A couple years ago, Jenova Chen began working on some “different” kinds of games. One of those games is FlOw. It can be played online but needs a flash player. The game play is simple, the graphics are almost geometric, and the soundscape is almost mesmerizing.
There’s a link to Chen’s site at the bottom of the wikipedia entry. A fascinating place to visit.
As we consider the idea of “distance education” it might be useful to break down the idea into its component parts.
See Considering Distance for some additional questions you might fold into your thinking about distance education.
There’s often some confusion about what we’re doing with all this stuff. There is a method in the madness. The challenge we all face in the networked World 2.0 is trying to keep track and make sense of it all. A key tool for that is the feed aggregator.
See Why a Feed Reader for an explanation.
This has always fascinated me.
One of the big rationales I hear about school sports is that “it teaches the kids so many great lessons like teamwork, and discipline, and dedication.”
Yea, ok. And I’m not interested in buying that particular bridge. I’ve seen the real one in Brooklyn and I’m pretty sure it’s not for sale.
But if we REALLY believe that sports teach, then what about games? Chess? Sodoku? Crossword puzzles?
I’m not talking about the lame “educational crossword puzzles” here with the 25 vocabulary words floating in a sea of black. I’m talking real crossword puzzles with words like “alae” and “engender” … but we don’t use those. And there’s a reason.
Education gets in the way.
As a teacher you have a curriculum to cover. You need to teach the kids THOSE words. It’s not important that the kids learn MORE words, because as a teacher, you’re responsible for teaching a specific set. They’re the words they’ll be tested on. That’s what you’re supposed to teach. I understand.
But that’s also why most “educational games” suck.
Sports — if they can be said to teach lessons — teach big lessons. Kids don’t learn how to play basketball there. They have to KNOW basketball before they can get on the team. They learn teamwork, not traveling. They learn discipline, not dribbling. They learn lessons that aren’t spelled out in detail in a syllabus approved by a certified blue ribbon panel of educators. Kids learn these lessons through engagement, sweat, performance, and repetition. They see the people who have the teamwork, the discipline, and the dedication and they see what those lessons mean — how they get played out in real life. They’re relevant. They’re meaningful. To the kids.
They’re not isolated words, stripped of context, artificially constructed to be a “fun activity to achieve a meaningful educational end.”
Over the course of this semester, I’d like to explore some of these ideas:
Yes, I appreciate that it’s probably not a word, but for some of you out there in the ether, it’s probably summing up how you feel right now.
Welcome to day two. The tasks for this week are intended to get us linked up and established. You’re going to use all these very simple tools to experience an online course in ways that do not mimic the classroom. There’s a method in my madness.
For a run down on the tools, see “Eating the Elephant.”
And so, another semester begins as we scramble for lost passwords, new books, and the sense that it’s all slipping out of control before it even begins.
Historically, my traditional greeting for the class has been via email. With the advent of blogging and other simple tools, I’m able to create an archive of materials that I can use and re-use pretty much on demand and at any point in any course. Read the greeting at the following address:
Welcome to your new world.
As the semester winds down and you get ready to evaluate my performance using the IDEA tool, this just in from the Dept of Duh:
Validation for RateMyProfessors.com?
A new study is about to appear in the journal Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education and it will argue that there are similarities in the rankings in RateMyProfessors.com and IDEA, a student evaluation system used at about 275 colleges nationally and run by a nonprofit group affiliated with Kansas State University.
It’s gratifying to know that somebody recognizes that these kinds of comparisons mean, “omg, this one is just as bad as that one!”
Remember that the next time somebody wants to do a study comparing online and classroom courses.
From the news wire, this story about educational research:
Hold the marbles: Abstract approach best for math | Science | Reuters
CHICAGO (Reuters) - Frustrated math students may have a good excuse — some of the teaching methods meant to make math more relevant may in fact be making it harder to understand, U.S. researchers said on Thursday.
I wish they’d included a link to the original study.
As the course has unfolded this semester, there has been a recurring theme. I’ve seen the theme echoed throughout the web in practically every environment where educators hang out. The theme revolves around “professional development” and how teachers need more, better, and more relevant professional development. I’ve purposely let this subject hang fire for the last few weeks to see if anybody would make the connection. So far, it hasn’t come out as clearly as I would have liked, altho several people have tap-danced around the edges.
The idea is that teachers seem to believe that professional development is something that’s done to them. “If we could only get the district …” and “When they finally get around to teaching us …” and “They give us the software/hardware/whatever and then don’t train us how to use it …”
In “Welcome to your world,” I explained the model of professional development. What do you want to know right now? What’s keeping you from learning about it?
The tools of Web 2.0 put amazing resources at your fingertips. Wikipedia is a good start for an overview and often has follow on links. Google will give you perhaps more than you want to know, and then, once you’ve done your homework (hint, hint, for all you Classroom 2.0 people), you can start looking for people who are experts in that field. Twitter’s great for general callouts. Facebook is a good place to look for expertise.
With all this information available to you, then, why is it that “professional development” is something that waits for “District” to hold a workshop?
Clay Burrell tagged me on his blog, Beyond School. The thing was apparently started by Paul C. at quoteflections. According to the established protocols for such things, here are the rules
I’ve reviewed some of the other contributions to the meme to get a better feel for where this is going. My problem with it lies in the phrase “teen novel.” What the heck is a teen novel?? Most of the contributions I’ve seen involve a teen as protagonist, and they’ve all been interesting - kinda. Some of them I’ve read myself. Some of them, I think I’d like to read, and frankly, a couple of them, no. Thanks, but no.
The primary qualification is “a sure antidote to the daze of high school.” I need to be able to assign it to a high school kid. Clay’s suggestion of Lolita has garnered a lot of attention for a lot of good reasons. I’ve seen Ender’s Game in the list, and I’ve seen a lot of titles that — um — not so much.
One of my problems with this is that it’s been 38 years since I graduated from high school and while I remember the books I read on my own, I don’t remember the ones I was assigned. Seems to me there was Ivanhoe, and Moby Dick. Yawn. What I remember was a long string of Dostoevsky, Heinlein, LeGuin, and what seemed like a doorstop by Frank Herbert entitled Dune.
Dune is the story of Paul Atriedes who is thrown into the bubbling stew of court politics, war, and culture. The book is filled with vivid imagery, unforgettable (often repulsive) characters, and scenes of often violent action set against a sweeping religious and philosophical backdrop. This is a seminal work in modern science fiction and I think every bit as important as the work of Verne and Wells in the genre.
I probably should add a disclaimer. I’m a science fiction fan, author, and general geek. I can read other kinds of stories - but sci-fi is my home. It’s the genre that few “literary” people respect and this is often doubly true in education. In spite of that, sci-fi (or speculative fiction, to use the current politically correct term) gives us an opportunity to examine issues that are too close to us — too personal — to be seen. By placing the behavior or characteristic in an alien context of outer space or far future, we can gain perspective on ideas which might otherwise be unapproachable. (No, Frank Gorshin’s performance in Star Trek is not a good example.)
Along those lines, please note that this book is one of the few from my personal collection that has survived the many moves, transfers, and prunings of my collection. 
This volume has been with me since I purchased it in a small shop on Congress Street in Portland, Maine, in the summer of 1966 — my own high school years. The cover above is a scan of my own copy and notice the price. This particular suggestion is offered up from personal experience and perhaps without consideration of the universe of possibly better alternatives.
All I can say is, “It worked for me.”
I know this meme comes out of education, but I’m going to tag some people who have a different take on literature:
Update (4/19): I wanted to be clear that I’m not including these people in order to promote them or their works. I want to open the discussion up and introduce the idea that teachers need to stop talking to teachers all the time. Not that it’s a bad thing, but when you’re looking for authentic educational resources, don’t talk to teachers. Talk to the people who are engaged in that particular field. You want authentic experience with language and literature? Talk to an author. You want to know what a plant biologist does? Talk to a tree surgeon. You want math? Talk to a physicist. Or an astronomer.
There’s an old chestnut that goes something like, “The teacher opens the door, but the student must go through alone.” The Web 2.0 corollary for education is, “The web opens the door, but the teacher must go through it to learn.”
Thanks to Mur, Tee, Pip and the author-to-be-named Christianna for playing along.
