Wang, Q., Quek, C., & Hu, H. (2017). Designing and Improving a Blended Synchronous Learning Environment : An Educational Design Research. International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 18(3), 99-118
Definition: blended synchronous learning has attracted much attention and it is often labelled with synchronous hybrid learning (Cain & Henriksen 2013); synchronous blended learning (Okita, 201 3 ); multi – access learning (Irvine, Code, & Richards, 2013); or simultaneous delivery of course s to on – campus and off – campus students (White et al ., 2010). Adapted from the definition given by Bower , Dalgarno, Kennedy, Lee, and Kenney (2015), blended synchronous learning in this paper is defined as a learning method that enables online students to participate in classroom learning activities simultaneously via comput er – mediated communication technologies such as video conferencing . By following this approach , on – campus students attend F2F le ssons in the physical classroom. M eanwhile, online students who are situated at multiple sites participate in the identical class room learning activities via two – way video conferencing in real time .
With regard to educational benefits , blended synchronous learning can help to establish rich teaching presence, social presence, and cognitive presence ( Garrison, Anderson, & Archer, 200 0 ; Szeto, 2015 ). A BSLE provides a mimic classroom environment (White et al. , 2010) , where teachers ’ direct instruction and facilitation can be easily carried out a nd the teaching presence is hence naturally established.
Digital Bodies cofounders Emory Craig and Maya Georgieva for an interactive session that will examine five developments in virtual, augmented, and mixed reality with the greatest potential to impact teaching and learning. Ask your questions live as they explore how groundbreaking developments in VR, AR, MR, and artificial intelligence will power immersive technologies and transform learning.
Maya Georgieva, an ed tech strategist, author and speaker with more than 15 years of experience in higher education and global education. Georgieva is co-founder of Digital Bodies, a consulting group that provides news and analysis of VR, AR and wearables in education
Microsoft has been collaborating with its partners, such as HP, Acer, Dell and Lenovo, to develop VR headsets that will work with lower-end desktops. Later this year, the companies will debut headsets for $299, “which is much more affordable compared to HoloLens
many Kickstarter crowdfunding efforts are bound to make high-end headsets more accessible for teaching.
the NOLO project. The NOLO system is meant for mobile VR headsets and gives users that “6 degrees of freedom” (or 6 DoF) motion tracking that is currently only found in high-end headsets.
2) Hand Controllers That Will Bring Increased Interactivity
AltspaceVR h uses avatars and supports multiplayer sessions that allow for socialization and user interaction.
Facebook has been continuing to develop its own VR platform, Facebook Spaces, which is in beta and will be out later this year. LectureVR is a similar platform on the horizon.
Visual Literacy.Using Instagram to select a single photo to capture an overall concept would transfer to so many subject areas.
People, in general, love Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and other networks, because they want to share their pictures, videos and thoughts with the world; this sort of sharing makes people feel important. When kids feel important about what they share, they, in turn, believe that what they learn is important. This is truly what 21st-century learning is about.
annual Speak Up survey of more than 510,000 K–12 students, parents and educators
Middle school students seem to be the most excited about AR and VR in the school setting. Among students in grades 6 through 8, 33 percent said they would like to see augmented reality apps in their ultimate school, and 47 percent of those kids said they would like to see virtual reality experiences and hardware in their ultimate school.
teachers, principals and parents were more skeptical. Only 12 percent of parents and principals said they want to see AR apps in their ultimate school, while 13 percent of teachers said the same.
After participating in this course, you will be able to:
incorporate ever-evolving definitions of digital literacy into learning opportunities
draw upon a variety of digital resources to create digital-learning opportunities
seek additional resources that you can use in your continuing efforts to keep up with new developments in digital literacy in libraries and other learning organizations
What is digital literacy? Do you know how you can foster digital literacy through formal and informal learning opportunities for your library staff and users?
Supporting digital literacy still remains an important part of library staff members’ work, but sometimes we struggle to agree on a simple, meaningful definition of the term. In this four-week eCourse, training/learning specialist Paul Signorelli will begin by exploring a variety of definitions, focusing on work by a few leading proponents of the need to foster digital literacy among people of all ages and backgrounds. He will explore a variety of digital-literacy resources – including case studies of how we creatively approach digital-literacy learning opportunities for library staff and users, and will explore a variety of digital tools that will help to encourage further understanding of this topic.
Now, who is ready to build their digital-literacy skills and help their users become digitally literate as well?
eCourse Outline
Part 1: Digital Literacy: Initial Definitions and Explorations
An overview of various definitions of digital literacy
Ben Ward, Kansas State University
Transmedia, unicorns, and marketing, oh my!: The not-quite epic failure of transmedia design efforts in Oz.
Transmedia storytelling, also called Alternate Reality Games, have been designed to intrigue, engage, and even engineer groups of people since the release of The Beast in 2001. A few colleges and Universities have employed them to engage their student populations and even teach them a thing or two using narrative game mechanics. Presenters will chronicle a highly successful transmedia design effort at Kansas State University, and the subsequent annual efforts to replicate the engagement and enthusiasm. Best practices and not-quite epic failures will be discussed, as will tips (and laments) for marketing to our current student populations.
Ben Ward, Kansas State University
Joelle Pitts, Instructional Design Librarian and Associate Professor, Kansas State University Libraries
Stefan Yates, Instructional Design Librarian and Associate Professor, Kansas State University
Transmedia, unicorns, and marketing, oh my!: The not-quite epic failure of transmedia design efforts in Oz.
Transmedia storytelling, also called Alternate Reality Games, have been designed to intrigue, engage, and even engineer groups of people since the release of The Beast in 2001. A few colleges and Universities have employed them to engage their student populations and even teach them a thing or two using narrative game mechanics. Presenters will chronicle a highly successful transmedia design effort at Kansas State University, and the subsequent annual efforts to replicate the engagement and enthusiasm. Best practices and not-quite epic failures will be discussed, as will tips (and laments) for marketing to our current student populations.
Glenn Larsen, National Science Foundation
SBIR and Other Funding Sources for Your Game
The National Science Foundation (NSF) awards nearly $190 million annually to startups and small businesses through the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR)/Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) program, transforming scientific discovery into products and services with commercial and societal impact. The equity-free funds support research and development (R&D) across almost all areas of science and technology helping companies de-risk technology for commercial success. The NSF is an independent federal agency with a budget of about $7 billion that supports fundamental research and education across all fields of science and engineering. For more information, visit http://www.nsf.gov/SBIR.
Karen Schrier, Assistant Professor/Director of Games and Emerging Media, Marist College Design Principles for Knowledge Games
Lisa Castaneda, CEO, foundry10|
Mark Suter, Teacher, Bernards Township Schools
How Teachers Can Use VR in the Classroom: Beyond the Novelty
Over the past three years, foundry10, an education research organization, has been studying the potential of Virtual Reality in Education. The research has focused on the implementation, immersion dynamics, and integration of content across the curriculum.
Working with a variety of classroom curricular areas, with students and teachers from 30 schools, we have gathered data as well as anecdotal stories to help illustrate how VR functions in a learning environment. Students from all over the US, Canada and parts of Europe, completed pre/post surveys and educators participated in extensive qualitative interviews in order to better understand what it means to learn with virtual reality.
Please join foundry10 CEO Lisa Castaneda and teachers Steve Isaacs and Mark Suter as we share what we have learned about how to effectively utilize VR for classroom learning through content creation (both inside and outside of the virtual world), content consumption and content integration and overcoming the obstacles inherent in implementation.
The topic of the use of electronic devices, being that laptops, and more recently smartphones, tablets 2in1 laptops (or hybrid laptops) has been a disputable issue among instructors.
Under the tutelage of TPR, I am offering to facilitate a campus-wide discussion on the use of electronic devices in the classroom. The short-range goal of such discussion is to provide a platform for SCSU instructors to share their pedagogical experience in handling the use of electronic devices in the classroom.
The long-range goal of such discussion will be to start a conversation among SCSU faculty about the didactic of educational technology; going beyond just learning technology and start building practices for successful use of technology for teaching and learning.
Eyal, L. (2012). Digital Assessment Literacy — the Core Role of the Teacher in a Digital Environment. Journal Of Educational Technology & Society, 15(2), 37-49.
Common to all is a view of the level of literacy as a measure of the quality of human capital of a society or a particular area. Literacy develops in interaction with the environment (Vygotsky, 1987).
digital assessment literacy refers to the role of the teacher as an assessor in a technology-rich environment.
Learning Management Systems (LMS) benefits and limitations
Measurement allows quantitative description of a particular characterization of an individual, expressed in numbers.
the combination of assessment and measurement provides a thorough and accurate picture, based upon which practical conclusions can be drawn (Wagner, 1997). A test is a systematic process in which an aspect of student behavior is quantitatively evaluated (Suen & Parkes, 2002).
For several decades this system of assessment has been criticized for a variety of reasons, including the separation between the teaching-learning process and the evaluation process, the relatively low level of thinking required, and the quantitative reporting of results, which does not contribute to students’ progress. In the last decade, the central argument against the tests system is that their predictability is limited to the field and context in which the students are tested, and that they do not predict student problem solving ability, teamwork, good work habits and honesty.
teachers mistakenly believe that repeating lessons will improve students’ achievements.
To evaluate how well the goals were achieved, objective measurement methods are employed (Black, et al., 2004).
Eshet- Alkalai (2004) offered a detailed conceptual framework for the term ‘digital literacy’ that includes: photo-visual thinking; reproduction thinking; branching thinking; information thinking; and socio-emotional thinking.
Eshet-Alkalai, Y. (2004). Digital literacy: A conceptual framework for survival skills in the digital era. Journal of Educational Multimedia and Hypermedia, 13(1), 93–106.
Eshet-Alkalai, Y., & Chajut, E. (2009). Changes Over Time in Digital Literacy. Cyberpsychology & Behavior, 12(6), 713-715. doi:10.1089/cpb.2008.0264
two major patterns of change over time: (a) closing the gap between younger and older participants in the tasks that emphasize profi- ciency and technical control and (b) widening the gap between younger and older participants in tasks that emphasize creativity and critical thinking. Based on the comparison with the matched control groups, we suggest that experience with technology, and not age, accounts for the observed lifelong changes in digital literacy skills
Eshet-Alkalai, Y., & Soffer, O. (2012). Guest Editorial – Navigating in the Digital Era: Digital Literacy: Socio-Cultural and Educational Aspects. Journal Of Educational Technology & Society, 15(2), 1.
a wide range of technological, cognitive and social competences—collectively termed “DigitalLiteracy.” Users thus must become “digitally literate” in order to cope effectively with the complex sociological, cognitive and pedagogical challenges these technologies pose. These skills include, for example, the ability to operate computers and navigate the net effectively, to cope with large volumes of information, to evaluate the reliability of information, and to critically assess what seem to be natural (and not ideologically biased) technological tools. In a different way from the spirit of modern print, learners construct and consume knowledge in non-linear environments. They need to learn, collaborate and solve problems effectively in virtual (non face-to-face) learning environments, and to communicate effectively in technology-mediated social participation environments.
It is important to note: digital literacy, then, is not limited simply to computer and Internet operation and orientation. It also relates to a variety of epistemological and ethical issues arise due to the unique characteristics of digital technologies and that are often overlapped with trends related to the post-modern and post-structural era. These include questions regarding the authority of knowledge, intellectual property and ownership, copyright, authenticity and plagiarism. Furthermore, issues such as self-representation, virtual group dynamics, and on-line addiction also arise.
