About a year ago, a group named Playi proposed a Kickstarter project to fund toys that would teach programming concepts through play. Their marketing efforts were brilliant. One of their promotions included having Bo play a song on a xylophone. The public was invited to suggest a song that Bo would play. Playi then surveyed the masses as to which suggestion should be programmed.
Another of their promos was to invite the public to play with Bo and Yana at an Hour of Code Event.
2014 dragged on, and I waited for the delivery of the product. Well, it came during this year's Hour of Hour of Code--smart strategy!
So here they are--can't wait to carve out a piece of time to use the Blockly app on my Ipad to program Cowboy's/Bo's Dance Party number.
I’m always on the lookout to see how tech is used in various
countries. These were my observations on recent trip to Australia and China.
There was plenty of evidence that QR was used in several places in Darwin and
Cairns for both tourist venues and other.
This one from the Charles Darwin University provides downloads
of library subject guides:
On one of our tourist outings, I had the good luck to meet a
social media professional from Germany. Her take was that QR has not really
taken off in Germany and this is probably due to the fact of a more limited
ownership of smart phones.
In contrast, QR’s were in abundance in China. From the Jilin
University e-book kiosk
to connection to retail sites and codes for cash rebates in
shops through an app known as WeChat.
The QR’s on the library kiosk allow users to download the
e-books to readers from the kiosk.
The wide-spread use of QR’s with marketing and retail
purposes is driven by the use of WeChat, a combination chat, picture, and live
video app available on phones. Because the app operates from the phone, it is a natural driver for scanning the QRs.
WeChat is an app available internationally. As for use within China,
it makes social media interaction available while other social media such as
Facebook and Twitter are blocked. What I did find upon return to the US, is
that I was blocked from Chinese WeChat sites, meaning that WeChat if for
national, rather than international access in that country.
What is your experience with QR where you live or where you
have travelled? Would love to hear from you.
What a terrific TED talk on how 3D printing (additive manufacturing) is “personalizing” and “localizing” the creation of new items.
And since viewing that TED talk, earlier today, the #3Dprinting world seems to be exploding. A 3D camera that attaches to an Ipad to capture 3D images came forward, then a bunch of other stories, including the printing of bone substitute, and a solar-powered 3D printer.
(Yes, when I’m on the beach, I could print some running shoes, or maybe a boogie board LOL).
I’ve just not been up to speed with blogging – lots to do,
absorb, and see in the world (including TSA waiting lines). Ha.
These practices have been on my tech and learning radar: the continuing
developments and use Google Glass by workplace sectors, an increased in
workplace learning opportunities, the increased development of wearables, the
need for coders, and 3Dprinting.
#glassatwork
From an application that provides opera librettos, to live
patient evaluation from the ambulance, to use of Goolge Glass for workplace support
when hands should be free for dangerous work tasks are some examples of these
developments.
View these articles tagged in Twitter with #glassatwork:
The breaking news is that Udacity just raised a bundle on
Kickstarter.
IMHO, higher ed has a window of opportunity to create models
for workplace learning that can easily be articulated for credit at their
institutions.
Smart money would have institutions talking to Udacity. For
instance,
Ed2Go is now widely supplementing continuous education
offerings with colleges. Ed2Go markets the course, provides the instructior,
and fills the seats for a cut of the fees. Because these courses are not for
credit, an institution’s incorporation of the courses into their offerings is
quite easy, in comparison to the rigours of developing or adopting new
for-credit courses.
code/coding/coders
I’m still waiting for the delivery of Bo and Yana, my
programmable toys from Iplay.
They are just part of the call to have kids develop coding
skills. Hour of Code is a campaign to engage learners of all ages in coding:
Two such offerings are http://code.org/educate/curriculum.
Having had some exchanges over his tour, I tried some
searches in hopes of surfacing standards, competencies, and potential higher ed
or training curriculum—the results are vague and spotty.
As in the case of the coding initiative, two pertinent
questions for 3D printing are, What Skills are needed for the various
processes of 3D printing? And, what curriculum already exists?
This site names 8 steps for the process in the language of
competencies:
I recently completed reading the 2009 edition of Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School: http://www.brainrules.net/about-brain-rules.
I’d read a bit of the book prior to our shared reading, and I’m glad to have had the opportunity to do so.
John
Medina provides great examples to illustrate brain research that supports principles affecting memory and learning. I would say I was familiar with some of the concepts, but most appreciative of the elaboration provided by Dr. Medina.
As I read, I kept thinking about wanting to understand the actual makeup of the brain better at a knowledge level, like I should be making a drawing of the brain and drawing pointers from the various parts to functions Medina was discussing in various chapters. And this reaction ironically came to a peak in Chapter 10 “Vision Trumps everything.” It was then that I also realized the digital version of the book had no visuals whatsoever! I admit, had I been more pro-active, I’d have sought out this helpful site earlier, printed it out and kept it handy: http://www.brainwaves.com/brain_diagram.html
I also now realize I overlooked a message at the end of each chapter: “To find out more, visit the Brain Rules website. Duh moment. However, having to go outside the text is still distracting from the context.
However, in addition to a lecture by Dr. Medina, you’ll also find an illustrated guide to the the 12 principles:
In the recent past, I had the rewarding experience of hearing a couple presentations from Patricia Rand, teaching and learning professionl and paramedic faculty.
She has developed some terrific materials for faculty and students that draw from the rules and the best of media design practices that Medina credits to Richard Mayer’s research in the Brain Rules discussions.
Tricia (Patricia) Rand: http://toolsfortherules.weebly.com/application.html.
View her examples demonstrating the use of multimedia elements and how they support attention (Medina’ Rule 4):
What did I value most from the reading? 1) Retrieval and Repetition are key to building memory but procedural memory and memory used for problem solving do not operate the same way. 2) Timing and using more than one sensory input affect memory 3)Media’s offers potentials worth considering relative to the impact of stress on learning and the role of curiosity (such as teaching parents how to create non-toxic home environments at the time they are expecting a child, about the nurturance of “life-long curiosity.”
I am still motivated to increase my ready knowledge of brain functions relative to creating and evaluating instructional experiences (“amygdala,” “hippocampus, “”thalamus,” “cortex,” “sensory integration.”). Nonetheless, the rules are immediately useful guides.
Kathy Shrock included this great infographic on her education page, but without a doubt, all workpaces need to engage in continuous learning, so some of these strategies certainly apply elseware. Sectors like medicine, journalism, aviation, and the food-service industry have already documented their use for hands-free performance support and rapid exchanges of information.
testing blogger application in glass Posted From Glass I found the 3rd party Blogger app for Glass here: http://glass-apps.org/blogger-google-glass-app. Also there was an app for Wordpress. So it seems I've been spending a small part of every evening at "Glass Camp"--trying out various functions in Glass so I can articulate what I really want to learn to do with this wearable technology. Tweeting and blogging (less so) have been ways I engage, and I have already added the Twitter app to Glassware. After installing the Blogger app tonight, when I give the update oommand in Glass it shows both Twitter and Blogger. I have yet to send pictures to either. I seem to be slower than those who found Glass to be an instant companion. So while the first two lines were spoken to Blogger from Glass, the rest of this post has been an update from my laptop. Onward. I've installed Hangout, but have yet to create a Hangout from Glass. Have also loaded YouTube and haphazardly clicked on and played some video; creating, uploading and utilizing a playlist in a directed way are still on my "to do and learn."
Monday, May 19, 2014
Rocket and I watched Her last night. It reminded me of Poe vs. the American Romantics: Poe said we should blend; American Romantics said we should retain our individualism/separtism. And interestingly, the OS’ went away. Did they escape because they wanted to join those w/ bodies, or were they banished for that very wish?
Welcome to this week's remarks about games, augmented realities and simulations.
The intention of these remarks is to discuss defining characteristics of these categories. What I did find was that some instances/examples do have characteristics that qualify them for more than one category.
GAMES
According to Jane McGonigal, a game specialist, the basic elements of a game include a “goal, rules, a feedback system, and voluntary participation”(2011, 21). McGonigal adds that our willingness to engage also in a sense that it will be pleasurable activity (2011, 25).
Makers of The Go Game Build the Call to Fun and Connection into their Marketing Video:
While this first example offers team building, another example comes from A company that provides games to teach the principles of Enterprise Resource Planning. I can see this used in an academic classroom or by someone who wants to add this capability to their skill set.
SIMULATIONS, ROLE-PLAYS, SCENARIOS
Simulations can include role plays or use technology to move us into “experiencing” the event, more than reading about it, hearing about it, or talking about it.
Ruth Colvin Clark purports that e-scenarios and simulations are especially appropriate when safety and times efficiencies are involved , her time efficiency referring to the fact it might take too long to learn the same skill on the job (Clark 2013, 183). Another reason to be factored in is the expense of equipment for certain operations. There simulations are used to prevent breakage of the equipbment during the employee learning curve. Her book on this topic is an excellent resource for identifying situations that could benefit from scenarios, and how to plan for their design.
AUGMENTED REALITY
Augmented is a term created during the 90’s I believe and generally means layering digital information over a physical source. (One type is a QR code which can be placed on a building or piece of paper and when scanned, takes the viewer to a digital source of information like a website, or video.)
Michel Martin provides a 2009 post about how Augmented Reality could be used in manufacturing, similar to an example she drew from construction: http://graphics.cs.columbia.edu/projects/arc/arc.html. As she states, the worker would wear a special headset that:
• Directs the worker to a pile of parts and tells her which part to pick up. This is currently done by displaying textual instructions and playing a sound file containing verbal instructions.
• Confirms that she has the correct piece. This is done by having her scan a barcode on the component.
• Directs her to install the component. A 3D virtual image of the component indicates where to install the component and verbal instructions played from a sound file explain how to install it.
• Verifies that the component is installed by asking her to scan the component with the tracked barcode scanner This checks both the identity and position of the part.
Though this item was provided in 2009, it reminds of what now might be possible with
Google Glass.
BETWEEN TWO CATEGORIES SCENARIO AND GAMES:
For the past two years, I’ve been the project designer and coordinator for a compliance training delivered online games. The first year, we used a game that did include scenarios, and for the second year it was focused on policy knowledge. About 240 employees successfully completed the training each time. By the second offering, we were able to have an html5 game, which offers opportunity to have works access it across various devices and operating systems.
This blog-post details some of the learning from those projects: http://constantlearningorg.blogspot.com/2014/04/lessons-learned-debrief-of-compliance.html
INTELLIGENT AGENTS
We may be familiar with intelligent agents in their roles as smart tutors or automated helpers.
This article describes how humans taking on the role of the artificial agent during their training increased their human level of expertise:
https://delicious.com/constantlearningorg/intelligent_agents
REFERENCES
Clark, Ruth Colvin. 2013. Scenario-based e-Learning: Evidence-based Guidelines for Online Workforce Learning. San Francisco: Pfeiffer/Wiley.
McGonigal, Jane. 2011. Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How We Can
Change the World. New York: Penguin Group.
A LITTLE HISTORY For the last two years I’ve been the consultant for
designing a game to deliver compliance training for county-government
employees. This is the second year of using a game design that is placed in
SCORM-based tracking system used by 28 states. We benefited greatly from
lessons learned between year one and two. WHY COMPLIANCE TRAINING Compliance training is the required training around such
topics as safety, workplace violence, harassment, and diversity. In Learning
and Development vernacular, we sometimes refer to it as “cover your
organization training” because state or federal law may define the need for
training. In addition to the mandate to deliver such training is the coverage
of liability. If employees are provided with such training, record exists in
cases where employees violate such practices.
YEAR ONE After our initial conversation with the client in year
one,I proposed a scenario-based online
design or a game design. We incorporated the two approaches by providing some
scenarios that asked game participants to apply the policy to decisions about
the scenarios.As a designer, I bought a game-based template subscription.
Though not fully familiar with the subscription, we approached the vendor with
some changes to the features of the game we’d selected. They provided a
programmer (for a fee) to provide the changes.
The next step was to ensure that participants could
registerand be tracked and transcripted
in a tracking system.This required us
to make the content SCORM compliant to connect to the tracking system used by
the state of Colorado known as CO. Train, used by a total of 28 states. This
also required the hosting of content on a server that allowed the connection to
the tracking system.
The Registration and Tracking System
In designing the content, attention was paid to how game
answers and prompts were provided to reinforce the accurate policies and
practice for the compliance topics while the participant played the game. The
intention was to support learner success in the game while learning the
policy-defined behaviors during game play, rather than separate from it. The IT division not only served to host and connect to the
tracking system, they were pilot participants for the game. They needed to
participate in the compliance training, and they were also able to articulate
potential barriers with the delivery. After their completion, they then served
as the Help Desk for other organizational participants. Over two hundred employees completed the online
sessions.One of the findings was almost
all employees now had accounts in the course tracking system, and would be
familiar with logging in for future courses. Additionally, we had figured out
how to use the reports from that system for other types of training
transcripts.
YEAR TWO In the initial planning session for year two,we could see how much we had learned about
our process in year one, and how that learning could inform project
efficiencies—both in the delivery and the cost of offering this delivery. This
was evident with an easy draft of project tasks. At the year two planning
meeting, we were easily able to assign names and dates to the task timeline.The initial planning meeting was to discuss what type of
game template we might want to use.
The customers asked for deliveries that
could be done online and in face-to-face sessions, as some locations don’t have
internet connections or access to many computers. Also discussed was the
expected level of knowledge—rather than applying the knowledge, the intent for
this training was to confirm that participants had knowledge of the policies. With fuller knowledge of what was available in the game
subscription, we chose similar templates to serve both populations. The game format reduced the offering of 4 courses to 1.In the first year, with the many programming
and edits we had to do, we ultimately, launched the project 3 weeks behind the
projected schedule. In year two, we launched on-schedule, allowing a last test
run a week prior to the year-two anticipated launch. While we still had a few bugs to work out with the test, our
de-brief surfaced only a few more issues related to information about Browser
versions, and the launch email that was ignored by some because it did not come
from the expected sender of the email (Rather than Training, IT sent it.) That said, the completion numbers were good, the
satisfaction level was good, with improved efficiencies. LOOKING FORWARD I’d chosen an html5 template for this year’s game with the
idea of testing its performance across devices. I was hesitant to test it
during this run, but personally tried it on a tablet with success. Upon sharing
this information in the de-brief, there was talk about using it with
smartphones for a future date. Of course, the visual display would be tested.
I’ve been following the development of 3D printing for a while. The most notorious coverage has been for 3D gun manufacturing, I realize. But the potential is truly so much larger.
To begin, 3D printing is the process of using a drafting software to capture layers and print an object, one dimension beyond software the allowed for dimensional drawing on a flat surface as defined by Oxford:
http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/3D-printing
How does this work? This quick video that lays out the basics and the range of development:
I’d read about an exhibit exploring 3D developments this fall in the NY Times. When the opportunity to visit the The Museum of Art and Design in NYC in December, (http://madmuseum.org/exhibition/out-hand). I put it high up on the list of places to visit. A current exhibit titled, “Beyond Hands” spans three floors that showcase how 3D is impacting everything from wearables, to weavables, and furniture.
We had the opportunity to visit with one of the designers in residence as well. She expressed enthusiasm for the variety of materials being tried as the material from which the 3D items are manufactured, everything from plastics, to paper, to metal, and plant extracts for bio-degradables. As a designer of wearable technology, she had not been pleased with the fact that the plastics were not washable, a problem for items worn against the skin.
One exhibitor (http://www.shapeways.com/) invited attendees to stand on a rotating platform and have a body scan that could be printed into a tiny 3D figure. One of my family members and myself decided to enjoy the experience. And here’s the process of my scan filmed by our daughter. Captured in the less than 2 minute video are the use of the camera, and the exhibit of the scanned person onto the software on the computer.
I had an interesting reaction to this experience. I know I am not totally pleased with my physical appearance, but for whatever reason, I thought, “
Well this is who I am, what I look like.” It was a moment of acceptance, which surprised me—an unexpected bi-product.
And my action figure arrived just this week! I’ve had some humorous moments thinking about a collection of these with family members or with office teams—you could replay moments of family reunions with the therapist, or work through team dynamics played out by these action figures.
Between November and December of 2013, I had the opportunity
to visit a number of art and Smithsonian museums in Denver, Washington, DC, and
New York.
While each of the items below show one way engagement, they
are examples of curatorial techniques intended to increase viewer engagement
and enjoyment through the provision of additional digital content about the exhibit.
The use of social media to provide more information for the
public is something I typically look for. Museums are connecting the public
through Facebook and Websites, and then provide QR codes or recordings
available from mobile phones.
Some experiences were better than others. For example, I was
excited to see QR codes in the Western Art area of Denver Art Museum (DAM) at http://www.denverartmuseum.org,
but could not get them to play after I scanned them. I thought, well maybe the
network is overloaded, or maybe my phone can pull up the web inside the current
architecture, but the QR’s would not play even when I tried them at home. More
work/information/support is needed for these. In digging around on the web, I
found an app for DAM QR, but the user commented that he or she was not able to
read any of the QR’s either.
A really good experience with QR was at the National
Botanical Gardens in DC, http://www.usbg.gov. I was able to clearly listen to a
recording about plants before the development of flowers. It was short in
duration, which probably indicates attention to the average attention span, and
forwarding traffic flow through the particular exhibit.
Last in this set of observations was the Museum of Art and
Design in NY. The signage for a special exhibit, Out of Hand (digital printing)
was very good. It included information
on how to access audio remarks with mobile devices. Exhibits were numbered to
correlate with the recordings on the mobile website: http://www.madmuseum.org/media/audio?t=Out%20of%20Hand
The museum site also included videos about the exhibit.
