Meaningful Conversations on Twitter

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This is a very interesting assessment of the exchange that goes on in Social Media like Twitter. I can see the incremental increase in relevance. I’ve been really learning about the value of Twitter over the past few weeks.  The author, Rajesh Setty, notes that exchange on Twitter doesn’t really extend past the third level in this chart. This is engagement with others, not the engagement between oneself and the actual information you may find on Twitter. From this perspective, at least for me, Twitter actually does have a great deal of “Immediate and Future Relevance.”

I’m finding that Twitter not only connects me with more information relevant to my interests and my job, it also is helping me connect and learn about others through their blogs. I get an introduction to these folks via Twitter that I would never get from just a search for a different topic. Also, sometimes people’s skill with what I call the “Twit Wit” actually draws me to learn more about them and their blog. There is a certain “speedy Zen” about Twitter that I”m finding increasingly appealing. Even though Twitter is a bit limited when it comes to sharing and exchange, it’s a great doorway into the worlds of it’s many participants.

Second Life Events for Educators

If you’re interested in learning more about Second Life or how to use if for educational purposes, I suggest you take a look at this calendar: http://sledevents.blogspot.com/
Many events are listed here and even have slurls (secondlife link locations) that allow you to teleport directly to the site in SL. Remember, you have to have the SL application installed, and you can get that from the Second Life official website.

I was able to attend most of the Sloodle 101 class (that occurs every Wednesday 2x a day). I highly recommend it. Hopefully, I’ll have time in the next few days to blog about my experience in the class.

I finally got a Second Life

Now how the hell do I get down… I’m stuck flying, suspended in the air. (okay… I figured it out… click the Fly/Stop Flying button).

My avatar, Bunny Kiwitz, suspended in the air at the “Pier of Culture.”
All I need is an umbrella and a carpet bag.

My avatar, in the Second Life Orientation Plaza with her new ‘outfit.’

Thanks to the TCC conference I was able to get my first taste of Second Life. I’m not fully hooked yet, but intrigued and I see the range of possibilities in here. I can now see what they meant by “steep learning curve” when it comes to learning how to be proficient in S.L. I unknowingly hit the “fly” button and couldn’t figure out how to get down. Also there are so many features and controls to work with that I found it a bit hard to get my bearings. Fortunately, the NMC tutorial ‘plaza’ allowed me to walk through a ‘museum of exhibits’ that showed me how to become familiar with the controls and features in Second Life. I was also able to learn a few things about how to integrate into “Second Life Culture,” such as how to use gestures and how to properly chat with people in a group.

During the conference I also attended a lecture/debate on the popularity and future of Second Life. One of the arguments in support of Second Life as a learning environment was that today’s students interact with and process information much differently than their predecessors. Second Life give them the opportunity to access it in a virtual space as well as interact with peers from all over the globe. These “Digital Natives” expect instant access to information and rely on social networking to get and build information. They have a ‘digital literacy’ because they’ve been raised with interactive technology that we “Digital Immigrants” need to be aware of.

Second Life allows participants to actively build both simulated and fantasy models and interact with these models. It stimulates creativity and promotes simulated learning of real-life scenarios. It provides students with the ability to engage in “situated learning” and as the one lecturer quoted, “work together to create a shared understanding that none have previously possessed.”

The half of this lecture that countered the support for SL, argued that the learning curve for Second Life is so steep that it’s just too frustrating for some learners. They also made the argument that subscriptions to the virtual world are dwindling and that people enter and experiment but they do not stay or continue to return. Second Life is merely another techie fad that will eventually become obscure and dated in the wake of progress.

Another point that this person brought up was that all the businesses that invested in real estate in Second Life are now pulling out. Personally, I think that the failure is due to the fact that they took a rather two dimensional approach to applying SL. They simply used it as only a virtual store. How boring! They could have developed an interactive storyline or even learning material around their products, and, oh yes, they could have given more free stuff. Free stuff always hooks people even if it’s free ‘virtual’ stuff.

I have this theory about these new virtual/simulated environments… that is when we (or most of us who are not digital protoges) become immersed in them our first instinct is not to create new and innovative things. We build what’s most familiar to us. In all fairness to the corporate businesses, they were in a hurry (as they always are) to get a piece of the Second Life action so they hastily constructed what they thought would work.

I believe that both sides of this debate brought up valid points. Though I’m becoming convinced that Second Life does provide participants with the opportunity to learn in a rich and interactive environment. Perhaps in the future it will become easier to learn and use.

I was going for the one piece tracksuit thing… maybe not my style but, oh well.

Using WetPaint to Create A Course Wiki

I recently developed a wiki for a course that’s being tested right now, and I have to tell you… I’m quite amazed at the possibilities of using wikis for collaborative learning. After developing the course objectives, the SME and I decided to use the wiki as an essential part of the students’ learning experience. The wiki would be available as a companion collaboration area and a sort of explorative playground for the students. As one of the course foci was on teaching using Web 2.0 tools, we wanted to help immerse students in the actual experience of working and collaborating with others online using a wiki.

We decided to use WetPaint as our wiki tool, because of the easy to use WYSIWYG (you know I have to spell this out in my head everytime I type it – arconymitis) features and the fact that it’s so easy to embed video.

Here were some of the applications and activities we included in the wiki:

• A profile page - where students could share a picture, a few facts about themselves, favorite links (and possibly videos or other media). The idea is to help build community among the particpants and instructor
• A collaborative link section – that includes the major concepts in the course. As the students did their own research on the web on topics of their choice they would continually add and share the links to (articles, documentation, media, forums, etc.) with their peers
• A fun video sharing page – I included this because I wanted to introduce students to the idea of sharing video content… and the notion that sharing content online doesn’t just mean text, html pages, or print content
• An image collage activity - the goal of this activity was to collect images that describe both Boomer and Net Generations. The students work with each other collectively to post their images to the wetpaint collage
• Assorted graded activities where students collaborated on content
• Use of the forum threads to discuss content

I took a few approaches to designing the wiki structure and layout of the pages for maxium student participation. Nothing stinks more, than when you build a learning application and no one uses it.

• Keep everything as simple as possible – don’t put to many things on a page
• Post instructions – (or links to FAQ)s if you even suspect that people will not understand how to do or use something (.i.e. use “Context Sensitive Help” whenever you can)
• Model wiki behavior – Always provide examples and suggestions of contributions
• Lay Easter eggs – in multiple places. I actually started planting interesting links and content in different places. Keep putting new things in different areas to keep the wiki live and growing
• Make activities fun and light hearted – when necessary. Human beings (even stodgy adults) learn through play

The course seems to be going well. Students are contributing to the wiki so far, and I don’t think anyone has had any troubles with understanding how to use WetPaint (because it’s a fairly well designed tool). If you haven’t checked out WetPaint I seriously suggest that you take a look at it as a tool for collaborative learning.

An image of the “Community Links Page” – students share information on their research and finding on different topics

Amazing: “In My Language”

This made me think a great deal.  This is probably one of the best explanations or accounts of autism I’ve seen, and it’s told from an autistic individual’s point of view. Can you imagine… would this persons story and view of the world be communicated as easily without video-sharing (YouTube) and Web tech? Also, the video comments and feedback is just as though-provoking.

Teens use of social media on the rise

PEW Report on Teen Use of Social Media: http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/230/report_display.asp

I was catching up on listening to my “Future Tense” podcasts when I ran across a report on one of the latest PEW research studies on Internet use. It looks like girls seem to dominate in use of social media while boys are more likely to post online videos. More, it appears that many girls have taken on the ability to super communicate through various technology.

Some noteworthy statistics from the report:

• 27% of teens polled maintained a personal webpage
• 39% of teens shared their own artistic creations online
• 26% re-mix content online

It makes sense that boys will tend to create videos that feature themselves; adolescent girls tend to be a self-conscious of their own appearance. However, this idea that their children have a presence visible to strangers must be more than unnerving for many parents. This is a given. The media certainly does their part in freaking out people even more by only highlighting what can go wrong when people’s children have a web-presence. I’m not saying that the dangers are not there, I guess I’m just a little weary of people taking the fearful approach to things rather than looking at what’s positive about the situation and then tackling the problematic and unsafe nature of things.

I’m just incredibly excited that these kids enjoy creating content and putting it online. They are for all intensive purposes, taking in what they see, re-interpreting it and then creating a product from their understanding. I’ve seen countless examples of Anime Music Videos (AMV) online that attest to this. Also, I ran across a wiki created by fans of the Avatar t.v. cartoon. The fans that create the content on this wiki are basically conducting some form of character and plot analysis when they post information. Fans that participate in the wiki content creation, young and old alike, demonstrate how engaged they are in the content. Why else would they be moved to do the work? It reminds me of my own childhood when I collected Star Wars bubblegum cards (geez, I must sound like a geezer). I had to go to the library and newstands to read more about the characters. There were countless comic books and pulp novels. I remember we used to lay the cards down on the floor and arrange them according to how the the characters were related to each other or when they appeared in the plot.  When we played with the cards we used to have discussions about what we thought would happen to Han Solo after being captured by Jabba or whether or not Han and Leia would get together and have kids. Of course, as I write this I realize that I’m probably embarrassing myself.

Still, even though it’s pop culture it still doesn’t mean that it’s beneath us. If we can recognize that we’re interpreting what we see in the pop stuff fluff or not and then scaffold into understanding other literature and art then that can’t be a bad thing can it. Maybe just we old stogies need to open up a little bit and look at how children and teens interpret the world through the media they see with clearer eyes.

Related Stuff:

Avatar Wiki About Page

I am gadget girl?

I don’t really think so. I do love my iTouch (given to me as an 1st year wedding anniversary gift). If you think about it it’s kind of ironic. First year anniversary is “Paper,” and I was given something that helps me eliminate my need for paper.

I love the iTouch because I can use it for a number of handy things:

• Carrying around visual lists for shopping at places like IKEA (so I can stay on track and not get distracted by putting too many unneeded things in my shopping basket
• Carrying around knitting and beading patterns for reference
• Holding visual maps of new cities or places
• Proving that I’m right about an actor’s identity by doing a quick search on IMBD
• Searching for another coffee shop when the one I’m in is too noisy
• And much much more

But now that Josh Bancroft has been showing all the cool little things that you can do with Google’s interface for the iPhone. I’m thinking… ehhhh I really don’t like this old phone of mine. Plus, T-Mobile service and connectivity hasn’t been all that great for me lately.

Oh… I’ll just have to stick it out and wait.

Darn it.

This is so cool! Virtual Interpersonal Interaction

I am robot…? I am telecommuter.

I bought a copy of the Economist for reading on the plane. I read about HP’s attempts to develop Virtual Telepresence so workers wouldn’t have to commute thousands of miles. The technology can be applied as a virtual interactive environment/room or as a personal mobile unit. Looks like Cisco is actually using some of this technology today in the form of a Telepresence room. It’s not cheap at $350,000 a room and $18,000 a month for maintenance, but still they claim that it’s cut down costs for transatlantic and long-distance flights.

If you visit HP’s site you can get a glimpse of one of their personal mobile units. When you use this unit, your image and voice travel around via a little robot on wheels. You can see everything via the semi-panoramic cameras on top of your virtual head. Now, I think this is pretty cool looking because it looks like it rolled off of Terry Gilliam’s movie Brazil, but I can see that some people might find it aesthetically unappealing and impersonal or just plain weird. Okay, I’m a geek and I’m the first to admit it, and while the technology posted here is a bit clunky looking still I really appreciate the work and effort that went into pushing this concept forward.

http://www.hpl.hp.com/research/mmsl/demonstrations/etravel.html

Notes from Karl Kapp’s Talk on Games and Gizmos for Learning

http://karlkapp.blogspot.com/

Digital Natives want electronics….

Kaybee, FAO Schwartz and Toys R US have all declared bankrupcy (NL: That’s sad…having manipulative toys is a key part of childhood, not to mention developing hand-eye coordination and motorskills)

Information and knowledge are the thermonuclear weapons of our time.

Era of Baby Boomers and their technology

• Color Television….
• Disney’s wild world of color… technology that drove things… 1 way broadcasting
• Passive ways of absorbing tech

Need for War Stories in the Workplace (Knowledge Management)

• Lockheed Martin hiring 14,000 in a year
• US Defense department will loose 500,000 people
• Average age of retirement is going down (59)

Learning Styles

• Characteristics of Baby Boomers… formal learners
• Gamer Generation… informal learners

Games, games, games

• Casual games à Example you don’t know jack
• Girls play games
• 43% of gamers are female.
• Play PC games a lot more.
• Women over 40 fastest growing segment
• 70% use of Sims users are women under 25 (I am)
• Grounding kids - don’t send them to the room… Say…No Screens.

Multitasking and Absorbing all that information

• They like to think that they can multi-task… we don’t think so but they can…
• ADD??
• Kids can wipe out background distraction? Is this true?
• They have to deal with massive amounts of information. They’ve always had a lot of information.

Net-gen communication preferences

• Kids go to instant messaging from e-mail.
• E-mail is too SLOW. Again… e-mail is for old people
• Generation wants to share all the time and be virtual. Example: Twittr
• 85% of the kids have a media device
• 44% have two.
• 15% of 2-5 year olds have a cell phone.
• This kids are linked in…
• Internet has been around for 14 years

Gamers Characteristics

• Problem solver à can solve problems in game… some cases can apply outside of game
• Confident
• Resilient
• Social à Online social via games and electronica
• World of Warcraft make Clans of people
• Multitasking
• Informal Learners
• Don’t want to sit through 45 minutes of class when they can google to get the answer.
• 3D world where you get your own stuff.

My thoughts….There’s a diy movement right now I think that there’s no coincidence that this is happening as technology is moving us more into a virtual world.

People want to make physical things.

More games examples

• Laundering money in Second Life… Hey, vinny don’t forget the virtual cannoli…..
  Protosphere… 3D business environment.
• Kids are getting into these games earlier.
• Disney.com… kids get involved in games where they build their own business.
• Nobelprize.org… learn about history via games

What the teacher should be today…

• More of a guide rather than a lecturer
• Not my best friend
• Socrates was a really great example of a guide
• We should Teach young people to be observant.

Mobile Learning Examples:

• Example settting up a display in a store
• Taking SOP’s and putting them in a video with audio that can be viewed on a hand-held device
• Note some things translate better to video than others
• Flight simulator game…
  • Demonstration mode
  • Practice
  • Test
• Sales rep game
  • Teach a doctor how to sell pharmaceuticals
  • Choose your strategy

Distance Learning Conference – My notes

I’m currently attending the Distance Learning Conference in Madison, WI (when I have time I will post the conference stats/details), and will post my notes and general reflections on the lectures that I attend.

Please note – these notes are not complete, I’ll fill out the details to some of these notes more as I go along.

Problem Based Learning for Online

Margaret Drew and Lori Mardis

Note: clicking on the image above will open up the full concept map.

 

Suggestion: Provide a collaborative lab project.

• Provide something that’s broken and get people to fix it.
• Multiple solutions to complex medical prob. (suggestion – use blog).
• Idea-make people take an active task oriented solution
• What…about using blogging to facilitate discussion/collaboration on the process.
• Creation of individual learning scaffolds… learning is meaning full
• Began with open-ended ill structured problem that initiated discussion.

Building Virtual Communities

Dr. Rena Pallof & Dr. Keith Pratt
Importance of online Community

Now, I’ve always suspected that it’s not okay to just dump and run when it comes to delivering online content, but now it seems that the novelty of this realization is becoming dated. This presentation highlighted the importance of instructors establishing a rapport and building a ‘community’ among the students. Big takeaway for me was the presenter’s suggestion not to openly communicate intent of building community because many learners will protest because they’re just in the class to get credit… and or NOT to make friends.

I believe that it’s important to demonstrate the value in learning from your peers by providing learning experiences that allow the students to do this. Those people who continue to want to be anti-social can do so, but not at the expense of the rest of the students. Also courses an the purveyors of a curriculum who employ this social approach to learning should continue to do studies and investigations to the efficacy of this method of learning and provide education on the importance of virtual communities.

——————-

Note: the “suggestions” are part of my notes to myself not the lecture.

Construction of Online learning community in which instructor is on the same level as students as a contributor… research says.

Intentional work on the development of presence online as well as other means which community can emerge are important… on student learning satisfaction.

Give the instructors and opportunity to communicate with students as a human level.

Suggestion: Encourage Office Hours / Train Instructors on how to do this effective

• Need to be intentional and create the environment… you have to make the effort.
• Aspects of learning:
  • Teaching students howt o inquire/construct knowledge
  • Teaching students to become self-direct

Suggestion: I-Search Papers

Competencies of Online Instructors (Martha Davidson):

• Creating a Learning Community that is Intellectually Exciting and Challeging
• Pepper collaborative activity throughout the course
• Encourage learners to perform to the best of their abilities
• Demonstrate Effective Use of Group Dynamics and Dialogue – need to know when to intervene and when not to intervene
• Use a variety of methods other than lecture
• Stress the interrelatedness of the complete curriculum and the value
• Know workplace trends and perspectives
• Draw out creativity, innovativeness, and ideas in a collaborative manner
• Integrate curriculum designed to provide learners with experientially based learning environment
• Evaluate learning outcomes
• Continue personal development

Presence

1. You must be able to connect with the people in the course.
2. You need to establish a sense of rapport/ and portray yourself as a ‘real’ person in the online environment
   1. Non Example: professor who put his whole CV online
   2. QUESTION: Do you think there’s a level of infomality in creating this presence that some instructors might not be comfortable with? How do you get them comfortable with this?
3. When there is a high degree of interaction between these participants…

Social Presence Online Correlates with:

• Increased learner satisfaction
• Greater depth of learning
• sense of belonging to a learning community
• Increased perception of learning
• Begin the course by focusing on the development of social presence.
• BUT DON”T TELL THEM THIS…. (They say…I didn’t take this class to make friends… I just want to take the class to get a grade).

Techniques

• Give minimal guidelines (note to self – don’t make up fussy rules)
• Let students know -It’s NOT okay to do all your posts on the same day
• Agree on what’s a substantial post
• Allow them to disagree

Suggestion: offer modeled examples and many practice opportunities for instructors. For example show them samples of chat discussions (recordings, simulations), have them practice in various online activities

Working as a Team: Collaborative Online Course Development

Emily Hixon, Ph. D

This was the best lecture/activity I’ve attended at the conference so far.

She provided 4 case studies of working with Faculty and SME’s talked about the challenges of working with faculty to develop an online course. She outlined the challenges and provided suggestions for selecting Faculty participants. I’ll post more details later including some interview criteria she listed for selecting good Subject Matter Experts (or Faculty).

One of the biggest takeaways I got from this was… bottom line – you need to find SME’s who are collaborative and can work on a team of folks who also communicate their process and progress along the way. Moreover, you have to find a SME who really believes that teaching online is possible.

FRIDAY’s LECTURES:

Managing Flash Game Development

Jon Aleckson

Another great lecture and probably one of the best here at the conference, that I was able to attend… because the presenter basically confirmed my hunch that creating really great learning activity requires a well-balanced team with the right skills and doing this takes moolah. If you want to be stuck with word documents and handouts then discount the need for these types of people on your team or look to moving into the online publishing business.

Biggest Takaways

• Good Game Design Requires a Superlative Team including:
  • Instructional Designer/Writer
  • Artistic Illustrator
  • ActionScript Flash Programmer
  • Project Manager
• DONT SKIMP IN HIRING (Note: I will post my notes on each of these position descriptions later)
• Using CMMI (CapabilityMaturity Model) – importance of logging time for data collection purposes and learning for future teams and projects. It is important to communicate intent for data collection to employees (positively)
• Use a Wiki for Knowledge Management/Capture – Saves time builds knowledge
• Brainstorming tools:
  • Learning objectives and content outline
  • Activity List
  • Benchmarking
  • Include people with different roles!
• Game or Simulation Continuum (3 dimensions)
  • Roles
  • Goals
  • Interactivity

Using Webcasting technologies

Coco Kishi and Tomoko Traphagan

What students wanted out of player technology

• Wanted to see what the instructor was doing clearly
• Synchronized audo, video, slides (clearly see the blackboard or slides
• Content Searching
• Playback and Speek Control
• Flexible Viewing Controls
• Bookmarking
• Annotation

MySpace is not YourSpace

View the slides from the link here: http://flynnfoley.typepad.com/alan_foley/presentations/index.html

Christy actually took better notes than I did during this presentation. Check them out.

I really liked the fact that these presenters encouraged us to think about the consequences of technology and also really question whether or not some learning media were truly appropriate for all learning.