Gamification offers this exactly. No thinking is required, just simple, absentminded iteration and the promise of empty metrics to prove its value. Like having a website or a social media strategy, "gamification" allows organizations to tick the games box without fuss.
Gee talks about the same thing. Gamification and how it is used to market games that may or may not be well done.
There just aren't enough high-quality games that also serve serious purposes effectively. Making games is hard. Making good games is even harder. Making good games that hope to serve some external purpose is even harder.
Creating a good game is difficult. In mod 3, we talked about DML and the future of it. Does this include games? If so how? A game needs to be created well and have an intended audience.
People know that there's something magical about games. They don't always express that opinion positively, but even condemnations of video games acknowledge that they contain special power, power to captivate us and draw us in, power to encourage us to repeat things we've seemingly done before, power to get us to spend money on things that seem not to exist, and so forth
They also create space where people can be someone else and that can be important to your mental health. Take a look at Avatar the movie, they implemented a new world where people could be apart of a rare community and become someone else entirely. Thats what makes video games unique.
As Luntz puts it, what matters is not what you say, but what people hear. And when we're talking about games, people often hear nothing good. Making games seem appealing outside the entertainment industry is a daunting task, and a large part of the challenge involves deploying the right rhetoric to advance the concept in the first place.
Gee had talked about similar concepts that there are negatives and positives with gaming. Mod 4 also talks about using gaming communities as a way to create spaces for friends to hang out and play together.
-ification involves simple, repeatable, proven techniques or devices: you can purify, beautify, falsify, terrify, and so forth. -ification is always easy and repeatable, and it’s usually bullshit. Just add points.
Doesn't this tie into almost every game out there? Same concepts, different platforms, and same story line? Games are just recreated and remarketed and people buy into it.
Game developers and players have critiqued gamification on the grounds that it gets games wrong, mistaking incidental properties like points and levels for primary features like interactions with behavioral complexity. That may be true, but truth doesn’t matter for bullshitters. Indeed, the very point of gamification is to make the sale as easy as possible.
If you can relate to the game Animal Crossing, it is a game where you create things to survive and have to catch things so you can eat, it is similar to Minecraft. They have have the same concept, build a house, catch food to eat and kill the things that try to kill you. Yet, both games are huge in the gaming community right now. Same concept, different marketing yet its still an easy sale.
it takes games—a mysterious, magical, powerful medium that has captured the attention of millions of people—and it makes them accessible in the context of contemporary business.
Any big gaming company such as EA Sports, Xbox, Wii, they are just trying to get your money and brain wash everyone into thinking they need the newest game.
Rather, bullshit is used to conceal, to impress or to coerce. Unlike liars, bullshitters have no use for the truth. All that matters to them is hiding their ignorance or bringing about their own benefit.
Bullshit is typically used as as term for "not true" or expressing anger. Which both in turn is hiding someones ignorance to express their words in a better way.
Yetthecircuitsofproduction,distribution,andplayofgamesinvolveongoingtensionsbe-tweenindustryrelations,distributioninfrastructure,patternsofplayer/viewerengagement,genresofrepresentation,socialagendas,andeducationalphilosophies.Thesetensionsaffecthowwethinkaboutwhichliteraciesanecologyofgamingsupportsandwhichitpotentiallydenies
Bruce had talked about that it is just not a video game, they involve critical thinking skills, pattern recognition and the other elements that make up a video game. They require mental work and the ability to work through problems.
Playingvideogamesisakindofliteracy.Nottheliteracythathelpsusreadbooksorwritetermpapers,butthekindofliteracythathelpsusmakeorcritiquethesystemswelivein....Whenwelearntoplaygameswithaneyetowarduncoveringtheirproceduralrhetorics,welearntoaskquestionsaboutthemodelssuchgamespresent.(p.136)
Bogost is correct. Literacy is defined as as ability to read, write, use something effectively with understanding.
Hearguesthatmakingdigitalgamesaccessibletoawideraudiencebenefitseveryonebyprovidingopportunitiesforplayacrosscommunities.HecitesaclosedcaptioningmodforDoom-3thatprovidesauditoryinformationintheformoftext(orother)visuals.Ratherthansimplyallowingplayerswhomaybehardofhearingtoincreasetheirqualityofplay,themodhasbeentakenupandusedbymanyEnglishlanguagelearnerstohelpthemlearnandunderstandEnglishbetter.
When someone is apart of the online gaming community, they play with people all over the world and when you ask people from other countries how did you learn english or how is your english so good, their response tends to be from video games. This is a great idea and a great concept because then you are not excluding anyone at this point.
theauthorsinsteadarguethatthecultureofvideogameplayisonedeeply“tangledup”withotherculturalpractices.Thesepracticesincluderelationswithsiblingsandparents,patternsoflearningathomeandschool,aswellasimaginedfuturesforoneself.
This is important though, we enjoy playing games based on reality or what is normal for us.
Geetakesontheintersectionofgamedesignandgoodlearning,choreographingpotentialsitesofengagementbetweenthetwobydrawingoncontemporaryworkinthelearningsci-ences.Wellestablishedasanauthoritywithinthevideogames,learning,andliteracyspace,Geecreatesausefulfoundationuponwhichmanyoftheotherauthorsinthevolumedraw.
Gee also talked about this in our previous reading as well as to what makes a good game and engagement for the game design.
Contributorscomefromeducation,thelearningsciences,filmstudies,technology,anthro-pology,gamedesign,performancestudies,computerscience,andyouthdevelopment.Suchadiversityofperspectivesleadstoaconditionofbothwealthandpoverty.Wealthcomesintheformofnewframeworks,methodologies,andalternatehistoriesthatenrichthedialoguewithmultiplepointsofview;povertycomesinthechoiceofbreadthoverdepthandinthechallengeoflocatingacommonvocabulary
This interesting since most people do not understand what truly goes into game design and gives a different aspect of how a game comes together.
Bornintoaworldwhereconceptslikecopyright,mastery,civicengagement,andparticipationareseamlesslynego-tiatedandredefinedacrosshighlypersonalizednetworksspanningthespacesofFacebook,Yu-Gi-Oh,andYouTube,today’skidsarecraftinglearningidentitiesforthemselves—hybrididentities—thatseeminglyrejectpreviouslydistinctmodesofbeing.Writer,designer,reader,producer,teacher,student,gamer—allmodesholdequalweight.Whereweusedtocallthemplayer-producers,prosumers, orevenmultitaskers, we nowjustcallthemkids. ThephrasethatbestexplainsthischangecomesfromMikey,aparticipantinoneofourcontributors’studies,whointalkingaboutgamessaid,“It’swhatwedo.”The“we”towhichhewasreferringwaskidsthesedays,theyoungpeopleofhisgeneration.
Going back to Buckingham, he talked about kids not really having a socially acceptable space to hang out. Kids a have turned towards tech to hang out with friends. They are making TikTok videos, youtube videos and creating other spaces where they can interact with one another.
If a game cannot be learned and even mastered at a certain level, it won't get played by enough people, and the company that makes it will go broke. Good learning in games is a capitalist-driven Darwinian process of selection of the fittest.
No one wants to play a game that would take 5 minutes to beat. The struggle is game design and how to make it hard yet engaging to keep the player entertained with enough rewards to make the time and effort spend on it worth it.
The potential significance of the XO, as well as of other IT innovations, in developing countries calls for system-atic, independent evaluation—a true “grand challenge” for the computing and social science communities. Re-searchers can provide value by con-ducting well-designed studies of the diffusion and results of such innova-tion. The knowledge created promises to prevent wasting a great deal of mon-ey and effort and lead to quicker diffu-sion and better use of innovations that prove beneficial. While OLPC has so far fallen short of its goals, there is much yet to be learned by studying this case of IT innovation.
This would be interesting to follow and see the progress of this project over the next couple of years.
Expecting a laptop to cause such revolutionary change showed a degree of naiveté, even for an organization with the best intentions and smartest people.
This has been exactly what we have been reading and discussing in class. Technology is the future but how can we use it.
This situation is common in developing countries where endemic problems of infrastructure, financial resources, technical skills, and waning political support “hinder both the completion of IS innovation initiatives and the re-alization of their expected benefits.
But does this not still apply to us in the United States with our education system? How can one overcome this since education is usually the first cuts lawmakers, congress, and governors take from our students.
Often, more important is the social and cultural environment in which it will operate
They took this into account since not every culture or rural area is exposed to technology. The lack of knowledge and resources will play a huge impact on this. If no one is willing to learn or understand it, then it would be pointless to implement such an amazing project.
Despite its considerable innovation, or perhaps because of it, the OLPC proj-ect has been unable to achieve its $100 targeted cost. The current cost of each unit is listed on the OLPC Website as $199 (www.laptop.org/en/participate/ways-to-give.shtml). However, this does not include upfront deployment costs, which are said to add an additional 5%–10% to the cost of each machine (wiki.laptop.org/go/Larger_OLPC),and subsequent IT-management costs. Nor does it include the cost of teacher training, additional software, and on-going maintenance and support. OLPC initially required governments to pur-chase a million units, then reduced the number to 250,000 in April 2007. Such large purchases are difficult to justify for governments in developing countries, and the requirement was ul-timately eliminated.
As amazing as this project sounds, there are limitations and funding that would be necessary and there is no data to back up governments in making a decision that may or may not be beneficial
However, re-ports from the classroom suggest that teacher training is limited, and willing-ness to adopt a new approach to teach-ing is questionable. Children are excit-ed but somewhat confused about the use of the machines, and educational software is lacking or difficult to use. Also, if a machine fails, it is up to the family to replace it or the child must do without.
According to Cuban, schools should be moving in the direction of technology and how we can adapt in the preservationist's scenario, we need to learn and how we can implement and keep improving. Here it sounds great, but the problem is that teacher and students would need to be trained on the technology and that is time and money.
OLPC pilots in a half-dozen countries report positive changes (such as increased enrollment in schools, decreased absenteeism, increased discipline, and more participation in classrooms), but it is not clear if these changes are directly related to OLPC, as many evaluations are neither inde-pendent nor systematic. Independent evaluations in Ethiopia and Uruguay cite a positive effect on the availability of learning material via the laptop but also problems with buggy input devic-es, connectivity, software functionality, and teacher training.8,12,
It would be interesting if the changes they saw were only made due to the OLPC or if the students were now becoming interested in school. Also, how effective are the evaluations since there usually is a bias in them.
The XO laptop developed by OLPC reflects hardware innovation in the power supply, display, networking, keyboard, and touchpad to provide a durable and interactive laptop (see the figure here). The shell of the machine is resistant to dirt and moisture, with all key parts designed to fit behind the dis-play. It contains a pivoting, reversible,
I was wondering how the XO laptop would be built for different areas of the world and with limited resources in those areas.
dual-mode (monochrome for outside, color for indoors) display, movable rub-ber WiFi antennas with wireless mesh networking, and a sealed rubber-mem-brane keyboard that can be customized for different languages. For low power consumption and ruggedness, the XO design intentionally omits all motor-driven moving parts. It was developed jointly by the MIT Media Lab, OLPC, and Quanta, a Taiwan-based original design manufacturer, and is manufac-tured by Quanta in Songjiang, China. The software for the XO consists of a pared-down version of the Fedora Li-nux operating system and specially de-signed graphical user interface called Sugar. It was developed by the project to explore naturalistic concepts related to learning, openness, and collaboration.
Nicholas really took everything into consideration for this. This is the future of technology and it has different languages so students could potentially learn English if needed or practice another language.
OLPC is a nonprofit organization providing a means to an end—an end that sees children in even the most remote regions of the globe being given the opportunity to tap into their own potential, to be ex-posed to a whole world of ideas, and to contribute to a more productive and saner world community”
This would change educaiton in the remote communities.
Our analysis draws on diffusion-of-innova-tion theory, exemplified by Rogers,18and illustrates the difficulty in getting widespread adoption of even proven innovation due to misunderstanding the social and cultural environment in which the innovation is to be intro-duced. We also bring to bear specific insights from the literature on adop-tion of IT in developing countries,2,25using them to analyze the OLPC experi-ence and draw implications for devel-opers and policymakers.
Many cultures are unfamiliar with technology and even if they were the problem lies with electricity or internet connection. If we look at the Amish culture, majority of Amish do not use electricity or have internet, but if we look into poor countries in Africa, electricity might only be used for an hour or two during the day and then you run into the internet problem and not every family can afford that.
OLPC created a novel technology, the XO laptop, developed with close at-tention to the needs of students in poor rural areas. Yet it failed to anticipate the social and institutional problems that could arise in trying to diffuse that innovation in the developing-country context.
In theory this sounds great and Brown and Thomas would be proud of this, but the reality is funding for the project and yes it might become a great project, but districts need money and more money to purchase new ones as they become dated or broken.
Most people working in this area are driven by an underlying belief that digital technologies are—in some way—capable of improving education.
This is why a lot of teachers teach, they also want to improve education. This is why USF has the program we are in. We all want to explore and help make things better and easier on the school system.
It is important to note here that I am not arguing for the adoption of a dogmatic blanket negativity towards education and technology. In its purest sense, pessimism still allows room for an acceptance that specific things are getting better
I like how this is worded. If one goes to a school and asks teachers how they feel about technology in the k-12 classroom, you might get a groan from teachers. This is only because we are always told to implement it but no one can actually tell us what to use and how to use it effectively. Teachers know it will get better, but how and when are the questions most often asked.
Thus at one level, the pessimistic educational technologist is simply one who adopts a mindset that is willing to recognise—and work within—the current and historical limitations of educational technology rather than its imagined limitless potential.
Does this mean that were ignoring social inequalities as in the sense of working around them and finding a solution? Would any of the instructional technology authors agree with this? Would this include others such as the DOE, colleges and universities, elementary, middle and high schools? How can we adapt this mindset and then implement it into our school system.
Instead, there are a host of often overlooked critical issues and themes that need to be brought to the forefront of any contemporary discussion of educational technology.
Selywyn makes a great point here. What can be done, what are the critical issues and how can we overcome these critical issues.
In other words, educational technology scholarship should look beyond questions of how technology could and should be used and instead asking questions about how technology is actually being used in practice.
This is everything. There are multiple resources that can be used but are they being used effectively? How can we combat this? What can be done to implement technology effectively?
For instance, just why do most digital technologies remain at the periphery of many people's educational lives? Why has there been no educational ‘killer‐app’ or ‘game‐changing’ technology that has transformed learning along the open, mass‐participatory and convivial lines that we are continually being promised? Why does a clear gap persist between the rhetoric and the reality of technology use in education? All these questions are based around challenging prevailing presumptions of the technological transformation of education.
As a former teacher these were my thought exactly. Polk County school board pushes teachers to use technology in the classroom but they do not give appropriate resources for it except 3 tablets and 2 classroom computers. It is up to the teacher to figure out how to use it. Some schools have a program that is used, for example, my school used Smarty Ants, but the research was not there to see if students actually improved or not.
All I am advocating is that educational technology is approached from a position that expects nothing—a position that is not be to confuse with the nihilistic position of wanting nothing or even the sceptical position of knowing nothing.
Does this mean that as future educators we shouldn't expect much in the realm of tech? According to previous authors that we have read, the future of education is in technology and how we should use it and learn how to use it effectively in and out of the classroom.
Connected learning addresses the gap between in-school and out-of-school learning, intergenerational disconnects, and new equity gaps arising from the privatization of learning. In doing so, connected learning taps the opportunities provided by digital media to more easily link home, school, community and peer contexts of learning; sup-port peer and intergenerational connections based on shared interests; and create more connections with non-dominant youth, drawing from capacities of diverse communities. We also offer an approach to learning, design and program building that can expand the opportunities afforded by a changing media environment while minimizing the risks.
This is relevant to learning right now. Schools are closed and all learning in online. The surge of online learning was used for colleges for remote learning or distance learning. The struggle with distance learning as I have learned in my distance learning class with professor Hatten, is that there is a disconnect between being in class and being able to participate vs online. Boettcher, in her book, talks about the struggle of online teaching and how hard it is and explains how as educators and students, we can overcome the struggle of it and create more of an engaging classroom. Boettcher continues to talk about how to create a classroom discussion that is engaging and prepares the teacher to ask the right questions to create meaningful content.
Young people today have the world at their fingertips in ways that were unimaginable just a generation ago.
Buckingham had stated that teens would turn to social media to help create a different hangout space. This had led to many teens and adults turning to social media and having everything at our fingertips to constantly keep in touch and create quicker and faster communication.
the teens we inter-viewed throughout the United States regularly told us that engaging with social media is important for developing and maintaining friendships with peers.
Previously in the article it had stated that teens did not have a safe accessible public space to hang out, if that is true, then teens would need to rely on social media to keep in touch with their friends. Though, this is also how young adults are keeping in touch too.
n the 1980s, the mall served as a key site for teen sociability in the United States (Ortiz 1994) because it was often the only accessible public space where teens could go to hang out (Lewis 1990). Teens are increasingly monitored, though, and many have been pressured out of public spaces such as streets, parks, malls, and libraries (Buckingham 2000). More recently, networked publics have become the contemporary stomp-ing ground for many U.S. teens. Just as teens fl ocked to the malls because of societal restrictions, many of today’s teens are choosing to gather with friends online because of a variety of social and cultural limitations (boyd 2007). While the site teens go to gather at has changed over time, many of the core practices have stayed the same. The changes we are seeing today are a variant of these core practices, infl ected in distinctive ways as youth mobilize social media
Ortiz states that the only place to hang out as teens socially in the US was at malls. Lewis stated that it was only accessible public spaces that teens were able to go hang out, but was this just malls? Could it have been playgrounds, parks, restaurants? Buckingham stated that teens were pressured out of public spaces such as streets, parks, malls and libraries. If people are pushing teens out of somewhere safe to hang outside of the house, then of course teens are going to meet their friends online.
Much of what is written and discussed about educational technology is, therefore, more a matter of faith than it is a matter of fact.
a lot of research has not been done on the ways that teachers are using tech in their classroom so its a leap of faith vs matter of fact
14 | CONNECTED LEARNING
This. Families are turning to different ways to give their children a better education than they had. Yet on the other hand, schools are focused on testing and more testing to see where the students are. The main problem is the no child left behind. By the time they child gets to that point, they are already so far behind;.
The articulation of connections in social media serves three purposes. First, these lists operate as an address book, allowing participants to keep a record of all the people they know. Second, they allow participants to leverage privacy settings to control who can access their content, who can contact them, and who can see if they are online or not. Finally, the public display of connections that takes place in social network sites can represent an individual’s social identity and status (Donath and boyd 2004)
This goes back to the Myspace days where you have your top 8 friends. Now facebook has the top pictures where you can put pictures of you and your friends so everyone can see who your friends are. This hits home.
Young people in the United States today are growing up in a media ecology where digital and networked media are playing an increasingly central role. Even youth who do not possess computers and Internet access in the home are participants in a shared culture where new social media, digital media distribution, and digital media production are com-monplace among their peers and in their everyday school contexts.
This is where our new generations are coming into as well as the millennial generation. This is how we grew up and how our future children will be brought up
13Fourth, all the above trends are leading to the phenomenon known as “Pro-Ams”. Today young people are using the Internet and other digital tools outside of school to learn and even become experts in a variety of domains. We live in the age of “Pro-Ams”:amateurs who have become experts at whatever they have developed a passion for (Anderson,2006; Gee,2008;
We have access to learn about anything at the tips of our fingers. It is so relevant in todays world. If someone has a question, you can just google it and have an answer in less than 20 seconds.
Third, digital tools are changing the nature of groups, social formations, and power.
This has shifted our way of thinking and belonging.
More and more today, people do not have to play just the role of the spectator. Since they can now produce their own music, news, games, and films, for example, they can participate in what used to be practices reserved for professional or elite musicians, film makers, game designers, and news people(Shirky, 2008)
This has created new careers and jobs out there.
igital tools are giving rise to major transformations in society. These transformations are crucial to the NMLS. First, digital tools are changing the balance of production and consumption in media. It is easier today for everyday people not just to consume media but to produce it themselves. Everyday peoples—not just experts and elites—can produce professional looking movies, newscasts, and video games (thanks to “modding”) and many other such p
This is everything. This transformation has created so many new jobs that just 5-10 years ago we didn't think would be possible.
eople can be “manipulated” by media and can “manipulate” others with media. It is often relevant to ask whose (vested) interest is served by a given media message and to wonder whether people mistake whose interest such messages really serve, for example, an ad whose message really serves the profit motives of a company but which a consumer can mistakenly take to be in his or her best interest.
The simple power of the media.
here are many different social and cultural practices which incorporate literacy, so, too, many different “literacies” (legal literacy, gamer literacy, country music literacy, academic literacy of many different types). People don’t justread and write in general, they read and write specific sorts of “texts” in specific ways and these ways are determined by the values and practices of different social and cultural groups.
THIS. What exactly defines literacy? Is it the classroom? academia? work place?
People learn a given way of reading or writing by participating in (or, at least, coming to understand) the distinctive social and cultural practices of different social and cultural groups.
Our school system varies by state but also by country! We all learn at a different pace but learn towards the same goal.
While the traditional model of learning has been grounded in the concept of “learning about,” the idea that knowledge is something to be studied and accumulated, new theories of learning have begun to understand the affordances in the networked world that privileges notions of “learning to be,” the ability to put the things we learn into action, often within the context of an epistemic community or community of practice.
This goes back to learning is something that has to be studied but that isn't true. We learn everyday. We learn something and put it into action. An example would be taking an alternate route to work due to traffic and the using that route when there is too much traffic on your main route to work.
If the paradigm for learning in old media is a notion of direct transfer, the question that interests us most is “what does a theory of learning look like for collective, social, and participatory media?”
This. What is the outcome. How will this affect us in education and later in life? They are right. If we change one thing or one theory how will relate in the future?
What we are 2witnessing now, with new media, is a second transformation, marked by a shift from interpretation to participation (Jenkins, 2006). In just the past ten years, we have seen that change happen throughout the world of journalism, with news itself first being seen as factual, later being seen as interpretive, and with the emergence of the blogosphe
This emergence of technology within the classroom as well as the workplace.
nsmission of knowledge. We want to suggest that now even that is not enough. Although learning about and learning to be worked well in a relatively stable world, in a world of constant flux, we need to embrace a theory of learning to become. Where most theories of learning see becoming as a transitional state toward becoming something, we want to suggest that the 21st century requires us to think of learning as a practice of becoming over and over again.
Our schools are slowly going this way.
This ability to access or locate information is undoubtedly important; yet the skills children need in relation to digital media go well beyond this. As with print, they also need to be able to evaluate and use information critically if they are to transform it into knowledge. This means asking questions about the sources of that information, the interests of its producers, and the ways in which it represents the world, and understanding how technological developments and possibilities are related to broader social and economic forces.
Children no matter their age need to be able to understand process the information they are given. They need to be able to find it, read it, and apply it. This not only applies to research online, but via text as well.
provides a fairly clear and succinct example of this approach: ‘media literacy is the ability to access, understand and create communications in a variety of contexts’. Access thus includes the skills and competencies needed to locate media content, using the available technologies and associated software.
Depends on where they are accessing the technology. Is this using books? Can this be literacy in using a computer program?
Many educational conceptions of literacy tend to define it in terms of a set of skills or competencies
This is how the school system defines literacy
suggest that children lack the skills to evaluate online content, let alone create it.
children tend to be innocent and are sometimes unaware of what they're watching is inappropriate. This goes back to parents and what they allow their children to watch
main exception to this is in the area of gender, where anxiety about violence in computer games and the evident gendered split in game-playing uptake provoked huge debate. The statistics cited here about the gendered nature of game playing break down to confound popular expectations that game playing is an exclusively male preserve. Bryce and Rutter (2002) argued that discussions about the nature of gendered game playing tend to focus on game content rather than looking at the factors that might determine specific gender-related pleasures and motivations, and they concluded that game playing is more evenly spread across genders than is commonly supposed.
There is a stigma that boys or men commonly play more video games than girls do, BUT if you have ever looked into Twitch Streaming which is a video game streaming service, there is a higher male presence than female.
he attribution of blame to the media, and computer games in particular, bore scant relation to the facts. This was not an isolated example of poor press coverage but a classic displacement whereby problematic cov- erage was made to take the blame for complex social events.
People are still looking to blame video games. The major issue here is mental health awareness. The media saw an opportunity to blow something out of proportion and took advantage of it, but like the article says, this is not the place nor the time to discuss it.
This only enhanced the view that the study of computer games represents a classic "before and after" opportunity to explore the impact of a new media technology in terms of both the changing nature of youth and childhood and the effects of globalization.
I think that this also relates to the generation of video games. We weren't necessarily born into video games, we had adapted to using them vs the current generations which were born into having either an xbox playstation around.
. Because we tend to regard young people as vulnerable subjects, research has tended to concentrate on showing how young people can be susceptible to media culture (e.g., Kline's, 1993, study of children and the marketing of toys within the wider media and commercial culture).
This follows the trends of what is popular an example is the new iphone releasing and everyone loses their mind over it. The media plays a big role in this.
In recent years, concern with violence as an effect of exposure to the media has seen a definite swing toward an interest in the role of media in influ- encing consumption--as me
This relates to the theory that video games increase violence in children. Yet, majority of parents are not monitoring what games their child is playing but they still want to hold the game companies accountable.
As with the introduction of mass literacy in the 19th century (Barker, 1989; Luke, 1989), the introduction of each new medium (radio, film, television, and finally the Internet) during the 20th century has been accompanied by anxiety about its imag- ined effect on less educated, "vulnerable" social groupings.
I found this interesting because they used the word anxiety, but it is true. When we look at Japan they use tech almost every single day. When you compare Japan and the US, we tend to be behind in technology. Then when we look at 3rd world countries, we tend to be shocked that they are so far behind compared to what we use everyday.
I am goingto explain it to you once again, give you somedrill and practice until you have mastered it, andurge you not to make this mistake again. . . .
This goes back to repetition, trial and error, and practice. All effective methods of teaching
This highly prized value of making teaching andlearning efficient is historic and, when harnessedto electronic technologies, unrelenting. The lureof productivity—teaching more in less time forless cost—can be traced back to the origins of pub-lic schools in the early 19th century and has beena consistent goal for schooling ever since
I feel that is always the goal everyone has, more teaching less time teaching it. Is there a way to achieve this? I don't think so. Teachers are effectively teaching in the ways they know how to teach. Should we start plopping children in front of a computer and let them learn that way?
They want schoolswhere such knowledge is shared by all membersof the community; schools where diverse mixes ofadults and children work easily together in variedgroupings. Hence, interactive computers and tele-communications are mind-tools that help studentsgrasp concepts, use all of their senses, and practicewhat they have learned creating self-directedlearning communities, according to such advo-cates.
This would be a great concept to put into place, but its not a reality. Technology is not always there and there is a sense to learners using and creating what makes sense to them.
First, there is the drive to bring schools techno-logically in step with the workplace because of thefear that students will be unprepared both to com-pete in the job market and adjust to the changingmarketplace where bank teller machines, barcodes on products, answering machines, and otherelectronic devices prevail. The computerizedworkplace and the ubiquity of telecommunica-tions in daily routines outside the home have con-vinced advocates of modernizing schools thatstudents must become familiar with electronictechnologies. Computers, in other words, are thefuture and schools must prepare students for it.
I feel that they contradicted themselves in this paragraph. When they listed the job market and adjust to the changing marketplace, they listed technology that schools do not use or teach. Then at the end of the paragraph, the author said that computers are the future. I feel that there is a real disconnect between the two here.
The supervaluation of the abstract blocks progress in educa-tion in mutually reinforcing ways in practice and in theory. In the practice of education the emphasis on abstract-formal knowledge is a direct impediment to learning-and since some children, for reasons related to personality, culture, gender, and politics, are harmed more than others, it is also a source of seri-ous discrimination if not downright oppression.
This can go back when separate but equal was rampant in education and Brown vs. Board of Education was taking place. The case talks about how the black and white classroom was separate but equal; BUT when you look back on it the white classroom was superior than the black classroom. The students who were African American had used and falling apart classroom materials and the white classroom had brand new things. Yes you can still learn but who was harmed the most in the learning process.
Bricolage is a mecaphor for che ways of che old-fashioned traveling cinker, the jack-of-all-trades who knocks on the door offering to fix whatever is broken. Faced with a job, the cinker rummages in his bag of assorted tools to find one thac will fit the problem at hand and, if one tool does nor work for the job, simply tries another without ever being upset in the slightest by the lack of generality.
I really found this interesting to read. I found it nice to have a word for it, well a metaphor at least. I feel that this ties into the classroom where we will always teach with what we have on hand. We will always make due with what we have. This can also tie into the theory of affordance right?
If children really want to learn something, and have the opportunity to learn it in use, they do so even if the teaching is poor. For example, many learn difficult video games with no professional teaching at all! Others use Nintendo's system of telephone hot lines or read magazines on strategies for games to find the kind of advice for video games that they would get from a teacher if this were a school subject. Moreover, since one reason for poor instruction is that nobody likes to teach reluctant children, the constructionist route will make teaching better as well as less necessary, thus achieving the best of both worlds.
I know there is a learning theory for this and I can't remember it, but children will learn and do as they wish, same for adults. We are always learning and eager to learn something new.
It is to be read on a more ideological or programmatic level as expressing the belief that the route to better learning must be the improvement of instruction-if School is less than perfect, why then, you know what to do: Teach better.
I LOVE LOVE this. You can teach all day everyday, but unless it is effective, it won't happen. This is why teachers are constant learners.
Formal learning requires special access to ordinary things, on the one hand, or, on the other, easy and dependable access to special things made for educational purposes. An example of the former is the special right to operate or dismantle a machine in a garage. An example of the latter is the general right to use an abacus, a computer, a book, a botanical garden, or a machine withdrawn from production and placed at the full disposal of students.
Does this tie into the theory of affordance from last week?
the very face of the earth has been modified by man. The layout of surfaces has been changed, by cutting, clearing, leveling, paving, and building. Natural deserts and mountains, swamps and rivers, forests and plains still exist, but they are being encroached upon and reshaped by man-made layouts.
The way man has changed an object into something that they need to use.
Why has man changed the shapes and substances of his environment? To change what it affords him. He has made more available what benefits him and less pressing what injures him. In making life easier for himself, of course, he has made life harder for most of the other animals. Over the millennia, he has made it easier for himself to get food, easier to keep warm, easier to see at night, easier to get about, and easier to train his offspring.
How deforestation started. Right now I'm thinking of Australia and those idiots who set a forest on fire without thinking of the consequences of animals and humans losing their home. Not thinking about the future, only themself
o our accustomed way of thinking, technologies are seen as neutral tools that can be used well or poorly, for good, evil, or something in between. But we usually do not stop to inquire whether a given device might have been designed and built in such a way that it produces a set of consequences logically and temporally prior to any of its professed use
I would like to go back to early 2009 when the iphone first came out. It was a huge thing to everyone to have the latest iphone. Now the new iphone releases and its like cool Apple released a new phone. I feel that if you didn't have a certain phone or laptop it wasn't cool. Go into any classroom and you have a mixture of what type of phone everyone has.