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Sceptics start to see the other side of Second Life

July 17, 2010 By drbexl Leave a Comment

Study finds virtual learning environments taking off despite dogged hostility. Hannah Fearn reports

Hostility between academics who advocate teaching through virtual worlds and those who scorn the idea is being blamed for holding back the evolution of higher education.

The warning comes despite evidence that universities are slowly embracing virtual environments such as Second Life for teaching, according to a report from the Virtual World Watch consultancy.

The report, Zen and the Art of Avatar Maintenance, says that like the two characters in Robert M. Pirsig’s 1974 book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, academics hold polarised views of learning online.

“Some people take to it with great enthusiasm; others recoil in dismay, horror or anger,” writes the study’s author, John Kirriemuir.

Enthusiasts do more than welcome the chance to work in a virtual world, they embrace their avatar, or online alter ego, and dress it up in new costumes and designs.

Read full story

Filed Under Social Media Tagged With Learning, Second Life, Virtual World

Social Software for Learning, #pelc10

April 8, 2010 By drbexl 1 Comment

Social Software for learning – definition…

  • Do we need it or is it fancy hype?
  • How do we use it?
  • What are the apps of the future?

The Theory

Most of us use it every day without even realising it…e.g. Facebook

Social software treat triads of people differently than pairs… needs more collaboration features…

Social software treats groups as first class objects in the system – more important than individuals

Richter and Koch, 2007

So, what now…

  • 3 types
  • ID & Network management – rep of users & their ties within the internet
  • Communication – enable management of comms between users
  • Info management?  find, rate & manage online contents.
  • [Practika – add delicious to Twitter, etc.]
  • Is it new? what has changed? Much communication was 1-2-1 (telephone/letters), whereas radio/newspapers (1-many), now many-many
  • Is social important?
  • Attention – common & selective
  • Emotion – better memory with attachment (e.g. remember Twin Towers, not everyday activities – also a shared/common experience)
  • Possible online – to get emotionally attached when not even here – online emotionally
  • Motivation – cannot be created, but be supported…
  • Community – medically important & part of human nature.
  • Community – the most powerful factor affecting learning.
  • Structures of motivation and rewarding within the human brain are activated during cooperative behaviour.
  • Scientifically proven t0 improve brain strength
  • #Social Software supports searching and finding information from learners – can ask the network…
  • Enables learners to contribute personal expereinces & opinions to formal learning content
  • Emails not adequate medium for comms & knowledge exchange
  • Knowledge can’t always be formalised in docs. (e.g. phones, rarely learn through manual, but through learning from others who already know how to do it…)
  • Communication not document management – best info silo can’t solve most of the described info problems… ‘real’ experts not able to formalise their exetensive knowledge…
  • Learner Preferences – creator, analyst, perceptor, organiser, constructor, ?
  • Augmented Reality – “layer” (using geolocation – e.g. picks up tag clouds from surrounded Twitter account, etc.)

Augmented Reality – VFX Breakdown from soryn on Vimeo.

Video linked to by @jamesclay in session.

  • WikiTube
  • Facedetection
  • Autotagging of photos
  • Voice detection (good for disabilites)
  • Time in virtual form
  • WILD wireless interaction learning device – mobile device to students, students indicate too fast/slow/don’t understand, polls, etc.
  • CoCoMa
  • Social Network Visualisation – Facebook plugin
  • www.gapminder.org rescale data visually
  • Serious games 0 e.g darfurisdying.com
  • Friend Mapper – just locates those people who you are connected with…
Filed Under Event, Learning Tagged With #pelc10, Learning, Social Media, Social Software

Podcasts: enhancing or replacing normal lectures?

February 25, 2010 By drbexl 1 Comment

Online lectures are no substitute for face-to-face contact, argues UCU. Melanie Newman reports

Pre-recorded lectures: a means of providing “flexible learning” to students juggling other commitments or a way to phase out face-to-face contact time on the quiet?

Bournemouth University is encouraging staff to record lectures and upload the videos to the university website as part of a pilot project.

Managers say the system helps the university to avoid lectures being cancelled if academics are sick, attending conferences or away doing research, and that they are helpful to disabled, international and mature students with other commitments.

But the University and College Union has raised concerns that the online offerings will replace some face-to-face sessions.

Filed Under Academic Research, Learning Tagged With Learning, Podcasts, Times Higher Education

JISC Innovating E-Learning 2009

November 24, 2009 By drbexl 1 Comment

At the JISC “Innovating E-Learning” Conference (great to have a chance to attend a conference in your PJs, when it’s not even “Children in Need”!). Today I only managed the keynote with Charlie Leadbeater, author of We Think, (interesting, but the back-chat was even more interesting), but am now catching up on some of the information that’s online. If you’re interested in checking it out on Twitter, try #jiscel09. The conference (which is on for the next 2 days as well) was only £50, meaning that discussion and recordings of events will be available online afterwards (and there’s a blog by @jamesclay), which is great as there are few people who can make 3 whole days of a conference, but this is time/financially efficient – recommendation is that you spend 2 hours a day on the conference to make the most of it, and I made some interesting contacts in the first session, including Helen Whitehead from ‘Reach Further‘. Meantime, couple of quite amusing (but thought provoking) bits of time-travelling:

(from EdTechie)

Sure they’ll be some more blogs feeding back, but meantime I have lots of information to digest on the JISC site (and 15 essays to mark by lunchtime tomorrow, and I work better at night!), whilst I listen to KUBE information, and consider whether institutions have a future.

Let’s let @jamesclay have a bit of a last word:

Filed Under Event, Learning Tagged With #jiscel09, Conference, E-Learning, Learning
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