Moderation in all things

Interesting piece in The Scotsman by Nicola Morgan - related to a couple of books she has written - How to wean them off their computers (Thanks to Kevin Thompson for finding this!). It argues for a balanced lifestyle for children, where computer and video games are an accepted part but which don’t dominate their lives and spare time.
Quote:

None of these activities is valueless. All, unlike television, are interactive, not passive; many require focus, concentration, skill. Games involve strategy, dexterity, mental speed, hand-eye co-ordination, intuition, perseverance; some involve role-playing and creativity.

And another:

However, there are important negatives. All stem from one factor which makes these activities, particularly computer games, different from other things that occupy our children’s time: time itself. It’s so easy to spend an inordinate number of hours playing computer games or being online. If they spent only half an hour a day, or treated it like any other hobby and did it for a couple of hours once or twice a week, we wouldn’t worry. But it’s the hours and hours that worry us.

There are several good points, even if it does read like a sales pitch at times. Something that has not gone unnoticed by some of the commentators at the end of the piece.

Ultraversity

I mentioned a while ago that I was going to see Kevin Thompson of Ultraversity (a project of Anglia Ruskin University) speaking about online collaboration. You can get his presentation here.

It was a very interesting day and a good talk - though a few too many (needless) mentions of digital natives. The Ultraversity project in particular is an amazing idea - a degree without a set curriculum. Not only that, there are no exams at all, and the teaching is entirely online.

No formal qualifications are required to start the course, there are no exams- assessment is through portfolio

So how does it work?

Links for the day - 20th Feb 2007

Two reports that I missed on publication, but better late than never.

NMC has released its Horizon report for 2007 - a look at the educational technologies coming into play over the next two to three years. 32 pages. Includes a Second Life bit. Also blogs, wikis, etc…

The EU released back in December a report on “Cooperation in Education through Virtual Mobility. A Best-Practice Manual. A whopping 124 pages, including a number of best practice case-studies of using internet technologies for virtual mobility in education. (For the un-initiated, the EU has many projects aimed at increasing academic mobility across Europe. If you want EU money to stay where you are as an academic there aren’t quite so many opportunities!)

A kind of handy WordPress tip…

Courtesy of Alan Levine. A nice tip to generate shorter URLs for your WordPress blog posts. Now to find out about the other WordPress dialogs and options that I never look at…

Identity and Self-Promotion in Second Life

I finally made my first post on the Digital-Ethos blog. It’s on a topic of interest to me - if no one else. Unlike real life, in Second Life you have (almost) complete control over your appearance - and I’m sometimes intrigued how people choose to dress their virtual selves. I made a few very concious decisions dressing my avatar. But whether or not my virtual self is perceived the same way I try to project myself virtually I cannot tell.

Basically, it’s all about me.

Excellent series of events… if you are in Glasgow

There is a fantastic programme of events taking place at The Lighthouse in Glasgow (its a design museum… not an actual lighthouse!). The program is here at UrbanLearningSpace, not at The Lighthouse’s web-site. Indeed, I spent a frustrating half-hour looking for the programme yesterday…

Things starts with Kevin Thompson of Ultralab on Online Collaboration on Thursday 15th Feb and over the next few months includes a great range of talks with one from Chris Yapp of Microsoft. All sessions are supposed to include some amount of ‘hands on’ acitivity - not the usual passive seminars.

These would be great if they were evening events - many people who would love to attend will be unable to due to the day-time scheduling.

Futurelab news… guidelines for using GBL, and more

Received the latest mailing from Futurelab. Amongst the news, they will soon be revamping their web-site so that news can be delivered via RSS. Plus a number of interesting articles including:

•  Some brief but sensible and balanced guidelines for teachers wishing to adopt GBL in the classroom, here.
• Interview with MIT’s Edith Ackerman, here. Ackerman outlines her belief in constructivist learning and the importance of the One Laptop Per Child initiative.
• Presentations from BETT (the main UK educational technology expo), here. Includes links to powerpoints, and podcast of “Games For Learning” presentation.

Yet another report on game-based learning

Thomas Hainey, a PhD student here at Paisley brought this JISC report on learning in immersive worlds to my attention. There are a good number of case-studies reviewed, and its quite a long report - with quite a few interesting findings and points made. My feeling is that when the limitations of GBL are raised, they are not considered in depth. When one of the points is that

The potential of game-based learning in practice can only be supported by a more coordinated approach to staff development and opportunities for buying out staff time to allow tutors time to explore and experiment with existing tools and game spaces. (p. 7)

Then we need to consider the costs of implementing and introducing game-based learning.

Adapting Lessons for Multi-Tasking

Hilary Mason had some interesting ideas for getting student’s who attempt to multi-task during class time to do so productively - she posted this on the Second Life Education mailing list, but kindly gave me permission to reprint here.