Middlelearn

A Conversation with Don Fraser on Helping Kids Succeed

2010-07-27T10:23:00.000-04:00

Don Fraser is an specialist on student retention. Here he is being interviewed on his favorite subject.

Resource of the Week: "WatchKnow"

2010-07-27T10:21:00.000-04:00

The co-founder of Wikipedia creates a service for rating educational videos.

Google Tool for Developing Applications

2010-07-12T13:01:00.000-04:00

The next stage in bringing coding to the masses may have been achieved.

Article: Beyond Blowing Up Enemies: The Future of Games for Learning

2010-06-16T12:22:00.001-04:00

Edutopia has a article promoting Games for Learning entitled "Beyond Blowing Up Enemies: The Future of Games for Learning"

Research on Serious Games and Simulations

2010-05-15T10:34:00.000-04:00

From PlayGen, a list of research on the effectiveness of serious games and simulations.

The Overdue Blog Post about PowerPoint

2010-05-14T11:03:00.000-04:00

Given that the purpose of this blog is to disseminate information about technology and techniques for learning, it would seem a glaring oversight that I heretofore have said nothing about the most commonly-used presentation tool, PowerPoint. However the ubiquity of PowerPoint made mentioning it seem less important than newer, less famous technologies.

Nevertheless, the devil must be given his due. PowerPoint was recently in the news. A New York Times article, "We Have Met the Enemy and He Is PowerPoint" details the phenomenon of PowerPoint burnout in a military culture that overuses and misuses slide-ware. This article brings to mind Seth Godin's meditation on the uses and misuse of PowerPoint. Also, the tech-sensible Farhad Manjoo over at Slate points out that PowerPoint isn't evil if you learn how to use it.

Video Profile of the Week: Will Wright

2010-05-14T10:00:00.001-04:00

One way of testing whether or not a person is knowledgeable about Games for Learning is to drop the name of Will Wright and see if they recognize it. Wright, the legendary designer of The Sims is one of the giants of the field. Here he presents a keynote address at GameTech 2010. Here is another presentation by Wright on game design.

Finally, here is an interview Wright gave to the Chronicle of Higher Education entitled "5 Teaching Tips for Professors—From Video Games."

The Next Stage of Virtual World Based Learning: MESH

2010-04-20T10:00:00.000-04:00

The ever brilliant Clark Aldrich weighs in on the next stage of Virtual Worlds in Learning.

The MESH would be structured similarly to a massively multi-player online role playing game such as World of Warcraft. But rather than killing dragons or aliens, teams would fluidly form to bid on and, if selected, attempt to solve real-world problems. Assuming they were successful, they would get a) points towards a "degree," and b) an increasingly detailed assessment of natural strengths (such as leadership or project management), industry preferences, and weaknesses to be worked on.

"What Makes a Great Teacher?"

2010-02-01T08:52:00.000-05:00

A must read article from January 2010 edition of The Atlantic Monthly.

Video of the Week: James Paul Gee on Learning from Games

2009-12-10T10:37:00.002-05:00

James Paul Gee is one of the names everyone should know if they are interested in using games for learning. Here he is on PBS discussing Games for Learning. (Hat tip to Don Margulis for posting it first.)

Phrase of the Week: Experience Design

2009-12-10T10:33:00.001-05:00

As we seek to move the focus in education from content to engaging learning experiences, we often have to embrace new words and phrases to describe the changes that are happening in front of us.

One emerging cross-disciplinary field which relates to what we are attempting to achieve is called experience design.

Let me quote Clark Quinn, author of Engaging Learning:

That is, experience design is about creating a user experience, not just focusing on their goals, but thinking about the process as well. And that’s, to me, what is largely ignored in creating elearning is thinking about process from the learner’s perspective. There are really two components: what we need to accomplish, and what we’d like the learner to experience.

Our first goal still has to look at the learning need, and identify an objective that we’d like learners to meet, but even that we need to rethink. We may have constraints on delivery environment, resources, and more that we have to address as well, but that’s not the barrier. The barrier is the mistake of focusing on knowledge-level objectives, not on meaningful skill change. Let me be very clear: one of the real components of creating a learning experience is ensuring that we develop, and communicate, a learning objective that the learner will ‘get’ is important and meaningful to them. And we have to take on the responsibility for making that happen.
A wiki definition can be found here.

Required Reading: "Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants"

2009-12-05T19:35:00.001-05:00

"It is amazing to me how in all the hoopla and debate these days about the decline of education in the US we ignore the most fundamental of its causes. Our students have changed radically. Today’s students are no longer the people our educational system was designed to teach." - Marc Prensky

The phrases "Digital immigrants" and "Digital Natives" have used a great deal in the recent past to explain the generational gap between those of us whose formative experiences were in the pre-internet era and those of us who cannot concieve of a world without Google or Facebook. (The latter group is also referred as "millenials" indicating that they came of age after the turn of the 21st century.)

While there is a book entitled Digital natives, Digital immigrants, a quicker introduction is Marc Prensky's seminal essay on the topic. it can be accessed here.

White Paper: "How Advocates and Implementers Are Overcoming Barriers to Adoption of Immersive Technologies in the Workplace.

2009-11-25T09:54:00.000-05:00

Despite the promise of internet technology to transform learning experiences across the spectrum, there still remains considerable resistance to the culture of interactivity necessary for these learning opportunities to flourish.

Thinkbalm, a consulting firm that deals with immersive internet technologies, has released a white paper which addresses these problems and how to overcome them, "Crossing the Chasm, One Implentation at a Time: How Advocates and Implementers Are Overcoming Barriers to Adoption of Immersive Technologies in the Workplace." It can accessed on the web here.

Quote of the Day

2009-11-25T09:31:00.000-05:00

"So, in a nutshell, what is the difference educational simulations and serious games? Serious games are how you want to learn, and educational simulations are how you want your doctor to learn."

Clark Aldrich

Video:"The Future is Now: Presentation to the RU Board of Governors"

2009-11-13T09:40:00.001-05:00

This is a copy presentation given at Rutgers University, discussing how the Humanties teaching must change in response to technology.

Resource of the Week: The Good Work project

2009-11-02T08:57:00.002-05:00

Few modern scholars have had such a impact of how we think about learning as Howard Gardner. Gardner, a Haravard-based professor of education, is largely responsible for the theory of multiple intelligence which has changed the way we look at knowledge and learning.

In collaboration with the well-known psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (known for his work on positive psychiology and the "Flow" concept) and William Damon (Stanford-based expert on human development), Gardner wrote a book called Good Works, about the elements that go into creating meaningful human activity.

As extension of that book, Gardner has created The GoodWork Project, "a large scale effort to identify individuals and institutions that exemplify good work—work that is excellent in quality, socially responsible, and meaningful to its practitioners—and to determine how best to increase the incidence of good working our society."

The site is a must-see for anyone interested in innovative activity that can enrich education.

Video: Academic Lectures available on Academic Earth

2009-10-20T09:00:00.006-04:00

Academic Earth is an online repository for videotaped lectures presented by leading academics. Lectures are organized by lecturer, university, subject, and theme.

Previously, such filmed lectures would be accessible only through a portal like I-Tunes University. The advantage of Academic Earth is that it doesn't require the user to download a program like I-Tunes--which is an issue for online instructors who don't wish to require students to install I-Tunes on their home computers as well as for instructors working in computer labs where I-Tunes is not installed.

The site is available at http://www.academicearth.org/

Software: ShortKeys

2009-10-19T09:14:00.007-04:00

As a college instructor, I often find myself writing the same comments on student papers. As a consequence, I went in search of a tool which would free me from the burden of repetition. Shortkeys is a "utility that allows you to set up replacement text or paragraphs for any given number of user defined keystrokes." [translation: it allows you to store & reuse blocks of commentary which can then be inserted into an electronic document].

Using it in conjunction with Microsoft Word's Comment function, I am able to provide a great deal of needed feedback to students in far shorter time than it would otherwise take. The video below provides a demo. In it I use the "plus" sign as a prefix symbol along with the code phrase "bre" (for brevity).

Shortkeys can be purchased at http://www.shortkeys.com/. There is also a free "lite" version.

Software: Google Building Maker

2009-10-17T11:05:00.003-04:00

The clever boys and girls at Google have created another toy that can be used for learning. The Google Building Maker. I'll let them describe it in their own words:

"We like to think of Building Maker as a cross between Google Maps and a gigantic bin of building blocks. Basically, you pick a building and construct a model of it using aerial photos and simple 3D shapes – both of which we provide. When you're done, we take a look at your model. If it looks right, and if a better model doesn't already exist, we add it to the 3D Buildings layer in Google Earth. You can make a whole building in a few minutes."

Download it here.

Word on the Street: Developmental Educations Woes often Lead to an educational "Bermuda Triangle"

2009-10-15T11:21:00.004-04:00

One of the things which this blog seeks to do is provide a glimpse of what is being saying in the national press about community college learning in general and "at-risk" education in particular.

In "Higher Education's Bermuda Triangle" published in the Washington Monthly, the problems (and poltical fallout) facing developmental education in the community college are addressed.

Medieval Helpdesk

2009-10-15T11:03:00.004-04:00

One of the biggest obstacles to educational innovations is the anxiety many teachers (and students) feel when it comes to technology. This humorous video (Norwegian with English subtitles) helps put tech anxiety in a historical perspective.

Game-based Learning

2009-10-15T10:47:00.004-04:00

People who know me know that I am a big advocate for game-based learning. I think it is the best tool for moving out of the old, industrial-age model of education which dominates our schools (and which, vampire-like, refuses to die). I have a blog that I use purely as a repository for "serious games" as they are known in the business. It can be seen here.

http://aguidetoseriousgames.blogspot.com/

Video: Criminal Justice Studies at Harvard

2009-10-15T09:55:00.001-04:00

Harvard has begun creating a broadcast version of its Introduction to Justice course
http://www.justiceharvard.org/