Well, time to come out a bit more about Sloodle I think…
Inspired in part because I find myself encountering it by chance quite often. For example, when Alan Levine discovered that he had a featured slide show on SlideShare, his screen shot revealed that another featured presentation of the day was this one by Alja Sulčič - Moodle in a Virtual 3D World.
I’ve not discussed it much on this blog, but a project I’m involved in a lot these days is Sloodle. As part of this, I’ve been in San Jose for the past 10 days. If you are interested in games-based learning and/or Second Life in general, this might not be the most thrilling post. If you have an interest in Sloodle, read on…
Two more Second Life workshops coming up.
First, an in-world workshop on best practices will be taking place on the 25th of May. I’m disappointed that I won’t be able to attend - I’ll arrive home in the UK the day before, and simply won’t be able to dedicate any time at all.
Much later, in October will be the 8th Association of Internet Researchers conference (AOIR8.0). Jeremy Hunsinger and Aleks Krotoski are organising a pre-conference workshop on ‘Learning and Research in Second Life’. The two announced keynote speakers for the conference are Henry Jenkins and Linden Lab’s Cory Ondrejka. So if you can get to Vancouver in October, this looks like being a very worthwhile conference to get yourself to.
Via the Second Life Ed mailing list…
Another ed tech blog. Includes a short article on Sun’s Second Life/Open Croquet/Qwaq like MPK project - which I’ve been meaning to write more about. They’ve saved me from having to.
BBC has an interview with Mitchel Resnick on Scratch. I think the video is a little misleading - I don’t think it gets across the ways in which children can insert their own drawings, images and videos to form truly unique creations. If all I knew about Scratch was what was in the video, I’d probably think it a much more limited tool than it really is. But worth a scan anyway.
I’m in San Jose till the 22nd of May, and will be giving a talk at SJSU which is to be webcast live in Second Life on the 16th. More details below.
Yesterday I attended the Eduserv symposium on Virtual Worlds. Had a great time chatting to people - and discussing what we are doing (or think we are doing) in Second Life.
By far the most provocative of the talks was from Stephen Downes (who publishes the OLDaily blog) who, it quickly transpired, is not a fan of Second Life. (Excellent picture here).
Anthony Fontana writes about Polychronic and Monochronic approaches to learning in his blog, The Polychronic Classroom.
A post here outlines why this categorisation of students differs from the ‘Digital Native-Digital Immigrant’ methaphor. As a way of categorising students or workers, I agree with the commentator on the blog that the terms suffer from not being immediately transparent - its not totally obvious what the terms mean without a definition on hand. Positively, the terms do not carry so many connotations (students are not all lumped into the one category with teachers into the other) and the scale is a continuous rather than binary one - recognising that individuals are individuals.
Another positive aspect of the monochron/polychron view is that the differences are about ways of interacting with others and working practices rather than about differences in a ‘native’ understanding of technology.
News@Nature has a current article on the brain-training phenomenon:
BRAIN CRAZE
Neuroscientist Ryuta Kawashima promotes the idea that computer games can boost the ageing brain - but others in the field remain sceptical. Ichiko Fuyuno investigates.
2 May 2007
http://ealerts.nature.com/cgi-bin24/DM/y/edx40SpXNZ0Hji0BSbU0En
Subscription only, sadly.
The BBFC (British Board of Film Classification) has a large report out from a recent study of gamers of all ages, and parents of younger gamers. Obtainable here.
As per usual, its really too long for me to read through it all at the moment (this is the first post I’ve managed in a fortnight!), but I did see a couple of amusing quotes. In fact there are a ton of them, but the following is from the very small section on ‘Skills and Education’ (pages 49-51):
Younger players quite often argue, not always very convincingly, that they learn useful things from games.
“You do get a lot of knowledge from it, because, like on Moonscape, it tells you how to do things, how to fish, in real life, how to make certain things. It tells you how to make steel, and cakes and how to mine. You wouldn’t want to go mining for clay or anything, but it tells you how to make stuff.”
PD11 M 14-15 C2DE intermediate Leeds
(I think that the game the boy is referring to is Runescape - where steel is made by getting a lump of iron and two lumps of coal and putting them in a furnace together by mouse click. And level 30 smithing skill, of course.) The report goes on to say this about games and skills:
However, references to skill development, and to educational value, often seem a little desperate; in the interview situation some players want to make the case but often seem not to really believe it themselves. They play games for diversion and enjoyment and not at all with the idea of learning things or getting better at anything other than the game itself. It is worth noting however that non-gamers, notably parents, are often deterred from playing because they lack the necessary skills. …discovering that your level of skill is hopelessly inferior to that of your offspring certainly discourages many parents.
It’s not a scaremongering report, certainly the UK games press hasn’t become defensive about its contents, but does include sections on the concerns of gamers and parents. Well worth a scan at any rate.
