Don’t praise kids for being smart, praise them for working hard and for trying. Very interesting and very recommended read from New York magazine.
Learning Games Learning about games, games about learning
Failures in GBL
March 8, 2007 — DanielIn most journals, across a range of disciplines, there is a shortage of papers describing what doesn’twork – and explanations of why it probably doesn’t work. People are generally more impressed by, and interested in, positive results. So I’m glad that John Sutherland has decided to write up a tale of failure inGBL in the most recent issue of my School’s journal – Computing and Information Systems, Vol. 11, Issue 1. (I’m listed as a coauthor for a section I contributed relating to Second Life. I’m sorry to say that a reference to John Bransford as the fellow who picked out ‘cumulativity’ as an advantage of SL got lost in the editing process… apologies.)
Anyway, the article mentions two failed attempts to develop a GBL project as a student post-graduate project. Not only did the project fail twice, but in both cases the project was developed to a standard far below that typical of the post-graduate cohorts involved. What was the project? It used a virtual marina as the background for teaching database development. What went wrong? John finds a number of reasons why that particular project failed twice, and also highlights some more general problems that GBL has to overcome to be successful:
Game 3.0 – Playstation Home
March 7, 2007 — DanielSeems like Sony Computer Entertainment have been paying attention to the likes of Second Life. Today they announced ‘Playstation Home’, taking Web 2.0 ideas of sharing and communication (but is there room for creativity?) and putting them into the PS3′s online-service, giving users their own avatars (as the Nintendo Wii, but not so cartoony) and virtual apartments to decorate and customise. Details a little vague just now, but a quote from the press release:
Impersonal statements
March 7, 2007 — DanielA funny one this… 234 of this year’s UK university applicants had chemistry set accidents leading them to burn holes in their pyjamas when they were 8 years old. Alternatively, they were just some of 800 applicants who copied their personal statements from a list of exemples on a web-site. From the BBC.
Another big report… "Their Space"
March 7, 2007 — DanielFound this via the Futurelab Flux blog. Demos (a UK think-tank) produced an 80 page (large print!) report on “Education for a Digital Generation“. Initially I thought this was going to be a hyper-bolic celebration of digital-youth, but it keeps a balanced perspective. Material criticising the myths found in mass-media hysteria on the ill-effects of digital media is balanced with a critique of the utopian counter view-point (page 41) :
There is also a set of positive myths demonstrating ‘blind faith’ in the power of technology. The more extreme versions caricature a whole generation of young people as digital natives and cyberkids, all equally confident users of technology. Meanwhile, staunch defenders of gaming and web 2.0 risk presenting all digital practices as equally valuable, hailing each wave of technology as full of revolutionary potential.
The authors also conducted many interviews with children, revealing a range of attitudes towards and capabilities for using technologies. Clear distinction is made between those who really explore and pioneer new technologies and those who simply use IM’s and similar to keep in touch with existing friends. The report finishes with recommendations for using technology effectively within educational settings. Quotes from these are scattered through the report, and usefully illustrate many of the points.
I have to admit skimming large portions of it… if people can stop producing new and interesting 80 page reports I might find the time to clear my backlog of the things!
Zoho Show
March 5, 2007 — DanielI experimented with Zoho Show, a web-based presentation tool (Powerpoint kind of thing) last week, and made a presentation for a class titled ‘Office Goes Web 2.0‘. Afraid the presentation was fairly rushed, and there’s no audio component – so you’ll have to pretend that I’m talking to you while you click through!
Editing was definately less responsive that with Powerpoint – due to the need to upload edits. Linking to videos on YouTube was a breeze – possibly the best bit of the process. Another gotcha was that the layout in editing wasn’t always preserved when it came to viewing a page – particularly when adding in several content areas to one slide. Embedded links should really open in a new page (IMHO), but by default don’t.
Zoho Show allows you to set presentations as public or private, and you can allow users to view them at their own leisure – or you can use the Remote Slideshow option to give a live remote presentation. I think this last really needs Skype or similar alongside to be effective, but it definately has potention. Could also do with a sidebar for typed IM style chat between participants (is there one? I couldn’t see it, but its an obviously useful feature for a remote presentation).
All in all, it was certainly interesting to play around with, but don’t think I’ll be using it as standard yet. Not till a few of the above limitations are dealt with anyway.
