Saturday, February 15, 2014
Social Media
I selected the Diigo group Social Media in Higher Ed. I thought this group was fitting for what we are learning about this week. Also, it appears as though there are many tools here for educators who plan on using social media. I think that social media has the uniqueness that it can appeal to both young and older generations. I think that younger generations will enjoy using social media in education because they are familiar and know how to use it. I think that perhaps older generations may like using social media because it will give them the chance to engage more with their classmates. Perhaps people who are older may not have as much time to do traditional group meetings and may use social media as a means to work with classmates. One of the many positives of using social media in education is that it will engage students.However, as positive as social media is i is also negative. There are many concerns about the legal ramifications of social media. Students are usually not taught about the ethics of posting to social media sites. They need to learn the appropriate ways to use these sites. There are also concerns about the privacy of students with social media. Students need to be taught the appropriate uses of the privacy settings. I spend most of my time on Facebook and or twitter. I believe that these 2 networks are the commonly used. The benefit to using these 2 networks are that I am able to effectively gather information if I need to for class and or work. I am able to network with people who I would not usually work with otherwise. However, the downfall is that I have to be very careful about what I post and or say on the web. I have heard that posting certain things online can keep you from getting a job. Actually when I was in high school I was friends with a girl who worked at the Cleveland Clinic and she was fired for saying they were disorganized on Facebook.
Saturday, February 8, 2014
Gaming
My thoughts
I think that gaming in the classroom is a
great way for students to learn. I know for me if there was gaming when I was
in K-12 it would have made it easier for me to learn. I am not the student that
can just sit down and read a book. Things with Virtual Augmentation would have
made it easier for me to have been engaged the material. I also think that using
gaming gives students the unique ability to experience things they could not experience
from a textbook. Students have the ability to experience what happened in the
book by seeing it. I would also like to point out that certain types of games
can help students who may have different types of disabilities. In the video
School Use Games for Learning and Assessment it talks about how the games can
engage students with disabilities such as ADHD. I still have questions of how
these games can help students who have certain disabilities such as vision or
hearing loss. It would be interesting to see how many of these games/ virtual environments
are either captioned or audio described. I however, see a great use for perhaps
students who have Autism. This past summer I went to National AHEAD conference
to learn about how to accommodate students with disabilities at the Higher
Education level. One of the workshops that I went to talked about a student who
maybe has problems presenting in front of the class. I wonder if platforms such as second life (http://secondlife.com/)
where a student can attend a virtual classroom may help this student. Perhaps
students with certain disabilities may be able to communicate and work online better
than in a face to face environment. I will be interested to see if this changes
with the new use of UTXNET at The University of Toledo.
McDonald’s the Game
This game is a simulation on how the McDonald’s
corporation works. This game is set towards Middle School Aged kids. In the
game you must manage the money, buy livestock and crops, manage employees and
keep everything running. This effectively would teach students how to not only
multi-task but how to a business is run. Student would learn how to manage a
budget and perhaps would be prepared for a similar job they may have in High
School. While not all students will work at McDonalds many corporations are run
in the same way. According to the McDonald’s website they have been highly
criticized for negatively impacting society. The game is to explain to young
people “that this is a price to pay in order to preserve our lifestyle,”(2006)
Minecraft
This game is where people can build structures
out of breaking and placing blocks. The structures are to protect the player
from the monsters in the game. The game has grown large to included players
working together to build imaginative things. This game can be played on a
gaming system, a computer or a smartphone. The game was originally created as
placing and breaking blocks in a 3D world. Now the game includes a multi-player
mode where the world is more dangerous. Since this game is so big and had so
many players the system could not handle all of the players and the servers crashed.
As technology increased so did the game. The game has gotten much recognition
from non-players via YouTube and Twitter. The game as it stands today allows
players to make musical parody’s, hunger meters, advanced combat and is open
source on Android devices. As technology continues to change the game will
continue to change with it. “The rest is in the future! And there’s a lot more
to cone,” (Mojang, 2009-2013).
Simschool
This interactive game allows teachers to analyze
student’s individual learning needs and gather data for effective teaching. The
teachers can explore what parts of their instructions work and what techniques
they can use to build a stronger classroom. Though this program the teachers
can improve their teaching skills but also can better impact the learning capabilities
of the students. They are able to dive deeper into the learning experience and
see where students may be struggling. This will allow the teachers to become
more engages and make the learning experience to the individual students.
Simschool’s are currently being used at 115 different institutions with users
in over 147 countries. These schools include both schools in the K-12 systems
as well as Higher education. Some of the larger schools that are already using
this program include but are not limited to Purdue, University of Mississippi,
University of Nairobi and the Hong Kong Institute of Education.
Benefits to using gaming technology
There are many benefits to the sites like the ones I mentioned
above. I believe the main benefit to
this is the engagement of students. According to the Horizon Report this type
of technology can bring learning into a student’s personal space. IT can help
them understand and scale learning down into something that is easy to work
with. The use of this online technology can bring learning into student’s
everyday life. This technology is similar to the use of the technology in
London. The London museum system is making it so that people can experience
what happened in streets of London with the use of a smart phone. There is a historical
overlay to the modern day buildings that helps explain the past of London. By
introducing this technology into the school systems it would almost ensure that
any student who learns hands-on is not left behind. McKinley Technology school
is already using this type of learning in their curriculum and is having success.
The school ties basic things into this type of learning such as math and
history. Students can gain a better understand of what is being taught to them
by sending it to them in a different way. Another reason why I think this technology
is important is because it allows students to be creative. In many of these virtual
environments students can create their own avatar or their own city. At
McKinley Technology School students are working with game designers to create
whole educational games. In one case a cancer patient’s wish was to make a
video game talking about how cancer affects kids. The game allows kids to virtually
fight off cancer and shows parents and surrounding people who children view
cancer. This type of technology needs to be utilized not only in the K-12 and
Higher Educational environment but as well as the professional environment. This
could be used for doctors or nurses to learn the most effective ways for
working with patients. There was in two videos where virtual simulations were
used to help veterans deal with both physical and mental pain. The educational benefits
of this are endless and should be used.
References
Edupotia. (Producer) (2010). No
gamer left behind[Web]. Retrieved
from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-GVEANUEVo
New Media Consortium. (2011). Horizon report. Retrieved from
http://utetpt5550.pbworks.com/w/file/fetch/49357936/2011-Horizon-Report(2).pdf
New Yorker Video. (Producer) (2008). Not
a game[Web]. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6kl2BuhKmM
Saturday, February 1, 2014
controversial and ethical issues
There are many
controversial and ethical issues related to using internet in the classroom. I
however, believe that the main issue that coincides with using internet in the
classroom is the issue of Copyright. Copyright is appears to be a consistent
problem from open source material, electronic text books, and creative commons.
The question that everyone is asking is can I use this material without being
in violation of copyright?
Open content first started
in colleges with schools such as MIT making free open online courses. Now open
content has started to trickle its way down into the K-12 school systems. Free
and open online content is important in the K-12 world because it can help the
teachers so that they do not have to reinvent the wheel. Teachers can use open content
to add new materials to their courses and according to the Horizon report (2011)
stay current in their area of expertise. This raises the controversial question on if
K-12 schools should really be using textbooks. Textbooks can be very expensive
and with the material always changing perhaps it is more advantageous to use
online textbooks such as Wikibooks. According
to the Horizon Report (2011) there is one online school in Utah that is already
using all open content for their curriculum
and “ conduct one-on-one tutoring with every student” to focus on
personal responsibilities. Many schools are following this same model and blending
the online content with the in class content. The online free open books for students are
where the lines start to blur on ethics.
Open content and free
content is generally the same thing which according to Wikipedia is work that
does not have legal restrictions on people’s freedom. Copyrighted material must
be declared as free within the licensing agreements for the work. Copyrighted material protects the author or creator
of the work for a period of time after the work enters the public domain. The
material must only be copies or modified with the permission of the creator
unless it falls under the category of fair use. Fair use is used many of times
in educational settings. Fair use may pertain but is not limited to teaching, research,
news and criticism. According to the Library of Congress (2012), when looking
at copyright cases the government considers the following four factors.
1.
The purpose and character of the use, including whether such use
is of commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes
2.
The nature of the copyrighted work
3.
The amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to
the copyrighted work as a whole
4.
The effect of the use upon the potential market for, or value
of, the copyrighted work
The term fair use is also used a lot in
conjunction to the Chaffy Amendment or Section 121 of the Copyright Act. The Chaffy
Amendments specks specifically to the recreation of text in an accessible electronic
text format for students with disabilities. According to the Chaffy Amendment
the reproduction of work for the “exclusive” use of persons who are blind or have
a disability is not an infringement of copyright. However, the title use must
be requested from the publisher and must not be distributed to anyone beside
the person with the documented disability and must contain the copyright
information. The Chaffy Amendment originally was only written to encompass K-12
schools but now is having more movement toward the Higher Education sector with
the recent court case of the Author Guild
v. Hathi Trust. In October of 2012 the court ruled in favor of the Hathi
Trust for digitizing thousands of textbooks for 3 purposes full text search, preservation
and access to persons with disabilities. The ruling has been appealed by the
Authors Guild based on the decision t1o favor the Hathi Trust. The final ruling
for this court case will help shape the way universities provide electronic
text to students with disabilities. As of right now there is no ownership on
the publisher’s part to provide accessible electronic material. Not 1 textbook
provided from a publisher is 100% compliant with screen reader access. This becomes more interesting with the use of
3rd party content and material that cannot be changed because there
is no way to add a description to a picture on a website that you do not own. Copyright
aside there are programs that give creators of content the ability to choose
how they want their content recognized.
Creative commons allows the creator of their
work to choose the way that want to give permission to reuse their work. This
may mean the creator just tells the user that wants to reuse the work you can
use it with but just include that I created it. People can create new things or
reuse the material and share licenses. The use of creative commons can help
with teaching and learning because a lot of the content can be used or the
copyright is spelled out. I believe that the use of open online content for the
purposes of teaching makes it more cost efficient and more particles for the
schools. I think that many times especially in K-12 schools they cannot afford
new textbooks. The material changes so quickly that the textbooks and the money
needed to purchase them isn’t available. The ability to have open content gives
the student a better learning experience.
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