watch again and again, and recommend it to anyone who would listen (and that doesn't happen often for me).

Gamification for learning - using game elements - sounds very promising. Prior to the internet, technology, there were board games or hands on projects - all with the intent to engage and interact with each other. So it is no surprise to me given the appropriate design/project that students can learn and solve real world problems. Letting students choose their persona and role also allows them to make their own future and take ownership for how they want to participate. Just like the original promise of multimedia training that was purported to replace the traditional classroom events and enable getting the "best" teacher recorded for all to have the same experience...I believe it was then thought that the learning experience needs o be "blended". Different techniques - online, face to face, etc.. This is not my field of expertise so these are just personal opinions. If the online game approach can be combined with face to face and tactile/outdoor activities, aka a blended approach - I think that might be very useful. I do also believe that design solutions should be encouraging win win situations to reinforce collaboration and the feeling that all can succeed. One question I might have is how do you measure success in learning?

Gaming promoters unfortunately for me have a commercial agenda and its always difficult to make that balance of pure learning and commercialization aspect

Provides a list of important skills and how those skills are embedded within the curriculum.

Thank you Kevin Stranack for sharing. Tony Bates ends with five questions: 1. Have I covered the main skills needed in a knowledge-based society? What have I missed? 2. Do you agree that these are important skills? If so, should universities explicitly try to develop them? 3. What are you or your university doing (if anything) to ensure such skills are taught, and taught well? 4. What roles if any do you think technology, and in particular online learning, can play in helping to develop such skills? 5. Any other comments on this topic - My answers: 1. Frustration tolerance and keeping a balance between work and private life is a necessary skill 2, The skill set mentioned is important, but more likely trained in college than in university 3. I do have a personal coach and a counseler, and I'm enrolled in #OKMOOC 4. The activities required in every module of #OKMOOC ask to reach out, connect, build relationships, Have you answered the feedback questions?

This question is really the elephant in the room in a lot of university programs, especially in the humanities. I myself was a doctoral student in the humanities before leaving because, as I eventually learned, there were essentially no employment opportunities and my skillset in today's economy was sorely lacking. But the old mantra that "we teach critical thinking" is become a worn excuse. Do we really need four years to teach people the skills to survive "out there"? How much of our specialized knowledge will really be useful outside of the academy? These are questions we just don't have the answer to, and I'm not sure there are many people willing to ask them. But more to the point, I didn't see anything in this link about the changing ways that millennials (I promise that I hate the term as much as anyone, but it's a useful one) are engaging with information, and how that is changing how they actually think. There have been arguments made that digital natives (again, a pretty terrible term) think about and process information in very different ways that have serious implications for contextualization and long-term research. I'm not saying that universities don't teach these things in their own ways, but it's an important issue that needs addressing. I know that the link talks about the important of knowledge management, but there's a huge difference between simply knowing how and when to access information and quite another to properly contextualize its place in a larger hierarchy (or web) of knowledge. I would argue *that* skill is the one that universities are best poised to provide, and maybe why we keep hearing talk about how undergraduate degrees are the new highschool diplomas.

By: Matthew LeBar Massively Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are often described as the future of education - or at least a significant part of it. But there may be a significant problem with them: a very small proportion of students who start them actually finish. This poses a serious threat to their legitimacy.

This brings up the question of what it means to complete something? And why is it so important to us? And why 'productivity', a thing somebody defined ages ago, is so important to our humanity? .. or is it anymore?

Because I am taking a MOOC course but also on campus at University, I receive credits and grades where this is definitely one of the motivations for me to contribute. Although I agree that completion of the course is not essential to attain knowledge, what about our motivations to learn? And what about our incentives? Not saying MOOCs are not interesting nor helpful, I like MOOCs, but I think people like recognition too. I think to just receive the "statement of accomplishment" is not enough to prove efforts made within the course. However MOOCs are not as well developed at this stage, there definitely will be adjustments in the near future.

I think, its really an expensive and unnecessary experiments, if the attendance of Harvard University is low, then they have to come up with different rule to attract the interest of students. Cameras should be there for security, but not for surveillance.

wondering if this would be a different conversation if the cameras were just picking up heat signals so that the identity of the people could not be known but they could still be counted. The technology is pretty basic and it might even be more efficient than the way they're using them now.

Can't believe Harvard can do this thing. I think informations are sharing and revealing on internet or others more and more serious. Harvard shouldn't secretly photograph students, they should ask permission first.

Slides from Leslie Chan's talk on What is Open Science and What Role Does it Play in Development?

Is true that open access benefits the academic development of students and agree with it, but it would also be important to know whether college students and teachers and researchers know how to use information resources open access or if known. It is important to give more publicity to information resources in order to open the knowledge society makes use of them to create new knowledge for society.

A book containing the twitter statuses of people supposedly working on a novel is presented in this link. I am wondering if this is theft of intelectual property. While writing tweets may be public domain knowledge, making money by copying the exact phrasing into a work of your own seems like plagiarism. What are your takes on this?

uhm weird

A good example for module 4. I guess, as long as the 2nd creator made a permission to use those tweets before publishing it into book. But that person should also exercise the intellectual property guidelines or norms before anything else.

This is a neat idea. You start a sketch on your tablet and send it out into the world. Someone else sees your sketch and is inspired to do something else to it. Through successive iterations you have a new sketch that many people have collaborated on. It turns into something unexpected and new.

There is a project called Scratch (http://scratch.mit.edu/), which is a software that allows children and teenagers to learn to program graphically, can share their programs and work collaboratively. Thank you for sharing. -------- Existe un proyecto llamado Scratch (http://scratch.mit.edu/), el cual es un software que permite a niños y adolescentes a aprender a programar de manera gráfica, pueden compartir sus programas y trabajar colaborativamente. Gracias por compartir.

A brief article that looks at some of the research emerging from the massive amounts of student use data collected in MOOCs. Points toward directions for future improvements. Still a great deal of focus on the video lecture, as opposed to participant connections.

A digital journal of learning, teaching and technology. You can read interesting articles on MOOCs, digital writing, peer review and other relevant topics, as well as future of open knowledge.

The Canadian Government promoting how sharing private content of someone is illegal. Having the internet and our social media tools, it is so easy to share and connect with people. It is great in many ways, like education, social life, work etc. but when it comes to personal life, maybe it is not as great. People like to share because it is easy and fast, there are no physical restrictions. There are consequences but because there are too many people doing it, it is hard to target everyone. With this digital age coming so quickly, maybe rules, regulations, and education are still trying to catch up. If I have not taken this course, I would not have known that sharing a screenshot on Whatsapp with friends is actually illegal. The point is when everyone is doing it now, and we were not deeply educated on this topic beforehand, how is this going to stop? When sharing screenshots has became a trend, how is it possible to stop?

I think this video does an excellent job of not victim-blaming, or casting any moral judgement. I think it's easy to say "don't take pictures", etc., but approaching it as a strictly legal matter may be a better route to take. Speaking of the general open access movement, I think some valuable lessons could be taken from this for raising awareness about appropriate uses of open access information. It reminds me of the Disney compilation copyright video we watched at the beginning of the course - using some very literal imagery to get a point across, and explaining what the law is, not what people are doing with it.

I think this PSA does a really good job of communicating a 'touchy' subject in a tasteful manner. The message is simple and very relatable for adolescents. Cyberbullying is a tremendous issue among youth in Canada and I am really glad to see the government taking preventative initiatives.

These are some cool 'motivational' videos about open education - certainly a valuable resource when talking about the subject. The attached link has the three best ones (I have looked ahead & the third place winner is actually included in module 7), but this playlist (sorry, could not find one in English, but the videos are in English anyway) has a few more: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLgmAVOv3Lv3H1q20GUUg9h2koK6hPq4hk (playlist from Virtual educational library from Lithuania).

Emotional expression and linguistic style in online collaboration differ substantially depending on the contributors' gender and status, and on the communication network. This should be taken into account when analyzing collaborative success, and may prove insightful to communities facing gender gap and stagnation in contributor acquisition and participation levels.

lubajong and taylor_cole thank you for your comments. From my part I will add a critical evaluation of this resource as well. The talk pages of Wikipedia provide a rich source for researchers to study communication patterns. On Wikipedia talk pages they have found signals for status differences between groups of participants, notably between admins and ordinary contributors. Those findings support in general the theories of the researchers about status differences and communication style differences between managers and employees in firms. They have also found differences in communication style bases on gender, which also support their general theories about gender (which is a social construct). What I - as a Wikipedian insider - finds missing in the article is the selection bias. Wikipedia admins aren't appointed by Jimmy Wales or some other body. Admins are community selected. The exact process differs per language version. On the English Wikipedia admin selection is by a community consensus process. Future admins are selected who show the preferred communication style of admins by other contributors including existing admins. For me, the patterns in communication style do not explain the gender gap on Wikipedia. There is a gender gap in many language versions of Wikipedia, but not in all. The Armenian language version of Wikipedia is a notable exception, showing a gender balance in the conbtributor base. An explanation of that exemption requires further research. What taylor_cole notes about neutrality and bias is a valid point. People volunteer to write for Wikipedia, and volunteer in topic choice. My guess is that in general people will opt to write about something they like, care about, know about. A lack of diversity in contributors will naturally reflect in lack of diversity of topics. For example nerdy males will write about things male nerds like. In general females tend to be interested in other topics than nerdy males. A lack of topics covered in Wikipe

Levels of participation influences emotional expression and phrasing? has the function of sex and status of the taxpayer. 4 strands to study and find a result! Interesting!

This article relates to Module 1 and the lack of online privacy that we have with the increase of social media. This also affects intellectual property, and nothing is ever concealed or anonymous.