Federal Virtual World Challenge

The Army is in the midst of a virtual world competition.

Story here.

Winners announced at the end of the month at Defense GameTech Users' Conference.

SL-based conferences

Here's an article on virtual conferences in SL.

I found this part particularly funny:

At a virtual panel discussion moderated by Uribe and Cabra, an avatar stretched and yawned. “The speaker said, “Am I boring you?’‚” Uribe said.

“And apologies were exchanged all around,” Cabra added.

IRL, a yawn might be a largely instinctual act -- not heavily controlled, you might try to hide it. That someone deliberately had their avatar yawn, well ...

just for fun ...

Mashable posted the Top 10 Geekiest Decorations for Your Home or Office.

I'm kind of partial to the Enter Key Doormat. How about you?

Virtual Worlds - Best Practices

This Second Life Conference taking place next week might be of interest to you -- and it's free.

From their web site:

‘IMAGINATION AROUND THE WORLD’

The Virtual World Best Practices 2010 focus is “Imagination Around the World”. From the North, East, West and South corners of the physical world what is evident is the collaborate nature of virtual world participants to share knowledge and experience. This 48 hour conference will indeed provide opportunities for sharing and further understanding virtual world technology.

The Virtual World Best Practices in Education (VWBPE) conference originated from the 2007 Second Life Best Practices in Education Conference. This grassroots, community-based conference attracts faculty, instructors, trainers, administrators, instructional designers, technical specialists, and members of organizations from around the world. Those who create teaching/learning environments, resources, tools, support services and professional development opportunities internal and external to virtual world environments participate. During the conference, participants have opportunities to ask: What is education?, What is teaching?, What is learning? and How can we provide virtual world educational environments in which today’s learners can become all they can be.

The VWBPE Conference provides opportunities for virtual world communities to showcase projects, courses, events and research that lead to best practices in education. The end result of collaborating, sharing, and co-construction of knowledge during the conference is the creation of innovative and immersive environments in which virtual world residents can learn, work, and play.

Where does this fit in your definition of multimedia?

Here's a cool iPhone app that I just learned about: Poem Flow.

It's quite simple. Mobile poetry. A poem a day (from the public domain), fed to your iPhone, animated (flowing) on your screen (using a technology from TextFlows).

I'm intrigued. I do find that it adds an element to experiencing the poetry, much as hearing poetry read aloud adds to the experience.

What do you think?

Is it multimedia? (I have my own opinions on the matter which I'll share later.) And do you see potential educational uses?

Interactive Podcasting?

Podcasting may not seem like a very interactive medium. The podcaster plans, creates, and publishes. Listeners ... well, they listen. A podcast could be embedded in a setting that allows for human interaction (e.g. discussion forum, blog), but on its own it's just an audio file.

A company called Waxxi* was promoting interactive podcasting. Essentially, the interaction takes place at the point of recording. Think of a call-in radio show, recorded and put on the web as an mp3 with a feed.

If you want to check it out, they have a few examples on their site.

I'm posting this mostly for the idea -- that podcast creation might be done in this way. It's sort of like podcasting a lecture/discussion from a live class. What do you think are the strengths and weaknesses when considering it for instructional purposes?

*Note: The Waxxi stuff all goes back to 2006-07. I can't find more recent info. Not sure what happened to them, didn't really take the time to further investigate.

Voxopop

Voxopop is a web-based audio tool that allows speakers to record their thoughts AND respond to other speakers. I can see some great educational uses for this tool. If you join you can listen to discussions and record on the discussions. You do not have to join in order to listen.

Here is an example: http://www.voxopop.com/topic/822f37a4-0a87-403d-aace-e63dad23ac2a

What are your thoughts about this tool? If anyone wants to start an audio discussion to try out the tool, please feel free and let the rest of us know so we can join.

http://www.voxopop.com/

"Geared" up to learn

Yesterday while sitting in the pediatrician's waiting room, baby sleeping in the carrier, iPhone annoyingly not picking up a signal, I played with a game on my phone. I hadn't played the game in a while, and it was reset back at the first level. Thus, I got to experience it fresh (although with some knowledge that I did not have the first time).

The game was Geared. It's a fairly simple game in which you begin with two gears on the edges of the screen, one moving and one not, and a set number of interim gears of various sizes that you drop onto the screen, using virtual gravity as a force, in an attempt to connect the first two gears and create a chain of turning gears.

One thing I was struck by as I contemplated the game yesterday was the way in which the game teaches you how to play along the way. The concepts build slowly. First you drop in one gear, in an obvious (middle) position. As you move through levels you're led to new concepts: connecting multiple gears, dealing with the force of gravity while placing gears, placing big gears along tangents so they can effectively close small gaps, etc.

This is how good self-paced multimedia programs work, I think. They don't overwhelm you with directions up front (and who pays attention to those anyway -- HELLO temporal contiguity), but rather embed them. You learn the system/technology as you learn the content. The cognitive load focused on learning the system is secondary and minimal throughout.

Games in general excel at this type of self-teaching simplicity. Instructional multimedia, not so much. But the fields are merging in many ways (or, perhaps better put, instruction is learning from gaming).

On a closing note, here's a youtube video showing the solutions to the various Geared levels. I'm not watching it (just saw the first few screens) because I'm trying to play the game in my spare moments and I like the challenge. However, it might make this concept of which I speak (write) here a bit more vivid for you.

Jing

Char recently posted an example of Jing on the classroom discussion. Her example is under the "Modality" thread under the "Why not more narration in distance learning?" post.

Aside from Char's example, can you think of ways in which this tool can be used for educational and training purposes?

eyePlorer

Here's a cool tool: eyePlorer. Does it count as multimedia?



Since I am obsessed with my iPhone, I invite you to visit the eyePlorer entry for iPhone.

How do you think this tool could be used to support learning? Would you embed it in a lesson? Or use it for individualized (personal) learning?

Dale's Cone of Experience

When I was a graduate student, I learned about Dale's Cone of Experience. I was presented with an image from a text by Dale. It was a black and white cone ranging from the abstract (verbal symbols at the top) to the concrete (direct purposeful experiences at the bottom).

In some ways, Dale was but a blip on the radar for me at the time. However, a few years later when I was teaching I wanted to pull up Dale to share with a class. Imagine my surprise when I found not the graphical cone I was used to but instead a ton of graphics suggesting how people remember varying amounts based on how it is presented. I couldn't track that back to Dale or empirical research of any sort and dismissed it [Here's a post by Will Thalheimer that pretty much summarizes what I encountered.], but I still liked the cone (in a quiet sort of way) for its ability to suggest the various ways in which we might experience something. Essentially, it provides a way to classify various instructional media. [Here's a PDF of an encyclopedia entry on this topic by Mike Molenda, one of my professors at Indiana University.]

So, what do you think? Is it of any use? How does it mesh for you (or not) with what we've read of Mayer so far?

A pixton message to you ...

Edward Tufte & the iPhone

I mentioned Tufte on our discussion board, and his books are totally worth checking out.

Here's a video he posted on youtube about iPhone resolution, which touches on visual and information design issues.


It's an interesting exploration of the iPhone interface and how it negotiates sharing a limited space between interface elements and information/communication elements.

Cool Tool for the Day: Storybird

I am entranced by Storybird, a collaborative storytelling tool. Not only is it cool as presented, but it also holds promise for instructional use. What do you think? Check it out!

Welcome!

Jen and I will be using this blog to provide extras -- share links to online tools and articles, etc. -- and we encourage you to read and comment. We're using the blog to help keep these things separate from the regular course discussion which will be graded.

If you have any things you would like to see on the blog or want to guest blog or be added as a contributor, just let us know!