I attended the Educause Learning Initiative this week in Orlando Florida. Cole, Allan, and I sat down after the second day to record an episode of ETS talk. Most of what I write about below is discussed in the podcast. Podcast embedded below.
First on the agenda was keynote presentation from Constance Steinkuehler who has conducted a five year study to discover the ways that Massively Multiplayer Online Games foster various forms thinking and learning. She focused on players who pull stats from games, put them in spreadsheet, and come up with equations that that can explain the numbers. These players use message boards to argue over whose equations are more accurate predictors of what would happen in game. Steinkuehler posits that community discussion around these games promoted discourse where evaluative epistemological beliefs are fostered. This was contrasted with a traditional classroom model which leads to absolutist epistemological beliefs (students learn to receive information from authority).
I think this is another example of the possible positive benefits that occur when people organize themselves in communities to discuss and/or solve problems. This is why I think blogs@psu is an important tool. It allows for students and faculty to share information and discuss and deliberate online in an ad hoc fashion with a record. Everyone can be invited to join the conversation.
The keynote on the second day of ELI was delivered by Michael Wesch, superstar of the edtech world. His stardom actually transcends the edtech world and pierces the world of general internet hipsterism (This video has received over 7.7 million hits on youtube). This is not to say his pop culture appeal lends him more credence, but I think it does speak to the power of his messages.
I am not going to summarize his multifaceted presentation. If you want to see it, you can. Instead, I'll cover a few points that especially resonated with me in light of the work I am doing here are PSU.
Wesch tackles the argument that adding all this technology to the education experience is pandering to students. Wesch says that less than 1% of his students know how to use a wiki when they enter his class. Part of the reason he asks them to do edit a wiki is because they haven't done it before. This isn't pandering. It is attempting to foster new literacies. This reminds me of the the broccoli/cheese argument. The tech is not simply something to help make otherwise dry subject matter more interesting (the cheese to the broccoli, if you will). The tech and learning the corresponding skills and patterns of interaction should be an integral part of higher education.
Check out Wesch's World Simulation. I would classify this as an educational game. What I really liked about is that while it was assisted by tech (Wiki, twitter is used to plan the game and capture and coordinate while it is being played out), it played out in meatspace. I think this made much more accessible to the students. The technology didn't get in the way, and because of this it allowed for a much more flexible experience. The phrase we used in the podcast was "More dungeons and dragons, less World of Warcraft". The outcome of the game was really up in the air. Would the world be destroyed by war and overconsumption, or would peace flourish? This challenges me to really raise my level of thinking when it comes to gaming and higher education.
But that's not all! There are five roaming video cameras throughout the simulation. After the simulation, the footage is edited into a cohesive history of the simulated world, with documentary footage of real world history included to demonstrate how the two correspond. Wesch's classroom is a 21st century learning paradise.
Aside from the question of FERPA and blogs (It is ok to ask student to participate in public blogs. Thanks, Beth Cate, Associate General Counsel, Indiana University System. If your session was first then it would have saved a lot of discussion), another thread I observed throughout my session and conversations was the notion of using play to foster inquiry. I don't think it is a stretch to characterize Steinkuehler's presentation or Wesch's world simulation in this way. In a session on digital storytelling, one of the stories was on about getting elementary school children to inquire and plan around playing. I am not talking about gaming, just general imaginative, dramatic play. I wish there was someway I could link to it. Basically, the kids went through a scenario that went from some of the kids pretending that they were hurt by wolves, to tending to the injuries, to capturing the wolves, to planning on how to transport the wolves across the country to a wildlife refuge. It is pretty amazing stuff, and I'd like to learn more. I know the educational experience depicted in the video was the work of Brian Edmiston from OSU.
Of course I have to also give a shout out to Cole Camplese and Carla Zembal-Saul and our presentation on using blogs as social learning portfolios. I think the reaction to the presentation was good. We left 20 minutes for discussion at the end and it was all used. It really got me thinking about how so much time is spent on information transmission instead of discussion. Seems like maybe an event could be structured in such a way that the info transmission happens asynchronously and then the time everyone spends in the same meatspace can be focused more on conversation. I think our presentation was ambitious in the amount of ground we attempted to cover. It was a lot to throw at people.
and BTW, getting to hang out with The Reverend Jim Groom: awesome.
