The Latest
- SL Scripting & Holodeck Possibilies
- A Lifeline from the Classroom
- Educational Social Networking
- Virtually Going Back In Time
- Teaching Skills Over Content? Really?
- SL Orientation
- Virtual Class Field Trips
- RUOK? LOL
- A Technology (non) Fiction Tale
- SL Building and Inventory
- Ideal Avatars may Motivate Real World Behavior
- What lessons can Games and Sims teach us about Life?
- SL Communication and Transportation
- Instructional Design for “Digital Natives”
- A future foundation of Education?
Virtually Going Back In Time
March 13th, 2008 by Craig Miller
I have made no secret of the fact that as a Science teacher, I am fully in favor of using virtual worlds in order to allow students the chance to manipulate interactive simulations that mimic environments which would be impossible to explore in the real world. One absurdly detailed example may be found at Microsoft ESP. Recently, I have also been considering how virtual worlds might be used to take students back in time in order to help them get a “feeling” for history.
As a contributing member of Jazz 91.1 (who possess the third largest jazz collection in the world behind the Smithsonian and Rutgers University), it would be fair to attach the label “jazz lover” to me. [Shameless plug: If you like good music, you could do a lot worse than streaming this station throughout your day.] As a jazz aficionado, and former resident of Oakland, California, I am intrigued by a collaborative project by the UC Berkeley schools of Journalism and Architecture.
7th Street in Oakland had a bright musical history during the 40’s and 50’s. The goal of this project is to recreate the area virtually so that it is architecturally and historically accurate. The intention is to also include jazz and blues recorded by the period’s artists, and have the music playing when an individual walks past or enters a virtual club. Players may also choose a character to explore the shops and restaurants, or simply to interact with known characters who spent their time hanging around 7th Street.
Download 7th Street Oakland, California Circa 1945
This project’s progress is being documented by the Journalism School’s New Media Program Director Paul Grabowicz.
Another Berkeley project is taking this idea a bit further, with a complete recreation of ancient Cairo.
A classmate in my “Educational Gaming and Simulation” course produced a suggestion of using virtual worlds in order to recreate interactive houses where famous authors once lived. I know that I learned much more about art through visiting the countries where it was created than simply by viewing slides projected upon a screen during my college “Art Appreciation” classes. To be immersed in a foreign tongue while reading books set in/written by citizens of the country, and eating/drinking the national delicacies together make art truly come alive for me. I imagine that a student who is given access to interactive media related to an author will gain a much greater contextual understanding of WHY an author wrote what she did.
And if just a fraction of the money that is put into digitally enhancing a Hollywood movie was put into education, the result would be absolutely jaw dropping for students:
Gladiator, 2000
Posted in Masters, Teaching | tagged Virtual Worlds | | 0 Comments
Virtual Class Field Trips
February 26th, 2008 by Craig Miller
The concept of “learning”, and how best to demonstrate a “change in behavior”, “change in the way one thinks”, or the more nebulous “continual process or appropriation”, is one that I am currently researching in my job as technology coordinator in a public high school.
As a continuation school, we are charged with the tasks of providing a program of credit recovery for students who have fallen behind their peers , while simultaneously preparing them for the mandatory High School Exit Exams (Math & English).
For the first task, there are many online programs such as:
Odyssey Ware http://www.odysseyware.com/curriculum.html
Cyber High http://www.cyberhigh.fcoe.k12.ca.us/CyberHigh/chmain.htm
Educational Options http://www.edoptions.com/
We use both OW and CH at our school for varied populations, and the students generally enjoy working through the online curriculum because it is a straightforward format to use. The web pages are largely text, with a few scattered images, and multiple choice review questions at the end. In other words, there is very little to differentiate these sites from a textbook. According to James Jones from the U. of N. Texas & Stepehn Bronack from Appalachian State University, this curriculum definitely runs the risk of allowing students to “answer the readings, but not move past the facilitated prompts.”
The problem for me is that at it’s base level , the read-and-response model does not demonstrate any “change in behavior”, let alone a “change in thinking”. In order to pass the Exit Exams, our students need to have real learning happen in order to improve their academic skills. For this to occur, I believe there needs to be some sort of manipulative action between the acquiring of information and the assessment.
As a science teacher, I have finally found a company that does manipulative simulations extremely well, Explore Learning: http://www.explorelearning.com/index.cfm?method=cResource.dspResourceCatalog
(Please visit this site and play around. Although it is Math & Science only, visitors get to use each “gizmo” simulation FREE for five minutes per computer per day)
I have been looking for a company creating these types of interactive computer simulations since I began using computers in the classroom during the early 1990s. In fact, I am so impressed with their product, if the acting governor of my state continues to cut education, I may one day look into working for them.
Although they have numerous simulation activities and assessment questions, they do not include pre-activity content. One site that does this very well using flash animations is Brain POP:
http://www.brainpop.com/
(Please select “see all _______ movies”, and then select one of their free samples)
The advantage of using online animations to teach is that they are both engaging, and a nice supplement to a static textbook.
Both Explore Learning and Brain POP have assessment quizzes at the end of each manipulative and flash video respectively; however, neither offers the complete package of content followed by a manipulative reinforcement and capped off with an assessment.
One online educational company has incorporated all three of these educational steps and bound them into one product: Plato Learning: http://www.plato.com/
Plato leads their lessons with animated instruction that requires students to click on buttons in order to continue the presentation. It then offers a scenario based interactive manipulative to reinforce the usefulness of what has been learned. It finishes with a more traditional exam to assess what students have learned. Our school will most likely be implementing their curriculum into our site in order to give instructors another option for reaching “alternative” students who find themselves in unique situations.
Despite singing the praises of a few companies who are leading the pack in developing online educational content, these are all self-paced programs. None of these options allow for student interaction. Instructors may easily add blogs, wikis, or discussions to the “canned” curriculum, and moderate student submissions; however, these would all be synchronous, and rule out students directly communicating about what they are learning in real time.
Instead of simply adding a requirement that students post their reflective thoughts while completing individualized online coursework, perhaps instructors who are monitoring students’ online curricular progress should have their students meet at arranged times in a virtual world. In this way, an online course would actually qualify as a “blended” or “hybrid” course, with avatar interactions replacing face-to-face conversation. One might this a “virtual blended/hybrid course”.
In keeping with my belief that the key to learning is interactive manipulation of the material after introduction and before assessment, it is my hope that virtual education worlds will become more than simply a dispenser of content tutorials, resources, and links. I would like to see the educational centers within virtual worlds include three-dimensional interactive simulations similar in style to what the folks at Explore Learning are creating. Moving beyond “open-ended simulations”, these “framed simulations” should have a friendly interface with obvious objectives and basic instructions so than an individual may “learn by doing”. I would also like to see bins for “note cards” or bulletin boards in/on which students may leave advice tips for future students. Lastly, I imagine some sort of recording and tabulating of scores over time, so that an individual’s score may be compared to the overall group data. I see three-dimensional interactive simulations of this nature increasing students’ motivation to interact with surroundings, due to an increase in context.
If these manipulative exercises are performed with a partner and/or in front of one’s classroom peers who are observing them within the virtual world, the tenets of social constructivism may come into play. If “learning is created and maintained through social interactions” as Jones & Bronack suggest, then groups working to achieve a goal in front of the other students within the class will need to effectively communicate with one another, and evaluate suggestions from their onlooking peers.
Additionally, if “learning is participatory where students take an active role”, then having authentic activities would be highly motivating. Also, if “development proceeds through stages and among more- and less-experienced peers within a community of practice”, students are more likely to talk with each other through an activity since each cannot assume that the others are viewing the exact same scene or sharing the exact same context as they tend to do when working together in the same real world room.
Socially, groups meeting in a virtual world in order to accomplish tasks together require one-to-one, one-to-many, and many-to-many interactions, just as in the real world.
I do not yet have the skills to build these types of simulations in a virtual environment; however, I see great value in simply converting two dimensional online simulations into a three dimensional virtual context. If real time social network interactivity is added to the simulations, then the ultimate field trip will have been created. Imagine searching trails in the amazon rain forest to find the specific plant needed to create the antidote for a snake bite victim, or terraforming mars, or huddling with emperor penguins during an Antarctic winter…my classmates and I could literally go anywhere and do anything at any time without ever leaving our respective living rooms!
Posted in Liaison, Masters, Teaching | tagged Avatars, Simulations, Virtual Worlds | | 0 Comments
Ideal Avatars may Motivate Real World Behavior
February 21st, 2008 by Craig Miller
As a follow up to my last post asking how games & sims can teach lessons that will follow the player into the real world:
A couple colleagues of mine passed along their January/February 2008 copy of “Stanford Magazine“, in order to present me with an article describing the psychological research of people’s connection to to their virtual world avatars.
The article is not simply a collection of studies trying to determine how people choose their avatar’s appearance and act differently in-world while viewing their “ideal” selves; instead, the article collects studies trying to determine how these new behaviors follow an individual back into the real world.
Some of the behaviors being viewed relate to aggressiveness, prejudice, decision making, and exercise.
As a bonus, there is an additional description of one company’s implementation of online communication models within various businesses in order to increase productivity.
Nothing could be more up my alley: my degree is in social psychology, and I teach Digital Media Arts. I could read articles like this all day. I cannot wait to read their results!
btw,
Stanford sucks! GO BEARS!
(Sorry, as a second generation graduate of Cal Berkeley, I am legally obligated by my alumni association to say that whenever I post any reference to the school who named their mascot after a color yet represents the mascot with a tree.)
Posted in Liaison, Masters, Teaching | tagged 2nd Life, Avatars, Virtual Worlds | | 0 Comments
A future foundation of Education?
February 4th, 2008 by Craig Miller
Yesterday at 4pm I received an email from Boise State canceling all afternoon/evening courses on campus due to the snow storm that was hitting the area.
Despite the weather, my instructor, classmates, and myself were all able to attend class at 5pm. We did so because our class was held in Second Life.http://secondlife.com/
Although we were scattered across America, we met for nearly two hours. Each person had the luxury to share from the real-world location of her choice. I chose to lay on my couch with my laptop on my chest.
Shockingly, after the initial hassles of setting up everyone’s microphones, we settled into a fairly natural dialogue pattern. One person picked up speaking as another trailed off. The conversation was only slightly more delayed than in face to face meetings.
Additionally, more information was shared than simply by voice, as there was a simultaneous chat message conversation going on at the same time that flowed in and out of the spoken conversation.
Furthermore, people did synchronous web searching for content related to our discussion and typed the address directly into the chat so that all the other people in the group could click on the link and open up a separate browser window directly to that site.
In the future, our instructor will be showing videos/websites/games, and taking us on virtual tours.
As an old school style teacher, I am naturally biased against anything possessing style over substance in education; however, I must admit that negotiating my way through a virtual world for a meeting is much more engaging than simply video conferencing.
In the photos you can see that the sun even set on us during our meeting on an outdoor platform high in the branches of a tree house.
As the world becomes smaller, and we make more contact with experts from around the world, this may be a way to safely connect them to our students (Please notice that real names are not used in SL). One might also use a virtual world to meet outside class time for tutoring or reviews, or even as a place for classes from across the world to exchange information/work on projects together in a modern day version of pen pals.
Since students may create their character’s look (I choose to be green and wear a shag carpet shirt with orange leather pants!), the potential for engagement is high.
For those concerned about the trouble students might get into, there is a “teen only” Second Life that shields them from adult content. Adults are not permitted; however, educators can be given accounts to the teen SL after a screening process.
I have only had one meeting so far in SL, but I can already see some great academic possibilities here.
Posted in Liaison, Masters, Teaching | tagged 2nd Life, Virtual Worlds | | 0 Comments
