Category Archives: pedagogy

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Why I’m Obsessed with Google Earth

  November 9, 2014 ,

I have a confession to make. I am addicted to Google Earth. Google Earth is a virtual globe, that also serves as a map and geographical information program, which has been around since 2004. By mapping the Earth through collections of satellite imagery, aerial photography, and a 3D Globe and by offering additional capabilities such as viewing 3D buildings and landscapes, it makes for a fun and engaging user experience. Pin points can be added, symbology can be changed, information pop-ups can hold explanatory text or be embedded with videos. And the program is free and just requires a quick download to your desktop. GE can create a special visualization experience in the classroom-especial through the creation of personalized tours. GE allows you to record tours as you zoom in and out between points, change perspectives, or even enter into street view (how-to video here). These tours could easily be incorporated into a lecture or group project.  You also have the ability to see historical imagery in some areas. There are additional fun tools such as flight simulator and Ocean View. Did you know that you can see a 3D rendering of the Titanic using GE? But that’s not all! GE now lets you adventure to places you aspired to visit when you were a child with aspirations to be an astronaut: through the GE sky feature you can tour the galaxy. Visit the constellation of Orion, the  Moon and Mars. There are a lot of possibilities when it comes … Continue reading

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Consumption vs. Production in the Hybrid 2110

  November 3, 2014 , ,

With a lot of help from Ameer, I am finally reaching the point where I can make videos more or less on my own. As I have been making them, I have been thinking about how educationally useful the experience of making the videos is. The countless decisions about what edit out, how to write captions that add to the content of the talking heads, and how to select images that enrich the storyline are really useful exercises in critical thought. The making of the video is more stimulating and engaging than the experience of watching them. Maybe this is simply a reflection of my still-modest chops as a filmmaker, but I think fundamentally it has to do with the difference between consumption and production – or, to use Halverson’s terms, between the kinds of content based technologies educational institutions have often been drawn towards and the learning technologies that have proliferated on the internet. So, I have been thinking about how to use the hybrid 2110 and its video component in ways that try to capture something of the experience of making the films. I know of at least one person at GSU, a VL named Nicole Tilford over in Religious Studies, who has been teaching students in upper division classes to make video as an assignment. You can see some of the results of her student’s work here. However, Nicole has been doing this with upper division courses, which has several significant advantages for projects of this nature. … Continue reading

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Another Post on Gamification!

  November 3, 2014 , ,

Hey All! I’ve been working like crazy on comprehensive exams this week and thought I would share some of the latest dialogue on Gamification I’ve researched and written. I think it’s a highly relevant topic to a lot of contemporary research that has any public leaning–like our reconstruction of Decatur St project we’re still investigating and researching. Enjoy! How Gamification has Transformed Web-Based Interaction: Black Hat vs. White Hat The terms white hat and black hat originate from the hacker community. White hat hacking refers to those who break cyber security barriers for non-malicious reasons; testing internal security for vulnerabilities(Knight 2009)(Douglas 2010: 503), and sometimes extended into civil activism like leaking documents into the press. Black hat hacking refers to the violation of computer security systems for maliciousness or personal gain(Moore 2005: 258). The dichotomy is in the intention behind one’s action. The terms were applied by Yu-Kai Chou (2014) in his theories of gamification to mirror the intention behind its application. White hat elements of design promote engagement by letting the user express creativity, feel success through mastering the gamified application, and promote a higher sense of meaning—it fosters positive emotions. Black hat elements are those that demand user action from unpredictability of rules, fear of loss, or from the need for things given arbitrary value. The motivations to engage are still evident with black hat elements, but the end user experience elicits negative emotions. Although Chou draws this distinction of good and bad motivating game design elements—black hat … Continue reading

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Tweaking the SIF

  October 26, 2014

This afternoon I went to a very interesting talk by Rich Halverson of the University of Wisconsin, which raised two major issues, one about the SIF program in general, and the other about one of my SIF projects, the American History Video project. To keep the post to a manageable length, I’ll save the History video project for a later post and take the SIF-wide issue first. Let me preface all this by saying that I am enjoying SIF immensely, and have learned a ton. That said, I think the program as it is being run now has a significant, but fixable, flaw, and Halverson’s talk was just the kind of event that I think could fix it. Rather than a narrow technical training, say how to use a specific piece of software, (as many of the ‘normal’ training opportunities available to us are), this was a talk that was simultaneously practical and actionable, yet mostly concerned with big pictures and with deep and broad questions about the role of technology and innovation in higher ed. My time in the SIF has been quite useful so far, well worth the not inconsiderable investment of time that it has required. However, my experience in general has been that because we (maybe I should say ‘I’) are so deep in the details of specific projects and in acquiring the skills that are required to do them, SIF has been a relatively poor forum for thinking about these big questions. Obviously, SIF is … Continue reading

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“Education, Technology, and Society”

  October 26, 2014 , , , , ,

This week I sat in on the two presentations given by Rich Halverson on : Education, Technology, and Society Speaker Series Center for Instructional Innovation.   Much of his presentation was analyzing how technology does and can influence the way we educate and the way we learn.  Although some of the discussion was giving an overview of various approaches to education currently being used, what I found most interesting was his comment on the way kids and young adults communicate and interact with each other and the world. You no longer call you friend to make plans to meet, go to the public library to do research, or have to meet up in person to play a game- everything can be done remotely. You what information on a research topic for school, google it. You want to know where your friend is to see if they want to have lunch? Just see what they last tweeted or put on facebook, see if they have checked in somewhere or send a quick text.  Want to get with your friends and play the newest video game? Just get online and talk via your game console or computer.  Basic human interaction is not the same , yet the way we approach the classroom and education is shockingly stagnant. I believe in much of the traditional concepts utilized ino our public systems, but that is also in part because I do and have succeeded in them.  I am one of the few people I know … Continue reading