CECA+Notes+08

Keynote David Pogue... Had the most disastrous presentation I have ever seen -- He was over a half hour late, and NOTHING worked! The tech guys could not get the projector and laptop to play nice at all. I liked listening to him as he is very funny and entertaining, and definitely smart. New Technologies: VOIP (Vonage), Skype, T-Mobile hotspots have seamless handoff to cellular network, Verizon has opened up their network to any phone that will work on their network, Google cellular 1-800-Goog 411 or text to 46645 can get info text messages from google:  put what you're looking for in the body of the text message: weather sandiego. SpinVox and CallWave take your text/voice messages and translate them into email messages for you. On-Demand Everything: hula.net = network tv shows on demand online, comcast cable has on-demand cable channels, podcasts are essentially on-demand radio. Downloading movies at this point is still not as good as dvd because the quality isn't great (compression, no high-def) and selection is limited. Phones are becoming the new laptops. Things splinter -- old technologies aren't being replaced by new tech, so we are just adding things to keep track of: newspapers-magazines-radio-tv-websites-blogs-wikis-mashups... Interface challenges: machines get smaller, but our fingers stay the same size! Things don't "Stay put" online... nothing you do online is private or goes away. Keith Olbermann/Rita Crosby email controversy Things will settle down -- trust the public and imagine the possibilities.

Saw a rolling iPod lab cart, sold by Apple. Gail McKenna at South Windsor HS uses it to teach foreign language as she downloads FL podcasts for her students to listen to (self created, student created, found on iTunes, etc). good for when she has to test individual students and needs self-directed activities for the students. Applications also for music teachers. Expensive -- $10K for class set, cart and laptop that downloads into the ipods. 80 G ipods, can get less expensive ones.

David Pogue breakout session : Web 2.0 -- audience creates content. Social networking: MySpace = kids, Facebook = college/young, LinkedIn = job networking for grownups Digg : social bookmarking that ranks pages by users who rate the content thumbs up/down. idea is that best/most useful content floats to top, crap sinks. "wisdom of masses" Wikipedia: everyone said it would never work, but it does. some pages have to be locked (if you try to change the page in the same way 3 times in 24 hours the page gets automatically locked, but you can appeal to the admins) Study reported that it is statistically as accurate as Encyclopedia Britannica. Most problems are with controversial topics and bios of living people. Social media like flickr and youtube, blogs, podcasts, vlogs. forms of self-expression (text, audio, video, images) 75 new blogs are created every minute. Most of them are "hey, look I can do this" Pogue's Posts was the first NYT blog. They did not allow comments at that point but do now. David's most popular post got 1200 comments in one day. Blogs: anyone and everyone can have a voice. Used for keeping in touch with friends, people with special interests, maybe make $ and/or get famous. Blogospheres: personal, corporate (Microsoft, Google), and commercial (exist to sell adspace and make $, frequent posts that can be mean, snarky) While blogs occasionally break mainstream news it is usually destructive or mean news (Bill Clinton's affair, George Allen racial slur video, etc). Tear-down stories, not real journalism. No time for fact-checking, editing, getting the other side. Lots of rehashing/exaggerating, no ethical standards. Z-Trim - blog rumors that product caused cancer were started by an investor who was short-selling the product, therefore the product stock price tanked and the investor made out. Market manipulation. Same thing happened with the blog rumor that Steve Jobs had a heart attack (Apple stock went down, a short-seller made money). Solution: Google Alerts. Set up Google Alerts for your name, your product, whatever. Google will email you an alert whenever they run across a new posting of that term/name. Teaching Credibility and Fixing the Problems: Blogs should participate in the Blog Ethics -- voluntary now. No anonymous comments, take responsibility for your own words and for the comments you allow to be posted on your blog, when we believe someone is being unfairly attacked we take action. Pogue thinks that everyone should post using their REAL names -- get rid of anonymity, you get rid of the "I can do anything because no one knows who I am" Obvious implications for children/schools!! Look at: whoissick.com -- map/symptoms mashup tripadvisor.com domystuff.com

Gaming To Learn, learning to game

Good games are also good learning environments 2008 Pew Internet Life of America Survey of 1102 teens: 97% of 12-17 year olds game, 99% of boys, 94% of girls gaming included computer, online, console (Wii, playstation etc) and portable games Ian Bogost 2008: Gaming is also a form of literacy, literacy of systems, logic, rules, models and procedures Old educational model: Curriculum --> Teacher --> Students 21st Century Model: Coach (teacher) outside the loop, students/players circle the challenge/curriculum. Distributed Knowledge: we know more than I do. Depends on and demands a more authentic assessment than a multiple choice test.

Gaming context includes cross-functional teams, each with extensive knowledge/skills of individuals, able to adapt to changing situations, flexible, intensive knowledge of self-capabilities (I know what I know but I know what I DON'T know and can ask the right people, go find out the info or learn the skills)

42,000 people play EveOnline daily, and most of that is project management tasks to build a spaceship -- participation

Advantage of gaming: Demonstrate competence THROUGH performance. Players can perform even when not fully competent and attain competence through performance. Failure and risk-taking are encouraged, become learning opportunities. Price of failure is much lower, and emotional investment in learning increases. Long-term memory of situations and processes increases

Teaching game design: modeling the world improtant to generalize the experience (concrete to abstract) "modding" a game is a way of learning about and experimenting the model underlying the game structure learning involves systems, process-oriented thinking, problem solving (when you change one piece, it affects many others -- being able to see consequences)

In May -- CT Innovation Expo http://ctcconline.org High school teams collaborate through a year to create a game that teaches about a major problem (pollution, deforestation, overpopulation etc). They present their game, company, business plan marketing plan etc at the expo. They use Scratch software to design the games and learn to build games: http://scratch.mit.edu try learnscratch.org for help

They use Grow A Game cards (tiltfactorlab @ Dartmouth) that gives them a problem, a game style and a theme to work through.

Other websites: ctexpo.org  -- look at ctexpo.org/projects/Brookfield   and    ctexpo.org/projects/WaterburyCHS/game.html skills21.org ctcconline.org -- moodle environment with complete curriculum and resources