Learning Lore

Microsoft Whacks the Wii: A First Look – TIME

So I stumbled into this article and after reading about the new project for the Xbox. I had a couple of opposing reactions.  The first (predictably as I’m a guy who likes tech toys) was wow…now I need to get one of these.  Followed by the reaction of holy sh** how much further to the full virtual immersive experience?

The gaming industry is leapfrogging ahead providing us with a growing realism in the virtual world.  Now we don’t need a controller, we become the controller.  Sure it makes for an immersive experience, but take it further.  Partner this type of intuitive controls with a virtual world.  I’m now no longer holding a button to fly in Second life, my physical actions allow my character to fly.  If people were getting addicted to games and virtual worlds before, we haven’t seen anything yet.

And now I’m struck with an aweful realization as I’m struggling to set up an online Athletic Training course in Moodle.  Sure, we are offering student athletes in BC access to some cutting edge technology and knowledge in regards to training (See Fact-canada.com), but how can I provide them with the kind of immersive experience that is possible with the ever progressing gaming technology?
I’m focussing on creating a community of athletes so that the students can learn from and with each other, but wow…could you imagine the kind of course that you could develop when the students’ bodies are the controllers?  In our case the potential for virtual training practically mocks the moodle environment to the trashbin.

Okay,…maybe not so drastic, but I can’t help but feel that public education is falling behind, perhaps it already fell behind and got run over by the corporate technological hoard.  They just haven’t told us yet.  I have seen a desire in BC for education to become more privatized, to see industry play a bigger role.  Once microsoft decides that education is a place to grab some more cash, how are we going to compete?  Of course, microsoft could provide some rich interactive experiences for students (which would be a big plus in our DL environment), but the idea of corporate education scares the bejeezus out of me.

So, my sci-fi loving side of me can envision some great places this technology can take us (and some pretty iffy moral conundrums as well), while my public educator sides quivers with concern.  Will they at least let us know when the ministry of education becomes a subsidary of Microsoft?

Education 21 century skills, digital natives, elearning, FACT, microsoft, moodle, privatization, second life, virtual world

So I’m at the VSS preconference and thought I’d try may hand at live blogging as a way tokeep my notes and keep everyone who couldn’t make it with me aware of what I’m listening to

So this is the first session of the preconference, and something I think we need to do a much better job of:-)

Andrew Henry uses a flash calendar to help track kids and contact parents.  He’s a Surrey COnnect teacher.

After a feelling of being unsuccessful he contacted students and parents.  Students felt unsure abotu what to do and where to go. PArents “I don’t know much about computers”

WHat the Literature said:  when parents are involved success rate sincreased by twice as much.

• Parents need specific information on how to help and what to do
• parents may not effectively help a student unless they know how to help them.

Who should intiate the communiction? And what form shoudl it take?

• Teacher should establish contact.
• Many parents prefer informal contact.
• Andrew found that parents would prefer not to come into a formal parent teacher interview.

Students have access to a customized calendar, and submitted one.  those that didn’t submit one were given one by the teacher. ( Forced a 2 month calendar on the student)

The only intervention, or change in the test group were given an email.

If parent responded to the email asking for help:

• study skills
• goal setting
• Come into the building for help.
• If students need daily help you can recommend a tutor

students had 11% more complettion rate and 30% higher success rate.  Multiteacher emails more successful than lone teacher email.

Conclusion:

• Parent involvement can be increased through direct teacher contact.  Contact should be teacher-intitated, non-formal and regular.  It should also provide parents to timely access to accurate information.
• direct parent contact increases student completion and success rates

Recommendations:

• shuodl be parent centered as much as student centered
• schools should institue some sore of program where teachers can intiate parent contact.
• Especially good with multicourse approaches.(Looking at full DL students).
• Remember the learnnowbc study guide.

Some of my thoughts…

• should this be more personal

• how would this work with singleton courses?  Chased out teh grade 9’s
• how would we effectively implement this?

Education elearning, parent contact, practical, vss conference

Well, I admit that I was a little bit of an elearninng snob.  I thought that the last thing that my courses needed was the dreaded powerpoint slides. I’ve been checking out different tools that can speed up my course content creation, and came across this great example of how you don’t necessarily need to always go high tech to deliver some useful content.

Tom Kuhlmann writes the Rapid eLearning Blog, and gave a great demonstration of using PowerPoint to create a replica of the well known Frogguts virtual dissection.

I’ve already used some of his ideas as I work on my online math course, as a way to provide some examples and provide some interactivity.  It took some time to play with the Powerpoint and remember how to use targets etc.., but it’s definitely a tool that I need to place back in my arsenal of elearning tools

Now…all I need is a whole swack of time to create these bits of content within an overall engaging interactive course:-)

Education content creation, dissection, elearning, powerpoint