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Engaging millions of students in virtual worlds of learning

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Posted on 2nd April 2008 by Judy Breck in Connective Expression

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millions.jpgFor the next two days, I will be attending Virtual Worlds 2008, a conference to be held at the Javits Center in New York City. My interest in being there is to learn about an emerging digital sector that is creating compelling new ways of communicating. Education is a form of communicating, at least in part. Will educators be leaders at this conference? Well, no. Maybe they should be. It is advertising and entertainment that are the big thought leaders for digital communication, while educators are primarily still back in the print era. Maybe educators will step up soon to use virtual world possibilities for learning.

The picture here of Reuben Steiger is from the homepage of one of the major sponsors of the conference at Javits Center, Millions of Us. The image is a frame from a video in which he describes how Tivo has become much-used because people don’t like advertising. He goes on to say that for advertisers a good answer to that problem is creating advertising that is entertaining so people would not skip it if they were given a choice. He says that “virtual worlds are amazing for this, but so are social networks.” Steiger goes on to explain that he founded Millions are Us as a company to follow these methods for advertising.

Are you following the parallel for education? The old ways of doing education are often what students will go to great lengths to skip. Why not use new arts and technologies that can actually make education material entertaining? Why not do some educating in virtual worlds and social networks?

Here is a virtual reality check for educators: Listen to Reuben Steiger on his Millions of Us video and while you do, think about how the methods he proposes for advertising could engage millions of students in learning. Steiger tells us we are in the “avatar age” and sketches how advertisers can participate effectively in that age. How can we properly parallel this kind of path for learning, or must, or should education not adopt the tools that advertising is picking up?

Students in real astronomy network

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Posted on 13th February 2007 by Judy Breck in Networks

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This week eSchool News reports: “in the latest frontier of astronomy, known as ‘virtual astronomy,’ professional astronomers are increasingly enlisting the help of students and other novice stargazers to sift through these data in search of the next great breakthrough.”

What is happening in astronomy is at the leading edge of virtual apprenticeship—something that will replace uncountable hours of boredom experienced in the past by young people in schools. The Internet can connect youngsters to real places of productivity and research: businesses, laboratories and venues where knowledge is refined and art is made. In the agricultural world of a few centuries ago, the kids learned farming in real barns and fields. In the industrial times that created schools, children were sent to schools instead of factories (a good idea!). The Internet provides a new means for new generations to learn by participation. The astronomers are showing us that way, as described in the article cited above and here.

How to do laboratory science in the 21st century

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Posted on 20th October 2006 by Judy Breck in Schools We Have Now

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bunsen burner phoneThis morning the New York Times has a story on the front page that is ten years old in its timing. It asks—as if it were newsworthy—whether virtual science is a good way to teach high school students. It seems the vaunted College Board has decided to challenge the online labs that provide experiments in mixing chemicals, dissecting tissue, and other expensive and now rare on-hands school laboratory traditions.

Maybe in 1996 these would have been worthwhile questions. But in the meantime here are some changes virtual science has caused: Detailed, realistic online labs have replaced NO labs that students would find in many schools. Virtual experiments offer experiences considered too dangerous to be done in a brick and mortar lab. Lessons using tissue spare the lives of experimental animals. Virtual experiments offer a broad range and variety of levels of difficulty impossible in a classroom full of kids.

Nonetheless complains, “Trevor Packer, the [College] board’s executive director for Advanced Placement [:] “You could have students going straight into second-year college science courses without ever having used a Bunsen burner.”

In 2006, using a Bunsen burner is an insurmountable obstacle for teenagers in failing schools, developing countries, and places with strict fire codes. With today’s technology you could easily do a virtual Bunsen burner lesson on your mobile phone screen. Yet the vaunted Gray Lady New York Times, who probably carried a story about Robert Bunsen’s burner invention in 1855, is giving front page coverage to going back to 19th century schooling. Here is some flavor of that from the NY Times article:

John Watson, an education consultant who wrote a report last year documenting virtual education’s growth, said online schools had faced lawsuits over financing and resistance by local school boards but nothing as daunting as the College Board. “This challenge threatens the advance of online education at the national level in a way that I don’t think there are precedents for,” Mr. Watson said.

The board signaled a tough position this year: “Members of the College Board insist that college-level laboratory science courses not be labeled ‘A.P.’ without a physical lab,” the board said in a letter sent to online schools in April. “Online science courses can only be labeled ‘A.P.’ if the online provider” can ensure “that students have a guided, hands-on (not virtual) laboratory experience.”

But after an outcry by online schools, the board issued an apology in June, acknowledging that “there may be new developments” in online learning that could merit its endorsement. . . .

[And what does the accrediting industry itself—of which the College Board is a prime example— show when it measures online labs?] On the 2005 administration of the A.P. biology exam, for instance, 61 percent of students nationwide earned a qualifying score of three or above on the A.P.’s five-point system. Yet 71 percent of students who took A.P. biology online through the Florida Virtual School, and 80 percent of students who took it from the Virtual High School, earned a three or higher on that test.

“The proof is in the pudding,” said Pam Birtolo, chief learning officer at the Florida Virtual School.

Why not let kids do the brain surgery tutorials?

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Posted on 6th March 2006 by Judy Breck in Emerging Online Knowledge

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brain heart surgery virtual simulation
If a surgeon were going to operate on my brain, I would hope he or she had practiced in every conceivable way. The article here from Case Western Reserve University describes a virtual reality simutlation to train brain and heart surgeons. Including virtual training for surgeons is a growing practice.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if kids in high school and in lower grades could use these same tutorials? Too young? I don’t think so. Did you ever have a classmate — say in the sixth grade — who had decided long ago to become a surgeon? I think of my friend David, who did just that when we were students together at Crockett grade school in El Paso. He is a professor of orthopaedics and wrote the standard hand surgery textbook used in medical schools. I can tell you that by the sixth grade he would have been a whiz at the tutorial descibed in this above link.