http://campustechnology.com/articles/2009/02/18/real-life-teaching-in-a-virtual-world.aspx
Summary: This article discusses possible of ways of using the game Second Life in an educational setting. The article mostly emphasizes combining different aspects of learning such as role-playing, collaboration, many others, and combining them all into one package. This allows students to have an experiential learning experience unlike anything else that we can accomplish. Second Life also allows educators to get together and collaborate together in an environment where no one needs to travel to see each other. Basically, Second Life allows a class to do everything they can do in a physical classroom and more. Students can get power point presentations, open links, copy entire lectures to word, and all for free too.
Reaction: I played Second Life for a bit last year so I'll add in my own opinion. First, I would hardly consider Second Life a game. Games have some kind of goal. Second Life is more like a 3d chat program like IMVU. While people do have fun there is actually a lot that goes into playing Second Life before they can actually start. Choosing a viewer, or user interface is important but a lot of the better ones have spyware embedded in them. It also takes a long time to customize an avatar. Hair specifically is extremely hard to customize. I also found it quite hard to find education communities in Second Life. The one I did manage to find turned out to be some type of sexual fetish community. Other than that I do think the article makes a fair point about all the advantages in using Second Life in the classroom. I believe that there would be too many obstacles in using Second Life for younger students though. I think this should be suitable for upper high school or college students. I also believe the best way to fully utilize Second Life would be combining whatever class you want to teach with a visual arts class because a lot of the customizable features in Second Life are created by normal people using scanners and Photoshop. Students who create items using this can also sell them in the Second Life store for game credits that they can use to buy various items that are also created by other users.
Harrison, D. (2009, February 18). Real-life teaching in a virtual world. Retrieved from http://campustechnology.com/articles/2009/02/18/real-life-teaching-in-a-virtual-world.aspx
Monday, February 14, 2011
Avoiding the 5 Most Common Mistakes in Using Blogs with Students by Ruth Reynard
http://campustechnology.com/articles/2008/10/avoiding-the-5-most-common-mistakes-in-using-blogs-with-students.aspx
Summary: In this article the author talks about five mistakes that are common when having students do blogs in the classroom. The first mistake is not contextualizing the blog correctly, or having students not understand what a blog is for and how it will enhance their learning. In this case, the main point of the blog is for self-reflection and thought process assignments. Mistake two is unclear learning outcomes. The teacher needs to have clear learning outcomes because blogs tend to help with higher learning processes such as synthesis and analysis. Not being able to utilize this effectively with a clear learning outcome will waste a lot of potential. Mistake three is misuse of the environment. Other people can comment on blogs but they cannot contribute like they can with a wiki. It is mostly published so that students can see their classmate's thought process and have that help guide their own thought process. Mistake four is not having a clear rubric for grading. Students need a clear idea of what they need to publish in the blog in order to benefit from it and not feel like they are being arbitrarily graded. The final mistake is inadequate time allocation. The author suggests leaving blogs available to write until the course is over so students that need more time to gather their thoughts can have it.
Reaction: I am not so sure about leaving the option to blog open until the end of the course. Some students may benefit but others may just choose to leave it until the last day and that means less students will be able to benefit from reading their classmate's work. Other than that this article seems pretty solid. Reynard seems to write a lot of technology articles for some reason. I would agree that a lot of these are common mistakes with doing blogs correctly. I'm sure if I just randomly said that students should start doing blogs about a certain subject I would get some who do it correctly, others who don't post anything, and others who turn it into some type of diary. Overall I think using blogs in the classroom is a good idea for certain subjects and assignments.
Reynard, R. (2001, October 01). Avoiding the five most common mistakes in using blogs with students. Retrieved from http://campustechnology.com/articles/2008/10/avoiding-the-5-most-common-mistakes-in-using-blogs-with-students.aspx
Summary: In this article the author talks about five mistakes that are common when having students do blogs in the classroom. The first mistake is not contextualizing the blog correctly, or having students not understand what a blog is for and how it will enhance their learning. In this case, the main point of the blog is for self-reflection and thought process assignments. Mistake two is unclear learning outcomes. The teacher needs to have clear learning outcomes because blogs tend to help with higher learning processes such as synthesis and analysis. Not being able to utilize this effectively with a clear learning outcome will waste a lot of potential. Mistake three is misuse of the environment. Other people can comment on blogs but they cannot contribute like they can with a wiki. It is mostly published so that students can see their classmate's thought process and have that help guide their own thought process. Mistake four is not having a clear rubric for grading. Students need a clear idea of what they need to publish in the blog in order to benefit from it and not feel like they are being arbitrarily graded. The final mistake is inadequate time allocation. The author suggests leaving blogs available to write until the course is over so students that need more time to gather their thoughts can have it.
Reaction: I am not so sure about leaving the option to blog open until the end of the course. Some students may benefit but others may just choose to leave it until the last day and that means less students will be able to benefit from reading their classmate's work. Other than that this article seems pretty solid. Reynard seems to write a lot of technology articles for some reason. I would agree that a lot of these are common mistakes with doing blogs correctly. I'm sure if I just randomly said that students should start doing blogs about a certain subject I would get some who do it correctly, others who don't post anything, and others who turn it into some type of diary. Overall I think using blogs in the classroom is a good idea for certain subjects and assignments.
Reynard, R. (2001, October 01). Avoiding the five most common mistakes in using blogs with students. Retrieved from http://campustechnology.com/articles/2008/10/avoiding-the-5-most-common-mistakes-in-using-blogs-with-students.aspx
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