I have thoroughly enjoyed teaching Integrating Technology into the Secondary Curriculum here at my uni. Not having taught this course before presented a number of challenges associated with the types of assignments that might be most beneficial for students as well as determining what types of skills might serve students best.

I initially started out by focusing on teaching and learning basics, lesson plan design, and instructional strategies (i.e., pedagogical content knowledge), with the idea of inserting technological pedagogical content knowledge through different learning experiences and class activities. I found after the first few weeks that I was spending too much time teaching students how to create lesson plans and not enough time showing how technology might be integrated into the lessons they were creating, as well as giving students opportunities to practice what they have learned. Assignments were constructed in such a way as to have students actually using technology experientially (e.g., weblogs, wikis, PowerPoints, Moodle, Googledocs, Google forms, polls, spreadsheets, YouTube, Slideshare, Flickr, discussion forums, podcasts, Wordle) on a daily basis; however, students seemed unaware of how what we were doing transferred to the lessons they were creating. After much reflection and one bungled lesson plan assignment, it occurred to me that I was trying to do too much. The mid-term evaluation I asked students to complete showed me that I was doing well on many fronts, but that I was moving too quickly. Students wanted the opportunity to slow down so they too could have some time to think more deeply about what we were doing and how they might apply what they've learned. Armed with this new knowledge I made a few adjustments to the syllabus so that we could concentrate on why and how technology could be used effectively in a teaching and learning environment. As such, students have warmed up considerably to our new pace and are showing me and each other a number of new ideas and strategies that indicate that the content we are covering is beginning to become their own.

I also took some time to talk with my colleague who teaches a similar class for elementary education students to see how he managed both the course in a way that seemed to benefit students best. I quickly picked up a few strategies that I will incorporate next semester, including adopting Jonassen's Learning With Technology text and having students "teach" the text to each other. This term I chose Bransford's How People Learn as the course text which seems to be serving the students well in terms of providing them the requisite pedagogical knowledge necessary to talk about how to teach students. I believe combining this text with Jonassen's next semester will give students a solid foundation and understanding of both pedagogical content knowledge and technological pedagogical content knowledge that is clearly the goal for this course. I have also been supplementing students' reading with selections from TED, Henry Jenkins, Clay Shirky, danah boyd, Will Richardson, and others which allows us to keep abreast of the social complexities associated with teaching, learning, and technology in our brave and ever-changing world.

Overall, I feel I've come to a greater understanding and appreciation for going deep as opposed to going long. In other words, it feels like both the students and I are getting more out of the class when we take our time and truly explore course concepts deeply as opposed to covering more, if that makes sense. I am finding that I sometimes forget what it's like to be a beginner and end up approaching the class too much like an expert which in turn does not help students new to teaching and learning with technology. I am also glad I am able to take some time to reflect on my thinking. I want students to feel confident about when, where, how, and why to use technology in their classrooms and I want to be able to model it for them so they can use their experience with me as a powerful example as opposed to a powerful non-example. We still have a several weeks to go in the semester and I am happy to be able to take what I've learned and make the necessary adjustments to make this experience better for them and me.

Image: Ode to Joy

Yes, I am still here!

I apologize for not writing more. I have been beyond busy during the past 15 weeks writing up research findings for my study. My goal is to hand in the first draft of my dissertation to my advisor next week. The study identifies specific advantages and limitations within which teachers' learning might be supported online, so needless to say, I am anxious to share the results with an edublogging audience.

Once I've received the green light from my advising team, I will begin to post chapters in pdf form here in Eduspaces. I am also considering creating a wiki to house the final product to make the content more accessible to the public and open to social judgment and adjudication. There are scholars all over working on projects that could benefit more than their peers if they opened up their work to a larger audience using the freely available social media tools. I understand how funding for research and scholarship works and that you cannot always have your cake and eat it too. So in the spirit of seeking balance, I will do what I can to always make my scholarly efforts public.

 I have also been quite busy developing content for a course I am teaching this fall titled Integrating Technology into the Secondary Curriculum. I have two sections of 16 and 22 undergraduate education minors finishing up their careers in college. Some are truly gung-ho and interested in teaching and learning. Others less so, but are willing to play along in the name of learning something new about themselves. I was hoping to share more of what is going on in these classes in this space, but with course preparation and the dissertation, my attention is needed in the latter.

In the meantime, I have not completely fallen off the map. The wonderful bits of minutiae that I find in my travels I have been posting to my Tumblr blogs.  So in the spirit of Friday, I give you a literal translation of A-ha's famous pop fodder Take On Me. Cheers!

"The artist is the one who never gets it right." --Mose Allison

So you may have noticed things have been a bit quiet on this Eduspaces site as of late. I just came back from a much needed vacation and am feeling renewed, refreshed, and revived (the ocean air can do that for you).

I am starting out a new school year teaching two sections of an undergraduate education course titled Integrating Technology into the Secondary Curriculum. The course is a requirement for those students minoring in education and who are thinking about teaching students at the secondary level (US grades 6-12; ages 11-18). As I work through putting together a meaningful experience for all involved, I will be sharing ideas, observations and reflections about the course, the students, and other items as they arise.

One item I am keen on sharing is a new weblog I've been working on. I have always wanted to write a book about metaphors associated with learning and teaching. The catch is, I didn't want to write it in the conventional sense. I wanted "the book" to be a jumping off point, a picture book, designed to spark conversation, reflection, and debate. I wanted the book to be fluid, dynamic, editable on the fly, allowing me to add images as I find them. Perhaps a wiki might be a better option in terms of organizing content in a more user friendly way. On the other hand, I like the notion of simply browsing and viewing images at random. Please let me know what you think.

Finally, I am happy to announce that I have outlined my dissertation and have begun the blissful task of writing up the first complete draft. I should have this completed in about six week. I am standing here beside myself with happiness and cannot wait to share the results with you. Stay tuned!

 Image: play station

While conversation may indeed be king, meaningful conversation requires that we check to see whether the king is wearing any clothes.

In my research on using social or participatory media applications to support substantive educator knowledge development, it is clear conversation or professional talk is a powerful element or factor that can lead to deeper knowledge and understanding of one's practice (Hargreaves, A., 1994).

In my initial examination of participant posts and comments within an online professional learning community designed to support knowledge building among geographically separated participants, I have noticed that conversations fall into two general categories with some occasional subtle overlappings. In general conversations in the online learning community fall into two types: thin and thick.

Thin conversations are those that provide little in terms of reflection, feedback,  expansion and or examination of the initial ideas presented. Thin conversations suggest the emperor is threadbare and thus offers no redeeming substance or value (i.e., the conversation is powerless).

Thick conversations offer not only the thoughts and ideas of the participant but they build and expand upon thoughts shared from the initial post. Thick conversations also provide a sense of deeper reflection and emotional cues that offer insight into the participant's sense of self. Thick conversations are not necessarily verbose; they can be short, triggering statements that lend themselves to deeper reflection and deeper contemplation. Thick conversations are the robes and raiment that make conversation king.

In my initial analysis, where these two categories overlap is where conversation may be thin, but attached resources and artifacts associated with the thin conversation are thick and rich. There are multiple examples within my study that show participants offering little in terms of content-rich, back-and-forth dialogue and conversation, yet attach multiple rich resources or artifacts to their post that serve all participants in the community exceedingly well. The conversation is thin, but the knowledge and value associated with the post appears to outweigh the apparent veneer.

Perhaps, this requires a clearer definition of what conversation in a social media supported environment affords participants. Clearly, meaningful dialogue and written exchange can be valuable to knowledge development. Yet conversation can also trigger references to artifacts outside the immediate conversation that can also provide additional meaning and value. Given that the platform being used to serve and support conversation in this instance also allows the exchange of physical artifacts, conversations can be thin in initial substance and thick with associated attached resources.

Hmmmm....

Your thoughts and feedback are clearly warranted!

Reference:
Hargreaves, A. (1994). Changing teachers, changing times: Teachers' work and culture in the post-modern age. New York: Teachers College Press.

Computer and video games are a cultural and economic force drawing increasing attention from educators, anthropologists, economists, media scholars, journalists, and art critics (King, 2002; Perron & Wolfe, 2003; Poole, 2000).

Computer games have grown in sophistication and brought innovative models of interactive storytelling that is entertaining and inspiring millions of people.

Games have grown not only into an important economic force (grossing roughly US$11 billion), but a cultural force -- a medium of choice for many members of the millennial generation that educators should understand.

While some educational critics have derided games as pointless, it is still important for educators to understand why games have such appeal and understand what design principles underlie them.

Dodlinger's (2007) academic literature review focuses on 35 publications addressing educational video game design spanning the last ten years in order to "identify elements of game design that promote learning as well as the learning theories that conceptualize how video games foster learning" (p. 21).

Dodlinger notes that "While there is widespread consensus that games motivate players to spend time on task mastering the skills a game imparts, some disagreement over the specific characteristics that provoke that motivation exists" (p. 28).

Elements of game design that promote learning

Moreover, Dodlinger's (2007) review identified six distinct design elements that could be deemed necessary to stimulate desired learning outcomes. These elements include:

• Narrative context -- for situating and contextualizing learning -- the storyline
• Goals and rules -- objectives and guidelines - short term, medium term, long term
• Rewards -- (associated w/motivation) -- signals achievement
• Interactivity and multisensory cues -- direct attention, introduce new sensory perspectives, provides feedback cues for error correction

Learning outcomes from educational video games

In terms of learning outcomes from educational video games, Dodlinger (2007) points to research that suggests that well-designed games support the development of 21st century learning skills (e.g., play, performance, navigation, resourcefulness, negotiation, synthesis, collaboration, team work, judgement, discernment) but also other higher order thinking skills such as deduction and hypothesis testing, complex concepts and abstract thinking, and visual and spatial processing.

While exploring the potential for games in educational contexts, there seem to be a handful of challenges to widespread adoption and game integration:

• Understanding the value of games
• Finding appropriately designed games
• Getting games into educators' hands
• Integrating games into curricula, i.e.,  getting them into kids' hands
• The ethical roles and responsibilities associated with gaming
• The lack of clear evaluation standards associated with work produced utilizing games
• How do we guarantee that the rich opportunities afforded by the expanding educational gaming landscape are available to all?

[I'm sure there are more, these are just a few that sprung to mind.]

Class activity:
Let's take a look at a couple of online educational games and see to what extent they incorporate the six design elements listed above.

Examples:
Tut pup --  basic math and spelling games -- http://tutpup.com

Getty Games -- basic puzzle games based on museum pieces in the Gettty collection --  http://www.getty.edu/gettygames/

Villany, Inc. -- Thwarting World Supremacy through Mathematics storytelling, problem-solving and mathematics -- http://villainyinc.thinkport.org/mission1/default.asp?autoload=1

Free Rice -- social action and educational game -- http://www.freerice.com/

ADDENDUM:
More Educational Games:
Games Multimedia Materials -- a wiki housing several good examples of educational games.

Game Research Site:
Game Research - The art, business, and science,  of video games.

Major Reference:
Dondlinger, M. J. (2007). Educational video game design: A review of the literature. Journal of Applied Educational Technology, 4(1): 21-31. Retrieved 23 July 2008 from http://www.eduquery.com/jaet/JAET4-1_Dondlinger.pdf.

My del.icio.us "games" links
 

[Note: This post is a brief introduction to video and computer-based games in education. It is the basis for a lesson plan associated with EME2040 Introduction to Educational Technology Summer C 2008.]

Image from 1up.com.

What happens when punk rockers get old?

Well, they change, right? And they start country bands, take side gigs as movie and t.v. actors, and become law-abiding, taxpaying citizens. Oh, and they do spotlight interviews for the Sundance Channel.

Uh-huh.

Well, if you don't already know of him, meet John Doe.

John fronted a band in the early 80s called "X." Their sound was rich, snarling, ready for a fight. The first time I heard X was on MTV when I was 15. I had learned to play the guitar well enough to put together a handful of bar chords. And while I tried to emulate Jimmy Page and Angus Young, X stepped on stage and rearranged what rock music was in my mind. They weren't punk in the sense that they threatened "Anarchy in the USA," but their music, lyrics, and stance were clearly a reaction to the music heard on Top 40 radio. While punk music packed a lot angst, it was music aimed straight at the kids. It said, "Hey you! You don't have to listen to that shit on the radio. Rock the f_ck out! We did it. So can you." Bands like X, the Minutemen, the Dead Kennedys, the Clash, started as art school boys and girls getting together and finding a means to express themselves through a web of music and recordings, creating a platform to spread their message world wide.

This sense of youthful idealism, this sense of me and my mates against the world, against the system, against the improper use of power and authority, could be channeled through amplifiers, through the gift of music. What fun! I subsequently started and/or joined a number of musical outfits all in the name of Do-It-Myself. Similarly, it was this same ethos, this same sensibility, that led me to teaching, of changing the world one or two kids at a time.

I also bring this story up as it relates to changing the face of education through participatory media. The changes many of us want to see, have to come from the kids. They start small as garage bands playing locally. Like musical hits, some changes take immediate traction and spread far and wide quickly, ushering in wider audiences and broader acceptance. Thus, the key to educational change, I believe, is one band of kids at a time. They don't need me or you or any educational technologist to tell them what to do. They will simply do it.

The same goes for you, you old puke.

Easegill pointed to this video this on Twitter which offers an intriguing twist on the notions of piracy and innovation.

Essentially, the argument is: without a certain amount of piracy, i.e., law breaking, our culture would stagnate--creativity, new ideas, new social and economic opportunities would be less likely to occur. [How edupunk is that?]

Let's face it, the movie industry would not exist without piracy, nor would the United States of America. Following the rules is something we learn early in our developmental years. We need these rules to make sense out of the world. Yet, once we begin to gain consciousness of ourselves and the different rules that shape society and culture, "interesting" things are sure to follow.

One of my favorite stages of human development are the "Why?" years. Parents and teachers learn to address this boundless curiosity with a number of strategies, some of which teach kids to stop questioning and merely accept things as the way they are, regardless of why they are the way they are.

My favorite part of college during my early years was when I had a professor who would re-introduce "Why?" Why do we believe what we believe? Why does language have such an impact on how we see the world? Why are you studying poetry? [That last comment was from my parents.]

When I think of piracy, the metaphor churns up more than movie-friendly swashbucklers. The first thing that comes to mind is the notion of stealing valuable goods and taking control of other people's property. I think the word I'm looking for is "stealing." Piracy in this sense smacks of a rather sordid affair. So it seems it's one thing to break a rule and it's another to steal something which is not rightfully yours. (See this related article regarding a study commissioned by Microsoft "that aims to quantify the economic impact of piracy on related small businesses in the software ecosystem and identifies sales of software licenses to pirates as a key economic opportunity for small vendors.")

Stealing ideas, now here's where things get exceptionally dicey.

The mash-up has been in existence since the beginning of recorded time. People have been combining ideas, lyrics, melodies, and images for centuries, creating truly some of the most important inventions, music, and ideas we as a civilization have ever known. So, given the useful tools for appropriating information, sounds, images, and ideas, when is stealing illegal anymore? Copyright laws were designed to protect both creators and users of information, but who is out there enforcing these laws when the scale of appropriation is simply beyond the scope of control? And what about what we're teaching kids and educators in schools about appropriating content? Are we teaching about "fair use," or other copyright uses and responsibilities? My guess is those ethical and legal considerations are being swept under the rug.

So, is the issue that of stealing or are we operating from a set of rules that can no longer be enforced? I find the question almost as delicious as the possible solutions! 

Image: Howard Pyle -- Walking the Plank. 

I have been listening in to several conversations of late that have been pondering our collective fate in light of new social media affordances. It's not just politics or education or celebrity news that's driving this train. It seems the potential to organize, act, and solve problems has never been greater given new social media applications. And given the relative trajectory of social media adoption across the globe, things appear to be potentially getting brighter.

Since we have the ability to organize in a ridiculously easy fashion (Paquet, 2002), the next step involves developing new forms of group leadership. Managing people, activity, and information is no small feat; thus, while new social tools are re-vising the way we do our work, new organizational models are required that, for the most part, have yet to be invented. I look forward to reading the research that examines how to best manage and leverage new media applications for social action in profit and non-profit arenas. However, with the pace of new application development and deployment being what it is, it seems difficult in many cases to stay on top of rigorously assessing these new media applications, hence functional research is often years off.

A different solution might be turning social media research over to the users themselves. This is precisely how the notion of action research evolved. Imagine having school children studying the effects/affects, and impacts of social media in mathematics, biology, economics, in literature, as well as the communities within which they participate. Imagine K-12 school children using social media to study social media and the world they live in. Of course, teaching children how to set up, validate, and evaluate experiments with rigor and aplomb requires teachers to be capable of doing such, as well. So the reality there points back to the caliber and quality of educational professionals and what we are doing as a country to ensure that we are providing our youth the best education possible (and not simply what they can afford). As such, it is my belief that school curricula need to be re-written to allow learners and educators to become researchers of, as well as producers of knowledge and information, and not just consumers thereof.

So, if this is something you believe in, you might ask yourself: What am I going to do to alter this reality?

What are your expectations? How are you going to make these changes happen? Who do you need to better educate? What's is your timeline? What resources will you need?

Somewhere in the distance, I can hear John Henry's hammer ring.... Just don't swing yourself too hard and I look forward to reading your results.

I admit it. I like reading poetry. (Occassionally, you will find ink running from the corners of my mouth -- that's when I've been damn busy eating poetry). In Symbolist sense, I could not resist drawing connections to the U.S.'s current Middle East situation and the one depicted in Yeats' The Second Coming. While I normally shy away from voicing my political views in public (aren't they obvious?), I couldn't resist drawing connections.              

    THE SECOND COMING

    Turning and turning in the widening gyre
    The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
    Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
    Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
    The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
    The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
    The best lack all conviction, while the worst
    Are full of passionate intensity.

    Surely some revelation is at hand;
    Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
    The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
    When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
    Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
    A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
    A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
    Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
    Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.
    The darkness drops again but now I know
    That twenty centuries of stony sleep
    Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
    And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
    Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

 William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)

Past || Present parallels

Without stretching allusions too far, Yeats draws a picture of the best of times, and the worst of times, all centering on the moment at hand.

So what is our job? What are we the reader to do? Are we inspired to go along with a fighting spirit? How should we choose to face the anarchy and passions that surround us?

What if our passions are misguided?

Perhaps there is a plan in Yeats' work. A plan that sits beneath the surface awaiting its turn. Perhaps the plan is located somewhere in the Spiritus Mundi, our universal consciousness, somewhere before the mind's eye, passing from generation to generation. Similarly, the U.S. may have a plan to resolve tensions in the Middle East, but they are not apparent, "the falcon cannot hear the falconer."

My favorite lines that I believe best captures the current executive branch's throes:

The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

What happens when our passions are misguided -- when things fall apart?

Surely some revelation is at hand. Could that revelation/revolution be tied to the many pieces loosely joining across the Web? Religious connotations aside, the "Second Coming," the next historical cycle that is upon us, is built upon more than a set of tools. Perhaps this shift is more representative of a "coming together," of people joining together, sharing, and conversing across time and space.

While I have only given Yeats' work a brief, post-positivist rub, his poem leaves much to consider. As always, your thoughts are welcome.

Reference:
The poem was written in 1919 in the aftermath of the first World War.
It can be found in: Yeats, William Butler. Michael Robartes and the Dancer. Chruchtown, Dundrum, Ireland: The Chuala Press, 1920. (as found in the photo-lithography edition printed Shannon, Ireland: Irish University Press, 1970.)
Retrieved 16 June 2008 from http://www.potw.org/archive/potw351.html.