LearnLand Experiment

by Elliott Masie via Learning TRENDS

To help our collective learning along, The MASIE Center's Learning CONSORTIUM has invested in the creation of a Sandbox we are calling LearnLand. This will allow us and our organizational learning colleagues to experiment with how a virtual world might be used by learners, trainers and organizations.
...
We are "building" a variety of office structures, a retail structure and even some manufacturing layouts, all virtual, in a 3D World. (Second Life) We will experiment with putting live and avatar learning resources into these spaces and evolve design and engagement models.

Build a virtual environment and then wait for someone to create a learning situation to be used in the environment. I think this is the WRONG order of how good learning package/design can come out. It seems to me that Elliot is falling into the trap of technology-centric rather than learning-centric. OK, Elliot's is an experiment, but I still think he is promoting a wrong example.

My first question will be to ask why we want to replicate the real world in a virtual world. One of the answers may be: to provide a safe environment for people to experiment and test out.

In a later update of Learning TRENDS (#363 ), one of Elliot's reader raised an issue:

Were the discussions of learner's in a classroom dialogue about a topic like sexual harassment or manager competence "off the record" or "on the record"? How much safety could one of her trainer's give to the learners about their disclosures? If one of them talked about a time when they might had done some less than appropriate things, what were the implications?

If the discussion of sexual harassment (in fact any workplace related issues) had taken place in a virtual environment in the form of role playing, this would not have been an issue in the first place. The learners were experiencing and acting out in the protection of a persona and it would be clear that any discussion related to such issues were made in the roles the learners were playing.

So, we have established a case for creating a virtual environment. The next question I would ask is what sort of environment. Would that be "3-D virtual environment" or "imagined reality" environment? What are the relative merits of choosing anyone of these?

We have argued

that while rendered environments can contribute to learning, they are often too shallow for purposes such as fostering strategic thinking and problem solving. In such cases, non-rendered virtual worlds may be better in using and fostering the required imaginative capacities of learners.

Am I opposing 3-D virtual world? Definitely not! In League of Worlds 2 conference, a group of researchers and partitioners will be exploring the theme "Playing and Learning in Virtual Environment". (There are still a few places left, if you want to join, contact me or Roni Linser.) I will be reporting on the conference in that week. Please stay tuned.

Tags: virtual learning environment

Proof of Learning: Assessment in Serious Games

by Sande Chen and David Michael

From the game designers' view of point:

Games and game technology are poised to transform the way we educate and train students at all levels. Education and information, skill training, even political and religious beliefs can be communicated via video games. But these games and repurposed game technology, collectively called "serious games," have yet to be fully embraced by educators.

and slightly further on

the education strategy of "teaching to the test" clearly identifies to the student what is important to learn and what can be ignored just like in-game scores do in entertainment games

Oops. Just like educators who are typically lack of insight into how games have engaged millions, game designers are also having a wrong view of the current education strategies. We would be the last to admit that all the teaching is geared towards tests. Yes, we do what gets measured, but the strategy is not to teach for being measured well.

I believe one of the greatest insight come from Sivasailam Thiagarajan, or more commonly known as Thiagi. From August 2005 issue of PLAY FOR PERFORMANCE

The scoring system in a game determines what is measured (and rewarded). By modifying the scoring system, you can influence what is learned.

In a simple game like this 5-player game:

In this game, the players choose a key phrase (example: simulation game). Each player writes down different words by selecting and rearranging letters from the key phrase. (Sample words from the key phrase, “simulation games”: sin, mule, steam, animal, gasoline, magnate, and limousine) At the end of a time limit, the players compare their lists.

Thiagi came up with 14 different ways of scoring, each emphasising a different aspect of the game.

Assessment should be designed within the game, as part of the scoring mechanism. Be creative. This is a whole new game anyway!

Tags: game learning

IP: I am confused

The recent arguments on copyright, patent and IP rights have confused me and messed up with my layman understanding.

Here is my understanding of the issue, please, PLEASE, correct me if I am wrong.

Copyright is automatically assigned to the creator for a manifestation. The ideas behind the manifestation is NOT protected.

If you want to protect your idea, there are two ways to do so:
1. as trade secret - do not tell anyone. If you do, that's your problem and the secret is out for everyone who gets to know it to exploit it.
2. as a patent. You tell people of a particular jurisdiction how you have done something (the method) so that you don't need to protect your secret. In exchange, the law grants you a right to exploit your own idea exclusively for a definite period of time within that jurisdiction. However, the law does not grant you the right to exclude someone else finding an alternate method of doing the same/similar thing. Obviously, the law would not be applied outside of the jurisdiction.

Here is my interpretation of this understanding.

The creation of a writer is the assembling of words into paragraphs and work. The manifestation is the "assemble". Note that the writer does not own the manifestation of the assemble of "word". Writers use the word commonly available to them as well as to everyone else. Writers do not have exclusive right to use any word. Since the copyright is given to the writer for the manifestation, when the writer dies, shouldn't the right be reversed and the assembling of these words is now owned by the general public?

A writer may grant a publisher a right to "publish" the work. The manifestation done by the publisher may be in the form of a book. That's should be protected by copyright as well. So, no one should be allowed to "reproduce" the book.

However, the writer granting the right to the publisher may not be exclusive. The writer may also grant the right to another publisher, who must produce another manifestation, in order not to violate the copyright of the first publisher. So, as long as the book is in different format, different pagination or any way significantly different from the first, the second publisher will have the copyright of the second manifestation.

Of course, the first publisher would have acquired *ALL* rights from the writer to protect his investment. So, what does this "ALL" mean? I suppose that would mean all the known ways of exploiting the author's work. Should it include those yet-unknown way of exploiting the work? I don't agree so.

New way of exploiting a work is by itself an invention, protected by patent or by trade secret. Patent, implicitly, involves only the method.

So, I may later discover that I can read the work, record my reading and exploit my audio recording. I, most likely, should ask the author for this right. If the author is dead, or when the copyright expired, I should be free to do so. Among all the rights the first publisher has gotten, this new right should not be included because without someone discovering that the work can be exploited in that way, that right would have no value. As implied by transfer of any right, there is a compensation. Without the ability to evaluate a future yet-unknown way of exploiting a work, there is no evaluation on the right linked to that way of exploitation and hence is NOT transferred to the publisher.

The fact that I have recorded a work, whose copyright has expired, should not exclude anyone else doing another recording. I am protected by my own copyright that people should not be able to exploit my manifestation (ie my recording). But my act of recording should not exclude anyone else to do so.

A new way of exploiting a work should not extend the copyright period of the work as well.

Here is something I cannot understand.

Say an author has created a character (in a novel say). In what ways can the ideas that supported the character be protected?

1. Copyright? No, because copyright only protect the manifestation of work. So, if the character is protected by copyright, anyone else should be allowed to use a specific combination of the few words that make up the name in their own work. The name of a character is only a few words combined in a special sequence. That would not represent, to any reasonable test, a significant portion of the work.

2. Trade secret? Bad luck. It's out and it is out.

3. Patent? Should such patent be granted in the first place? What are the distinguishing characteristics of that character from any other character? OK, as described in the work. Fine. Then any use of that name, deviated from that described in the work is NOT infringing on the patent!

4. Trade mark? My understanding of trade mark is a special symbol to represent a product (and with extensions). A character may be trademarked. That would mean a special graphic representation of the character, either its name or some other thing. However, Trade mark does not exclude people using the word that make up the make. When I say, "my windows are broken", Microsoft(tm) cannot sue me. Although they have trade marked a specific form of the "Windows", they don't own that word.

Can I use "Mickey Mouse" in my work? It seems that I cannot. I don't understand!

Tags: IP issues

"you can't blog this"

by zephoria

So, i've gotten used to friends telling me that i can't blog something. And teachers. Professors always stare me down and say that i can't blog something that they said.

[my emphasis]

The rest of the post, and some very intelligent comments, focussed on the relationship of blogging and publishing.

I am surprised, and very surprised that teachers and professors are concerned about someone else blogging about the content of their conversation.

I know the dual role a professor has: as someone interested in helping others to learn AND as a researcher. In the researcher role, it may be of concern for "leaking some research secret" unintentionally during conversation. I can put up several good reasons why the researcher may not want someone to blog about something related to some research results not yet ready for wider consumption.

For teachers and professors, the latter in the role of teacher, I really do not understand why they do not want someone to blog about the conversation. Knock! Knock! Is teaching really equate to the shuffling pieces of information across?

Tags: blogging learning

GeoPocket: A classroom tool for the GameBoy generation

by ANN ARBOR via Educational Technology

Using hand-held computers in the classroom isn't entirely new. Other devices have been used as "clickers" to allow students to respond to simple yes/no or multiple-choice questions and then compare their answers with those of their classmates.

So, what is new? [my emphasis]

if [lecturer] is discussing why the Earth is colder in northern areas than around the Equator and explaining that it has to do with the angle at which sunlight strikes the planet, students can fiddle with an animated diagram, dragging a cartoon flashlight to make it shine on a surface at different angles. As they drag the flashlight, the solution to an equation that describes the relationship shows the effect.

In another GeoPocket exercise, [lecturer] asks students to point out, on a map on their screens, the primary sources of the world's oil supply. Their answers are recorded centrally, and the students can click on "Show All Answers" to see their classmates' responses. The answers can also be projected for the whole class to see. The professor can then use that information as a jumping off point for a class discussion.

If I have read the news correctly, the "newness" is the integration of specialized software with the course and such software, I assume, is delivered to the hand-held within the lecturer hall.

I would question:
1. Why hand-held? This is not the best form factor to process great amount of information and I believe developing software for this platform has more limitations (due to the small screen size and limited processing power).

I suggest the software should be browser-based. This would not have to be limited to a particular platform and hence can leverage on any existing computing equipment a student may have.

2. The first example in the quote is a specialised software, almost custom-make for that particular lecturer. I doubt how sustainable that may be once the funding runs out. The second example seems to be a better. I suppose maps with hot-spots are very generic which can be used in different courses.

3. I have also pointed to some real time collaboration software which may also be useful in such classroom.

Tags: learning technology

A child's view of tomorrow's learning

by Godfrey Parkin

Godfrey commented on an US Departments of Commerce and Education recently commissioned study which explored how K-12 school-goers views on technology for learning. I think I have read the report before, but it is good to look at it again.

I share Godfrey's comment that the views expressed in the report from this digitally savvy group is

bland and unimaginative, almost status quo, not at all the kind of creative or exciting thing that kids should be coming up with. It sounds like something a committee of adults would produce one evening over tea and biscuits.

Godfrey further speculated that

this report appears to be written by those who only see what they want to see and can only understand that which fits their current frame of reference

or

kids can’t visualize what they can’t conceive

Either way, I think the US thinkers who really care about their country should take concern of this.

If it was the report writer's filtering which created this, and the government takes that as a blue-print, the funding to learning technology will be biased. If the kids are that unimaginative, the future is bad.

See my imagination for how I would like to work in the near future. The technologies are here already, just waiting for someone to integrate.

Tags: learning+technology

Digital Native

Laptops, iPods: are they friend or fiend? - Chee Chee Leung, the Age (Australia) by Ray Schroeder

Tara was four years old when she started using a computer. By age six, she was introduced to email and accessed her first website, barbie.com. Now aged nine, Tara is an example of what has been dubbed the "digital native", whose natural habitat features computers, the Internet and video games. "As I grew older I became more attached to the computer and I can type faster," the grade 3 Xavier College student says. "It's been a part of my life."

The other night, I was reading in my study when my daughter was online chatting with her friend. I heard the keyboard sound. I thought I am a fast typist. Oh, I don't think I am not a fraction of her speed.

She usually stores her contacts on her mobile. Occasionally, she needs to find someone else. She goes straight to whitepages.com.au. The dead tree version of the white pages? Our last year version is still in its plastic wrap!

That's digital native!

Tags: digital native

Games & Learning

by Josie Fraser

Look like a very interesting post which I should follow up when I have time, especially the many links to Nesta Futurelab. This also serves as a place holder for myself. :-)

Tags: games learning

Survey questionnarie design and delivery

Best practices in questionnaire design by Godfrey Parkin

This is a good check-list of creating good questionnaires.

I would just add two comments about the mechanics of creating and delivering a questionnaire.

1. Anonymity and confidentiality need not be mutually exclusive. In the case of a value-laden questionnaires, such as promotion-related teaching evaluation, we need to ensure no tampering of survey data both by students AND lecturers involved. We must ensure that only students involved can submit and only submit once in order to avoid biasing. We also need to ensure anonymity to the students through an open process which anonymity is provided by the process without relying on any trust. (I have implemented such a system, but details have to remain with me. If you require such a system, please contact me for references and demonstration.)

2. Web-based data collection seems to be most economical way of collection survey/questionnaire data. One of the greatest problem of this is the tedious task of creating the questionnaire, especially if you are a frequent user of survey. Choose a survey data collection provider who can provide you with re-use ability of your survey.

Tags: online survey

Recent Posts in my other blogs

Here are some of the recent posts I made in my other blogs:

Conversation With My Evil Twin

English Language Test for New Australian Citizen

the choice of language is political and economical. Once upon a time, England has been strong and have colonies all over the world. Now, US is economical strong and they speak a dialect of English. But if we are talking about change, we should look into the future and find out what would be good for our citizens or countries in the future
...
The problem is in the assumptions of the debate question. I am afraid it will give the wrong impression of Australia going back to a "white policy", and that English-speaking people has a supremacy over non-English speaking people. The world is now about multi-culture and cultural diversity. I suggest Australian should keep it that way.

Asynchronous Collaborative Learning Activities

Spontaneous Groups

That got me thinking. Should we assist the students to organise their groupings (and that in a way will interfere with natural process)? or should we just leave it for them to occur naturally?
...
I find this quite similar to the discussions of "formalizing informal learning". Once you formalise the informal learning, is it still informal learning? How would this process interfere with the original informal learning's effectiveness?

Collaborative writing tool - writely, writeboard, wiki

With both writeboard and writely free (at least for the time being), teachers can get their student so write collaboratively. Hey, remember to give them more time because collaboration takes more time, but definitely will improve the quality of the work. This is also an experience students will need as they enter the work place in the future.

Real time collaborative notes taking

If you have Internet connection in your lecture room, your students can take notes collaboratively. :-)

Norway's public broadcaster sells out taxpayers to Microsoft

By Cory Doctorow of BoingBoing.

There is no much point in repeating a post from a blog which has much larger circulation than mine. However, there is one point I want to make from an e-learning angle.

The value of the content being locked up could be more than the value of producing the content in the first place.

Some content's initial value has relatively short life-span. An example in case is the stock market quotes. Years ago, stock price on the spot was very expensive. A day-old data only worth the price of a newspaper. However, the aggregation of the stock market data takes on a complete different value. In this case, the older (or the more comprehensive) has more value.

Some newspapers publish their daily news free. However, they charge for access to archive of previously free news articles.

From a learning point of view, the availability of the content is only as good and useful as the need of having the content immediately at the time you need the content. In some situation, it may be "just-in-time" to meet the need of solving a problem at hand. At others, it may be "just-in-the-right-mood" when your curiosity brings you to that content. It is about the "flow", the continuity of experience when dealing with an aggregate of content. You may be doing a comparative studies. You may be following the life events of a person.

Media enrich the experiences, most probably in the second category above. It is very difficult to associate a value of providing that "flow" of experience. After all, missing a particular piece, among many, may not even seem to worth the effort to count. The problem is, you may not know what you have missed and how vital, or otherwise, the missed part may have modified the experience!

According to the post linked to by BoingBoing,

Microsoft Media Centre Edition was chosen because it is the first media centre to be released in a version for the Norwegian market.

and more importantly,

Based on the experience from this service NRK will explore possibilities for adding support for systems like Apple Front Row, Mediaportal, MythTV, Beyond Media and Meedio.

I can see a business case here for Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation to release its archive of content immediately for Windows Media Centre Edition. It is about the value of being one of the first to release such collection AND make them available to their citizens immediately, compared to lost of that value when the release is delayed to allow the potential value creation by Norwegian software houses.

We just hope that other versions will follow.

On another slightly different note: BBC has plan to release its comprehensive document. [quoting from BoingBoing again, my emphasis]

...most excitingly, it describes a free and open Creative Archive intended to provide Britons with access to the material in the BBC's vaults for free viewing, remixing and reuse.

If it is about global access and about global domination, limiting the use to the Britons is against that objective!

Tags: experience and content

Einstein's Big Idea

This is a website about one of the greatest minds in human history. via Internet Scout Project.

There is a teacher's guide in the website which I don't particularly like. Out of the three activities, you may look at the Physics Quest and forget about the other two.

Can you guess why I called myself "Albert" as my English name?

Tags: content

Top down or Bottom Up

10 days ago when I was at the "Advancing ADL through Global Collaboration", I was with a group of international learning technology standards participants (SP). As I was watching, hearing and participating in discussions about global learning technology standards, I started to reflect on the differences between a top-down approach to global interoperability, as typically represented there in the forum and the current bottom-up movement as promoted by the active participants in the blogosphere (BP) such as Stephen Downes, George Seimens, James Farmer etc, just to name a few.

There are, of course, complete different philosophical preferences between the two groups. While the SPs are claiming pedagogical neutrality of the technologies, the fact is, they are NOT. AND, more importantly, SP fails to see the implicit pedagogies embedded in the learning technology standards they are creating. BPs, on the other hand, are pretty open and straight forward about the pedagogy that a particular approach is embracing. For example, George Seimens does not shy away and is actively promoting "connectivism" as a learning theory. I am actively promoting online role play simulation!

I don't think I ever see a post about describing learning design in a universal way pomoted by BPs (reporting of such development are many!). SPs promoted EML as a notation for learning design. The work done by LAMS Foundation has received wide-spread support. Personally, I think it is a wrong approach. When we try to compare musical notation and education learning activities notation, we are not using a fair analogy. There are very established science in sound and music thoery. Today, educationists are still arguing how to teach, or how to help people learn. In fact, I have to be careful to say "teach" and "help people learn" in order to please both sides of my readers. We are also starting to learn more about how our brain works. Designing a learning activity notation language is pre-mature at this stage. Even if such a notation does exist, the implement of a software system to support the full scope of EML will be a huge monolitic application. The BPs, including myself, are promoting a distributed learning technology strategy. If we want to implement software to preform some pedagogical support, it would be better for such support to be distributed.

While learning technology standards development is "voluntary", the fact is that these are people doing the standards development as a full-time job, supported mainly by government funding. People participating in blogosphere, mostly, have a full time job and maintain their blogs at their own time, or as a part component of their daily duty. (This is my speculation and I cannot produce any evidence to support my observation!) It would be difficult to predict which approach is more financially sustainable. If learning technology standards remains political important and continues to attract long term funding commitment from the supporting government, it seems that these people can continue to fly across continents for meeting for quite a while. On the other hand, BPs are subjected to the shift of interest of the people involved. Some will come in, other will leave. From the development and the increase of blogs related to education, we are in an upward trend (well, the whole blogosphere is expanding anyway!).

Interoperability is a top requirement in SPs. It seems to me that the BPs are more focussed on distributing good ideas and leave it to whoever pick that up to implement in their own way. Diversity is a top requirement.

IMHO, interoperability should be achieved by protocol, not by standardising on the format of the content. Of course, the payload of any protocol is still content, what I mean here is that we should limit the learning technolog standards development to a supporting layer, which will support the "upper" pedegogical implementations. Learning technology standards should NOT concern with the payload standards, rather at an efficient underlying connection technology to support whatever that is put onto it.

One more observation I may make here is that SPs are more focussed on formalised learning/training whereas BPs are more towards informal and life-long personal development.

Any comment? Welcome!

Tags: learning technology standards

They know a lot...

Mike Currie sent me this. pizzafutures.swf (author unknown. please identify yourself for your good work.)

The operator may know more about you than you may think. Enjoy.

Tags: fun

It is very rude to restart your machine automatically

I used an Windows XP (among other machines). This morning, as I was reading a document, the machine started to shut-down automatically and then restart.

What the hell!!

After re-boot, a little notice from the Microsoft told me that the automatic update has downloaded an important patch and the machine needs to be restarted -- after the fact.

Microsoft, given its wealth and domination, no doubt thinks that it owns the world, including every machine on which their software was installed. Can they just ask what the user is doing and/or at least give the user a chance to save the work first?

I also noticed that Google indexer runs only when the machine is idling whereas Microsoft's indexer runs even if you are executing computational intensive tasks.

Is it an organisational culture difference, or is it the difference between a teenager and an old man? (Google about 6 years old whereas M$ is 30)

Architecture of virtual spaces and the future of VLEs

via OLDaily

Scott Wilson's powerpoint slides contrasted the controlled, closed environment of a LMS with an free, open Personal Learning Environment (PLE).

I like to add another environment into the mix - a virtual rehearsal/practice space.

While PLE enables learners to model learning to more realistic environment, or even participate in real environment during learning, there are situations whereby such participation is very expensive (pivots need to learn how to land an aeroplane when there is crippled landing gear ), dangerous or morally unacceptable.

At a more personal level, at critical events, we rehearse. (Think wedding rehearsal...) We also do that for speeches, presentation, etc.

For complex political environment, students can learn through political role play simulation.

Tags: virtual learning environment

Melbourne Declaration

The key agenda of "Advancing ADL through Global Collaboration Forum" I have been attending in the last few days is to find out a way to take up the stewardship of that thing we generally call "SCORM". In preparation of the discussion, Neil Mclean and Robby Robson have put forward two discussion papers, linked respectively to the authors' names.

It is clear in the discussion that it is NOT the intention of the US Department of Defence funded ADL Initiative to give up SCORM and its related technologies. Rather, it is a way forward to further advance the vision of creating a global interoperable infrastructure for advanced distributed learning.

Three meanings to the term "ADL" need to be clear to understand the "Melbourne Declaration". ADL may refer to the US Department of Defence funded ADL initiative. The term may also mean the vision and/or infrastructure of advanced distributed learning. Yet another meaning may refer to the community which supported, adopted and have given input to the vision. At this point in time, it was agreed that the what as in "Stewardship of What" referred to in Robby's paper should be deferred. Instead, the discussion was focussed on creating a sustainable global stewardship.

The final and official declaration is not available yet. Here is what I have taken down as the discussion progresses:

The US Department of Defence sponsored the Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL) Initiative in 1997 with the goal of enabling of the highest quality education and training, delivered any time and anywhere (ADL processes). The ADL models are now widely adopted in many different contexts and sectors for the implementing technology-based learning on a global scale.

In celebrating the achievement, the Melbourne forum, Advancing ADL Through Global Collaboration, endorses the following points as a means of creating and maintaining the momentum for the further international advancement, development and deployment of advanced learning technology initiatives:

• Scalable sustainable and global infrastructure is of critical importance in fulfilling the many visions for teaching, learning, education, training and performance support.


• Global interoperability, based on open standards, is key to achieving the vision.


• An international collaborative approach will optimise the advancement, development and maintenance of this infrastructure


• Current ADL community has provided some of foundation stones for building this infrastructure.


• The continuing involvement of the ADL Initiative will be critical to any collaborative venture.


• The forming of a global stewardship is an effective means to achieve the above.

Actions

• An international stewardship organisation shall be established and become fully functional within a three year period.


• The ADL Initiative in collaboration with international community will convene, as soon as possible, an interim working group to develop a planning framework and timetable for the creation and commissioning of the proposed international stewardship organisation.

Tags: Melbourne declaration, SCORM

CORDRA, Federated Search, Subject Gateway & Repository

In 1999, Ip et el wrote a paper "Metasearching or Megasearching: Toward a Data Model for Distributed Resource Discovery" looking at searches based on free-text and web crawling, and depth searches using metadata harvesting across multiple repositories. These are alternate/complementary ways of information discovery. Different methods fit different purposes. In 2001, the group followed up with another "Resource Synergy" paper which looked at the value proposition of specialised collection of resources, called subject gateway at that time.

Subject gateways exist to meet the resource needs of their communities of interest. They tend to place a higher value on returning quality resources than general search engines - however we may interpret 'quality'. The value of any SG is in finding more efficient and effective ways to build, index and facilitate retrieval from special interest collections sifted or culled from the massive underlying search space. This sifting and culling depends on the domain knowledge of the SG owners. Such domain expertise is hard to find and replicate in general purpose search services.

As time goes by, it turns out that the value proposition of subject gateways is not sustainable and eventually SGs faded out. Instead, we are seeing a lot of locked repositories where the resources are put behind password protected walls. However the value proposition for collaboration among SG now applies to repositories as well, hence the idea of federated search. Since most repositories are community-based and metadata enabled, apparently it makes sense to based the federated search on metadata. Metadata, based on schema developed to meet specific needs of a particular community, have great difficulty to map among each other. A solution is proposed within the ADL/SCORM community, CORDRA:

(Content Object Repository Discovery and Registration/Resolution Architecture): An open, standards-based model for how to design and implement software systems for the purposes of discovery, sharing and reuse of learning content through the establishment of interoperable federations of learning content repositories.

I took the opportunity at the "Advancing ADL through Global Collaboration" to ask Dan Rehak for a sample instance of CORBRA which I can play with without the need of a user name and password. After thinking for a while, Dan asked me whether I can read Japanese. Apparently the only available CORBRA instance which does not required a user name and password is a Japanese repository.

Business model aside, the value of a federated search is the trust that a user have on the relevancy and quality of the result returned. Federated search will NOT return thousands or millions of potential result. The value of federated search is the limited set of result with the "trust" associated to the result set. That's also one of the value-proposition of subject gateways I referred to earlier.

The relevancy of federated search is based on a smaller search space with well-defined and hopefully well populated metadata set. It also depends on the specificity of the search criteria that a user can put in. Assuming that the user is part of the community, that's is not a problem.

When we are tackling search problem among repositories, we are basically cross-searching (or mega search as used in the 1999 paper) among different community. The are different metadata schemas between different communities, obviously because each and every community will customize its schema to fit its own need and requirement. The cross-mapping (or cross-walking) between schemas are problematic. This will introduce a level of "fuzziness" in the return set of federated search. Hence I cannot buy into the argument that metadata-based federated search will consistently produce better result set. (Better in the sense of relevancy as "fitness for the purpose".)

I reported on Rollyo last Thursday. I don't know the ranking mechanism of Rollyo, but the search space of the result from Rollyo is limited to the nominated websites. This is where the "trust" of quality is exercised by the searcher.

Will Rollyo be a better alternate solution to federated search? Your call.

Tags: federated search

Information != Learning

At the "Advancing ADL through Global Collaboration", the first day of presentations seemed to focus on information and information management. We have demos of re-purposing S1000D (which is an international standard for technical publication utilising a common source database) data into SCORM training material and Cordra - a software which supports federated search.

I don't think there is anyone in the Forum who would say that "information" IS "learning". So, why is the skewed emphasis of information management. Afterall, ADL stands for "advanced distributed learning", so shouldn't we be talking more about learning, or distributed learning? We are implicitly equating information, or information delivery as learning?

OK, here are people interesting in "learning technology", or should it be "learning-enabling technologies"? If it is the latter, I would argue that the technology to support managing information is a key technology in supporting learning.

It is very important for learning technologists, me included, to remind ourselves continuously that we should not think we can teach because we have been taught. Airplane passengers can't fly an airplane, so people who has been students should not assume that we can teach, or help others to learn.

Tags: learning

Build your own social software free

According to the website:

Ning is a free online service (or, as we like to call it, a Playground) for people to build and run social applications. Social "apps" are web applications that enable anyone to match, transact, and communicate with other people.

Well, what is social apps? Again, according to the website:

Social apps are web apps made up of code and content that enable people to match, transact, and communicate with one another. Social apps can include listings, reviews, ratings, recommendations, discussion boards, photo sharing, social bookmarking, wishlists, events, people matching, maps, as well as many other features.

Look likes the Web 2.0 is coming, the second coming of Marc Andreessen?

Tags: free social application

Hard SCORM and Pocket SCORM

I am at Advancing ADL through Global Collaboration Forum today and next two days.

I saw a very interesting demonstration of "hard SCORM" and "pocket SCORM" by a PhD candidate from Taiwan, Mr Te-Hau Wang.

Hard SCORM refers to SCORM content printed on dead tree. What was interesting is the integration of book-based content with web-based content. By using a hand-held OCR reader (called Hyper Pen), a learner will scan the printed pages when she turns a page, she also scan on printed symbols on the paper to activate media which is delivered to the computer screen. Hey, who likes to read off long articles from computer screens? That's an interesting solution.

I remembered about 10 years ago, there was a "live book" project where bar-codes were printed at different places on a dead-tree book. User scans the bar-code to retrieve sound files from the computer, or indicates selection of answers.

Pocket SCORM is delivering SCORM content to small screen devices such as pda, mobile etc. In order to avoid scrolling both horizontally AND vertically, the content needs to strip of most graphics and re-flow in order to allow a single scroll direction. Nice!

Yes, he also presented "Video SCORM". The idea was to use television (digital televison) as the delivery platform. Learners can move between screens using a remote control. Is that edutainment?

Tags: SCORM+devices

SCORM Courseplayer

After putting down the project for a long time, I finally got around and updated the SCORM courseplayer.

Courseplayer will deliver SCORM-compliant courses on CD or DVD, or static web sites. Basically, I have implemented a light-weight SCORM compliant LMS using Javascript. The script will open the imsmanifest.xml files found in the SCORMcourse directory, read the manifest file and create a default table of content.

This pre-release version is totally compatible with SCORM version 1.2 (OK, I know it is an old spec, but it is the most highly adapted, right?). I have not implemented any sequencing engine and hence will not work with version 1.3. However, it does support the new APIs.

The pre-release version also supports the professional license (although the online license generator still needs some more work). With a license (put in the setting directory), the courseplayer will ask for a student ID at launch and proceed to capture any cmi data generated. The student should activate the [send data] before the end of the session and email the encrypted interaction data to the tutor via the email address in the license.

I believe this feature will be useful for supporting e-Learning in remote area where high-speed internet connection is still unavailable generally.

Tags: scorm courseplayer

Rollyo - your personal search engine

According to the website, rollyo allows you to create a search to sites which you already know and trust. Basically, rollyo enables a user to pick the sites that the user wants to search.

I have created a rollyo search here in this blog. On the right column, there is a text area just under "Search my blogs". If you type in a search term and click [go], rollyo will produce a result based on seaching my blogs only.

This can be very useful for creating customised "resources" in education sites for the minors. At the moment, rollyo limits the number of sites to be searched to 25. This is probably not enough.

Tags: rollyo

North South East and West

Leigh Blackall quoted a Google Chinese to English translation of the blog by Yoa Zhou. Let me try a human translation.

The blog title consists of two phrases: Freedom and being oneself.

Hi, lucky to meet you here. What a chance!,

An educational movement using Podcast.

A crash of civilisaton is being acted out in Iraq, what a human tragedy! East and West requires more exchange, so is North and South. Let podcast and RSS lead us towards freedom.

(Looks like a slogan, but this will do for the time being. May change it in the future.)

The mistakes in Google's translation is in this sentence: "Broadcasts the guest educates the movement":

"broadcasts the guest" is the reverse translation of "podcast". (Obviously podcast is a new term from the West. When it was translated back from Chinese into English, it became this funny form.)

"Educational (adjective) Movement (noun)" was incorrectly translated as "educates the movement". Here, the characters for "educate" should be used as adjective to describe the movement which follows. But the Google translator treated them as verb and hence became "educates" (the verb) the movement (the object)"

The rest of the translation is quite understandable!

CSS Swag: Multi-Column Lists

via Stephen Downes' OLDaily

The methods suggested in the "A List Apart" article are not very good. I like none of them. Here is a better one from www.csscripting.com. Check out the Test Case 6 which is what the "A List Apart" article is trying to achieve.

There is no clumsy and additional mark-ups needed for the list to work. Just link the javascript and the css.

Tags: multi-column list

Who is the mother of success?

My best friends, Kin and Kit are staying with me in the last few days.

Kit was a awarding winning teachers. She won numerous teaching awards in teaching Chinese in Australia and in Hong Kong. Kin just obtained his PhD. In fact they arrived immediately after the graduation ceremony.

Both Kin and Kit have just retired. Kin and I are working on an interesting project which will be revealed later when ready. Kit is working on a book project with the other award winning teacher Betty I mentioned some weeks back.

Our dinner conversation somehow wandered into asking what makes someone successful.

I always thought that it was failure because there is Chinese saying that "failure is the mother of success". Is that only a Chinese saying, any equivalent in other languages/cultures?

Kit said in her farewell speech delivered to her students a month back that in fact success is the mother of success. Small success gives us the motivation to continue to work and work harder, which leads to more success. The trick is to create small success to begin with and build on the sucesses.

It makes a lot of sense.

Many entrepreneur texts suggest people to think "big" and be pesistent. Venture capitalist wants the entrepreneur to stay focus and works on the single project whicih the capitalist supports. This last point I think is a bit selfish. While VC spreads their investment in multiple ventures, why do they want the entrepreneur to put all his eggs in a basket?

I think both of these suggestions are against the human nature. At least they are not the way I work.

I am motivated by success. It does not matter it is small or large. Success bleeds success.

I have been and still am working on multiple projects. Yes, I am spreading myself too thinly in some cases. However, many a time, the thinking that I put in one project produces new insight in other projects. I just need to have more time and more people helping me. Up to now, the major problem I have with my projects are that they are mostly solo projects. I changed that couple of years back and things are moving on nicely. There are still some projects I am still the sole owner. I need to clear them either by finishing them or by inviting people to join me to share the load and of course the fruit of success, if any. For the following two solo projects, I am now seeking interested partners:

www.snapsurvey.com - an online data collection platform, and
www.scormplayer.com - a CD-based mechanism for delivering SCORM-compliant courses.

Contact me offline if you are interested.

Tags: motivation entrepreneur

"Freedom to leave"

by Stephen Downes and various Blog authors including Derek Morrison and Christopher D. Sessums.

I was not at ALT-C in Manchester and I have not had the fortune to hear Stephen directly. Because of some hicups, the audio was not available too. So I have to make do with Stephen's powerpoint slides and the comments made by other bloggers.

Quoting from Stephen's slide directly:

In my view, the question of collaboration is a question of governance
[sic]
Are you free to leave?

[next slide]
The Lecture…
May be the form that (counterintuitively) offers maximal freedom to the audience
And hence, may be favoured by learning professionals (at least in their own learning) because it preserves this degree of freedom

Stephen raised a very interesting and important point in our process of understanding what is collaboration (not only collaborative learning).

Are we collaborating if I can join the work/discussion when I like and just walk away even without letting the other members know? (Indeed, is there a definition of the membership?) What will be the consequence on a collaborative activity given the presence of this form of "freedom"?

I question whether it is an issue of governance or an issue of mutual commitment to a mutually agreed objective or an issue of sharing of responsibility and task.

Closely linked to this question is the size of the "membership" participating in the collaborative effort and the scope of the collaborative effort.

On small scale, when the objective is clearly defined (and possibility also with a further constraint of delivering the objective within a fixed time frame), the mutual commitment to the tasks and the delivering of the responsibility will mean the "freedom to leave" is not an desirable option.

On the other hand, consider wikipedia as collaborative effort. One can put in a comment, change a few words of an article, write a paragraph or two, contribute a whole article or actually "runs" the project. Whether you are "free to leave" depends on the amount of responsibility you have committed to. In general, it is easy to leave a project if you have little responsibility or there are duplicated people taking up the task. It would not be socially acceptable if you leave an effort when you are carrying a huge responsibility on which the success of the project depends.

In collaborative learning, it is a collorary to conclude that you have greater learning effectiveness with greater participation.

I suppose a keen learner will not leave an interesting lecture, even when he has the freedom to do so.

Should we instead focus also on making sure the learning process (whether it is collaborative or not) is interesting, engaging and rewarding so that "free to leave", even when given, will not need to be exercised?

Tags: collaborative activity

Another way of looking at instructional design

by Jay Cross via OLDaily

If you don't have time to read anything else, don't read the rest of this post. Go and read the post itself.

Here are some highlight of the main ideas I resonate well with the article.

They [ADDIE instructional design model] box the design process into steps and deal with them one at a time. There’s no unity, nothing working together here. You finish one step and go on to the next. Like behaviorist psychology, there’s no emotion. People’s feelings count for nothing. It’s as if the workers being trained are robots or zombies. And what about the impact of what’s outside of the flowchart? These models don’t map to reality.

[sic]

As a landscape designer, my goal is to conceptualize a harmonious, unified, pleasing garden that makes the most of the site at hand. As an enlightened instructional designer, my goal is to create a learning environment that advances the organization’s mission by nurturing the growth of its people.

[sic]

In a knowledge economy, learning and work are one and the same. Here’s Peter Henschel again, saying “By sheer force of habit, we often substitute training for real learning. Managers often think training leads to learning or, worse, that training is learning. But people do not really learn with classroom models of training that happen episodically. These models are only part of the picture. Asking for more training is definitely not enough—it isn’t even close.”

Tags: instructional design

Economists lead the way in showing what’s wrong with college teaching.

by Lanny Arvan via XplanaZine

The idea that trained professionals in the field don’t know the fundamentals of the principles course is scary, but I’m guessing it is not that uncommon and I’m guessing it happens in disciplines other than economics. Look at me. I never took that principles course where opportunity cost is taught and I never took the intermediate course where presumably the opportunity cost idea is amplified and used extensively. And while I think my graduate education was excellent, it really helped me to think seriously about economic models, the language and technique that were used from the get go was meant for insiders in the field.

Lanny has articulated a typical problem about the industrial model of education when everything was designed in locked step. At certain time of the day, at certain year level, you are taught a particular principle. If, for whatever reason, you missed this lesson, that will be missed forever.

Tags: problem with industrial age education model ,

Communication barrier

This is a conversation between a user and computer support:

[User]: Hello, computer support?
[Support]: Yup.
[User]: I have a problem with my printer. It's jamming paper.
[Support]: OK, what type of printer was that?
[User]: an HP laserjet printer.
[Support]: and the problem?
[User]: paper jam.
[Support]: Can you open the door and clear the paper path?
[User]: It's the mouse. It is stopping everything?
[Support]: {..???} Is the cursor frozen?
[User]: {...???} No, it is not related to the screen. It is the mouse.
[Support]: {@#$% ... ???} Can you move the mouse?
[User]: I dare not touch it. It seems still alive.
[Support]: {@#$% ... ???} ... and ?
[User]: it is stuck there
[Support]: mouse? are we talking about the printer?
[User]: yes, but the mouse is stuck... it won't move...can't...jammed
[Support]:what mouse?
[User]: the mouse in the printer
[Support]:I mean physically go to the printer and open it
[User]: I did
[Support]:do you see the paper?
[User]: no,... it's a laserjet .... I'm afraid to restart because I might damage the mouse
[Support]: ahhhhhh.. you should still be able to open the printer box and see the paper jammed somewhere
[Support]: no point in restarting without clearing the paper first
[User]: I don't see any paper jammed
[Support]: can you see the full path of where the paper should go?
[User]: no. I just see the mouse

What is happening here? If you have not figured that out, take a look at this photo. (ps I got this photo from a friend. If anyone knows the source, please let me know.)

Context is everything.

Tags: fun , context is everything

Starting Conversations

by Will Richardson via XplanaZine

The post started by looking at the two sides of wiki and blogs:

the other half of the equation, the consumption of blog and wiki and podcast content by students and teachers.

The discussion obviously led to the validity and accuracy of wiki and blogs. Yes, students produced wiki and blogs are not necessarily the best sources of information.

On another note, I believe we should think outside the box when thinking about the use of wiki and blogs in classrooms. I believe we need not (should not ???) think in terms of information production and consumption (too much an information transfer type pedagogy). We can think of wiki as a collaborative environment for students to co-author an article. We can think of blogs as a mean for students to negotiate a common understanding of the subject matter. We should focus more on using the technology to support the learning process rather than using wiki and/or blogs to record the outcome of the learning. To this effect, we may state clearly to the students at the beginning of the term that whatever wiki or blogs which are created during the course will be deleted at the end of the term. Learning involves experimenting and taking risks. We don't want the writing that we left during our learning process to daunt us in years to come. We can also keep the wikispace and blogosphere slightly cleaner.

Tags: use of wiki and blog

Effects of video game violence

by Dave Munger of Cognitive Daily

In the last two days, Dave looked at two studies related to effect of violent video game on human attitude and behaviour. See Critiquing the video game violence studies and More on video game violence. In both situations, he went back to the original papers, looked at the data and noted carefully the conditions under which the data were collected. Here is his conclusion: [my emphasis]

Does Williams and Scoric’s data undermine that of Gentile et al., discussed yesterday? The two studies hardly intersect. The average age of Gentile et al.’s population was 13; Williams and Scoric’s was 27. Gentile et al. used participants’ own ratings to determine how “violent” the games they played actually were; Williams and Scoric preselected a game they had arbitrarily determined to be violent. Gentile et al.’s most significant result was a correlation of exposure to video game violence with physical fights; Williams and Scoric didn’t ask their participants about physical fights at all.
[sac]
psychologists have a hard enough time figuring out how people react to different colored squares. Understanding a complex social phenomenon like video games is not going to be a simple task, and making public policy based on that understanding will be even more difficult. Perhaps the best we can hope is for policy-makers — and the general public — (not to mention science writers) to understand that we’re dealing with a limited set of data, and to not put too much faith in any single study.

I think Dave's comment applies to educator's use of game as a teaching strategy. The data is just not enough to draw any conclusion yet. I still prefer to learn from the game designers rather than blindly use commercial games in our classrooms.

Tags: games

Using Google Earth in Classroom

If you have installed Google Earth, you can open the placement with Google Earth. It will add 13 places in your "Temporary Places". Clicking each will open with a window with some questions in Dutch. I don't know what are the questions. :-(

Tags: Examples , Google Earth

Evolution vs "Intelligent Design"

This hoax has been heating up lately in the blogosphere.

On August 19, 2005 Boing Boing put up a $250,000 (later capped at $1 Million) challenge

to pay any individual *$250,000 if they can produce empirical evidence which proves that Jesus is not the son of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

With a couple of law changes and sues (see here and here), and the endorsement by the President of USA (see news releases from Washington Post, BBC), the debate is really hot. (see New York Times "complete coverage of the evolution debate") By the way, God bless America!

via Boing Boing, here is how Daniel C. Dennett sees the start of the hoax:

"The proponents of intelligent design use an ingenious ploy that works something like this," writes Tufts philosopher Daniel C. Dennett, and author of Darwin's Dangerous Idea. "First you misuse or misdescribe some scientist's work. Then you get an angry rebuttal. Then, instead of dealing forthrightly with the charges levelled, you cite the rebuttal as evidence that there is a "controversy" to teach."

I am not interested in this kind of debate. My point is what should be the position of educators/teachers faced with this problem. Since education can be used as a propaganda instrument, our curriculum has been loaded, increasingly, with social issues, such as sex education, road safety, drugs problems.... Is is a role of the formal education system to deal with such social/political issues while the teachers remain so low in social status, pay peanuts and themselves not fully equipped to deal with such situations?

Tags: social responsibility of teachers ,

Blogger beware, you may be sued

via Contentious by Amy Gahran: Can Bloggers Be Sued Over Comments? Maybe

In a nutshell, SEO company Traffic-Power.com has filed suit against [Aaron] Wall,[who writes the SEO Book weblog,] claiming that comments posted on Wall’s blog revealed some of their “trade secrets.”

There is a long trace of blogs to read if you are interested. You can start with Intuitive System's SEO Book's Aaron Wall sued over comments on his weblog by Dave Taylor, or follow the suggested reading in Amy's post.

As of today, I am turning off all the comments. If you put in a comment, it will not be shown. So please keep a copy at your own website.

Tags: blogger liability

When there is a will, there is a way

via Boing Boing: HOW TO extract video from Yahooligans

This post details how to save a stream-video so that you can play as many times and make as many copies as you like. Just beware of the IP police.

Tags: DRM ,

Yet another "Play and Learn" article

By David Stonehouse (the Age, 27 August, 2005) [my added link]

... But when he expressed frustration at not being able to revive a dilapidated industrial area, the youngster's reply astounded him: "I think you need to lower your industrial tax rates."

Reflecting on that years later, Johnson could not help but think that if his nephew had been in some urban studies class instead, he would have been nodding off. If there was a moment that helped convince him video games can enrich young minds, this was one. "He was learning in spite of himself," [Steven] Johnson says.

Note, I am not against video games. What I am concerned is the wrong cause and effect speculated here. The power described here is NOT because of the game. The power is from the engagement (of the game) and if we can create the same engagement, then we can almost teach anything. The problem with game is that the underlying assumptions does not reflect the real world.

James Paul Gee, a pioneer in video-game research at the University of Wisconsin, says the field is still so new nobody can prove anything. "It shows that games can improve your problem solving. There is well-known research that they improve surgeons' hand-eye co-ordination and skills in surgery," he says.

It is true that the effectiveness of using games is a very young field and we shall benefit with more research. One thing for sure is that there will be more situations in which interacting with the real world will be done via game-like console, e.g. surgery. The future war may be fought with soldiers in front of game-like console pushing buttons.

Elyssebeth Leigh, a senior lecturer at the University of Technology, Sydney, believes in the power of video games, too. She says they teach children how to interact with technology. And they can help children experiment with the world around them in a safe way - and learn about choices, strategy, risks and consequences without leaving the living room.

I would like to correct Elyssebeth's statement to:

Video games can help children experiment with the game world (not the real world around them) in a safe way - and learn about choices, strategy, risks and consequences without leaving the living room.

There is nothing wrong and I encourage children to learn via imagined world or game world. However, better still, we can do that using role play (like Fablusi role play simulation) and simulations where the underlying model and assumptions are made with educational objectives in mind. Direct use of commercial game should NOT be the way to go.

Tags: game design , role play simulation design

google fight: Albert Ip Vs Stephen Downes

and the winner is .....


Hey, don't peek. Check it out yourself. Just click on the link :-)

Tags: fun