Power Learners, #DavidBowie and Creativity

There is so much power in Learning. In the ongoing quest for creation, trial, error, and renewal. There is something mystic in those of us who keep on creating (learning) and exploring the new on top of the old. Heightened creativity inevitably leads to estrangement, and at the same time getting closer to pure understanding. Going out of every comfort zone, building on the immense knowledge and experience one has gathered during a lifetime, and then mold it into what only the minds eye can see, beyond the known. The learning process, in its full power leads to unknown territories, it makes us want to do, want to keep doing it, until the end of time.

The first time I saw personal, power learning, was when I was at a Picasso exposition in Spain. My mother has introduced me to Picasso's work early in life (we went to his atelier in Antibes, as we stayed nearby during our summer vacations), but I did not really feel related to much of his work (some exceptions). But then, in the attic part of the exposition, there were these seemingly endless erratic drawings of bulls.... just chaotic drawings. Again and again, trying to depict the perfect multiple viewpoints of a bull in a two-dimensional piece of paper. As I moved slowly passed these drawings (and at first with little interest) ... I suddenly was drawn into them. So I stopped. And started to look again. There it was. The master at work, for himself, by himself, relentlessly seeking something, sketching viewpoint upon viewpoint (those drawings were made at the end of his life). It suddenly became clear that this was not a drawing, this was a man at work. Dedicated to finding something, following a quest. For this to happen, fame, artistry... all of that was not necessary. Simply a dedication to a topic, for decades. Trying to find a clue in detail, that would explain the bigger picture. Power Learners seem to move beyond themselves, could it be said that they become the medium? Is there such a threshold, from where the personal learning journey for enrichment suddenly turns into the medium itself? Many artists have said at certain points that some work gave them the feeling of being more then themselves. They became the object of something invisible.

Power Learners have to keep creating: carpentry, engineering, programming, sculpting, writing, thinking, ... and of course making music. David Bowie seems to have done that, learning, power learning, and then moving beyond the sum of his learning. What a thrill that must be. Starting from a passion, and then becoming it. (picture: http://sloannota.com/blog/drawing-and-writing-with-light-2/ )

@AaronESilvers on the Vocabulary of xAPI and Implementation

To me xAPI stays one of the most exiting bits of Tech for understanding the learning experience of both individual and groups of learners (prior blogposts). The difficulty is to understand xAPI's mechanics, potential and reach. In come Aaron Silvers (the visionary behind xAPI) and Megan Bowe (the xAPI monger) with a nice set of slides that describe the vocabulary of xAPI, which are a set of simple words, but which definitions can be interpreted in different ways.

And after that set of words and wisdom, Aaron shared a slidedeck of 59 slides, illustrating what it takes to implement xAPI within industry or technological partners (questions for the team/tech partners, data alignment, todays adoption challenges...).

At the end of the industry/tech partner slidedeck Aaron also refers to the launch of the 2016 Data Interoperability Standards Consortium (DISC) with certification, workstreams, and a potential roadmap to implement xAPI. 

Here are the links to both xAPI slidedecks:

The Vocabulary of xAPI from Aaron Silvers

xAPI Making Sense of Industry and Practice from Aaron Silvers

#mLearn12 on #augmented reality with Elizabeth Fitzgerald

Live blogging from mLearn12, so writing and vocabulary is influenced by writing speed need...

Elizabeth Fitzgerald from Open University UK gives an overview of augmented learning state of the art. She looks fine as always and you can feel her passion for research as she gives her presentation.

What is AR
making the learning experience of a place more meaningful

current uses of AR
 sports coverage
retail/marketing
networking (augmentedU) or find somein in a crowd
aviation (head-up displays on wndscreen of plane)
training or task support
navigation
sightseeing e.g. outdour venues, museums and art galleries

defining technology-enhanced realities: virtual, mixed and augmented
fusion of digital information in real environment

AR, situated learning and embodiment
Situated learning
authentic: contextualized
use of tools to mediate contact with the world
Embodiment and embodied cognition (physical interactions with world help us to creeate meaning

other related research
ecology of resources
reality -based interaction
space/place (Dourish)

Classifying AR based on 6 projects using AR for mLearning
Dimensions used:
devices or technology used
mode of interaction
method of sensory feedback to the user (visual/audio/text /video)
type of experience (personal or shared)
fixed/static or portable experience
learning activities or outcomes

Criticisms and limitations of AR
Technical challenges:
GPS accuracy and registration errors
varying signal quality of phone networks/WiFi coverage
battery life of devices
viewing the screen in bright sunlight
using devices in the rain

Pedagogical challenges 
 learning not necessarily driven by the pedagogy
novelty of the tech may detract from the experience
ensure learning is not altered to fit around the limitations of the device
tech might be more engaging that surrounding environment (is the student removed from the real world?)
consider first the learning goals and objectives
reduction in observation skills due to excessive reinforcing/scaffolding

Issue: how can we make any educational innovation sustainable?
Is it a matter of time? Maybe this is one step along the way to completely integrated sensors etcetera for looking at the world? Increased hapticness, audio... or will this risk information overload => maybe we need to curate the augmented environment.

Do we need a new theory of augmented place? see E. Fitzgerald (in press - oct/nov 2012) Towards a theory ....
The slideshare of her presentation can be viewed here

Augmented reality and mobile learning: the state of the art from Liz FitzGerald

Business models for #gaming #medialearning2011

A panel of game developers who all shed their light on how they got their games funded/financed during the media and learning conference in Brussels, Belgium. It was amazing to see that the main route was via government funding (national). In-game advertising was not discussed (though would be interesting) and no corporate sponsors were mentioned either, though I can imagine that Disney would be interested in providing Disney land decors for an educational game?

Below you will find my transcript of what was said
Members of the panel: Lieve Achten (empowering via gaming), Balthazar Fernandez-Manjon from Universidad complutense de Madrid, spain (computer science background working on eLearning platforms and standards) and Swen Vincke from Larian Studios, a gaming company who built the fabulous MonkeyTales game to enhance math skills for all learners.
Getting money from the parents, as they want the best for their children.
Quickie on Monkeytales math for different ages, international (currently UC,US, Belgium, Poland... growing). The game adapts with an algorithm which enables the program to see how s/he good that student is, the program will adapt to the capacities of teh child in order to keep a motivational pace going that will stimulate the child and not demotivate it.
So even if you take it as an adult, the program will give you increasingly difficult challenges.

Which partners, main challenges for these funding partners
Lieve, works very low-tech so sponsorship for logistics (classrooms, providing students, ...) so she went to the ministry of education and youth to collaborate on this project. She got a lot of skeptical remarks on the 'serious game' idea.
She emphasizes the need to find out what language the different stakeholders understand, so diversifying your business and logic case.
At this stage the governments are more positive towards educational gaming.
Her games are aimed at disabled learners. The teachers are involved from early on (learning labs). The game starts from real life school content, translated to their own experience, then redesigning it towards a game. The teacher often get coaching roles, which the learners can connect to. Once the ball is rolling, it becomes easier to get funds. A game must also feel un-learning, otherwise, with too much pedagogy, the learners think 'get a life' and leave it.

Swen: governments are quite open to it, but frightened by the cost of building a 'real' game. The challenge is to put yourself out there against the competition, so you need research proof that the game HAS impact. So get research funds, manage the enormous amount of curricula. so you will need to be able to sell on the international market, this makes it depending on the curriculum standards in all these countries (quite challenging). you need to demonstrate that the kids will learn more by playing this game. But every algorithm takes years to develop, implement and evaluate. So time is an important factor. You also need to offer the learner a satisfying feeling, the game must deliver what it says it delivers AND without exploding in your face as you are playing it. So finding the strong common denominator with regard to public expectations. Strong surplus of gaming is memorization, by playing it again and again.Multiple disciplines need to be collaboration to get a game going.

Balthazar: problem to incorporate each of the stakeholders language to get positive results on your demand. You risk a deadlock if one of the key stakeholders stalls. The qualitative methodology of the game is also essential. The pedagogical end of the game is tricky, for educationalists come with a long list of learning needs. you need to combine all of the stakeholders concerns to get a high quality result that can stand the test of time and learning. Funding is also a challenge: ministry of education, but a lot of paperwork, but once the money is provided by the government, sometimes the gov contacts the gaming industry, they want to make a clear profit out of it... and this risks your project to become obsolete or missed. So what Balthazar did: sell it to Harvard. This enabled them to get local funding, as the local gov saw the Harvard sell as a quality mark. You must also make the game sustainable (will it be able to shift to 3D, new computers, new devices...), how will you tackle this? You need to make any educational game update-able. Games should be authentic learning. So in-game assessment should be integrated as well. Otherwise you have a discrepancy between learning (gaming) and assessment (paper and pen). The game must also be secured, at all levels... so this costs as well. And if a security breach happens... you risk liability. this is the reason Balthazar builds simple user games, not multi-player games as security is different for each of them.
Working with national standardization institutes of a country REALLY helps in getting funding, as this includes national compliance across that nation.
Games are the new narrative of education, previously it was movies. In the end games could be monetized. (Refers to scratch platform of MIT)

Remarks from the audience
Currently there is no serious game market. Military is one of the key funders of serious games, but what about ethics?

The funding risks killing the serious game market. As the research is subjective, but far too much money is spend on poor research. But the consumer market could be revived. But another risk is the open content which risks killing developing countries as well.

There is a discussion on ethics because of the negative views on killing games. So how to bridge learning and gaming via gaming traditions (shooter up...).

Another option is the learning apps that are on the market, and the completely self-generated games. But to produce this, it takes expertise and you always will and this takes years. That is why teachers will not be able to build games just in a jiffy.