29. July 2006 by MrBall.

I’ve started the planning process for my capping project.I met yesterday with my program head Mike Carbonaro and Elaine Greidanus who will be helping me with my paper. I’m going to hook up with the Computing Sciences department at the University of Alberta to work on building a computer game using the Neverwinter Nights Aurora tool set.

My biggest worry right now is the engagement level of the game. Will I be able to have my students buy into the characters and situations I’m going to create. I’m trying to focus on the question of “who you hope to become” (Squire & Jenkins, 2003, p. 5) for my students. In this question and its answer I see the best hope for capturing and holding their interest. I also think that this question will be the hardest to answer because I’m dealing with two different gender interests.

When I have played games I’m usually focussed on becoming the strongest/fastest/smartest hero with the coolest weapons and spells. After reading “From Barbie to Mortal Kombat: Gender and Computer Games” I’m feeling a little unsure about being able to reach female players. I’ll plug away at it, after all I’ve got a whole ten months.

I have to say that I became most excited about the game production after reading an article presented at the DIGRa

Not exactly APA but if you need more email or leave me a comment. If you want the Carbonaro article email me.

Carbonaro et al. (2006) Adapting a Commercial Role-Playing Game for Educational Computer Game Production.
Cassell, J. & Jenkins, H., eds., (2005?) From Barbie to Mortal Kombat. Cambridhge, Massachusetts: MIT Press.
Squire, K, &Jenkins H. (2003) Harnessing the Power of Games in Education: InSight, Volume 3.

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26. July 2006 by MrBall.

Dr. Bette Gray the Director, Stakeholder Technology Branch, Alberta Education will be in tomorrow. I’m going to try and think of some questions about how the Stakeholder Technology Branch of Alberta Education can support me in my research around video games and transparency.

Dr. Gray is investing her time in Alberta Education so that she can make changes from the top down. Dr. Gray used the Polo Parable as an introduction to tech integration. I feel that her vision of integration/infusion matched many of my cohort members idea of how we should use ICT. The trouble is that many of us have to deal with leadership who are sometimes just happy that the network is up. We discussed the troubles with assessment of ICT outcomes and the lack of clear examples teachers are given. Apparently Dr. Gray has been working on a paper at Alberta Ed. that has shares ideas on how teachers can better integrate and assess. I’ll be watching for it.

Right now I’ve got two things on my plate. I’m building my rubric for assessing COTS games and their use in the classroom and I’m working on my Contentious issue paper for my Humanities and Tech class: The contentious issue paper is based around:
“The Fellowship of the Microchip.” In Globalization: Culture and Education in the New Millenium, Marcelo M. Suarez-Orozco and Desiree Baolian Qin-Hilliard (eds.). Berkeley:University of California Press/Ross Institute, 2004. (Are there APA guidelines for blogger qoutes, would you trust the qoute?)

There are many aspects of the digital games which would be negatively effected by transparency. I’m going to take three out of the twelve elements from chapter five of Prensky’s book Digital Game Based Learning; Rules, Interaction, and Outcomes and feedback. I only have two pages (single spaced) to bring forward my contentious issue.

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25. July 2006 by MrBall.

Dr. Tom Keenan and Dr. Stan Ruecker

Dr. Tom Keenan presented in the morning about Volitional Cecity. The willingness of people to be blind in the things they do with their personal information. I fell badly that he is a little paranoid about giving out information. Not that I would blame him. I think this is mostly because of the roles he has taken with the Calgary police department that he has a bit of an edge to his trust of the users of his information. My step father is a retired police officer who trusts people lass than my mother the teacher. His experience has changed him in that because he had to deal with 10% of the people 90% of the time (not real math). I think that this would change me also.

Dr. Keenan offers up some good ways we can keep our information safe. One was, when asked to supply a name use a fake one. Almost too easy. He also tried to make us cognizant of the fact that the Law will always lag behind in the ‘guidance’ of technology.

Dr. Ruecker presented in the afternoon. He is an expert of visual arrangement of content in rich-prospecting browsing interfaces.

He has been working to build visual research environments. He keyed in on showing us non-textual search engines (one was the Sort Pills date base). Another visual one focused on the sorting of people by many factors: First name, Last name, Affiliation, Research Group, Gender, Hair colour, Eye colour, Eye glasses, and facial hair. Tools like these would enable business to have their employees recognize frequent customers. By opening up these searching areas we have opportunities to begin sorting and adding your own comments about these visual images. Dr. Ruecker emphasises the importance of information output.

These interfaces would be great tools as long as there are chances for users to rearrange and edit the groups that might reflect a personal understanding. These tools would allow a user of such a system to demonstrate a better context of use by allowing them to sort and create their own definitions.

Wiki idea: Give it to the First years to manage but still allow the 2nd years to be on it.

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24. July 2006 by MrBall.

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24. July 2006 by MrBall.

Pat Redhead:
Pat offered up her wisdom and experiences in realtion to 7 things:
1. her attempt at defining of technology and how it can be infused- The ICT outcomes are broader then the use of computers. In Pat’s work with Alberta Ed. she has tried to make the technology outcomes embrace new technologies, which includes the analog technologies.

2. definition of integration- the ICT curriculum should be infused not treated as a seperate course. ICT should be like a tea bag that infuses itself into the water. Technology should add to the flow of the learning.

As I sit and write this now I wish that I had taken more notes in the classroom. She had lots of experience to share as a classroom teaher, a policy maker and a contractor higher by Alberta Ed.

The Fellowship of the Microchip- Turkle, S. (2004) Here are some of the notes my group made on this article atMaster’s Wiki.

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21. July 2006 by MrBall.

Speaker for the day- Trevor Doerksen 11:00- 11:30
Virtual Field Trips- Mobility in Education. CEO of Mobovivo. Through Mobovivo he is trying to get the rights of educational videos so he can share out a collection of educational videos on iPods. This tool which so many students are accessing

A lot of his comments line up with the ideas presented in “Everything Bad is Good for You”- written by Steve Berlin Johnston. Students are not dumbing down they are ramping up and they want to communicate, collaboration and be engaged.

I am of the opinion that children are not losing attention span they are just becoming better consumers of information. They have been fed digital media that is built, probably not purposefully, on great pedagogical techniques. Students come to school having experienced good scaffolding and they get bored when teachers and adults cannot help them make further connections.

A qoute from Trevor- “There have never been more educational resources and there have never been more excuses not to use them.” What’s my excuse? I just need to find the resources so that I can use them!

Wiki article-
“Wide Open Spaces Wikis Ready or Not” by Brian Lamb touched on some interesting applications of Wikis. As a class we talked about multiple ways we could use our wiki. The way it is shaping up currently it seems as though we are building it up to share our capping projects. I think that is will be a valuable experience for us all in relating experiences.
When I think of Wikipedia I am often drawn to the book by Simon Winchester titled “The Meaning of Everything”. This book is the history of the Oxford English Dictionary and writes. The O.E.D. was put together by 89 volunteers (originally 147). The end result is what many consider a well respected resource on the history of the English language.
The Wikipedia is a more broadly based tool than the O.E.D. will ever be.

I started my own class wiki today at https://mrball.wikispaces.com/. I’m not sure how I will use it with my students but it has promise. I know I should go for the curriculum goals first but it’s just so cool!

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20. July 2006 by MrBall.

As a tech-teacher I often think about how ICT adds value to student learning. I spend time walking home from school pondering tech integration when I get frustrated about its use in classrooms. I’m not sure if it stems from teachers; lack of experience, fear of risk taking, or focus from administration. In my school I have tried many tactics to help with these three barriers.

I feel that Education is far behind in the adaptation of technology for the use of learning. Technology is moving so fast while education and government move like mollasas. This morning our Masters class enjoyed a presentation from Ray kurzweil. We were able to ask him a question about the future of education and its relationship to the increased rate of change in technology. As we listened to Ray Kurzweil’s presentation today we came up with a question about the future of education delivery.

Elementary and Secondary Education is not adapting to the exponential changes in technology. In the future how will education adapt and change to meet with student and society’s fast paced change?

Ray answered the question by touching on some of these points-
-M.I.T. will soon have its course work online.
-The next shift will be towards virtual reality. The intimate feeling of being together will be there. Kids will be able to share ideas around the world.
-We will have the ability to download knowledge, skills, and experiences. We will have the ability to capture human experiences. The role of a teacher will be that of a mentor. Not just to learn skills and accumulatre knowledge but to guide the learning.

Some thoughts that I would like to set aside for future learning…
Primary source expertise and authentic artifacts- how can I deliver the primary expertise in a cost effective way…
Skype can now allow us to contact experts

Take away from Ms. Charmaine Brooks presentation-
How do we measure the integration of technology?
I felt that the ICT outcomes were on very shakey ground. I’m not sure whether

Phil’s top three for tech integration in schools-
Need a champion
- must be able to work with the resistors and calm the overly excited teachers.
- they must know the curriculum
- they have to be able to draw people and build themselves out of a job.

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19. July 2006 by MrBall.

I have to put a plug in for an Edmonton Advertising company that I had a chance to work with this past year. It just came to my attention that they have a web page so I thought I would post their link here.

http://www.themetagency.com/index.html

I worked with them as they helped Concordia University College Education Department create a fresh and exciting advertising campaign.

If you need an agency I recommend The Met!

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10. July 2006 by MrBall.

I’ve been in my tech classes this past week and I’ve been baffled by the need of our instructors to have paper copies of our assignments and journal entries. I know that the paper copy is handy to write comments back on but the same can be done in the electronic original. My instructors won’t be able to use the paper version of my Excel sheet to plunk in numbers on paper so I feel that its a bit of a loss to have a paper copy. A loss for the trees as well!

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7. July 2006 by MrBall.

So I went out last night and bought an Olympus E-20n (its a digital camera). I got it from McBain camera here in Edmonton. It was the shelf model and it was missing a USB cord. I’m not sure what it would go for today but I felt I got a deal on it for what I wanted. It has all the features I wanted and more. I’m excited to learn how to really use the camera. I didn’t want a point and shoot because the Mrs. and I want to eventualy take a camera course.

Here is my first picture from our garden. I had to use the flash because it was quite dark out and, well, because I don’t know how to use the other features. I’m especially proud of the grapes. So far out of the three varieties I have this one, called Beta, is doing the best. I’m growing two others Frontenac and Valiant. In our climate we don’t get much of the fun and fancy fruit fresh from the vine. I keep making the outrageous claim that I’ll be selling bottles of wine off my front step in a few weeks. Anyway here is the picture…

I’m hoping that this is the start of better grapes and better pictures.

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