Blog Juice for Educational Technology

June 15th 2006

LockLizard Protector has been specifically designed to stop elearning courses from being pirated.  It prevents unauthorized users from accessing course content, and controls what authorized users can do with it (copy, share, print for example) and for how long.

“Corporate e-learning is one of the fastest-growing sectors within the education market," says KPMG Consulting.  "Huge benefits will accrue when content flows seamlessly - often over mobile networks - throughout industry value chains." IDC forecast that the global e-learning market is worth some $23bn.  Gartner says: "The e-learning market is poised for explosive growth."

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NB: Mike Edwards contributed heavily to these notes. In fact, most of what’s here is his work, so I want him to get credit for it.

The CCCC Blogging SIG had a large and productive meeting Thursday night in
Chicago. We began by discussing some of the initiatives the SIG had proposed
the previous year, including the one-page paper handout guide for teachers new
to blogging (which, we might hope, will continue to be revised collaboratively and kept up to date as necessary), as well as thoughts about assessment of weblog writing,
outcomes of weblog use in writing courses and professional endeavors, and a possible large multi-institution study investigating the
classroom uses of weblogs.

Following the initial discussion, we split up into five small groups focusing on
action in specific areas. The groups discussed their areas and reported back when
we reconvened. Here are the results of our discussion:

I love stories about outsourcing education to India. I think it’s fun and hopelessly interesting. Will we eventually reach a point where India has a better degree-to-citizen ratio than the US? (I’m assuming that hasn’t happened already). And will all those low-paid, obsequious tutors, teachers, paper writers, and (eventually professors) begin to turn all that knowledge inward and revolt? Should we be hiring Indian tutors to teach us about Karl Marx? Today I read this story about some rich punk whose mommy brings him cookies and OJ as he sweats through a leisurely private tutoring session on the Internet with his very own Indian geometry ace. Apparently, these outfits are raking in tens of millions in profits, and I see this as part of a trend towards outsourcing all across the educational spectrum.

An article many of you will want to read, via elearnspace, who notes that the overview “covers blogs, wikis, podcasts, video logs, etc. Each .pdf is a 2-page overview of the technology, addressing questions such as ‘what is it, how does it work, where is it going, what are the implications?’” Perfect for a lot of people I know who say that they “don’t get” social bookmarking, wikis, etc.

Dear Kairos Readers,

The Institute for the Future of the Book is pleased to announce the launch of next\text, a new project designed to encourage the creation of born-digital learning materials that will enhance, expand, and ultimately replace the printed textbook.

There are two stages to the next\text project. The first is a curated website showcasing significant projects currently in the field. The aim is to draw attention to a broad range of experiments that identify ways in which digital media and networks are expanding the potential of textbooks, redefining the role of teacher and student, and converging to create new ecologies for educational institutions. These areas include, but are in no way limited to: “expanded” multimedia textbooks; “open-source” textbooks continually improved by teachers and students; dynamic, networked textbooks with live or regularly updating components; collaborative work spaces; and multi-user games.

Via Infocult, the kickoff of Academic Commons, which, as a combination discussion forum/quarterly journal, looks to be a very valuable resource. From the first edition page:

Academic Commons (http://www.academiccommons.org) offers a forum for investigating and defining the role that technology can play in liberal arts education. Sponsored by the Center of Inquiry in the Liberal Arts at Wabash College (http://liberalarts.wabash.edu), Academic Commons publishes essays, reviews, interviews, showcases of innovative uses of technology, and vignettes that critically examine technology uses in the classroom. Academic Commons aims to share knowledge, develop collaborations, and evaluate and disseminate digital tools and innovative practices for teaching and learning with technology. We want this site to advance opportunities for collaborative design, open development, and rigorous peer critique of such resources.

Academic Commons also provides a forum for academic technology projects and groups (the Developer’s Kit) and a link to a new learning object referatory (LoLa). Our library archives all materials we have published and also provides links to allied organizations, mailing lists, blogs, and journals through a Professional Development Center.

The first issue of the quarterly looks very interesting. The pieces that pique my interest the most are these:

Technology & the Pseudo-Intimacy of the Classroom: an interview with University of Illinois-Chicago’s Jerry Graff

http://academiccommons.org/commons/interview/graff

Graff’s interest in “teaching the conflicts” as a way of rescuing higher education from itself has recently been replaced by a profound worry that higher ed is becoming increasingly irrelevant to American culture. We checked in to see what role Graff thinks technology might play in these unsettling times.

Copyright 101 by Richard Lanham, UCLA

http://academiccommons.org/commons/essay/lanham-copyright-101

The pervasiveness of digital media has so altered the nature of authorship and ownership that questions of intellectual property have become matters of core concern for our students and our contemporary culture. Lanham argues that these issues require an academic response, and that a basic course in copyright — “Copyright 101″ — represents a first step in this process.

Cross-posted to CultureCat and CCCC-IP.

Thought some here might be interested in perusing the August/September 2005 issue of Innovate. From the Editor’s Introduction by Joel Foreman:

Jim Gee opens the issue with a key question: “What would a state of the art instructional video game look like?” Gee’s response focuses on the commercial game Full Spectrum Warrior in order to reveal the “good theory of learning” that should inform the design of video games produced specifically for instructional purposes. This theory, which Gee refers to as “distributed authentic professionalism,” requires that the player’s avatar, the non-player characters (NPCs), and the interaction between them embody the professional knowledge and practices the game’s developers expect the user to develop and enact. In turn, David Shaffer argues that members of a profession have an “epistemic frame”—a particular way of thinking and working—and that the training of professionals is desined to create this frame. Shaffer’s paper focuses on how to create “epistemic games” in which people learn to work as professionals and in the process develop the skills, habits, and understandings of a post-industrial society. To illustrate, Shaffer describes Madison 2200, an urban planning simulation.

Richard Halverson also contends that valid learning principles inform successful video games and discusses how they might be integrated in educational contexts. He distinguishes between exogenous and endogenous games and argues that the latter offer the greatest potential for educators. However, because endogenous games encourage exploration, they offer a significant challenge for adoption within standards-driven curricula. Addressing this challenge, Halverson outlines how endogenous games may be incorporated in four distinct learning environments.

Melanie Zibit and David Gibson describe simSchool, a video game that prepares teachers for the complexities of classroom management. The authors illustrate how the game’s non-player characters (i.e., the virtual students) incorporate a diverse range of cognitive, demographic, and behavioral variables. Through such a design, simSchool offers a “simulated apprenticeship” that prepares teachers to practice the informed decision making required for success in their profession.

Kurt Squire’s findings about the benefits of and obstacles to the implementation of video games in the classroom are based on his own attempt to use Civilization III in high school history classes. He argues that rather than thinking about how to design good games for the existing K-12 educational system, educators should focus their energies on how to design an educational system flexible enough to accommodate video games. In contrast, Michael Begg, David Dewhurst, and Hamish Macleod advocate a “game-informed learning” approach that would make conventional learning activities more game-like. The two medical simulations they describe immerse students in a professional identity and generate highly motivated constructivist learning.