Worked through 'walkthrough'. Not so bad. In fact, interesting.

I have been dreading this and procrastinating, but so far not too many ghosts or demons of numerical malice.

I'm hoping to write my dissertation on wikis.

Topic: Analysis of the use of wikis as a preparation for an oral debate on German history (East vs West during 1961-89)

 

 Setting: Face-to-face language teaching, students prepare for and present debate in groups

My motivation (purpose): Last semester one of the assessments was to present a debate in groups. While the students did quite well in the debates, I felt they would have benefited from a more intense preparation, reading more texts, finding more arguments for their views and generally preparing more long-term. I also felt they could have collaborated more effectively. I would like to see whether a wiki would help them achieve these aims.

 

Research questions:

 1. To find out whether students find wikis useful to prepare them for an oral debate (Method: questionnaire)

2. To find out whether the use of wikis encourages students to engage deeply with the topic (Method: observation )

3. To find out whether the students collaborate effectively while using the wiki (Methods: observation and questionnaires)

4.To find out whether the preparation with the help of wikis actually improves the oral performance (Method: observation)

Methodology: Grounded Theory using a qualitative approach, though I may include some quantitative analysis of the data from the questionnaires.

My thoughts on these research questions:

Research question 1: This is a very subjective question, and students won't be able to compare their experiences to a similar situation without the use of wikis. I would maybe need to find criteria for "usefulness", i.e. how enjoyable was the experience, how much do you think you learnt...

Research question 2: I would need to find some criteria to measure how deeply students engage with the topic, for instance number of entries, how many books were read, how much did they reflect, argue, comment etc

Research question 3: Again I would need to find criteria for measuring this, for instance equality of participation, number of comments, etc

Research question 4: This would be very tricky to analyse without comparison to a different group. I could use my experience as a language teacher to assess whether the students are doing particularly well. However, every group of students is different. Criteria I could maybe use would be: How well prepared are they , how fluently are the students speaking, how broad is their vocabulary, how knowledgeable are they, how well do they interact in speech.

 

A different problem: Using a written plattform to prepare for an oral debate
Using wikis to prepare for an oral debate will mean that students will also need to concentrate on their written skills, and this could lead to an additional research question:

5. To find out whether wikis can support learning to write in a foreign language (Methods: observation, interview with student tutor)

My thoughts on
Research question 5: Criteria for this might be number of corrections, quality of language. The students would be interacting with a student tutor to help them with the language in their wikis, and an interview with the student tutor would give additional information on how effective wikis are to improve written skills.

Marking the wikis

In order to motivate students to use the wikis I would give them a goup mark for the wiki. This needs to be thought through. It could be a mark for the end product or several marks at intervals (though this would cause a heavy work load). Criteria might be number of contributions, comments, corrections, richness of content, correctness (of end product).

Important: I need to remember though that the written wiki and the oral debate are two different tasks and require different skills. So research questions 1-4 just refer to preparation of the oral debate, whereas research question 5 leads to a different area.

Would it be better to just concentrate on questions 1-4?

I do think question 5 is quite interesting as well.

 

 

All comments are very welcome!

 

The interesting discomforts associated with exploring unfamiliar or previously rejected techniques for research are proving enlightening about my attitude to research altogether.  It's not that I'm anti research - though I am horrified by the distortions  to HE caused by the research assessment exercise - it's just that I only feel drawn to certain approaches to it myself.  I haven't properly thought this through before. 

Education has been my third choice of academic discipline - I changed from English Lit to Philosophy early as an undergraduate.  Research in those academic areas would probably not typically involve interviews, questionnaires, statistics or anything like that.  (None of these would have to be ruled out, though.) If I had progressed in either, "research" (perhaps scholarship?) would have involved working with texts and ideas, not people - though people could have been important as an object of study.

As an academic, the writing I have done has tended to be the low status "how to" stuff aimed at helping students.  I have several conference papers that I aim to redo to publish in academic journals, and I might also do this with some essays I've written for this course.  But my aim is to communicate ideas and possibilities rather than present facts that I have discovered.

I'm probably more interested in reinterpreting facts presented by others. Indeed, this would be appropriate for the interest I have in the changes that happen when we move activities online - I believe that they are no longer the same activities and our actions (including language use) are no longer the same as they are f2f.  This could have huge implications for education.

I think I'm feeling my way here to a philosophical stance rather than a social science one, if such a distinction is appropriate.  I've been reintroduced to philosophical ideas several times during the course and have enjoyed exploring them.  And of course Philosophy is also no longer the same online as f2f (nor the same as it was in the 70s!)

This discovery feels quite important, though when I read it over it doesn't seem to be saying much.

Some problems coming to mind re. potential dissertation topic: it would be necessary to compare 2 sets of learning, 1 in an online role-play and 1 in a face-to-face role-play. This presents some difficulty, not insurmountable, in being able to observe both sets of learners. But... much more importantly, there are simply too many variables in this project, as it stands at present: let's say that the online participants are more active than the F2F learners. This could tell you about:

• their personality
• the strength of the teacher
• the time they take their lesson
• etc etc etc

So... the project will not be explanatory. If it still runs, it needs to be exploratory, and would simply measure participation in the online role-play.

Bigger problem still: when I taught in Japan, despite the reputation of Japanese learners for being afraid of making mistakes, I had few significant problems in getting learners involved in F2F role-plays. This came down to skill of teacher and sensitivity too.

The dissertation could be significantly scaled down so that it focuses only on wiki role-play (my idea from the OLL course). A new question would be required, and very probably the (ill-conceived) Japanese culture idea should be scrapped.

Reading this week's papers from Pat Kane (2005) amd Brian Sutton-Smith (1997) were a sheer joy and delight compared to the James Newman chapter the other week. I think the issue between these three writers is one of how an argument is being presented to the reader. We start with Sutton-Smith (1997) who sets that scene by explaining that the meaning or definition of "play" is fraught with ambiguity with various philosophers, anthropologists, biologists, psychologists, etc. describing the essence of "play" in different ways that relate to their particular disciplines.

It's astonishing to learn that for such a "simple" concept of "play", or at least perceived by many to be a "simple" concept, has academics from a multitude of disciplines trying to place "play" within some framework or other - indeed, I don't recall any of the theorists mentioned by Sutton-Smith taking an holistic and all-encompassing view of "play"; this is something that Sutton-Smith (1997, p. 6) sees as a weakness and Kane (2005, p. 40) also picks up on when he talks about the "third culture" or polymathism ("Homo Universalis") before the arts and sciences had a parting of the ways. I was also intrigued by Sutton-Smith's view that play "has temporal diversity as well as spatial diversity" when he talks about the likes of the World Cup and the Olympics. Sutton-Smith (1997, p. 9) offers "seven rhetorics", which Kane (2005, p.39) describes as:

"...ways of thinking and talking about play that express a certain vision of human nature and culture, and which can be deployed by everyone from teachers to generals, hackers to CEOs ... [which] imply both a very modern and a very ancient vision of humanity."

The "seven rhetorics" are:

1. The rhetoric of play as progress
2. The rhetoric of play as fate
3. The rhetoric of play as power
4. The rhetoric of play as identity
5. The rhetoric of play as the imaginary
6. The rhetoric of play as the self
7. The rhetoric of play as frivolous

Kane (2005, p. 48) makes an interesting statement whereby he says "the moment of play is identified as a generator of originality, energy and new development" that made me think of Google's European offices in Zurich and the "Homo Ludens" that occupy it.

 

Kane's "manifesto" is about a lifestyle, an attitude, a state of mind, a way at looking at the world and the people and artifacts in it that strips away the rigidity and drudgery that has been hampered by a mechanistic, industrial mindset of the Victorian age. Education is still built around this hidden curriculum of "preparing people for the workforce".

There's this wonderful allusion to Jean-Dominique Bauby's "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" where Kane (2005, p. 46) quotes surrealist Luis Bunuel: "Somewhere between chance and mystery lies the imagination, the only thing that protects our freedom". Bauby suffered a massive stroke that left him with a condition called locked-in syndrome (the diving bell) and would use his imagination (the butterfly) to escape his biological prison.

Both Sutton-Smith and Kane position play not as a "trivial, frivolous, silly" waste of time; but as a powerful, natural human asset for learning and discovery through highly creative and imaginative interactions with the world and the people who live in it. Whilst the games industry has shown how people can become immersed in the world of games and are developing skills through experimentation, practice and from other players, so now Education needs to look at this phenomena and translate this into practical, everyday use fit for a classroom be it real or virtual.

Update

Have just learnt that Pat Kane is one half of the late 1980s, early 1990s pop duo Hue and Cry and maintains a blog called "The Play Ethic" and is using Twitter to share his thoughts and resources around his concept of the play ethic.

References

Gee, J.P. (2007). What Video Games Have To Teach Us About Learning And Literacy (Revised and Updated Edition). New York, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan.

Kane, P. (2005). The Play Ethic: A Manifesto for a different way of living. London: Pan.

Sutton-Smith, B. (1997). The Ambiguity of Play. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

I've been fortunate enough last weekend to have had a go on some of the different games consoles that are currently out on the market without hemorrhaging my wallet or bank balance. A work colleague has a Nintendo Wii and my partner's brother has a Microsoft Xbox.

The Nintendo Wii (or simply "Wii" as the manufacturer prefers to market it) is currently en vogue at the moment with it's unique wireless controller and nunchuk that acts as pointing devicea that senses positions across 3 dimensional space. I got to try out "Mii Maestro" and "Handbell Harmony" minigames from the Wii Music suite and Star Wars: The Force Unleashed. The first thing you notice is that the wireless controller is not as difficult to operate as the dual analog controllersof the Xbox and Playstation games consoles. The second thing you notice is that there is still a degree of eye - hand co-ordination going on (something that I am not particularly good at).

Whilst I am very competitive with board and card games, I have found myself not being quite so competitive with the computer / video games as I have wanted the opportunity to test the features of the software and hardware to try and gain a better understanding how it all fits together especially where my wretched eye - hand co-ordination is concerned. The rather nice thing with the Wii was that there was six of us having a go with it - it's the social aspect of gaming that I have always found appealing and it was nice to see it here again with a computer-based game rather than a board game.

Microsoft's Xbox is a more "traditional" games console that uses the dual analog contollers which takes a little getting use to as each button, toggle and trigger performs different functions that tend to come into play simultaneously - which means hand, eyes and brain need to work together (you really begin to appreciate Prensky's (2001) "digital native" concept at this point). My partner's sons, Josh (10) and Nathan (14), opted for Colin McRae Rally 04, F1 2002 and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.

The two racing games were very much about eye - hand co-ordination and manoeuvring the cars around the track without crashing them. The game that interested me the most was the Harry Potter game and the situation that arisen from it that reminded me of Gee's (2007) discussion about the social aspect of gaming. Josh is the most dextrous out of myself and Nathan as far as videogaming is concerned and how adroit he is at handling the controls. Josh is well versed with platform games and adventure games.

The Harry Potter games has dozens upon dozens of rooms that contained different types of logical puzzles. Josh would run around in each room like a headless chicken using his wand to smash open boxes, etc whilst completely missing that each room might have a special clue or puzzle that needed solving. This is where Nathan and I would come in to advise / coach / "bossing around" Josh what he needed to do. What struck me was that although neither I nor Nathan had access to the controls we were able to take a full part in the game by collaborating with Josh as to what needed to be done and how to go about it - this for me demonstrated the reflexive and critical elements that Gee (2007) was talking about in terms of learning and understanding along with group collaboration to getting the task completed. Whilst at the beginning Josh was a little irritated by our input, it didn't take long for him to see the value in it as he was able to complete tasks more efficiently and more quickly because the group was working to their strengths to get the tasks done.

References

Gee, J.P. (2007). What Video Games Have To Teach Us About Learning And Literacy (Revised and Updated Edition). New York, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan.

Prensky, M. (2001). Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants. On the Horizon, 9(5), NCB University Press. 

I'm a little bit behind with my reading for work as well as this course.  Coming to this blog is probably displacement activity (along the lines of it's not worth starting the reading now as I have to go for the train in 15 minutes).  However, I think it's worth recording how I feel about stats before I start doing them.  The fact that I only loaded my software yesterday (noting that I should have done it before the end of January) suggests some reluctance. 

I haven't done any statistics for a long time, but I can see that one of the things I'm reading for work contains some.  I don't think I'm phobic about statistics - I just worry about their use and the claims attached to them.  But it's actually better to know something about it all if people are likely to misuse statistics, especially if they are making spurious claims based on accurate statistics (but false premises). 

I did use numbers even in my very qualitative autoethnographic study - I created a concordance file in Word which helped me count my references to particular themes and thus see what a student "noticed" more frequently than other things.  It was a starting point when I had a lot of data and didn't know what to do next - it helped me to create categories and also a useful index.  It was of more interest to my examiners than I thought it would be - part of the argument about how you claim your data are data.

So I'll keep that in mind when I'm number crunching!  I've more to say on this but my time's up. 

Firstly you'll need to try and get back into FlashMx after a few weeks of not using it.. the shear amount of stuff you've forgotten is needed as a catalyst for distraction.

Secondly you'll need access to the internet,

Third, have something in the back of you mind that needs sorting out, in the following case it's CAD software for the Mac, at the moment is seems non exsistant.

and lastly have something really cool to do instead.

 

OK. the method..

Get into Flash with the following photos.

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These are two photos of a milling machine as found in a general DT workshop.

the difference between the two photos is that one has the guard down the other up.

Fairly simple and you can see where i'm going with them.. the'll go into flash as another quick fire challeng, "whats wrong" "click it" "next level" type thing

Before they can go into flash, we need to get rid of the crap in the background and replace any white space with a transparent background, called the alpha channel... i think.

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This take about an hour to do the two photo.. quicker if you're organised, infinately long if you're not.

With these two images, open flash and get really confused... realise that you've never done this type of action before and start looking on the net for a solution, find a CAD program that is used for MAC, download it and get a pleasant surprise when you see its a Virtual Lego builder

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spend a few hours building stuff and wonder if there is anyway to up the image quality with lighting dynamics.

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Find that the program you need requires two other programs and a separate utility to expand them both.

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 Get back to Flash when you realise that you're not achieving anything... although now you're thinking of different applications for the newly found software and you want to incorporate it, or at least make a Lego movie

ok so the mill..

eventually found out how to do the action by looking back at my blog and comparing notes to the past scenes I had done.

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Now I'm getting distracted by this blog....

off to play cooking mama

 

 

 

 

Carrying out a Masters dissertation research project is basically a learning exercise, preparing one to go on with research in the future (Hamish - discussions board).

Don't necessarily plan to conduct any further research in the future. Is doing the dissertation worthwhile for me? Perhaps not.

Know Your Island

This is the name of the game we have chosen to put forwad as our Google Earth team project.
Its aim is to test the user's geographical knowledge of islands.
However instead of just looking them up on a world map in this exercise you will be given the opportunity to 'fly' along parts of or its entire coastline.
The learning objective is to concentrate on the coastal features as the user will be traveling a predetermined path for about a minute. Certain geographical features such as the extent of agricultural land, rocky coastline, sandy beaches and marshland will provide important clues, as will the degree of habitation (towns/cities) and the presence of ports, bridges or jetties.
The game can be played individually but also as a group, competitively, based on a point score:

Rules
The rules are as follows:
1. Click on the file link at the bottom and play back the flight tour; if you can't work out the island repeat the flight, a maximum of four times
2. If you have not identified the island after the fourth time select the 'Places of Interest', and 'Borders and Lables' option from the Layers feature in GoogleEarth and try to identify the island using the landmark names
3. If you have not been able to identity the island at this stage start 'zooming out', one incremental step at a time until you know its name.
Points awarded as follows:

1. If you recognize the island on the first tour you get 10 points, if you recognize it after the second run you get 8 points, at the third attempt 6 points and at the fourth time you get 4 points.
2. If you need to switch on the landmark layers in order to identify the island you get 2 points
3. If you have to make use of the 'zooming out' option you will get for each incremental 'zooming out' a penalty point, for example if you zoom out one increment and then recognize the island you get get -1 points, if you need to scroll out three increments you score -3
4. Note down the score for each island you identify and move to the next one
5. Total the number of all points during your island hopping to obtain a final score
6. The person with the highest score wins

P.S. Is is recognized that there is a strong local bias within this game hence the choice of islands should be adapted to the nationality/residency of the player. For example local versions of the game may be created for particular countries such as Greece, Spain or Denmark.

Target group: GCSE to A-level Geography students
Below is the example of the first island tour, called Island1. Click on the file to launch GoogleEarth:

island1.kmz