Embedded librarianship holds potential for immersive learning. Come learn how to promote your virtual world communities and the great work of educators in virtual worlds through networking. https://communityvirtuallibrary.wordpress.com/
Chris Luchs (SL: Abacus Capellini, WoW: Cheerwine)
What Can We Learn from the World of Warcraft?
Join us as we host a blended reality session featuring a live stream from the World of Warcraft (WoW) as we explore educational opportunities in a massive multiplayer online roleplaying game (MMORPG). We will have a YouTube live stream, a Discord channel for voice discussion, and an immersive event in WoW. Educators from the International Society for Technology in Education – Games and Simulations Network (ISTE G&SN) will host an immersive event & discuss learning in a multiuser virtual environment (MUVE).
Click Try for Free and download the Blizzard Launcher, which manages the download. You’ll need 52GB for the game. Create an account, select Sisters of Elune realm and create a troll if you are new to WoW and using a Free Trial account.
Location: In the World of Warcraft and for those who do not have the game, over a YouTube Live stream (available that day) and hosted after the event over https://www.youtube.com/user/gamesmooc/videos
Howard Gardner’s “Theory of Multiple Intelligences” explored through an Interactive, Immersive Experience in Second Life
Dr. Gardner has proposed 8 different types of intelligence, ranging from Interpersonal to Kinesthetic. Join us to discover your own most innate type. You may be surprised, like many of the teachers who have tried this challenge as part of our whole-brain training program.
This is a summary of various performance-based activities in Second Life and how performance studies can provide an insight into the experience of virtual worlds.
In his book, “Experience on Demand,” Jeremy Bailenson, the founding director of Stanford University’s Virtual Human Interaction Lab, writes, “No medium, of course can fully capture the subjective experience of another person, but by richly evoking a real-seeming, first-person experience, virtual reality does seem to promise to offer new, empathy-enhancing qualities.” Bailenson contrasts experiencing virtual reality with reading news accounts and watching documentaries. Those latter activities, he writes, require “a lot of imaginative work,” whereas virtual reality can “convey the feeling” of, say, a refugee camp’s environment, and the “smallness of the living quarters, the size of the camp.”
Caldwell—who used Google Expeditions to deliver a virtual reality experience set in the Holocaust—says that when his students first put on the goggles, they viewed them as a novelty. But within a minute or two, the students became quiet, absorbed in what they were seeing; they realized the “reality of the horror of what was in front of them.” Questions ensued.
Ron Berger, the Chief Academic Officer of EL Education, points to another factor schools should consider. He thinks virtual reality can be a powerful way to introduce kids to situations that require empathy or adopting different perspectives. However, he thinks no one tool or experience will bring results unless it is “nested in a broader framework of a vision and goals and relationships.”
Berger says virtual reality experiences have to be accompanied by work beforehand and follow-up afterwards. Kids, he says, need to be reflective and think critically.
immersion experiences like virtual reality should be “embedded in positive” adult and peer relationships. He adds that ideally, there’s also a resulting action where kids do something productive with the information they’ve learned, to help their own growth and to help others. He mentions an example where students interviewed local immigrants and refugees, then wrote the stories they heard. They published the stories in a book, and the profits went to legal fees for local refugees.
saving virtual reality for “very special experiences,” keeping it “relatively short” and not getting students dizzy or disoriented. A report Bailenson co-authored for Common Sense Media highlights the research that has—and has not—explored the effects of virtual reality on children. It states that the “potentially negative outcomes of VR include impacts on children’s sensory systems and vision, aggression, and unhealthy amounts of escapism and distraction from the physical world.”
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The Brain Science Is In: Students’ Emotional Needs Matter
What the neuro-, cognitive, and behavioral research says about social-emotional learning
Teachers, like parents, have always understood that children’s learning and growth do not occur in a vacuum, but instead at the messy intersection of academic, social, and emotional development.
• Malleability: Genes are not destiny. Our developing brains are largely shaped by our environments and relationships—a process that continues into adulthood.
• Context: Family, relationships, and lived experiences shape the physiological structure of our brains over time. Healthy amounts of challenge and adversity promote growth, but toxic stress takes a toll on the connections between the hemispheres of our brain.
• Continuum: While we’ve become familiar with the exponential development of the brain for young children, it continues throughout life. The explosion of brain growth into adolescence and early adulthood, in particular, requires putting serious work into much more intentional approaches to supporting that development than is common today.
A whopping 60 percent of parents are worried about the VR’s health effects, according to a new study from Common Sense Media, while others hope the emerging technology will have profound educational benefits because of its highly-engaging nature.
Jim Steyer, founder of Common Sense Media https://www.commonsense.org/education/
Stanford researchers partnered with Common Sense Media, which has done extensive research on children’s media use, to examine the impact of VR on children. Their report includes a national survey of 12,148 adults, 3,613 of whom were parents.
the study notes that 21 percent of households with children already have a VR device and 13 percent are planning to get one, Common Sense found that many parents are scared of exposing their children to such intense experiences.
Bailenson, founder of Stanford’s Virtual Human Interaction Lab, acknowledged the long term effects of VR on developing brains remain unknown. But short term impacts can include dizziness, headache and eye strain. https://vhil.stanford.edu/projects/
While 62 percent of parents surveyed believe that VR can provide educational experiences, only 22 percent reported their child actually used VR for learning. The vast majority play games.
VR also has the potential to encourage empathy among small children, experts say, because it builds bonds with virtual characters and settings, though parents surveyed by Common Sense remain skeptical.
use storytelling to shape students’ learning experience, create connections across content areas
brain research suggests when students have an opportunity to retrieve information, rehearse, interleave concepts, and make connections, this promotes memory making and forgetting is less likely to occur.
Setting cell phone expectations early is key to accessing the learning potential of these devices and minimizing the distraction factor.Liz Kolb September 11, 2017
Ten is now the average age when children receive their first cell phones
develop a positive mobile mental health in the first weeks of school by discussing their ideas on cell phone use, setting up a stoplight management system, and establishing a class contract
What do you like to do on your cell phone and why? (If they don’t have one, what would they like to do?)
What are the most popular apps and websites you use?
What do you think are inappropriate ways that cell phones have been used?
What is poor cell phone etiquette? Why?
How can cell phones help you learn?
How can cell phones distract from your learning?
How do you feel about your cell phone and the activities you do on your phone?
What should teachers know about your cell phone use that you worry we do not understand?
Do you know how to use your cell phone to gather information, to collaborate on academic projects, to evaluate websites?
How can we work together to create a positive mobile mental health?
Using a Stoplight Management Approach
Post a red button on the classroom door:the cell phone parking lot. Post a yellow button on the classroom door
Post a green button on the classroom door
Establishing a Class Contract: Ask them to brainstorm consequences and write them into a class contract.
Setting cell phone expectations early is key to accessing the learning potential of these devices and minimizing the distraction factor. Liz Kolb September 11, 2017
Post a yellow button on the classroom door: Students know their cell phones should be on silent (vibrate) and placed face down in the upper right-hand corner of their desk. They will be using them in class, but not the whole time.
Post a green button on the classroom door: Students know they should have their phones turned on (either silenced or set on vibrate) and placed face up in ready position to use throughout the class.
Establishing a Class Contract
Ask your students to help you develop social norms for what is and is not appropriate cell phone use during green and yellow button times. Should they be allowed to go on their social media networks during class? Why or why not?
Ask them to brainstorm consequences and write them into a class contract.
Cognitive load theory is built upon two commonly accepted ideas. The first is that there is a limit to how much new information the human brain can process at one time. The second is that there are no known limits to how much stored information can be processed at one time. The aim of cognitive load research is therefore to develop instructional techniques and recommendations that fit within the characteristics of working memory, in order to maximise learning.
Explicit instruction involves teachers clearly showing students what to do and how to do it, rather than having students discover or construct information for themselves
how working memory and long-term memory process and store information
Working memory is the memory system where small amounts of information are stored for a very short duration (RAM). Long-term memory is the memory system where large amounts of information are stored semi-permanently (hard drive)
Cognitive load theory assumes that knowledge is stored in long- term memory in the form of ‘schemas’ 2 . A schema organises elements of information according to how they will be used. According to schema theory, skilled performance is developed through building ever greater numbers of increasingly complex schemas by combining elements of lower level schemas into higher level schemas. There is no limit to how complex schemas can become. An important process in schema construction is automation, whereby information can be processed automatically with minimal conscious effort. Automaticity occurs after extensive practice
Schemas provide a number of important functions that are relevant to learning. First, they provide a system for organising and storing knowledge. Second, and crucially for cognitive load theory, they reduce working memory load. This is because, although there are a limited number of elements that can be held in working memory at one time, a schema constitutes only a single element in working memory. In this way, a high level schema – with potentially infinite informational complexity – can effectively bypass the limits of working memory
Types of cognitive load
Cognitive load theory identifies three different types of cognitive load: intrinsic, extraneous and germane load
Intrinsic cognitive load relates to the inherent difficulty of the subject matter being learnt.
subject matter that is difficult for a novice may be very easy for an expert.
Extraneous cognitive load relates to how the subject matter is taught.
extraneous load is the ‘bad’ type of cognitive load, because it does not directly contribute to learning. Cognitive load theorists consider that instructional design will be most effective when it minimises extraneous load in order to free up the capacity of working memory
Germane cognitive load refers to the load imposed on the working memory by the process of learning – that is, the process of transferring information into the long-term memory through schema construction
the approach of decreasing extraneous cognitive load while increasing germane cognitive load will only be effective if the total cognitive load remains within the limits of working memory
More data doesn’t automatically lead to better decisions. A shortage of skilled data scientists has hindered progress towards translation of information into actionable business insights. In addition, traditionally dense spreadsheets and linear slideshows are ineffective to present discoveries when dealing with Big Data’s dynamic nature. We need to evolve how we capture, analyze and communicate data.
Large-scale visualization platforms have several advantages over traditional presentation methods. They blur the line between the presenter and audience to increase the level of interactivity and collaboration. They also offer simultaneous views of both macro and micro perspectives, multi-user collaboration and real-time data interaction, and a limitless number of visualization possibilities – critical capabilities for rapidly understanding today’s large data sets.
Visualization walls enable presenters to target people’s preferred learning methods, thus creating a more effective communication tool. The human brain has an amazing ability to quickly glean insights from patterns – and great visualizations make for more efficient storytellers.
Grant: Visualizing Digital Scholarship in Libraries and Learning Spaces
Award amount: $40,000
Funder: Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
Lead institution: North Carolina State University Libraries
Due date: 13 August 2017
Notification date: 15 September 2017
Website: https://immersivescholar.org
Contact: immersivescholar@ncsu.edu
Project Description
NC State University, funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, invites proposals from institutions interested in participating in a new project for Visualizing Digital Scholarship in Libraries and Learning Spaces. The grant aims to 1) build a community of practice of scholars and librarians who work in large-scale multimedia to help visually immersive scholarly work enter the research lifecycle; and 2) overcome technical and resource barriers that limit the number of scholars and libraries who may produce digital scholarship for visualization environments and the impact of generated knowledge. Libraries and museums have made significant strides in pioneering the use of large-scale visualization technologies for research and learning. However, the utilization, scale, and impact of visualization environments and the scholarship created within them have not reached their fullest potential. A logical next step in the provision of technology-rich, visual academic spaces is to develop best practices and collaborative frameworks that can benefit individual institutions by building economies of scale among collaborators.
The project contains four major elements:
An initial meeting and priority setting workshop that brings together librarians, scholars, and technologists working in large-scale, library and museum-based visualization environments.
Scholars-in-residence at NC State over a multi-year period who pursue open source creative projects, working in collaboration with our librarians and faculty, with the potential to address the articulated limitations.
Funding for modest, competitive block grants to other institutions working on similar challenges for creating, disseminating, validating, and preserving digital scholarship created in and for large-scale visual environments.
A culminating symposium that brings together representatives from the scholars-in-residence and block grant recipient institutions to share and assess results, organize ways of preserving and disseminating digital products produced, and build on the methods, templates, and tools developed for future projects.
Work Summary
This call solicits proposals for block grants from library or museum systems that have visualization installations. Block grant recipients can utilize funds for ideas ranging from creating open source scholarly content for visualization environments to developing tools and templates to enhance sharing of visualization work. An advisory panel will select four institutions to receive awards of up to $40,000. Block grant recipients will also participate in the initial priority setting workshop and the culminating symposium. Participating in a block grant proposal does not disqualify an individual from later applying for one of the grant-supported scholar-in-residence appointments.
Applicants will provide a statement of work that describes the contributions that their organization will make toward the goals of the grant. Applicants will also provide a budget and budget justification.
Activities that can be funded through block grants include, but are not limited to:
Commissioning work by a visualization expert
Hosting a visiting scholar, artist, or technologist residency
Software development or adaptation
Development of templates and methodologies for sharing and scaling content utilizing open source software
Student or staff labor for content or software development or adaptation
Curricula and reusable learning objects for digital scholarship and visualization courses
Travel (if necessary) to the initial project meeting and culminating workshop
User research on universal design for visualization spaces
Funding for operational expenditures, such as equipment, is not allowed for any grant participant.
Application
Send an application to immersivescholar@ncsu.edu by the end of the day on 13 August 2017 that includes the following:
Statement of work (no more than 1000 words) of the project idea your organization plans to develop, its relationship to the overall goals of the grant, and the challenges to be addressed.
List the names and contact information for each of the participants in the funded project, including a brief description of their current role, background, expertise, interests, and what they can contribute.
Project timeline.
Budget table with projected expenditures.
Budget narrative detailing the proposed expenditures
Selection and Notification Process
An advisory panel made up of scholars, librarians, and technologists with experience and expertise in large-scale visualization and/or visual scholarship will review and rank proposals. The project leaders are especially keen to receive proposals that develop best practices and collaborative frameworks that can benefit individual institutions by building a community of practice and economies of scale among collaborators.
Awardees will be selected based on:
the ability of their proposal to successfully address one or both of the identified problems;
the creativity of the proposed activities;
relevant demonstrated experience partnering with scholars or students on visualization projects;
whether the proposal is extensible;
feasibility of the work within the proposed time-frame and budget;
whether the project work improves or expands access to large-scale visual environments for users; and
the participant’s ability to expand content development and sharing among the network of institutions with large-scale visual environments.
Awardees will be required to send a representative to an initial meeting of the project cohort in Fall 2017.
Children who use smartphones, tablets, and video games for more than seven hours a day are more likely to experience premature thinning of the cortex, the outermost layer of the brain that processes thought and action, a 2018 study found. https://t.co/OJe6ZTBVkx
But others say banning laptops can be counterproductive, arguing these devices can create opportunity for students to discover more information during class or collaborate. And that certain tools and technologies are necessary for learners who struggle in a traditional lecture format.
Flanigan, who studies self-regulation, or the processes students use to achieve their learning goals, began researching digital distraction after confronting it in the classroom as a graduate instructor.
Digital distraction tempts all of us, almost everywhere. That’s the premise of Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World by Cal Newport, an associate professor of computer science at Georgetown University.
The professor is upset. The professor has taken action, by banning laptops.
Bruff, whose next book, Intentional Tech: Principles to Guide the Use of Educational Technology in College Teaching, is set to be published this fall, is among the experts who think that’s a mistake. Why? Well, for one thing, he said, students are “going to have to graduate and get jobs and use laptops without being on Facebook all day.” The classroom should help prepare them for that.
When Volk teaches a course with 50 or 60 students, he said, “the idea is to keep them moving.”Shifting the focal point away from the professor can help, too. “If they are in a small group with their colleagues,” Volk said, “very rarely will I see them on their laptops doing things they shouldn’t be.”
Professors may not see themselves as performers, but if they can’t get students’ attention, nothing else they do matters. “Learning doesn’t happen without attention,” said Lang, who is writing a book about digital distraction, Teaching Distracted Minds.
One aspect of distraction Lang plans to cover in his book is its history. It’s possible, he said, to regard our smartphones as either too similar or dissimilar from the distractions of the past. And it’s important, he said, to remember how new this technology really is, and how much we still don’t know about it.
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Study: Use of digital devices in class affects students’ long-term retention of information
A new study conducted by researchers at Rutgers University reveals that students who are distracted by texts, games, or videos while taking lecture notes on digital devices are far more likely to have their long-term memory affected and to perform more poorly on exams, even if short-term memory is not impacted, EdSurge reports.
Exam performance was not only poorer for students using the devices, but also for other students in classes that permitted the devices because of the distraction factor, the study found.
After conducting the study, Arnold Glass, the lead researcher, changed his own policy and no longer allows his students to take notes on digital devices.
A nationally representative Gallup poll conducted in March showed that 42% of K-12 teachers feel that the use of digital devices in the classroom are “mostly helpful” for students, while only 28% feel they are “mostly harmful.” Yet 69% of those same teachers feel the devices have a harmful impact on student mental health and 55% feel they negatively affect student physical health.
According to a 2016 study of college students, student waste about 20% of their class time for “non-class” purposes — texting, emailing, or using social media more than 11 times in a typical day. In K-12, increased dependence on digital devices often interferes with homework completion as well.
Though the new study focused on long-term retention, past studies have also shown that indicate a negative correlation between use of digital devices during class and exam scores. A 2015 study by the London School of Economics revealed that pupils in schools that banned cell phones performed better on exams and that the differences were most notable for low-performing students.
Using laptops in class harms academic performance, study warns. Researchers say students who use computers score half a grade lower than those who write notes
findings, published in the journal Economics of Education Review in a paper, based on an analysis of the grades of about 5,600 students at a private US liberal arts college, found that using a laptop appeared to harm the grades of male and low-performing students most significantly.
While the authors were unable to definitively say why laptop use caused a “significant negative effect in grades”, the authors believe that classroom “cyber-slacking” plays a major role in lower achievement, with wi-fi-enabled computers providing numerous distractions for students.
High schoolers assigned a laptop or a Chromebook were more likely to take notes in class, do internet research, create documents to share, collaborate with their peers on projects, check their grades and get reminders about tests or homework due dates.
Blended Learning – the idea of incorporating technology into the every day experience of education – can save time, raise engagement, and increase student retention.
Lets face it, our students are addicted to their phones. Like…drugs addicted. It is not just a bad habit, it is hard wired in their brains(literally) to have the constant stimulation of their phones.
If you are interested in the research, there is a lot out there to read about how it happens and how bad it is.
a Scientific American article published about a recent study of nomophobia – on adults (yes, many of us are addicted too).
