Search Results for 'Games for Learning, What a Concept' ↓

cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog This guy not only sees far, but makes it understandable for us- not simplified, but approachable. What a treat in my first week of work at the University of Mary Washington to have Bryan Alexander come for a 2 day visit. He might be the hardest working educator, in one day he sat in on 4 classes, did a faculty lunch talk, and an evening talk that… is epic. The latter is what is still reverberating here, his framing of the future of technology not wrapped in technology or politics, but really- culture and life. He asks at the end, “What happens to your life in these worlds?” His talk was The Visible College: Four Futures for Higher Education (kudos to Andy Rush for running the live video stream and posting the archive of Bryan’s talk) The opening bit covers [...]

cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog Since I mentioned a desire to flip conferences, I have to say it was worth sitting in the front row of Jane McGonigal’s “Learning is an Epic Win” talk at SXSWedu, and frankly, it was just about the only non “Meh” session I attended. I last saw her speak at the big SX in 2008 and knew she would deliver here. Although she’s likely given this talk a lot of times, you could not tell from her energy. I’d embed the slideshare set of slides for her talk, but for like the ten millionth time that site is broken. Why are tey still around? Epic fail there. You might find it someday at http://slideshare.net/avantgame Oh, it might be this Learning is an Epic Win – ISAS February 2012 Part 1 View more PowerPoint from Jane McGonigal There is an audience [...]

cc licensed ( BY NC ND ) flickr photo shared by sea turtle MOOCs are a rumbling. For those following them or participating, so called Massive Online Open Courses might feel they are coming of age. I’d bet they are far from the horizons for most educators. I think the most important stuff about MOOCs is in the middle. Tim Owens has nicely frames some issues with MOOCs and his post is well worth a read. As is David Wiley’s series on his opinions of MOOCs (with the expected usual word matches with Stephen Downes). To me, the acronym is become a bit of an albatross or something that has less meaning than literal, and perhaps some day may just be an alias, or reference to the concept than an explanation itself. I agree with David Wiley that the “M” is rather like one of those appendages that has no [...]

cc licensed flickr photo shared by Torley My, how virtual worlds have tarnished. From all the high expectations of 2006, people calling for the coming of the “3D web”, and its been a year since the crows on the wire started sqwaking the “Second Life is Dead” as the big corporations who responded to the flash of light packed up their virtual buildings and left. Or, now it is relegated as a niche or that it is only good for 50 people. Here is a code phrase to look out for- any statement that X is dead is suspect unless X is that skunk you ran over on the highway and has been flattened. Always question such assertions; ask to see the corpse. I’m just coming off of a two day utterly engaging experience in what we do at the NMC as online conferences- these are not your webinar slideshow [...]

In person, in reading, I’ve long been enamored ofBarbara Ganley‘s concept of “slow blogging” — rather than dashing off quarter-baked, unstructured stream of consciousness blogging, she suggests taking time to reflect, to actually re-read and revise in the blogging process. Barbara’s own lyrical writings, flowing like one of her tranquil Vermont creeks through red maple trees, thoughtfully illustrated with her own metaphorically rich photos, have long been inspirational to me and was capped even more by the chance to meet her in person at the May 2007 UMW Faculty Academy. I love the concept. I have never done such a crazy thing. My method might be termed “fast sloppy” blogging, writing at one end and not sure always where the end goes. I blog often directly from flickr based on a relevant (or not) photo. I do not spell well nor use words like “epistemology” without snickering at myself. No, [...]

photo credit: Mr.Tea It’s 6am here and after prepping once cup of fresh coffee, I flip the laptop open to check the weather… and next thing you know am getting pinged in Australia from my colleagues in Australia. Stephan, Robyn, and Alex want to talk about a breaking story there in the Sydney Morning Herald, Phone a friend in exams. Apparently, the Presbyterian Ladies’ College (remember ‘college’ there is high school here), is experimenting with allowing students in certain Year 9 exams to be able to use their mobile technology during exams. A SYDNEY girls’ school is redefining the concept of cheating by allowing students to “phone a friend” and use the internet and i-Pods during exams. Presbyterian Ladies’ College at Croydon is giving the assessment method a trial run with year 9 English students and plans to expand it to all subjects by the end of the year. An [...]

I’m just back from a 3 day visit to St Paul for the Midwest Library Technology Conference hosted at Macalester College. This was the first time for this conference, and with attendance well over 250 and from the level of activity I observed, planner Ron Joslin and colleagues should be very pleased. I liked very much how they tried a variety of session formats other than 50 minute lectures (like in the Games in Libraries session we actually got to play some of the games; I might be hooked on Wii bowling after a few rounds). I should add another noticeable feature of note at the conference was the overt effort to be green sensitive with the amount of paper generated- the program was a singl trifold, double side printed with agenda on one side and map on the other. They asked us to turn in name badges every day [...]

Presentation number two today was my part in the The Great ILS Challenge 2.0 a presentation idea that intrigued me when Mark Oehlert first described it; as a knock off of the Great Design Challenge done at the Game Developers Conference. Last year a roomful of lucky attendees got to watch as three top-notch designers created game-based solutions to deal with an incredibly difficult learning challenge. This year we’ve invited three more ILS/Serious Games experts to step up to the challenge. The Guild understands that, whether you call them Immersive Learning Simulations (ILS), Serious Games, or the greatest thing since sliced bread; you are looking for ways to use these powerful technologies and methodologies to improve learning outcomes for your organizations. You are also looking for inspiration and ideas for any and ALL of your e-Learning projects. The premise is the 3 panelists are presented a scenario for a project, [...]

It’s well over a week that my first experience attending SXSW Interactive ended, and a blog post is just wriggling out. I wavered, wafted, and decided on a different, lazy (lame) strategy… to just soak it all in and write something prophetic later. Well, this will likely fall short on most accounts. And this is also a year when I am trying a few conferences out of the normal education technology realm, so I was wanting to be more reflective and… okay, I am lazy. The idea of doing detailed sessions posts was not all attractive; earlier in my blogging I would try and do session blogging, but am not enthralled at being a stenographer. Second, I decided on a new tech strategy- I left the laptop in the hotel, and “lugged” (meaning slipped it in a pocket), my new iPod Touch. The hangup there was the wireless network at [...]

In education, and technology, but no different from most other fields, we sure can get mired in definitions. It seems… that the mere fact of identifying something with a TLA (Three Letter Acronym), that it exists. Like last Decemberm when I got invited to be on the planning committee for the EDUCAUSE ELI Focus Session on Immersive Learning Environments, in conversations about said ILEs, I tried pot stirring early in our teleconference meetings by posing the question, “Is there really something that is an ILE”? No one felt like playing, so we went on the merry way, so that they included virtual worlds, simulations, remote controlled instruments, computer games, and heck why not the world famous card game of Kaiser? “Immersive” can be mighty broad. it’s not that I have an bsession to nail down definitions, but I am not sure that I can say what is an ILE and [...]