Archive of ‘instructional technology’ category

26
Nov
2015

games and learning

categories: Digital literacy, gamification, gaming, information technology, instructional technology, student-centered learning, technology literacy

Four Inventive Games That Show Us the Future of Learning

http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2015/11/26/four-inventive-games-that-show-us-the-future-of-learning

Earth Primer

Designed by Chaim Gingold, a Ph.D. student at UC Santa Cruz, indie developer and designer of Spore’s creature creator, “Earth Primer” is a reinvention of the textbook. Unlike the all-too-familiar “interactive textbooks” that are little more than pictures and animations tacked on to traditional text, “Earth Primer” starts from the ground up. It’s elegantly presented and paced.

Metamorphabet

Patrick Smith, the designer behind “Metamorphabet,” is like the games equivalent of a toymaker.

Extrasolar

Money and time are the two most common barriers to using games in the classroom. “Extrasolar” solves both while also striking pedagogical gold: authentic, self-motivated learning. It’s a free alternate reality game (ARG) that mimics the day-to-day life of a rover driver exploring an alien planet for a mysterious space agency. Rather than placing players in some fantastical world, they interact with what looks like a typical desktop interface, giving their rover commands, and waiting to receive photographs and data from the alien world as well as messages from their employer. Each bit of play requires only a few minutes of activity. The wait builds tension, and when matched with the relatively mundane interface and tasks, it doesn’t feel like a game — which is kind of the point. Best of all: It’s all based in real science and, like with any good ARG, has a healthy dose of mystery to give players a reason to return.

Twine is an open-source tool for telling interactive, nonlinear stories.

http://twinery.org//

You don’t need to write any code to create a simple story with Twine, but you can extend your stories with variables, conditional logic, images, CSS, and JavaScript when you’re ready.

Twine publishes directly to HTML, so you can post your work nearly anywhere. Anything you create with it is completely free to use any way you like, including for commercial purposes.

Twine was originally created by Chris Klimas in 2009 and is now maintained by a whole bunch of people at several differentrepositories.

https://www.graphite.org/ – reviews and ratings for educational materials

25
Nov
2015

categories: Digital literacy, information technology, instructional technology

The Visualization Gap

http://www.nmc.org/blog/the-visualization-gap/

The bigger problem, however, is our mental limitations in both teaching and thinking visually. Most classes that “teach” PowerPoint gloss over the narrative changes that it imposes on us through its transition from a linear textual narrative to a nonlinear visual one. They also fail to examine the information transfer capacities of various media. PowerPoint is software that complements a performance and often fails as a container for information. It needs to be augmented by more persistent visual and textual media. I’ve worked around this by creating websites as a mechanism to gloss my presentation; provide background linkages; and to create a persistent, living complement to what happens live. Slideshare fails to do this because it only gives you half of the presentation, the visual part, which may or may not stand on its own. Part of visual literacy is understanding how visual media complements other media, such as audio and text.

Finally, we need to start embedding design thinking into our processes. Design thinking is, by its very nature, closely tied to the visual.

Every Picture Tells a Story from haymest

More on presentation design and tools in this blog:

https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims/?s=presentation&submit=Search

25
Nov
2015

future trends in education

categories: Digital literacy, information technology, instructional technology, mobile learning, student-centered learning, technology literacy

The NMC Horizon Report > 2016 Higher Education Edition Wiki

http://horizon.wiki.nmc.org/

 

23
Nov
2015

educational technology and faculty development

categories: Bring Your Own Device BYOD, Digital literacy, information technology, instructional technology, mobile learning, teaching, technology literacy

Educational Technology and Faculty Development in Higher Education

http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ers1507.pdf

 The Potential of Mobile Devices for Teaching and Learning

Despite the near ubiquity of student laptops and smartphones, in-class BYOD is still an emerging practice.
19
Nov
2015

EDAD 646 tech instruction

categories: educational technology, information technology, instructional technology, technology literacy

EDAD 646 tech instruction with Dr. Roger Worner

Based on the documents attached above, and the discussion and work already surrounding these documents, please consider the following flowchart:

study >>> systems theory >>> cybermetrics >>>

SWOT >>> strategic planning >>> task force >>> architect >>>

CM >>> public adviser >>> public polling >>> referendum

During the exercises surrounding the documents above, you have been introduced to various speakers / practitioners, who presented real-life cases regarding:

  1. business
  2. transportation  https://www.edulog.com/, http://www.tylertech.com/solutions-products/school-solutions/transportation, http://www.busboss.com/
  3. food service (http://www.foodservicedirector.com/research/big-picture/articles/impact-technology-foodservice)
  4. building grounds (http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED499142.pdf)
  5. HR (http://login.libproxy.stcloudstate.edu/login?qurl=http%3a%2f%2fsearch.ebscohost.com%2flogin.aspx%3fdirect%3dtrue%26db%3dkeh%26AN%3d89941160%26site%3dehost-live%26scope%3dsite)
  6. others

– the first goal of this technology instruction is to figure out the current state of technology in K12 settings.
assignment:
* split in groups * using each group member’s information and experience about technology in general and technology in school settings, use the flow chart above and identify any known technology, which can improve the process of each step in the flow chart.
* reconvene and compare results among groups. Find similarities and discrepancies and agree on a pool of applicable technology tools and concepts, which can improve the process reflected in the flow chart.

Example how to meet the requirements for the first goal:  1. based on your technological proficiency, how can you aid your study using system thinking/systems approach? the work ahead of you is collaborative. What collaborative tools do you know, which can help the team work across time and space? Skype, Google Hangouts for audio/video/desktopsharing. Google Drive/Docs for working on policies and similar text-based documents.

Work on the following assignment:
Trends in technology cannot be taken separately from other issues and are closely intertwined with other “big” trends :

e.g., mobile workspaces (https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims/2015/12/03/mobile-workspaces-on-campus/ ) are part of the larger picture, namely active learning spaces (https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims/?s=learning+spaces&submit=Search), which involves, furniture, building construction, etc.

keeping in mind this interdependence / balance, please work in groups on the following questions. Using the available links above and the literature they lead to, as well as your own findings, please provide your best opinion to these questions:

  • when planning for a new building and determining learning spaces, what is the percentage of importance, which we place on technology, in relation to furniture, for example?
  • how much do teachers have a say in the planning of the building, considering that they had worked and prefer “their type” of learning space?
  • who decides what technology and how? how one rationalizes the equation technology = learning spaces = available finances?
  • how much outsourcing (consulting) on any of the components of the equation above one can afford / consider? How much weight the strategic planning puts on the consulting (outsourcing) versus the internal opinion (staff and administrators)?
  • how “far in the future” your strategic plan is willing / able to look at, in terms of technology – learning spaces?

How to stay current with the technology developments:

– the second goal of this technology instruction is to become acquainted with future technological trends and developments.
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims/2015/11/25/future-trends-in-education/

 

The New Horizon Report 2015 K12 Edition:
http://k12.wiki.nmc.org/

https://www.graphite.org/ – reviews and ratings for educational materials

ideas:

Are Schools Wasting Moneys on Computers?

https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims/2015/12/04/computers-in-education/

18
Nov
2015

immersive journalism, games, and empathy

categories: Digital literacy, digital storytelling, gamification, gaming, instructional technology, technology literacy, Uncategorized

Virtual reality breathes life into immersive storytelling

by · January 11, 2015

http://www.hypergridbusiness.com/2015/01/virtual-reality-breathes-life-into-immersive-storytelling/

Virtual Games Try To Generate Real Empathy For Faraway Conflict

James Delahoussaye
http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2015/01/25/379417927/virtual-games-try-to-generate-real-empathy-for-faraway-conflict

Project Syria, a virtual reality experience built by a team of students at USC.

“I sometimes call virtual reality an empathy generator,” she says. “It’s astonishing to me. People all of a sudden connect to the characters in a way that they don’t when they’ve read about it in the newspaper or watched it on TV.”

What Peña’s doing — using virtual reality in combination with reporting — is part of a wider landscape of video games being created to explore the news. And they’re called, appropriately enough, “newsgames.”

“There’s an argument to be made that games are perfect at getting at the systemic problems and challenges in the world,” says Ian Bogost, a professor at Georgia Tech.

He says games are really good at showing the complex underbelly of stories.

Take a game that he helped make called Oil God. In the game, the player controls an oil-rich region, waging wars and inciting coupes. The player learns that oil prices are contingent on all sorts of factors rarely mentioned in a story about the price of a gallon of gas.

The Sociology of Videogames

http://sociologyofvideogames.com/2015/01/25/can-video-games-create-empathy-and-awareness-for-real-world-issues/

creating games to bring awareness to social issues for over a decade.  The game to create the biggest waves was arguably MTV’s “Darfur is Dying” released online in 2006, in which players took up the role of a family displaced by conflict in Darfur.

1 … 118 119 120 121 122 … 135