LearnShifting

 Joe completed an assignment on Chinese mythology this week and in one of his slides he had pictures embedded into shapes. Some of his classmates asked him how to do it and it made sense to create a small movie. These little movies can be created with camtasia if you have the software or jing or community clips from Microsoft, or screenr from the folks at articulate.

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This entry was posted on September 1, 2011 at 10:24 PM and has received 355 views. There are currently 1 comments. Print this entry.

My son likes playing with Lego. Lego has been around so long that I believe on a recent archeological dig in China they found a prototype of the Great Wall of China built in Lego...

Lego has evolved to a point where you buy a computer game, let's say Lego Star Wars and as you proceed through the game, or rather you child proceeds through the game, requests to purchase the Lego spaceships and characters in the game increase.

Some may argue that we buy these games, paying money to a company advertise their wares through gameplay on our computers. That is not a discussion for this eLearning place however effective the strategy might be.

I really only wanted to comment on two observations.

Reward Systems

Reward systems in these games are generally based around earning points by finding or doing something and you use those points to buy tools that will help you advance through the levels in the game. Joe's teachers over the years have used a similar strategy in the classroom. Paying attention, doing work well, working as a team member, being well behaved earn points, marbles, jellybeans and once enough "micro-credits" are accumulated, the marbles convert to a silver ball which means that with the extra strength of the silver ball, minor transgressions will still be pointed out and the threat of losing the silver ball and being relgated to collecting jellybeans and marbles is enough to keep kids in check.

When does that strategy cease to be effective? I think at about the same time that interest in the Lego Star Wars games wanes and collecting baubles and credits loses importance and is replaced with the collecting other things of importance to us. By the way this is not about materialism although it can manifest itself in the earn and trade nature of games.

Given that many kids in class do play computer games, our classroom teaching can't compete with the 3D wizardry of the multimillion dollar game companies, but we can learn from the reward systems used (which are based on reward systems in life) and as art imitates life... take the good, leave out the bad and use what you can to keep them interested and making it easy to pick up points for good behaviour or attention so they can get to level one, but not too easy that they don't care about going back to zero again.

Those of you who are teachers and have taught for a while will go "I've been doing that all my career" and that is right... Joe's teachers are great examples of teachers putting good classroom strategies in place to improve performance at both an academic and behavioural level.

This is mainly for us first time parents who realise that whatever you do to do your best for your child, you are always trying to understand the best way to provide the best path... the "do I let him" or "don't I let him" or "Would it help if we..."

So if a reward system in a computer game can keep a child engrossed for hours, I want to map the secret of that onto other activities - like getting him to eat vegetables.

Virtual World (on the computer) and Virtual World (Lego spaceships attached to child being flown around the house)

The playing of the game on the computer leads to similar play with the Lego objects in the house. I was thinking that using my iPod nano to film Joe and putting that on YouTube (or just on the computer) maybe with the right storyline we can add to the way play activities become learning activities. Making a short movie with kids waving light sabres around is one thing and it is fun for all involved, but it wasn't until I suggested that we make a "Masterchef" movie with Joe and his cousins that a real interest in cooking was sparked.

So by using a Lego Star Wars spaceship we could make a movie about a visitor from another planet travelling to places affected by climate change and reporting back to the grand council on Naboo on each of the findings. With Joe combining the two worlds of a computer game and a real world he researches, prepares and then shoots a story that presents a serious topic using a visual treatment that I know his mates would love to watch.

These observations are written as a parent and not as a teacher (which I am not - although I know some very good ones) and this is not a shameless endorsement of Lego (although you have to agree they are pretty cool).

May the force be with you!

This entry was posted on February 10, 2011 at 7:26 AM and has received 668 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

There are three things (which means I will probably write about five things) about YouTube I would like to share with you. The first is a challenge...

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This entry was posted on December 30, 2010 at 3:44 PM and has received 458 views. There are currently 1 comments. Print this entry.

 So we held our successful live broadcast the other week with up 78 streams of video simultaneously consumed by locations across the Northern Territory. In my last post I rivus on how good it was and in this post I want to focus on what we could have done better and what we did do well.

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This entry was posted on November 16, 2010 at 11:18 AM and has received 1176 views. There are currently 2 comments. Print this entry.

Ah, to think how far we have come. I would like to thank Monica from Tennant Creek for sharing this. For all of the folks who help other folks with technology, this is for you...

This entry was posted on April 23, 2010 at 2:38 PM and has received 422 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

There are quite a few situations where we want to engage people in an online social environment to create, sort, edit, share and if required to delete information. The popularity of Facebook and YouTube are evidence that people do engage with this approach. I'd like to use this entry to expand on the journey I have taken with two real uses of this technology and how it can benefit you as an educator, a parent, a club member or someone who needs a combined soapbox and filing cabinet out there in cyberspace - where it appears that now - everybody can hear you scream.

This article talks about about Microsoft's Office Live Workspaces which look uncannily like SharePoint and links to other tools that allow us to communicate and share information.

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This entry was posted on April 8, 2010 at 6:43 AM and has received 336 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

Just read an article about Microsoft Surface which at 21,000 is way more expensive than an ipad but could answer the critics of not having people interact personally face to face with ellearning technology. Microsoft surface is a touchscreen coffee table - kind of interesting as we are having a planning day tomorrow using the World Cafe concept. It is a physical/tactile way to work with objects on the screen, which is embedded into the table. It is compared with the movie Minority Report's screen used to determine participants in a "pre-crime".

One thing that is clearly different (and potentially a problem) is that unlike a translucent interactive whiteboard that responds to iphone like gestures, students nad teachers have to lean over the table somewhat. I am sure the ergonomic professionals will undoubtably scrutinise before we deploy these into the school environment.

I would, however, like to see a few of these deployed with useful PD content into selected staffrooms as a trial. More technically savvy teachers could introduce the gestures and searching paradigms to their colleagues who are grappling with the overload of computer "stuff" that they are expected to absorb.

What would teachers look at? ItunesU downloads, scootle content, general research using the web, checking the news, discussing topical subjects with a small group of colleagues...

So if you don't click on the article above, imagine a giant iPhone on 4 legs that you can sit around and view things on with a bunch of firends.

This entry was posted on February 11, 2010 at 6:47 AM and has received 346 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

How do you take YouTube and improve on it? You livestream it. Livestream TV came to my attention when those folks at Microsoft used it in Australia to launch Windows 7.0.

Now, at work we use Adobe Connect which has a Flash Media Server doing all the hard work streaming live video out to the masses. It made sense that creating an education based TV station with a mixture of live content, locally created content and purchased material would be a way of engaging with all manner of people.

Being a pilot of little aircraft I am quite concerned about safety - especially mine. I was looking for something that could provide a TV station look and feel and didn't require the pockets of James Packer or the skills of Spielberg to produce something useful.

Welcome to livestream. First the bad news. You do need ADSL and that is just the way it is. Also when experimenting from the office the video didn't record (the sound did though). At home it worked a treat so there are still some learning curves and bumps to negotiate.

Basically with a webcam, laptop and microphone you can be delivering content to your virtual class or to the world. If you already use a product like REACT or Adobe Connect don't jump ship, but do have a peek in a spare moment. They have free tools for running your channel and if you have only 50 viewers, your channel is free. You can import your videos from YouTube. I have only imported mine. You can create playlists for when you are not live so now everyone can be a FoxTel or an Austar and have a bunch of repeat shows.

Enough talk... show me the channel...

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This entry was posted on December 2, 2009 at 4:58 AM and has received 507 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

Should we allow web 2.0 in schools? Should teachers be able to use facebook and youtube in the classroom? I am using Web 2.0 here to blog about this. But are we victims of the technobabble that means we need to rename something every few years to make it sound fresh and provide consultants with an opportunity to skill us up in a new fangled technology which is just an old idea rebadged.

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This entry was posted on November 27, 2009 at 5:16 AM and has received 326 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.