The wheels are turning! We can’t stop talking about the 3-D printing keynote from Tuesday. Other discussions include Second Life, Mine Craft, Animated Cartoon Strips, iPad Apps, Experiential Math and Science in the Community, Peer Mentorship. It’s good to get out of our comfort zone to wander down new pathways; the aha moment might be around that next bend.
I am so excited about a new program I learned about in one of the sessions I attended yesterday afternoon. It’s called VideoScribe–check it out at http://www.sparkol.com. I spent a couple of hours playing with the program last night and watching the tutorials, and successfully produced my first VideoScribe. Yay! I’m all for success on the first try, especially when it comes to technology. Check out my 2 minute video on You Tube here: http://Youtu.be/zCL1DEi8dPw
Diane,
I just saw your video. All I could say was: “Oh, my goodness” — several times! Can I use it for the new CTLE website? I’m thinking about the page on syllabus design – what a wonderful link from your syllabus introducing your course that this would be — maybe will be — as well as the page on The Use of Technology!! Whew. This is wonderful. -Lana
Now that I’ve had a minute to sit down with a sandwich, I took a look at your video, Diane. Inspired! Sets a great tone for the course and is fun too. You rock! Thanks for sharing this app with us. I feel a burst of experimentation coming on me!
🙂 I can see Laurel becoming a VideoScribe afficionado!
What the young people are doing – whew. 🙂 Check this out:
“There is no framework for flipping your classroom. You just have to choose the 2.0 digital tools that work for your classroom and your students. The main result – time in class for students to collaborate and engage with content on a deeper level than before.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OO8gzB7Q3A&feature=youtu.be
Your video is very nicely done. I attended a session dealing with animated videos using avatars. voki.com and goanimate.com appeared particularly appealing but I have yet to take them for a test drive. The avatars are pretty cool. I hope I can give myself some more hair!
Well, I did not make it to much today as I traveled back to campus this afternoon. The keynote this morning was very interesting though. Who knew the 80% of all ADHD medications in the world were taken by boys in the United States? When you think that males (including adults) in the US is only about 152 million out of 7 billion….that is 2% of the world taking 80% of the meds. Focusing on the technology aspect though, the keynote focused on gaming. I agree that gaming can make learning fun and interactive. I disagree with her statement that educators should not focus on education based games but instead focus on the games the students are already playing. A few days ago at a session I attended on social media, it was said that students are over Facebook, but still use it because there is not something better to replace it entirely yet. I believe Facebook was killed for students for two reasons. First, no student likes their parents creeping on their posts, seeing their family in the news feeds, or being seen and then lectured by family for what they did that showed up on a family member’s newsfeed. Second, as instructors started using Facebook groups for classes, it now became a school function and no one wants to be seen as thinking school things are cool. As educators start using Minecraft or whatever other game the students may be interested in, as a key part of the curriculum, students will want to abounded it for other opportunities. Will educators be able to keep up with the trends in games? I don’t know if they can, and more to the point, I am not sure they want to spend the effort to stay that current.
I am a big advocate for games in education though. When I was a child, we had an Apple IIc. I had a game to help me with spelling; always an area of weakness for me. Every week, I would enter in that weeks vocabulary into a custom game list and learn to spell from playing the game. If you spelled the word incorrectly, you kept trying until you got it right, and would be rewarded with a solid color banner that hung from the window. If you got it right, the banner had a fleur de lis on it. Once you got all the words right, you were treated to a show. If you had missed one, it was usually a princess waving a handkerchief and a jester dancing while juggling. The show lasted less than 10 seconds. If you got them all right on the first try though, then you got the dancing unicorn.
My friends, I played that game 25 years ago. Yet I can still hear the music, and see that dancing unicorn. Was that game high tech? Not by today’s standards, and maybe not even then, but it was effective.to this day there are words that I learned to spell using that game that when I think about how to spell them, they flash in my mind like they did on that game. Educational games should be the focus of where we go to teach kids with fun interactive assignments. Leg them keep the zombie sheep and Lego-like blocks for themselves outside of school.
Thursday reflections- attended a round table on Google+. Not many people there, so had the opportunity to ask lots of questions. Love the idea of being able to incorporate google docs into google hangouts. Limitations of google hangouts-only 15 people can participate. Also, Keynote was very interesting. (Actually took away a lot of info with pediatric nursing implications). Diane’s video was awesome. I think you should do one with white peacocks and llamas, though:)
BJ – wonderful ideas, yes, yes, and yes. ADD: View Sir Ken Robinson’s RS Animate, and in there you will see how ADD gets worse, statistics-wise, the further east you go!! It is pretty provocative: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U. You make a good argument for keeping away from the kids’ games. Had not thought of that. But you make an excellent argument for games with your story. … And white peacocks and llamas in Nursing. What a concept, Jenny! Thanks for your comments.
I like to use Voki for my online class. Thank you for Sharing this! I was afraid of being in front of webcam.
Also, I want to share Wordle. This was a useful tool for students to understand and recall vocabulary that they learned.
I like to use Voki and videoscribe for my online class. Thank you for Sharing these.
Also, I want to share Wordle. This was a useful tool for students to understand and recall vocabulary that they learned.
I had the opportunity to join a roundtable discussion about Google Glass. Since it has yet to be released commercially, the fully implications of how this device will affect higher education remain to be seen. It presents an even greater potential to reducing the barriers to accessing information. How will education react when the lowest level of Bloom’s Taxonomy is removed from the pyramid. http://uwf.edu/cutla/assessstudent.cfm. To put it another way if a student can literally pull up basic facts and information with the blink of an eye, will memorization still exist?
With wearable computing, recording and sharing video could become ubiquitous. A teacher could easily record themselves writing on a whiteboard or placing an IV in a patient’s arm. We already have the technology to do these things, but glass, and other wearable computing, could practically remove any barriers to creating and sharing this information.
With these potential gains, there is also question of how wearable computers will affect our privacy. While trying on Google Glass, I accidentally took a picture of the roundtable members. They had no idea they were being captured, albeit accidentally.
I just watched the video about flipping the classroom. Inspiring, but daunting. I spent much of Thursday at the conference trying to confer with my students back in Arlington, and only once got a group that could make Collaborate work. (Part of this was Java-created, but also I later discovered that when I moved a room to a specialized link, it was mypersonal room, rather than the class’s room, and the students in this class had not been invited. But I did find them later back in the class’s designated classroom!)
My point is, unlike the elementary schools with iPads, our students have different technology and different technological skills. The teacher in this video invoked a problem with Voki and Flash — and I could just see all those students claiming they couldn’t see the lecture. All the same, between Diane’s inspiring video and all the cool things she pointed out, I am ready to try for some more original content videos than talking over powerpoint slides….
Diane – Your VideoScribe is just great! I’ve been seeing these popping up on various websites (ha! political campaigns) and I wondered it they were paid productions like RSA Animate .
What I think is a key to this is to turn these tools to the students from THEIR production and demonstration of knowledge. How quickly we’ve moved to a multi-dimensional media world and we’re “mostly” still operating in the flat world of documents.