Vernacular Video Culture in Education

This video by Howard Rheingold discusses vernacular video, video created by non-professionals for the purpose of communicating casual ideas. It then looks at ways education can use this newly democratized tool to educate collaboratively.

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Cloud-Based, Open-Source For Teachers?

A computing device for every teacher and student so they can access the Internet at school or at home? That, along with an embrace of cloud computing, Creative Commons, and open-source technologies is part of a new set of recommendations from the U.S. Department of Education.

On March 5, the department released an 80-page draft of its National Educational Technology Plan entitled Transforming Education: Learning Powered by Technology. The plan lays out an ambitious agenda for transforming teaching and learning through technology.

Much of the NETP emphasizes “21st Century learning” as the path to transforming education: “engaging and empowering learning experiences for all learners… and leveraging the power of technology to provide personalized learning instead of a one-size-fits all curriculum.” The plan seeks to challenge the traditional model of the isolated teacher in a classroom, promoting the idea of “always on” learning resources and online communities for both educators and students.

In addition to changes to the US education model, there are some bold technology recommendations in the plan.

• Adequate broadband and wireless access inside and outside of school
• At least one Internet access device for every student and educator inside and outside of school
• R&D into the use of gaming, simulations, and virtual worlds for instruction and assessment
• Encouragement of cloud computing for school districts
• Use of Creative Commons and Open Education licenses
• Changes to FERPA (Family Educational Rights & Privacy Act) to open access to student data
• Changes to CIPA (Children’s Internet Protection Act) to open access to the Internet and rethink how filtering works in schools.

Continue reading via Read Write Web

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Virtual Worlds as Scientific Tools

Building Up Social Sciences in Synthetic Spaces

Virtual worlds as modifiable simulation tools are finding a foothold in all levels of academia and professional research, and the names and organizations being linked to virtual world research are no longer unknown fringe researchers. This is because the mechanics behind virtual worlds are evolving with emerging technology, and because institutions like the University of Texas are making virtual worlds a research priority instead of a secondary or tertiary concern.

The great visual effects community blog Vizworld has some excellent reporting on just how expansive virtual world-based research has become. Among Vizworld’s best points? The emergence of virtual therapy – something we covered a week or so ago – and the potential ethical questions raised as an old discipline adapts to the shifting and nebulous rules of a virtual landscape:

Several psychologists and sociologists view SecondLife as a rare sandbox of human behavior.  The open nature of the system removes several of the restrictions found in online games, allowing more natural interaction between avatars, but also allows people to assume whole new personalities.  The distinctions between the user’s real persona and their chosen avatar has been the subject of many psychological studies and books.

Books like John Suler’s ‘Psychology of Cyberspace’ is a great resource that discusses the observed group dynamics and psychological behaviors monitored inside virtual worlds, and lays out possibilities for psychotherapy and clinical work inworld.

Vizworld writer Randall Hand notes that, disconcertingly, little ‘hard’ science is conducted in Second Life. This is a legitimate criticism of virtual world research as it stands – the great palaces of research organizations seem to serve as libraries of completed and pending research instead of virtual field labs for virtual experimentation. But as more open-source and behind-the-firewall worlds come about, that paradigm is changing. As it turns out, getting researchers in front of virtual worlds may yield a long-term dividend for applied science.

Putting students and researchers in front of virtual world technology – be it Second Life or something else – creates familiarity, and with familiarity comes the confidence to create ever more refined social and scientific experiments. In time, graduates with research experience in virtual worlds could develop their own virtual worlds – an interactive laboratory of indefinite size and scope, suitable for any number of experiments that real-world limitations may render impossible. UT Dallas made a name for itself building virtual laboratories in Second Life. The future of virtual research will be much more ambitious.

The standards for this kind of in-world research are already being debated in academic circles. A recent conference session over at the New Media Consortium focused on best practices in respecting the privacy of researchers and research subjects in virtual social experiments. The presentation’s PowerPoint notes are available at the aforementioned link, and they make for fascinating reading. When universities begin looking at virtual world research in earnest, they’ll lean on the best practices developed by forward-thinking organizations like NMC.  Continue reading…Via Pixel and Policy

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Connectivism And Modern Literacy

In the 20th century literacy was simply the “ability to read and write”. The subset of skills necessary to be called literate has changed greatly and the definition has expanded to encompass the, ” …ability to identify, understand, interpret, create, communicate, compute and use printed and written materials associated with varying contexts. Literacy involves a continuum of learning in enabling individuals to achieve their goals, to develop their knowledge and potential, and to participate fully in their community and wider society.” (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) With the advent of the internet and social media students have been challenged to add new resources to their tool set to be prepared to be productive citizens in the information age. Modern literacy in the information age calls for lifetime learners with a set of skills that are constantly evolving and is permeated by dynamic, participatory media (social), and web-based tools that aid collaboration and information sharing.

In the book “Using Participatory Media and Public Voice to Encourage Civic Engagement,” Howard Rheingold wrote: “If print culture shaped the environment in which the Enlightenment blossomed and set the scene for the Industrial Revolution, participatory media might similarly shape the cognitive and social environments in which twenty first century life will take place (a shift in the way our culture operates). For this reason, participatory media literacy is not another subject to be shoehorned into the curriculum as job training for knowledge workers.

Participatory media include (but aren’t limited to) blogs, wikis, RSS, tagging and social bookmarking, music-photo-video sharing, mashups, podcasts, digital storytelling, virtual communities, social network services, virtual environments, and videoblogs.”

Modern youth multi-task more often, multi-task more effectively and have shorter attention spans than any up to this point in history. This student demands the use of rich multimedia learning environments and, project-based instruction that engages the student and challenges him to use dynamic web-based tools and participatory media. Terms like “Connectivism” and “Networked Learning” are now being used to describe the new processes that are emerging. Here is a excellent video that explains these new paradigms and what they mean for the 21st century classroom.

This is a key reason teaching must change to keep up with the new paradigms called for in the information age. The lecture-based educational model is obsolete and role of the teacher has morphed from the “sage on the stage” to the “guide by a students side”.

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Develop Idea for A Mobile Learning App

Applications for the first Startl Design Boost are now open for budding entrepreneurs and designers interested in developing cutting edge mobile applications for learning.  Developed in conjunction with IDEO, the first Startl Boost, a five day building, hacking, business and human centered design immersion will be held at the Pratt Institute in New York City, March 15-19, 2010.  There is no tuition cost for the workshop.  Details of the workshop:

Day 1: Define the Idea: Participants present ideas and set criteria for their proposed mobile learning application.

Day 2: Validate the Idea: Participants conduct research with end users and get feedback with learning and marketing experts about their mobile learning app.

Day 3: Design the idea: Participants storyboard their refined idea for mobile learning app and begin creating/ modifying their prototype.

Day 4: Share the idea: Participants create presentation deck to “pitch” their mobile learning app and finalize their prototype.

Day 5: Pitch the idea: Participants will present “pitches” and prototypes to an audience that includes a panel of users, industry experts, and market investors.

The top three teams will be invited to present to a larger audience at the Venture Capital in Education Summit in June in NYC.  While the Startl Design Boost is open to mobile learning applications for all ages, teams creating apps for children ages 3-11 can also apply for the inaugural Cooney Center Prizes for Innovation in Children’s Learning, a national competition intended to generate digital educational innovations with prizes up to $50,000, as well as ongoing business planning support from The Joan Ganz Cooney Center and Sesame Workshop. Startl is a new social enterprise dedicated to bringing digital media and learning innovations to market – from kindergarten to college, inside and outside the classroom.  Startl was incorporated in 2009 with initial funding from the MacArthur, Hewlett, and Gates foundations.  Startl’s mission is to identify talented people with great ideas and new products that will affect the future of learning.  Through relationships with best of breed design, incubation, and investment partners Startl provides an ecology that allows entrepreneurs to mature and products to evolve.  Related articles:

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Harvard Professor: Learn 3 Minutes a Day

Some educators are turning to short online learning activities as a preferred approach to engage students.

Take SpacedEd.  It offers students the chance to “learn most anything in 3 minutes a day.”  Originally developed by Dr B. Price Kerfoot, a Harvard Medical School professor, for medical school students, the method has been proven through 10 rigorous studies to increase knowledge by up to 50% and strengthen retention of concepts up to two years.

SpacedEd feeds short bits of info to users in small spurts of questions and answers.  Learners browse a directory of courses ranging from medical subjects to bartending, music theory and fantasy football.  “Courses consist entirely of questions and answers.  They are sent to you in small amounts (typically 1 or 2 a day) on a regular schedule via email, the Web or RSS … Questions repeat based on answers … Get a question wrong and it repeats sooner.  Get it right one or more times in a row and it is retired from the course.  Retire all questions to complete the course.”

This method is based on two psychological findings: the spacing effect and testing effect.  The “spacing effect” refers to the finding that “information which is presented and repeated over spaced intervals is learned and retained more effectively, in comparison to traditional ‘binge-and-purge’ methods of education.”  In other words, learning over extended time periods works better than cramming.  The “testing effect” refers to the finding that “the long-term retention of information is significantly improved by testing learners on this information.  Testing is not merely a means to measure a learner’s level of knowledge, but rather causes knowledge to be stored more effectively in long-term memory.”

Why Use e-Learning?

Collectively we’ve spent many years testing and improving e-learning ventures.  By “e-learning” we mean any training or learning that happens on desktops and mobile devices thru a variety of mediums including social networks, distance learning courses and learning games.