Beyond The Buzz Phrase: Social Learning And LMS Gamification In Real Life
When: Thursday 26 July 2018, 11:00 PM – 12:00 PM
Adobe’s Senior Learning Evangelist, Katrina Marie Baker in our webinar, and find out how you can easily transform your learning by taking a deep dive into the 2 smartest learning breakthroughs of the decade: Social Learning & Gamification 🚀
During this session, you will:
• Learn how to blend social learning into existing courses using an LMS
• Discover how gamification can be aligned with your business objectives
• Come upon the latest learning tech tips to help you drive engagement
• See examples of how gamification and social learning can be both employed in Captivate Prime LMS
Are social learning and gamification the new fashion that will dominate the future of eLearning? Let’s find out together!
Like any augmented reality app, the new AR content in Google Expeditions lets students view and manipulate digital content in a physical world context. The new AR content can be used as components in science, math, geography, history, and art lessons. Some examples of the more than 100 AR tours that you’ll now find in the app include landforms, the skeletal system, dinosaurs, ancient Egypt, the brain, and the Space Race.
To use the AR content available through Google Expeditions you will need to print marker or trigger sheets that students scan with their phones or tablets. Once scanned the AR imagery appears on the screen. (You can actually preview some of the imagery without scanning a marker, but the imagery will not be interactive or 3D). Students don’t need to look through a Cardboard viewer in order to see the AR imagery.
Opening Education: Using Open Education & Open Pedagogy to Transform Learning and the Educational Experience
The Open Education Southern Symposium at the University of Arkansas is accepting proposals for its day and a half conference on Monday, Oct. 1 and Tuesday, Oct. 2, 2018. Proposals should fall into one of three categories:
o Presentations: 15-20 minutes (Please allow 10 to 15 minutes for Q&A after presentations.)
o Panel Discussions: 45 minutes (Please allow 10 to 15 minutes for Q&A after panel discussions.)
o Lightning Talks: 7 minutes (A short 5 to 10 minute Q&A will follow all lightning presentations.)
We welcome proposals from organizations, including colleges and universities of all sizes, community colleges, special libraries, and any others involved in open education and open pedagogy. We’re particularly interested in proposals with topics centering around:
o Adoption and creation of resources
o Publishing platforms
o Best practices and the impact of Open Education
o Creative Commons, copyright, and other licensing
o Marketing and advocacy
o Pedagogy and student success, including K-12 highlights
o Instructional design strategies for OER
o Trends and innovation
o OER in community colleges
o Tenure, promotion, and OER
o OER community building
o Assessment
o Inclusion and diversity in Open Education
Submission Details:
The deadline for submissions is May 31, 2018 at 11:59 p.m. Central Time. The submission form can be found on our eventwebsite under the Call for Proposals page.
Proposal social media summaries should not exceed 240 characters (spaces included).
Proposal abstracts should not exceed 2000 characters or approximately 500 words.
All submissions will be evaluated based on the relevance of the topic and potential to advance the thinking or practice of Open Education and Open Pedagogy. Proposal reviewers will use similar proposal criteria to those being used by the Open Education Conference and OER18.
The planning committee will deliver decisions by June 29, 2018.
Presenters will be asked to accept or decline invitation to present by July 13, 2018.
All presenters will be required to register for the symposium.
Registration is $99 for our day and a half event on October 1 & 2, 2018 at the University of Arkansas. Registration covers full participation for both days, shuttle service between the hotel and event location, lunch on the first day, snacks and beverages, and event goodies.
Our library is gearing up to create a virtual reality demonstration station using either VTC Hive or Oculus Rift. We want to make sure that we at least a small suite of educational VR products.
If your library runs a VR workstation, could you share one or two educational titles that you’re especially happy with? We are planning on getting Mission:ISS, a simulation of the International Space Station.
Thanks!
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Daniel Cornwall
OWL Program Manager / Internet and Technology Consultant
In April, a PLAYlive Nation lounge in Tracy, Calif., hosted its first Fortnite tournament and sold out. Hundreds of players bought tickets to play against one another and win prizes.
Joost van Dreunen, the CEO of Superdata Research, a video game analytics firm, says most shooter games are serious and simulate violence. Fortnite, he says, is more like a friendly game of tag.
His company estimates the game has made about $223 million across all platforms in March alone. In lifetime sales, it had made about $614 million. The game is free to play, but Epic Games, the company that owns Fortnite, makes money through microtransactions. Players can spend real money to make cosmetic changes to their characters in the game. They can buy things like skins, which are like costumes, for their characters or emotes, which are celebratory dance moves their characters can do after winning or killing another player in the game.
Ninja, the gamer name taken by 26-year-old Tyler Blevins, is now a legend in the Fortnite world. He is a master at the game and rocketed into popularity after playing in an online battle with rap artists Drake and Travis Scott on March 14. That battle has been watched more than 9 million times.
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Educators Battle ‘Fortnite’ for Students’ Attention
Many educators want to ban the game from their classrooms, but some are taking the opposite approach, attempting to weave students’ interest in Fortnite into class discussions and assignments.
Nick Fisher, a science teacher at Fort Zumwalt North High School in O’Fallon, Mo., said his students like to take screenshots of gameplay and send them to friends over Snapchat. Teenagers want to broadcast their victories, and because the game is on their phones, it’s easy to post updates to social media, making Fortnite “the perfect concoction of addiction,” said Fisher.
North High blocks all social media and gaming sites on its WiFi, said Fisher, but students tell him how they circumvent the restriction: They use virtual private networks, or VPNs, to establish independent internet connections. (Dozens of YouTube videos provide step-by-step tutorials for students looking to get around school WiFi controls.)
“Kids can’t multitask,” she said. “Even having a digital device within sight can cognitively distract the student enough that they can’t focus on the academics.”
Schools and teachers should be guiding parents when it comes to appropriate limits around screen time, said Kolb. Most parents will appreciate research-based recommendations, such as turning off all screens a set amount of time before bed, she said.
Games like Fortnite can even have social benefits, said John Velez, an assistant professor of journalism and electronic media at Texas Tech University. Velez, who studies the positive effects of video games, has found that playing violent games cooperatively with helpful teammates promotes pro-social behavior.
Chris Aviles, the coordinator of innovation, technology, and 21st century skills for the Fair Haven Public Schools in New Jersey, wrote “A Teacher’s Guide to Surviving Fortnite,” an exploration of ways the game can be used for instructional purposes. The guide, posted to his blog Teched Up Teacher, suggests how to integrate the game into writing prompts, math lessons on probability, and physics.
Aviles doesn’t advocate playing the game at school. There isn’t any educational value in letting students engage in virtual combat during a lesson, he said. Instead, teachers can build a lesson around one aspect of the game, such as having students calculate the best angle of approach as they jump from the “Battle Bus,” the floating bus that drops players onto the map at the beginning of each match.
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Instagram, Snapchat, Fortnite: The distractions are endless. Here’s how to help kids cope.
In January, two of Apple’s shareholder groups asked the company to look at the addictive effects of iPhones on children. Google’s recent developer conference highlighted tools to help users better control smartphone usage.
A 2015 survey of more than 1,800 teachers and 400 principals in Alberta, B.C., found that nearly three-fourths of teachers frequently or very frequently observed students multitasking with technology, and 67 percent of teachers believed that the number of students negatively distracted by digital technologies in the classroom was growing.
The best approach is to use empathy, compassion and collaboration to help the young people in your life find ways to manage their digital workflow.
Encourage visualization for inspiration and motivation. The first step is getting students to buy in and to want to make behavioral changes.
Focus on compartmentalization. A 2009 study from Stanford researchers found that people who juggled several streams of electronic information were not able to pay attention, remember key information or switch tasks as effectively as those who completed one task at a time.
Using the Pomodoro technique of spending 25 minutes focused on one task followed by a five-minute break can be an easy way to have students begin to shift from a multitasking to a monotasking mind-set.
Make focus fun. There are now numerous ways to use technology to help us be more productive with technology, and it doesn’t have to be arduous. Students in my office use apps such as Forest or Flipd to motivate them to stay off their phones during class or when doing homework. Forest has a simple interface that will build a digital tree for users who stay off their phones. Flipd allows users to hide certain apps, allot time off their phone based on their schedule and, for a premium, track their progress over time.
Provide structured support as needed. A middle school student with whom I worked recently was relieved when his mother used the Mac OS app SelfControl to block YouTube and ESPN while he was doing his homework (Cold Turkey is a similar PC-based app).
Allow opportunities for regrouping. Even the best plans can go awry (for adults and kids alike). It’s important to focus on progress rather than perfection. Create time daily or weekly for students to think about what went well in terms of managing distractions and improving productivity, and what they would like to do better. Ask open-ended questions without judgment or expectation
Recording Capacity is 100GB cloud storage, shared between the 25 accounts, 100 participants per host
Here is the Zoom pricing plan showing the Basic vs. Pro account plans. https://zoom.us/pricing
Happy to set you up with an account (email provided below) as soon as one become available (5/14 or sooner).
I only ask for your assessment on this tool – pros, cons and overall impression.
CMDLN (Central Minnesota Distance Learning Network) is one of the six regions that make up the LNM (Learning Network of Minnesota). The LNM Board is made up of MinnState and the UofM representatives. It is a State of Minnesota Grant funded organization connecting Higher Ed to Higher Ed and Higher Ed to K-12. Developed in 1995 to extend education throughout Minnesota. Core role today is connecting campus to campus with interactive video and audio.
Yes, CMDLN is paying for the Zoom Host accounts. SCSU is a member of CMDLN (1 of 8) giving them access to this Zoom account. Yes, as long as Zoom is working as well as it has, CMDLN will continue funding.
I do not see Zoom as competition with Adobe Connect, just another tool. Just as Skype or Cisco CMS.
Connect does not connect to the video codec classrooms (30 that CMDLN takes care of).
Adobe Connect does not currently connect to China without issues. We use Zoom for the SCSU-Binhai meetings.
Chosen to pilot upon recommendation from my colleagues in other states that are serving the same needs.
All that to say, Zoom is in a three year pilot for CMDLN members with interactive video needs.
We invite you to an upcoming session in the 2017-18 CIDER Sessions series on Wednesday, May 2, 2018. This free, online session will feature David Mykota from the University of Saskatchewan.
Title: Social Presence in Online Learning: A Scoping Study
This presentation reports the findings of a scoping review of the construct social presence. The methodology follows the design for scoping reviews as advocated by Arksey and O’Malley (2005).
A scoping study is desirable because by synthesizing the research literature the opportunity to identify practical guidelines for the development of social presence is facilitated. A two-stage screening process resulted in 105 studies identified for inclusion with data extracted using a standardized form. A descriptive numerical analysis and qualitative content analysis for those studies included was undertaken. Results from the manuscripts, screened for inclusion and synthesized from the data extracted in the scoping review, provide strategies for the structuring of social presence; the potential benefits of effective affective communication in an online environ; and an overview of the evolution of the construct social presence. Future research that links both the theoretical and empirical frameworks that validate social presence across a variety of online and e-learning environs is recommended so that best practices for excellence in higher education can continue to be made possible.
When: Wednesday, May 2, 2018 – 11am to 12noon Mountain Time (Canada)
Registration is not required; all are welcome. CIDER Sessions are recorded and archived for later viewing through the CIDER website. For more information on CIDER and our Sessions, please visit us at: http://cider.athabascau.ca
Pre-configuration:
Please note that it is important to set up your system prior to the event. Make sure your Mac or PC is equipped with a microphone and speakers, so that you can use the audio functionality built into the conferencing software. The Adobe Connect platform may require an update to your Flash Player; allow time for this update by joining the session 10 minutes prior to the scheduled presentation.
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CIDER sessions are brought to you by the International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning (IRRODL) and the Centre for Distance Education, Athabasca University: Canada’s Open University and leader in professional online education. The Sessions and their recordings are open and available to all, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.