Recently in Travel Category

I noticed several trends at this conference.

    1.    Use/deployment/development of mobile learning is increasing.
    2.    There is less hype about the technology itself, and more concern for best uses/practices.

Can it be that we've finally blinked out the magic dust of technology from our eyes, and can now start clearly looking at the best ways to use it? Will the need for metrics push this?

I attended a pre-conference session by Thomas Angelo, Director, Curriculum, Teaching & Learning Centre and Professor of Higher Education, La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia. Although the session title led me to believe this was to be about assessment, it turned out to be that and more. Tom give the attendees a wide range of activities, things to ponder, and useful tips revolving around education.

Eric Mazur, Balkanski Professor of Physics and Applied Physics, and Dean of Applied Physics, Harvard University give the conference opening keynote. His use of clickers for audience participation really hit home! I believe many in the audience who had never seen these devices were convinced of their value.

David Wiley, Associate Professor of Instructional Psychology and Technology, Brigham Young University was entertaining as usual, and he has added a section on metrics to his stock presentation, making it worth watching.

I got very little out of the closing keynote, William Patry, Senior Copyright Counsel, Google, other then we need to decide what we want out of copyright and go for it. Hmmm.

I attended a number of general sessions around mobility and the LMS.

Some thoughts I jotted down during the general sessions:

If the lecture is cost effective and thus continues to be used, what can we do to make other forms of learning cheaper?

Learning Designers vs Instructional Designers:

• Learning is on the individual.
• Instruction is what we build in an attempt to provide a solid learning environment.
• We need to focus on building opportunities, not constrained forced situations.

Mobile Learning

• How much do the students really want this?
• Is it our mission to show the value of this?
• What about the digital divide?
• Can we track usage of mobiles and tie it to learning?
• How do we do this right?
• Does the use improve learning in a visible way? How do we measure it?
• Accessibility issues?
• Faculty prep. What is it, what do we need to do?
• How does this improve availability?

LMS

• Many see this as the hub, not as the be-all, end-all uber-solution.
• How do we leverage this to our advantage?
• How do we attach new stuff to this hub and make it work transparently?
  

On 8-24-10, Penn State World Campus hosted this Webinar. Clark Aldrich was the host for the session. I've followed Clark's writings for years; he a big advocate of educational sims, but has interesting insights on games and virtual worlds as well.

While I was not Clark's target audience for this session, I did pick up a few thoughts of his I've not heard before. One interesting distinction he makes is between three types of learning:

• Learning to know
• Learning to do
• Learning to be

Learning to know is all about cognitive skills. Learning to do is about task-related activities and applying skills. Finally, learning to be is about affective changes in an individual, the ethics behind decisions, etc.

So how does this play out in the real world? iPhone apps are, for the most part, learning to do apps. Facebook, on the other hand, is learning to be.

This is an interesting way of approaching the use of these tools/devices/sites for educational, training, and promotional purposes. Use phones for the just-in-time learning activities we need. Maybe if PSU chooses a new CMS we should look at a help system that runs on phones. Use Facebook for promotion and community discussions that lead to buy in. Share new CMS ideas on Facebook for discussion, feedback, and venting.

This has more appeal to me than shoehorning cognitive skill learning onto phones, or forcing community activities on a PC inside a closed CMS. I wonder how many times we see a new device and try to graft all our processes onto it? That just doesn't make sense and will surely lead to disappointment. Something to think about when yo9u examine your next cool piece of tech!

During the last two weeks in July, the Bixler family traveled to California to travel and explore the coast from San Francisco down to San Diego. What a trip! This was the longest vacation ever for me. I'm sharing some photos here, but for the full experience, see the slideshow . It's about 30 minutes long and takes several moments to load - you've been warned!

This was a great experience in diversity for me and my family. We saw many new things, were exposed to new ideas and ways of life, and it strongly impacted me. In fact, I plan on listing it as a diversity component in my next staff evaluation!

We started our vacation in San Francisco. Word of warning - we stood in line for 1.5 hours to receive our Dollar rental car. In comparison, people renting from Budget Car Rental in the area next to Dollar spent about 20 minutes in line on average.

Once we were in the Mercury Grand Marquis (dubbed "The Boat") we drove to the Fisherman's Wharf area of SF. My kids asked why the doors in The Boat were so big. "So the animals can enter two by two," was my reply.


Once we checked into our hotel, we had our first inkling that this was to be a cold vacation. Coldest CA summer on record since FDR was president, in fact. The hotel did have nice outdoor seating, however.

 

We visited the wharf area (aren't they cute!),


Ghiradelli's Chocolate,


Alcatraz,


Sausilto, and Muir Woods. The giant redwoods are very humbling, and make you aware of how much a part of nature we all are.



We also hit Chinatown and the business district.




The food in Chinatown was amazing. Chinese food in State College is dead to me for several months at least.

A trip to SF would not be complete with a trip down Lombard Street, the most crooked street in the world. Driving this street is a rite of passage, especially when driving a boat! Check out the cars in the picture - each one is on a different switchback.


We also toured the Marine Mammal Center where they rescue Sea Lions, etc. that need some help. This is a great place, one I could easily work at. It's north of SF and takes about 40 minutes or so to travel to, mostly due to traffic getting out of SF more so than distance.


From SF it was down the coast via Highway 1. This is an amazing drive, but it's not for the faint of heart. The pict here shows a stretch of road that is only half as high as it sometimes is - and no guard rails!


We stopped on the pier in Santa Cruz to stretch our legs:


Our next stop way Monterey, Cannery Row, and Pacific Grove. These are all in one location. While our hotel was in Pacific Grove, we were only about a mile from Cannery Row in Monterey.


Next to our hotel was a great restaurant - Latitudes. Do eat there if you ever get the chance. The food is amazing!


We also had a great ambassador for the area. He hung outside out hotel room window. We named him Norman, after Norman Bates, as one reviewer of our hotel likened it to the Bates Motel (s/he was wrong). We named his assistant Johnathan.


We then drove to Hearst Castle and took a tour. Words fail me here. This place is so over the top it's in outer space. I've never seen such opulence. It must have been quite the place to be  when it was in full swing.



We spent the night in a hotel in Morro Bay. Not much going on there, but it does have the US version of the Rock of Gibraltar. This is the tip of a 20 million years old extinct volcano, so I'm told.


From Morro Bay was the long drive to Los Angeles. We stopped along the way at Santa Barbara, a very nice town. We walked the pier and ate lunch just off of it.


Hollywood and LA were interesting, but possibly my least favorite part of the trip. Too touristy for me, and the lifestyles of the stars are too far removed from my lifestyle to really mean that much to me. We saw the usual things, like Mulholland Drive and the Chinese Theater:


We ate at Pink's Hot Dogs (recommended):


We took the traditional Hollywood stars tour and saw where Michael Jackson died. Here's the stop sign right next to the mansion entrance:



I took a sun bath one day. Folks in California are not nearly as liberal as you'd think, judging by the harsh stares I received:


We visited the knockoff section of the LA Fashion District. There were many bargains to be had!


Recovered from frenzied shopping, the next day was spent at Disneyland. It's no Disneyworld, but we had a great time. The only sour note was Tammy contracted food poisoning (we believe), so the ride back to the hotel was not pleasant.



After a final stop at the Hollywood farmer's market and an awesome hot sauce shop:


on to San Diego! This was my favorite part of the trip. SD is a great city, and has many surrounding areas to visit. We stayed on Shelter Island, just west of the city proper, with a great view of the city and the harbor.


Old Town in San Diego is a must see. It contains some historical building and shops.



The San Diego Zoo is another must see. It is the best planned zoo I've ever visited. The animals seem content.





The beaches are SD were cool. Literally. Too cold to swim IMO, but there were folks in it. Here's a view of Imperial Beach, just south of SD.


We ate at some great places. One was the Big Kitchen, another was The Ugly Coyote.




Both places are highly recommended. The Pacific Bean coffee shop, north of SD, is not to be missed, either. (Tammy is still recovering from food poisoning in this photo!)


The last day of our vacation, we visited Point Loma, the entrance to the SD bay. Sitting high above it all, it's a great place to take in the city and surrounding areas.


Like all good things, vacation does come to an end. Along the trip I saw things that reminded me of home and folks at work:





And finally:


And that's how I spent my summer vacation.

I attended and presented at the Games, Learning, & Society Conference held June 9-11, 2010 at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.  As always, I was overwhelmed at the amount of work, projects, and energy this conference produces and demands from one.

I attended a three hour pre-conference session on Games and Mobile Learning. Working on teams, we conceptualized and storyboarded a mobile game for learning. I pitched my idea on a location-aware discovery game for students new to a university, and the team ran with it. We came up with a great name for the game - Youniversity! While I've already conceptualized this game as a browser-based game, thinking of it in mobile terms has opened up some very interesting avenues. If I can get the scope of the game down to a manageable size, it is worth considering for development at PSU.

The opening keynote to the conference was done by Kurt Squire, an educational games guru from UWM. He used Sid Meier's Pirates game to discuss what learning happens in a game, things such as having a combo of short and long-term goals, choices and consequences, and a balanced progression - Short term goals build up to the long-term goals, occurring fairly frequently so no boredom creeps in. He also talked about how a player progresses through game play, from consumer to producer and community leader. If he's correct about this, the players of today (teenagers and younger) will be coming to college ready to create. I think he's onto something, based on the game dev programs spring up in middle and high schools. This is just too great to ignore. We have parallels at PSU as evidenced by the PSU Media Commons success. Students are now creating media in a variety of formats. Games need all that creativity and media, so if we do begin a game dev program at PSU, we already have some of the needed infrastructure in place.

Some of the general sessions I attended touched on common themes with educational gaming - leadership, power structures, etc. Nothing new there, but folks are starting to take a serious look at assessment of edu games, from assessing the design of them to the reaching of educational goals. Some promising rubrics are in the works.

Another theme at this conference was - "How do we (educators) build good games?" The true revolution will have to come from us. Business may help, but will never be the knight in shining armor that comes to higher ed's rescue. The profit margin just isn't there. I've come away from the conference with some good heuristics we can use for the development of our games.

If you want to see how professionally-developed games are going Hollywood, go play Uncharted 2: Among Thieves. I can't wait to pick up a copy and play the hero in this fast-paced game.

My poster session on the EGC was well received. The two main comments I received were, "We need something just like this where I am," and "I've never sen something set up like this (from central IT)." Most folks were eager to take my handouts and card, so I'm expecting some contact with them in the future.

In all, this was a very good conference to attend. It will take my brain a few days to sort through all the ideas!

Extra - While at Madison, I met and had dinner with a fellow ITLP'er - Peter Mann, who works at DoIT. We were in an ITLP cohort together and have remained in touch since. Peter's a great guy, great professional, and I owe it to ITLP for our introduction. My thanks to Kevin and John for getting me into this program. If you have a chance to participate in it - just do it.

Chris Stubbs, John Harwood, Kevin Morooney, and I met with several MS folks at the MS Executive Briefing Center on the MS Campus recently to discuss our mutual interests in educational gaming. We had a great 1/2 day with various folks from MS. They have of course the XBox, but you may not know they have an extensive developer's kit that includes their dev. platform, XNA.

My goals were simple - I wanted to establish contacts with folks at Microsoft working on their gaming initiatives. I wanted to discover opportunities for collaboration and partnerships in the gaming space. I wanted to learn more about the XBox platform, their game development software (XNA and others), and their mobile platforms.

We first met with Michael Kluchner, Lead Program Manager, who gave us an overview of the XNA platform. This is a very intriguing platform that we'll have to spend some time examining.

Next we met with Dan Walters, an Academic Evangelist (love the title!), who gave us an overview of the MS-sponsored ImagineCup competition. See http://www.imaginecup.us for complete info. Here's a synopsis:

• Student competition. Global.
• Team-spirited.
• Build software to address one of eight issues, live Combat AIDs, Child Health.
• One competition on fall, one in spring.
• 10 teams of each compete. M ost teams 4-5 in size. Chosen to go to US Finals in DC, then maybe be invited to WW Finals in some international location.
• Design a project using one of MS technologies, such as Visual Studio (for Software design) or XNA Game Studio (for Game design).
• Round 1 - Submit a business plan, wireframe (optional).
• Round 2 - Updated business plan, prototype, video presenting project and team.
• Finals  - Held in major city or University
• Up to 3 20-minute live presentations & 10-min Q&A.
• Beta of software or 100% playable game.
• Venture capitalists, etc. come to this.
• US Prizes - 1^st 8K, 2^nd 4K, 3^rd 3K
• Worldwide Prizes - 1^st 25K

Sounds like a great opportunity for PSU and we should explore it.

Next, we met with Kelvin Sung, Associate Professor with the Computing and Software Systems at University of Washington. His recent works are related to the teaching and learning of computer graphics and foundational concepts in programming, based on computer games. He developed "XNA Game Studio Game-Themed Introductory Programming Assignments for CS1/2 Courses" - http://www.microsoft.com/education/highered/faculty/curriculum/XNA/

We will definitely look to bring Kelvin to PSU! He's just amazing.

Finally, we met with Ian Wilson from the MS Entertainment Division. He gave us an overview of the products this division works with, such as the XBox and the Zune.

Reflections on this trip: The idea of a 2-day period for an XNA Jamfest is the most obvious one. Tying game programming to Computer Science and certain IST courses looks to be beneficial for all involved.  Kelvin Sung would be a great resource to bring in at a future time to introduce CompSci and IST faculty to the concept of using game programming to teach basic programming concepts.

We need to bring the EGC programmers up to speed on XNA development, looking for development opportunities that make sense.

We need to advertise the ImagineCup initiative to faculty at Penn State. Again, CompSci and IST are the logical candidates.

We need to investigate opportunities to utilize Microsoft Research opportunities in the EGC.

Here's some possible activities we should consider pursuing based on this trip:

1. Decide on a 2-day period for an XNA Jamfest.  We would train both faculty and students on the XNA platform, then have Kelvin Sung work with CS faculty on his programming modules.
2. Bring ETS Up to Speed with XNA Development . We need to have some internal expertise here.
3. Explore opportunities for ImagineCup at PSU.
4. Investigate opportunities to utilize Microsoft Research opportunities in the EGC.

If you ever get a chance to visit MS, take it! It's truly an amazing place.

The ELI 2010 Spring Focus Session on Mobile Learning was held 3-3 to 3-4-10, from noon to 5 PM EST both days.

At Penn State University Park, ETS brought this in to 141 Computer Building for anyone who could attend.

The archived sessions are now available at:

http://elifocus.ning.com/page/proceedings-1

You will need to establish a (free) UserID and Password on that site to access the archives. These are Adobe Connect recordings of the sessions.

Individual presenter slides can be found in the online program (http://net.educause.edu/Program/1024363) under the Agenda link for each day.

I truly believe that mobile learning is here and Penn State must proactively engage in discussions about its best uses. I define mobiles as anything lass than a laptop, so netbooks, the yet-to-come iPads, eBook readers, and cell phone all fall into this.

Fortunately, we are not as far behind as you might think, when comparing us to other universities. True, there are a few that have established mobile learning initiatives. Most places to date are concentrating on the infrastructure needed to support and develop mobile applications. App development is focusing on apps that support the student in non-academic ways, such as maps, class scheduling, and so on.

If I were to tie a learning theory to design of instruction on mobiles, I think Charles Reigeluth's Elaboration Theory is one to consider:

Elaboration theory is an instructional design theory that argues that content to be learned should be organized from simple to complex order, while providing a meaningful context in which subsequent ideas can be integrated. Chunking, or configuring large amounts of information into smaller units of information that are scaffolded (supportive structures) in order to accommodate memory and learning limitations is key to this approach.

Utilizing a minimalist, keep-it-short-and-sweet approach, one may be able to leverage the small screen real estate on phones to their maximum advantage.

If I were to suggest a plan to Penn State for starting a mobile learning initiative, it would include the following:

• Form a planning committee with representatives from ITS, Colleges, and students.
• Start with Student-focused services for maximum impact & to get used to the technology, set up support infrastructure & help desks, etc.
• Build support apps that have immediate and wide-spread appeal. For example, campus maps to find classes.
• Build educational apps that have immediate and wide-spread appeal. For example, informal quizzing apps where anyone can easily add content. These types of app build upon the strengths of mobile learning - anytime, any where, just-in-time learning. Leverage Web 2 philosophies into them.
• Utilize students in the building of apps. Great for cross-discipline collaboration.
• Tie the apps to the university CMS,blog, and iTunes U platforms.
• Augment our existing web technologies to include pushing web sites out to mobile devices.
• Start a mobile learning initiative to invite faculty innovators to experiment.
• Must have the technology to hand out/borrow for both faculty and students for pilot projects.
• Build on this by promoting their efforts throughout PSU.

This is just a brainstorm list - there's more that must happen here, or course.

Overall

I'm impressed by the amount of innovation expressed by the people and projects presented here. Mobile learning, open learning, and just plain fun learning (via games, virtual worlds, and simulations) are the things we need to be on top of in the coming year. Fortunately, at PSU we're aware of and have invested in open learning and gaming initiatives.

Mobile learning is another matter. This is a technology that defies pigeonholing. It crosses pedagogical and technological approaches, and curriculum uses, thus offering many, many possibilities. At PSU, we need to ramp up thinking about possible uses, resources, and constraints of mobile devices. I suggest a cross-disciplinary team begin investigations here, consisting of people from ETS and other faculty support units, and faculty interested in the technology. A "7 Things You Need To Know About Mobile Devices in Education" paper needs to be located or created.

In this day and age, a criteria for choosing keynote presenters at a national conference should be a video review of previous speeches given by possible presenters. We should keep this in mind as we move forward with various conference planning sessions.

Many places are focused on building "stuff." It's tangible, showy and others like to see new stuff. I saw only one presentation that really talked about the best use of stuff - a straight-forward research project. We need research to, in part, guide us towards best practices. I'd like to see ELI consider this for future conferences, hopefully achieving a balance between stuff and substance.

Below are my conf. notes for the major sessions I attended. In some cases I just copied the session description right from the ELI conf. listings.

Digital Histories for the Digital Age: How Do We Teach Writing Now?
The digital environment has had an immense effect on American society, learning, and education: we have more sources available at our fingertips than any previous generation. Teaching and learning with these new sources, however, has been a challenging transition. Students are confronted with an ocean of digital objects and need skills to navigate the World Wide Web and numerous proprietary databases. Writing and disciplinary habits of mind are more important than ever in this environment, so how do we teach these in the digital age? This presentation looks at the current digital environment that humanities faculty face in their teaching and explores new tools that might support collaborative writing and digital skills development for students. In particular, Thomas will showcase a multi-agent wiki system for writing called POND (Participating Online In-Depth) that is currently being used in a large lecture and intensive writing classes at the University of Nebraska and developed as a collaborative project between History, English, and Computer Science.

ELI 2010

~500 attendees
Good turnout given budgets.
Some international attendees.
40% faculty
27% IT
7% Corp
7% Lib
CIOs, etc %20

Building an interdisciplinary team

English
Comp Sci
History

Having the backing of high admins helps here!

We know faculty need training to use these new tools well, but what's the hook to encourage them to invest the time?

Hard to identify primary sources in a world of digital duplication
Need to help the "novice in the archive"--the student lost in the world of overwhelming amounts of digital data
Primary data sources? Hard to navigate what's out there. Which databases should you use?
Critical thinking is, well, critical here. Until we have better interfaces, you need to cull the good from the mass of data. Building better interfaces is desirable, but building CT skills is better in the long run, IMO.

Retooling a course makes one re-examine everything, all assumptions, fundamental questions. What is role of teacher?
Thomas piloted effort in Blackboard, then moved to ClassroomWiki for spring 2009.Wiki allowed collaborative writing assignment.



Improvements to course came via
 
A wiki system that monitored individuals better than Blackboard. Students knew it.
Sound ID
Graded participation for online activities.
Collaborative assignments where individual was assessed.

Hard to get folks to use a wiki natively, as a group doc. We should teach Wikipedia as model of how to "do" wikis.

I think the take-away from this session is that one must throw out the old stuff you gather over the time you've taught a course and be willing to start anew.
Once you do that, you'll be open to ID involvement and using new tools. Using Web 2 tools can foster collaboration if that's critical for the course. It can lead to authentic involvement in a culture of learning.

Do we need more tools, or more imaginative ways of combining and integrating the tools we have?
We'll always have new tools, but the need to use them well remains the constant opportunity, IMO.


Can an Online Simulation Promote Learning When the Topic Is Genocide?
Martha M. Hocutt, Dean, Division of Online Programs, University of West Alabama
Beverly B. Ray, Professor, Idaho State University

Exploratory research examined the efficacy of an online simulation, Darfur is Dying, to see whether use of that simulation promoted the learning of content knowledge about the genocide in Darfur. Results were rated before and after the exercise using an evaluation rubric. Results of a Wilcox signed ranks t-test demonstrated a significant difference between the pre- and the post-assessment results for both raters. Results suggest that content learning occurred as a result of playing the game. Results also demonstrate that further research is needed to examine the efficacy of digital games, including online simulations, as content learning tools.
www.darfurisdying.com
We need rubrics to assess dispositions in these types of games.

Some of My Students Are Not Human! Avatar Interaction and Collaboration in Virtual Worlds
Paul Wallace, Assistant Professor of Instructional Technology, Appalachian State University

Avatars are used in virtual worlds to increase a user's sense of social presence. Into the virtual space we carry our sense of identity and race and tend to act out our real-life prejudices in interaction with avatars. This session will discuss recent research on social interaction and collaboration in virtual worlds for learning.

Using Active Worlds, Teleplace, Venuegen

Active Worlds
    •    Used by Instructional Technology program
    •    2500 citizens

Venuegen

    •    More realistic than Active Worlds
    •    Windows-only
    •    Can make an avatar that looks just like you.

Teleplace

Uses 2D Photos for default avatars.

Used Cyberextruder to create avatar faces.
Most wanted an avatar that matched their own features.
What about non-human avatars - do people want to interact with them?
Highly sociable students more willing to collaborate with other avatars, sex, type didn't matter.
High context students want more text and async communication. Email vs. audio chat.

Mobile Learning Environment Showcase
Ellen Yu Borkowski, Director, Academic Support, University of Maryland
Karen French, IDEA Studio Coordinator, University of Texas at Austin
Christopher Higgins, Manager, Learning Technologies, University of Maryland
Shawn J. Miller, Academic Technology Consultant, Duke University
Ken Tothero, Project Manager, University of Texas at Austin

Flips as a learning device.
Maryland Mobility Initiative
The University of Maryland is conducting an iPhone/iPod Touch pilot that is exploring how these technologies can enhance the student education experience.
Use for time management - great idea.
Promote teacher-student interaction.
IT support issues?

Year 1 pilot
175 students given iPhone to iTouch
Made mobile version of student portal
Turning Point for clickers

Year 2 Pilot
165 students
ELMS app developed (lab system?)
data collection apps
UM info
Likert-scale instrument for data collection in the field.

Apps not widely available yet. Only local students.

Issue - continue to dev in house or hit vendors that offer canned/customized solutions?

Learning Tech Ctr, U Tx at Austin

The Learning Technology Center (LTC) at The University of Texas at Austin has been examining how mobile devices including smartphones, PDAs, iPod Touches, iPhones, and netbooks can be effectively leveraged to support learning within and beyond the classroom.

Looking at laptops down to PDAs.

Doing some app dev for phones.
Fitness data collection
Online assessment system - Used for self&team evals.
MOCA - Mobile Online Course Assessment - eval the course any time.
Presidential Timeline
Place-based learning - reacts to where you are locally.

Building a web site as a one-stop shop for mobile learning in edu.

Virtual Learning Environment Showcase
Todd Bryant, Language Program Administrator, Dickinson College
Jon Crutchfield, Academic Technologies Consultant, University of Notre Dame
David Hooker, Manager, The Digital Union, The Ohio State University
Daniel W. Kulmala, Associate Professor of English, Director of Writing, Fort Hays State University
Kenneth Rigler, Instructor of Technology Studies, Fort Hays State University
Vinayak Tanksale, Instructor, Ball State University

A VLE for Foreign Languages and Ideas for Others

Using Skype and Drupal for language learning via student-mentor pairing.

Epsilen, the New York Times Knowledge Network's global learning system

Learning environment.
Has NY Times Knowledge network - and articles.

MS Surface

Massively multi-touch. Up to 50 can touch at the same time.
Incorporates physical objects you can set on the surface that the machine can understand.

What can you do with this that is different from touch screen technologies?

The World Is Open: Now, WE ALL LEARN with Web Technology
Book, The World is Open: How Web Technology is Revolutionizing Education, Curt Bonk offers an intriguing look at 10 technology trends that he calls educational openers.
http://www.worldisopen.com/

http://php.indiana.edu/~cjbonk

WEALLLEARN

    1.    Web Searching in the World of e-Books
    2.    E-Learning and Blended Learning
    3.    Availability of Open Source and Free Software
    4.    Leveraged Resources and OpenCourseWare
    5.    Learning Object Repositories and Portals
    6.    Learner Participation in Open Information Communities
    7.    Electronic Collaboration
    8.    Alternate Reality Learning
    9.    Real-Time Mobility and Portability
    10.    Networks of Personalized Learning

"Anyone can now learn anything from anyone at anytime."

NROC
The National Repository of Online Courses (NROC) is a growing library of high-quality online course content for students and faculty in higher education, high school and Advanced Placement*.

TV Lesson
scribd


Computational Thinking
Jeannette Wing, Assistant Director for CISE, National Science Foundation

Computational thinking will be a fundamental skill used by everyone in the world. To reading, writing, and arithmetic, let's add computational thinking to every child's analytical ability.

http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~wing

Computing is the automation of abstractions.





 

Game Education Summit 09 Musings

Held in the Entertainment Technology Center at Carnegie Mellon University, this two-day event focused on game development.

Thus, there were many developers from game companies present. I got to rub shoulders with people that works on tactical/strategy games, etc.  It was great to hear their #1 issue:

People need team skills.

It doesn't seem to matter what you work on in today's world. If you can't function in a team, you are handicapped.

Don Marinelli, Executive Producer of the ETC, had this to say in his opening remarks:

Why doesn't the media cover the state of education?
 - American education is headed for a meltdown.

Videogames are NOT a fad. They are here to stay.
 - Games are art AND science.
 - Mario franchise has made more than all Star Wars movies combined.

If games are a paradigm shift in education, how do we make it happen? Let's forge a plan of attack.

 - No more apologies
 - Enlighten all
   - The potentials of gaming for education
  - We need to demonstrate the power of games within a societal context. Make it relevant to those that don't get it.
 - Young people find formal education less appealing, inspiring than ever before.
   - Maybe kindergartners should go on strike!

Richard Hilleman, Chief Creative Director for Electronic Arts, was also very interesting. EA is looking to develop smaller games. The days of the monolithic, $30 million game are almost over. Instead, EA will work on smaller games, and more of them.

Personal Note - This may mean EA is open to working with education to develop educational games?

I attended many other sessions, but the main takeaway was the people. I talked to many folks who were very interested in the Educational Gaming Commons concept, and set the groundwork for future speakers for the EGC Virtual Worlds Brownbags, etc.

The Annual GLS Conference took place at UWM June 10-12. What a treat! This conference is chock full of researchers, practitioners, and teachers that are interested in gaming, virtual worlds, and simulations for education. Here are my main takeaways.

1. It's not about games. It's about situated cognition, constructionism, constructivism, and active learning. Games, virtual worlds, and simulations embody these theories and bring them to life.

2. Jim Gee is the guru in this area, and rightly so. His broad swath of knowledge allows him to place all this in perspective, to give us a glimmer of where it all fits in the scheme of things. Read one of his books and you know what I mean. I was able to hear him as the conf keynote, then later in a much more informal Q&A session.

3. I participated in Real-time Research while attending the conference. This was a double session (one at the beginning, one at the end of the conf.) where teams devised a research question, tested it during the conf., analyzed gathered data, and reported out on their findings.


This sounds suspiciously like ETS' Hot Team Process, and I believe it would make a nice "snap-on" component for future Hot Teams where some data gathering from subjects makes sense. The only issue is IRB approval if we want to publish our results. That's not a minor issue, and I'll need to do some digging to see what's possible at PSU.

The neat thing is my team won best data analysis, and we get to publish our work in an upcoming book on RTR that will be produced by CMUs ETS-Press.

4. Some educators are producing in-house tools to develop games. By next year, it should be quite interesting to see what emerges.

5. Mobile gaming is gaining steam. IMO platform differences hamper this; you have to tie your development efforts to a platform, thus limiting distribution. I will continue to monitor this space, and at the EGC our developer, Jason Wolfe, continues to refine his knowledge in this area.

6. The people and connections I made are, as usual, at least as valuable as the conf sessions. This almost goes without saying, but it's worth noting that the frontier mentality re: ed gaming is slowing wearing away, to be replaced by a more mature, normal one. By this I mean people are increasingly collaborating, rubbing shoulders and sharing ideas, and devising joint projects. People are tapping into traditional funding agents, as these agents are now funding in this area.

I'm also seeing the Empire-builders appearing, the folk that always twist ANY conversation around to their projects, their ideas, their ways of thinking. If you fail to fall into their narcissistic black hole, they immediately discard you are irrelevant. How sad, yet how expected. There are two people I admired for some time that I met at the conf. that fit this category. My admiration for them has dimmed.

Finally, to read my minute-by-minute thoughts while attending the conference, see http://twitter.com/#search?q=brettbixler%20gls09

James Gee = Ed games guru.
GLS = Games, Learning, and Society Conference. Held in Madison, WI.

This man is a genius. He gets games, is a great researcher, and knows how to communicate his complex, deep thoughts.

My notes:

In his recent book - ignored Sims and women gamers.

But, in research, the marginal things are often the most interesting. This is true here!

Women in the Sims are doing amazing things - the future of gaming.

Gamers can become designers with today's games and tools.

Nickel and Dimed challenge by yamx - To the Sims community.
 - Based on the book, but at a metaphorical level.
 - Must be a "poverty" mom.
 - Raise kids until they are old enough to be on their own.
 - They can't die or be taken by social services.

Rule book for challenge created. Limits what you can do in the game, set boundaries.

This game "mod" is building social engagement.
Example - community wrote back and discussed the rules, argued them, some made mods of this mod rule set!

This is a new form of modding - built on social tools as opposed to "hard" programing skills. It involves "emotional intelligence."

That skill is critical for solving the problems of today and tomorrow. Games are one way to foster it.

This is an example of 21st century leadership - fostering connections, building people up, and allowing other's leadership to emerge.

We need people to use their emotional intelligence to engage all socially to solve the problems of today and tomorrow.

General responses to audience questions:

The game must be fun first! Learning of content should emerge naturally from the fun.

Fun is not the same as engagement. We don't always have fun playing games, but we are engaged.