Wk 4 Udutu Project

Energy Resolvers Course

This project was created to give students and introduction into energy conservation and reducing their carbon footprint. While I was creating the Udutu unit, I was frustrated at first and gave up several times. Then all of a sudden, after sleeping on it and starting in again with fresh eyes, it all became clear. Udutu was actually pretty easy to use and I wanted to create more and more content but had to force myself to stop because of time constraints. I look forward to creating more content with Udutu in the future, possibly for my classes in the fall.

Wk3 Wimba

Clark Aldrich - Simulations and the Future of E-Learning

I recently started a job in which I will be teaching sixth graders to develop their own educational computer games. We just finished a three week summer institute - an introduction to the course (which was difficult to teach since I haven't taken the training on the curriculum I will be teaching) so my main focus was teaching the kids why games are important and why it is important for them to learn. They seemed to grasp this concept a lot easier than adults do. Duh, games are fun. Why then, do educators have such a hard time grasping this concept? Fortunately, many educators now seem to realize how important games are in education. I did some research and found an article exploring reasons why animals love to play. It seemed so obvious. They play so they can learn skills that will be important in their adult lives, they play to exercise their muscles and to test their limits. Smarter animals spend more time playing (Braaf, 2003) - since humans are the smartest animal, their need to play far exceeds that of other animals.

I really made the connection from this article to Clark Aldrich's presentation because when he was talking about simulation games, it was mentioned that in a simulation you are free to make errors that you may not want to try in the real world. This seems to be the key to using simulations in education: preparing learners for dangerous situations in a safe environment. Some situations may just be emotionally dangerous, but they do help students understand the ramifications of their choices. For example, a driving simulation in which your reactions are delayed to simulate intoxication can hammer home the message not to drink and drive much better than simply memorizing a booklet full of driving rules and taking a multiple choice test. I can see how this type of simulation would add conviction to compliance.

Resources

Braaf, E. (2003) Why animals love to play. Home and Garden Publications. Retrieved June 26, 2010 from http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa4128/is_200311/ai_n9307508/

Wk3 Reading Comments to Michael

"Students who are gaining new replicated information can expect to see an e-learning environment based on the Intellectual tutoring system. An ITS handles connecting the expertise of a teacher with the knowledge acquisition of students through artificial-intelligence-control tutorial module. “Such situations occur when large groups need to be tutored simultaneously or many replicated tutoring efforts are needed. Cases in point are technical training situations such as training of military recruits and high school mathematics” (Wikipedia)."

Until now I had never heard of intelligent tutoring systems. I am wondering how this will be done and how training of military recruits and teaching high school mathematics could be similar. Thank you for bringing it up, it is something that I would like to learn more about.

Wk3 Reading Comments to Christina

"In looking at the 6 Trends described, I am familiar with the need for change and there is yet another new trend to add. With new innovations in technology comes new ways to use technological resources. V-Books are the newest trend in online learning. Video books or V-books are snippets of videos strategically place in the reading to enhance learning. Retreive Rechnology has a site which explains why and how to use video books and it also has a small inventory for online learning and it has inventory for v-books (see below). The information from Clay Shirky "It’s all about the transformation of media in the age of Everybody, and it’s focusing on a subject very dear to our heart – oldteevee vs. newteevee" clearly addresses the possibility of mass popularity."

Interesting post, Christina. I am not sure how I feel about embracing technology like v-books. Sometimes I think we may be going overboard in trying to use new technologies to get kids to become engaged. When do they stop becoming tools and start becoming gimmicks? With something like v-books, I would be afraid that students would learn to depend on them and gradually lose literacy skills that have been difficult to develop. Although there is a place for new media literacies, we cannot forget about traditional literacy.

Valdez Teresa Wk3 Reading: LMS Choice

Choosing a learning management system is an important decision that should not be taken lightly. With the variety of learning management systems available, each institution should be able to find one that has the right features and capabilities that will fit their needs. Knowledgeable educators should be part of the selection process for their particular institution and using the steps outlined in this article would certainly be beneficial. Key questions to ask when deciding on LMS requirements would be "what do you want to do, who is going to do it, and how is it going to work" (Parkin, 2005). Once you have a list of requirements, you can begin looking for a vendor who can meet these needs. In order to choose the best learning management system, it is important to be active when choosing a vendor as there are many factors to consider and choosing wrong can be costly.

Parkin, G. (2005) The lms selection process in a nutshell. Parkin's Lot. Retrieved June 27, 2010 from http://parkinslot.blogspot.com/2005/04/lms-selection-process-in-nutshell.html

Wk2 Project Udutu Setup

1. Valdez, Teresa
2. Prior Project Selected: Energy Resolvers Project Based Learning
3. Education Design and Evaluation - November, 2009
4. In Education Design and Evaluation, I created a Ning Social Network focusing on environmental issues, specifically energy conservation. I created several media assets for the course and would like to use them for this project since I would like to assess how much information students will get out of the media assets and also if they could then perform an energy audit on their home or school. 
5. http://energyresolvers.ning.com/

Valdez Teresa Comments to Michael

"Standardization is necessary for the future of LMS. The interoperability and exchange of information has been used throughout history because of standards. It should be continued in the future of learning."

Michael, I agree that some standardization should be in place when it comes to learning management systems, but with too much standardization we run the risk of our media content becoming stale and boring. I think there could be a market for content publishers to make more standardized material, then the learning institutions would have choice in what content they used or purchased. Standardization could lead to more competition in the production of RLOs.