27. March 2006 by MrBall.

I stole this post from Mr. MacKenty over at http://www.mackenty.org/

I thought that it had to be reposted it’s just too good!

Courtesy of Education World comes this great article from Doug Johnson.

It’s a tounge-in-cheek reply to the folks who don’t want to use iPods in the classroom.

From the article:

1. A student might use a pencil to poke out the eye of another student.
2. A student might write a dirty word or, worse yet, a threatening note to another student, with a pencil.
3. One student might have a mechanical pencil, making those with wooden ones feel bad.
4. The pencil might get stolen.
5. Pencils break and need repairing all the time.
6. Kids who have pencils might doodle instead of working on their assignments or listening to the teacher.

Great stuff. We should be teaching our kids how to use technology, not building a wall around technology! Doug asks this sterling question:

When are we going to learn to use the kids’ devices for their benefit rather than invent excuses to outlaw them?

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27. March 2006 by MrBall.

Just a heads up before checking out this site while the name seems circumspect there is no (as of the time I made this post) sexually explicit material.

The creator Max is trying to help people with disabilities to find healthy sex lives. He is setting up great a T.V. series in partnership with the U or A and the Canadian Burn Foundation. Phizer and the Miseracordia Hospital (Edmonton) are both being approached for funding. Keep your eyes on www.canadianburnfoundation.org for information about a golf tournament to raise money in Sept. It’s going to be an adult/kid team combination.

Here is their description of T.V. series they are working on…

SexAbility is a thirteen part documentary series that will follow couples and singles with a disability as they share stories, tips and resources in their pursuit and attainment of satisfying sex lives. The aim of the show is both to inform and to inspire courage and humour to a diverse audience by speaking to all genders, orientations, and abilities about the one thing we have in common, a desire for great sex. Through engaging personal stories and informative interviews the material will offer a new perspective for those who may share the frustrations of stereotypes, suffer the prejudice of a biased society, and fear that a satisfying sex life is impossible when living with a disability.

This is a facinating to me. One of those things I never think about because I am a white middle class Canadian male. I am excited to think this will open doors of understanding to the ‘average’ joe like myself. I feel this will also open doors to people with a disablity who might feel otrasized sexually by society. I pray that it will help both those with and those without disabilites to find healthy God rich relationships. When the Father brought the Son into the world, it was written of Him, “…He had no stately form or majesty that we should look upon Him, nor appearance that we should be attracted to Him…” (Isaiah 53:2).

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24. March 2006 by MrBall.

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13. March 2006 by MrBall.

In order to understand this response you must read a paper entitled “A Rape in Cyberspace” written by Jullian Dibbell . It is a story about virtual freedom of speech and a community call LambdaMoo.

Our instructions were to: Discuss the meaning of Dibbell’s statement: “the more seriously I took the notion of virtual rape, the less seriously I was able to take the tidy division of the world into the symbolic and the real that underlies the very notion of freedom of speech.” How might Dibbell’s story and commentary help or hinder our understanding of cyber-bullying? I have flown off on a few tangents as I have written this mostly because other thoughts have pushed to the front of my head. Here are my thoughts…

Jullian quotes one of the community members named HerkieCosmo as saying “In MOO, the body IS the mind.” (p. 9). The rape in this case is an assault on the mind and I’m finding it hard to come to a conclusion about the severity of the assault. There is clearly not a “tidy division” of the two worlds. It was graphic in nature to be sure and it certainly effected those who it was done to and those who witnessed it. I think that the creation of a virtual worlds and avatars in a MUD Oriented Object (MOO) is sort of a replacement of the masks we wear in everyday life.

The mask of online avatars allows users to try out different scenarios which would not be acceptable in RL. The online avatar is unique from books in that it allows interaction with others in the MUD or MOO community. In our current online communities the social responsibilities of the cyber personas are very little compared to the RL ones. I think that the VR responsibilities are less because the consequences are also reduced. You make a mistake you are booted (or toadded) at that is where it ends. You are removed from the imaginary community but you can still go to work in the morning and take your kids to school. The responsibility between our physical bodies and cyber-persona’s should be the same. We are all responsible for treating others with respect and dignity.

I am concerned that this acting out is a cry for help. The virtual environment is only as real as it’s users make it in their own imaginations. Is Mr. Bungle’s acting out in this ‘imagined’ environment enough to punish him or help him to find assistance? Sure, I think he needs help. He knowingly bullied his way around and this article has opened my eyes to another form of abuse. I would like to have read the discussion in emmeline’ room to read the conversation that took place.

The Tangents…
Tangent 1: It is timely we are reading this article. I’ve been exploring the Neverwinter Nights on line community as I develop my capping project. Through the use of the NWN Aurora scripting tool members of this community have created their own virtual worlds. These worlds aren’t text based like the MOO described in A Rape in CyberSpace they are visual worlds that can be navigated with the click of a button. The people in the virtual worlds are seeking more than just the hack n’ slash story lines that so many in the NWN community have developed. There are large virtual cities that can be explored where people have furnished apartments and houses. I find it incredible that some people have spent so much time and effort in the creation of these virtual worlds.

Tangent 2: There have been legal cases that deal with VR crimes. Crimes like theft and defamation have actually gone to RL court. There is an example of a Defamation case in a book titled “Video Game Law” (p. 109) edited by Jon Festinger. In the scenario written about in the book they make the point that ” legal action might well depend upon whether your virtual identity its truly divorced and independent of your actual existence.” Legal action is not a barometer of whether of not something is ethical. Apparently in Canada an ISP can be held responsible for Defamation if they are maintaining a chat room or bulletin board.

Here’s my blast-from-the-past quote. It comes from the 1989 Batman soundtrack (this is one of Danny’s favourite sound tracks!) written by the artist Prince. The song is called Electric Chair and it brings up an idea that I’ve seen recently in the movie Minority Report written by Philip K. Dick. Can we punish someone for their thoughts? Dick writes fiction about the future of technology and the ethical issues we might some day face.

“If a man is considered guilty for what goes on in his mind
Then give me the electric chair for all my future crimes -Oh!”

Finally, a good book to read through to delve more deeply into this issue would be “Virtual Liberty: Freedom to Design and to Play in Virtual Worlds” (2004) written by Jack M. Balkin.

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10. March 2006 by MrBall.

We just had our second lockdown of the year today. I’m buzzing a bit. I’m very proud of how our staff and students handled the situation. I know that the students in my class made out alright. They’re a brave bunch and I’m proud of how good they were.

Before the Lockdown I was making notes about “Everything Bad is Good for You” written by Steven Johnson. Johnson had some great insights as to how he thinks the human brain is adjusting to meet the increase in images and ideas we are being bombarded with. His term the Sleeper Curve relates to how our brains are meeting the challenge.

It has been interesting for me to watch my students while reading this book I am not sure that they are mentally developed to have many of the attributes described by the Sleeper Curve. I have been wondering where theorists would place this kind of development. Where would Piaget place the sleeper curve in his theory of cognitive development? My best guess is that it would sit around concrete operational. I’m aiming around there because children from 7-11 years begin to understand reversibility at that stage. That would then allow them to benefit from the many jumbled sequences they see in popular media.

The Sleeper Curve would probably fit nicely in Vygotsky’s Social Development theory since social interaction plays a major role in the development of cognition. Children are now experiencing that social interaction (through TV, video games, and other media) at a faster rate and more interactive rate. They now have to synthesis and evaluate their knowledge even more than before. Vygotsky said that social development happened in two stages first, on the social level (interpersonal), and later, on the individual level (intrapersonal).

I think that we are beginning to see many of the interpersonal things in our classrooms. These things include the ability to process more information at a faster rate. I don’t that means they can process it more efficiently it just means they can cut through the clutter. I often wonder if my students are filtering me out…

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9. March 2006 by MrBall.

(mini rant) I love how Australians call math “maths”. I feel this is the real language we should use because there is more than one strand in math.

I had PD today at St. Anthony’s (patron Saint of lost things I think). I just looked there are about two dozen Saint Anthonys!

We had a video session where we respond to video clips of lessons. Most of the video clips I watched dealt with Multiplication and Division. Quite a few different styles of arrays were used to demonstrate how we can build numbers through Multiplication and Division.

I appreciated the different ways that the students in each example understood the concepts of Multiplication and Division. It is great to see a classroom where students aren’t set into a fixed way of thinking. They are free to create personal understanding which is so much more valuable than the steps I learned. As long as their ways of thinking work in different ways they are free use it. Of course it is important to challenge students to try new ways so they can expand their understandings.

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8. March 2006 by MrBall.

I have my students preparing to blog. I’ve set up an account at Blogmeister and started to add pseudonyms for my class. Check my post on the class page to learn more about our shift to a blogging community.

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8. March 2006 by MrBall.

I posted this on my MES 597 discussion board as a response to a paper (Brighouses’ “Channel One, the Anti Commerical Principle…”). I have pretty strong feelings about consumerism, mostly because I feel I have been brainwashed to be a spender and not a saver. Don’t worry I got my RRSP’s in on time! Here’s the deal…

It took me a while to finally find advertisements at my school. Mostly because I’m lazy and not so much because they aren’t there. The first one that hit me was the Dell badge on the front of all 30 of our computer lab towers. Apparently they are starting to be swiped by students though. I guess Dell is the new Mercedes Benz… ?

We have labels on all of our TVs but in my classroom they are a bit out of sight to be noticed.

The BIG one hit me last Tuesday when the parent council brought in Pancakes for Shrove Tuesday. My brother in law has a shirt which has two cartoon stick figure facing each other inside of a circle. The first is saying “I’m a consumer @#$%@!” and the second says while pumping his arm is saying “And how!” That is how I felt on Tuesday of last week.

The pancakes came from the Golden Arches. They all came packaged in Styrofoam containers (with the big M on it), inside of MacDonald’s paper bags (more M), inside of Big (computer box sized) cardboard boxes (seriously big MacDonald’s emblems on these). The parents went around handing out the pancakes, syrup (golden arches), napkins (embossed arches), butter (more arches), and cutlery (no arches?). Before students had finished their food they each had a yellow pencil (arches) and stickers (no arches [just kidding!!]). The parent council had to pay to bring in advertising.

It broke my heart because I was trying to teach my students that Shrove Tuesday is about using up everything that would spoil during the 40 days of Lent. It is a preparation for Lent. Instead as an object lesson they were given hot cakes and a Super sized portion of branding.

I quickly disposed of all of the M’s and took the pencils away. You’re going to think I’m a total loony but I sharpened off all the Arches. I’m running a socialist experiment right now with my students. I’m trying to have them share pencils instead of hoarding them (they will run out eventually you know). You can send me money if you would like to join the Communist Pencil Party, we’re starting to look for campaigners for the next election.

I’m a huge fan of Supersize me. I don’t by any means think the test in the movie was a fair test I still buy into the philosophy they were selling. We all need to be conscious of the advertising and how it is programming us. (I won’t rant I promise!) I have this whole rant about how media is forcing youth to grow up so that they can become consumers earlier. Drive that market! Drive!

As you can tell from my actions I think that this form of advertising is wrong. I think that it distracted from the message of Shrove Tuesday and Lent. I also feel that it put me in a position as a teacher where students might think I was approving of MacDonald’s. They know that I don’t approve.

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8. March 2006 by MrBall.

In my MES 597 - Ethics and Philosophy in Instructional Technology we finished studying Marshal McLuhan and some pages from his book Laws of Media. I used McLuhan’s four Laws of Media to examine the topic of MORPG in Education. I took the first M off because I didn’t want to move into the Massive part of the roleplaying spectrum. Here are McLuhan’s four Law/Questions for media.

1. What does [this educational technology artifact] enhance or intensify?

2. What does it render obsolete or displace?

3. What does it retrieve that was previously obsolesced?

4. What does it produce or become when pressed to an extreme?

The paper is quite familiar in it’s tone. I moved away from the acedemic voice as you will be able to tell. I guess I’m just too excited about the promise of video games as learning tools. Please read and give me a post if you like. I would love to hear about additions or changes others would make.

Oh yeah the link for the paper is in the title (it’s posted on my ECSD site).

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6. March 2006 by MrBall.

In my quest to expand my knowledge of gaming and learning I went to a session about Shared Fantasy: Using Fantasy Roleplaying in the classroom. As I posted before I quite enjoyed the presenter and thought he did a thorough job in describing roleplay (Pen and Paper style) as a social learning tool. He has written some interesting articles on his site about RPG. So far I have only skimmed some of his writing and I have to say I’m excited for him as he tries to get into graduate studies this fall (I think he said Comparative Lit.) he has a good tone/voice to what he writes and I think he is quite fair in how he sets up his defense of RPG.

Most of the writings he has done around RPG are to do with the defense of them in a Christian perspective. He uses them in his ministry to help kids express themselves. I applaud his work in this area. He is doing something in his work that I would love to be able to harness and use in my teaching.

He inspired me to start looking into the different reasons why players are playing. During the lecture he sited John Hughes’s (not APA format) “Therapy is Fantasy” as a source for looking into the development of a player’s reasons for playing. Take a look at the diagram that he has about 1/4 or the way down the page. I often think that video RPG as learning tools are only going to ‘hit’ one type of audience in my classroom.

When I do the stand up lecture style to introduce a lesson I know that most of the girls understand what I’m talking about. I then teach the lesson in a different audience style and assess to see which students understand. Then I’ll try another style the next day and if I haven’t gotten everyone by then I go and do one on one with the students who have fallen through the cracks of my lesson net.

I believe that video games together with my teacher sense (kind of like spidey sense) which enables me to adjust instruction and use the teachable moment will hit a wider learner group. Multiple Intelligence theory comes to mind…

I’m going to look into this more later but for now I’m off to my Father-in-law and Niece’s birthday party!! I love my family.

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