Learning Simulation

Have Magnificent College Life and Do Assignments at the Same Time

noreply@blogger.com (WGS) — Tue, 28 May 2013 11:40:00 +0000

College life always becomes the first enjoying thing that young people wait impatiently. They want to get into their college life as soon as possible since there are many nice things that will wait for them there. They can meet with new friends, go to some nice places and parties with beautiful ladies, and do some silly things freely. No one has ever remember about doing writing assignments as one of the magnificent things that they will encounter when going to college since it is never be a great time indeed. Yet, college paper writing is one of the duties that should be done by students when they go to college and they cannot let it go easily. You should think seriously about this case whether you want it or not since if you do not do your writing assignments magnificently then you will not be able to get your college degree perfectly too.

In order to get your jobs as student magnificently then you should also take care of your writing assignments without any flaws. If you cannot do the duties and having fun time accordingly then you should be ready to accept the effect afterward. This will not do you any great if you cannot maintain those things thoroughly since by enjoying the time too much without paying any attentions to your assignments will get you kicked out from college disgracefully. But, if you have to work your ass out to do the assignments without even care about your personal life then you might as well feel bored as hell so that you never have the mood to do anything righteously. There is no option for you rather than to balance those two things so that you can get your fun time and assignments done at the same time. This will help you to get your degree with magnificent score and enjoy college life at the same time.

How would Steve Jobs Do Training and Education?

noreply@blogger.com (WGS) — Fri, 13 Jul 2012 15:28:00 +0000

I was asked by a certain company a question. How would Steve Jobs do training and education?

The New Old Software Development
My first answer is the bottom right of the three charts. In terms of software (and hardware) development, the simplest answer is 1) Create tools that don't need training. Use skeuomorphic designs. Provide rich feedback. Use icons and other visuals well.

Then, because that is not always possible, 2) Provide just in time context support for specific features, such as bubble help. For real-world hardware, this will also increasingly include a layer of just in time training that can be triggered by tags (such as barcades or QR Codes) or even shapes (an airplane maintenance worker takes a photograph on a mobile device (including Google Glasses) of a broken part, and this triggers the material on how to fix it).

The third aspect is "The Tool is the Philosophy." The development of software assumes and codifies processes on how to do a task outside of simply using the software. So increasingly the best way to learn a subject (even at a deep and philosophical level) is around engaging the tool.

One way to learn project management is to master a tool on project management. Math curricula for most non-Math majors should be shaped almost entirely by a modern spreadsheet. Similarly, new tools bring forth, not just capture, new philosophies. The existence of Facebook and Tumblr changes what MBA students need to know. Finally, certain technologies update skills. The skill of spelling is less important in the era of spell checkers.

The New Old Training
Having said that, there is plenty of training that happens (or should happen) outside the use of tools. For these, I submit the model of The New Old Training. Here (depicted on the bottom left of the three models), training organizations produce three types of content for which iPhones, iPads, and iPods have been optimized .

The first is sims (simulations and serious games), using today's casual games as a guide for scope and production values. I might look at PopCap as a model vendor here, with such games as Plants vs. Zombies. These are easy to engage, slick, with humor and other forms of personality. These will not just teach competence but more importantly conviction.

The second "deliverable" from the new old training group would be a Kahn Academy-esque video and podcast library. Here, low production value, short videos and MP3s (some user submitted) on a range of relevant area can be made available (and, on occasion, pushed out).

Finally, communities, such as modeled by StackOverflow.com, provide places for people to engage around both shallow and very deep issues.

All three of these New Old Training models use tracking methods, including awarding of achievements and other gamification techniques. The methodologies used to put hard certifications on soft activities (badges for status in a chat room) allow organization to measure and prescribe a wider range of activities.

The New Old Education
Finally, all learning has to happen in a context (hopefully intrinsically motivating, but often not). The New Old Education (upper middle diagram) is a complete reversal of the current industrial model. Education systems (K through College) should be dedicated to helping students:

find out at what skills they are better than almost everyone else, and
identify what their personal missions are (what problems in the world they find most motivating).

Any functioning education system would then help students connect their unique gifts with their mission by:

enabling authentic opportunities to hone and test themselves and finally
identify pathways to an appropriate career. (See education is individualistic and learning to be questions.)

The more people are self motivated, the less broad training is needed. But "best practices" communities and other deep content are still critically important.

It is impossible for me to answer the question, "How would Steve Jobs do training?" But it is easy to imagine the future of education being much richer than the past.

Schools that don't encourage "genuine play" in a subject-matter sacrifice both competence and conviction

noreply@blogger.com (WGS) — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 13:46:00 +0000

Unschooling Rule 26 (#unrules26) is: Biologically, the necessary order of learning is: explore, then play, then add rigor.

There is so much consensus on the critical role of play, from the ground-breaking work of Jean Piaget to a recent CNN Opinion piece: Want to get your kids into college? Let them play. Despite the compelling case made, an entire generation of school kids has already gone through middle school and high school since Dr. Gee's What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy came out.

Funnily enough, the most successful academic use of "play" is not, as one might expect, the extension of successful socializing and educational play from kindergarten to subsequent first and second grades. In fact, we are seeing the opposite here, with more directive style content and approaches being pushed down to younger ages.

Rather, the biggest use of "play" in academics is coming at the graduate school level, where "simulations" and "role-plays" are being used, almost inevitably media-assisted, to develop skills in the next generations of doctors, business people, and lawyers, just to name a few. In other words, the closer to the point of the real use of content, and the more sophisticated the content, the more play is encouraged.

This is because competent graduate schools understand that the goal of learning is: Competence + Conviction = Comfort

Competence is a pretty well understood idea. It is the ability of a learner to apply the right skills.

But developing conviction in a student for any subject matter is even more important. Conviction is the enduring understanding and drive in the learner to do the right thing.

I look at the conviction level by gauging:

How do people actually behave when no one is watching, and/or when stressed?
Can people improvise to appropriately adapt learned approaches to situations not explicitly covered in the material?

Ultimately, comfort comes from the combination of the two. And comfort, unlike the awareness of facts, lasts for decades. Comfort is reinforced and made stronger by the productive world.

As an aside, all of the identified "non-universals" of society require conviction, and include:

Model Based Science
Equal Rights
Democracy
Focus Culturally on Similarities over Differences
Slow Deep Thinking
Legal System over Vendetta
Perspective Drawing
Theory of Harmony
Agriculture over hunting and killing

From my own work, I have framed out a design approach to begin the conviction developing process using simulations:

Allow students to experiment with their traditional behavior. Allow them to do what they would naturally do. Then show not only the immediate, apparent, and high-probability consequences (which are often positive) of their traditional behavior, but also the long term, hidden, and/or "unlikely" but possible consequences (which can be devastating). Allow the player to experience emotionally the direct devastating consequences.
Visualize the "invisible system" - the flow of events that people can't normally see, but leads to any devastating outcomes.
Allow students to repeat the scenarios (which means they can't be too long, or rely too much on linear content), and then "discover" for themselves the right way of doing things.
Include the little feedback signs to teach players what are signs in the real world that indicate a straying into risky behavior.
Put the student in novel situations that require improvising based on their earned knowledge.
Present tailored, not generic, after action reviews/debriefings.

Play is the oldest form of education. And any parent that relies on, or any organization that hires from, institutions that don't use play will get people with only brittle, superficial, and transient knowledge at best.

See also:
Unschooling Rules 26. Biologically, the necessary order of learning is: explore, then play, then add rigor.

A simple IR experiment to prove that the North Carolina Sea Level Rise Bill is just flat wrong

noreply@blogger.com (WGS) — Thu, 05 Jul 2012 22:19:00 +0000

Last month, North Carolina's Senate passed a bill that would have required the state's Coastal Resources Commission to base predictions of future sea level rise along the state's coast on a steady, linear rate of increase. This has sparked controversies across the nation amid the record heat waves in many states.

If the lawmakers had done our very simple IR experiment on visualizing thermohaline in a cup, published in the July issue of last year's Journal of Chemical Education (see the image to the left), they would have had a better understanding about the possibility of the nonlinear acceleration of ice shelf melting: The less salty the seawater is, the faster the ice shelf above it melts. And the faster ice melts, the less salty the seawater will become. This creates a positive feedback loop that accelerates the melting process. If the speed of ice melting in systems as simple as a cup of saltwater is not as nice as the "steady, linear" rate some of the lawmakers would like to see, who can be sure that systems as complex as the Earth would follow a "steady, linear" trajectory of change?

If you bother to read on, this experiment uses just a cup of tap water, a cup of salt water, and some ice cubes. The two cups are placed next to each other on a table for comparison. (a) An IR image right after an ice cube was added to a cup of freshwater (left) and a cup of saltwater (right). (b) An IR image taken after four minutes showing a downwelling column in the freshwater. (c) An IR image taken after nine minutes showing the tabletop was cooled significantly near the freshwater cup. (d) An IR image taken after 16 minutes showing that the bottom of the freshwater cup became cooler than the top whereas the bottom of the saltwater cup remained warmer than the top.

To see the entire process caught under an IR camera, you can watch the embedded YouTube videos in this blog post. Feel free to send these videos to your representatives if you happen to live in the coastal area of North Carolina. Or send to a science teacher in North Carolina in the hope that the bill will be revised in the future to consider the possibility of nonlinear acceleration.

Note that these videos do not represent any political view and should not be considered as in support of any agenda, my purpose is only to provide a humble scientific demonstration to prove that things do not always go smoothly as we wish.

Investigating thermoimaging in augmented multisensory learning about heat transfer

noreply@blogger.com (WGS) — Mon, 02 Jul 2012 13:04:00 +0000

Jesper Haglund from Linköping University presents a poster about our Sweden-US collaborative research on thermal visualization at the 2012 World Conference on Physics Education held in Istanbul, Turkey. Below is the abstract of the poster:

"Infrared (IR) thermal imaging is a powerful technology which holds the pedagogical potential of ‘making the invisible visible’, and is becoming increasingly affordable for use in educational contexts. Science education research has identified many challenges and misconceptions related to students’ learning of thermodynamics, including disambiguation of temperature and heat, and a common belief that our sense of touch is an infallible thermometer. The purpose of the present study was to explore how thermal imaging technology might influence students’ conceptual understanding of heat and temperature. This was carried out by investigating three different conditions with respect to students exploration of the thermal phenomena of different objects (e.g. wood, metal and wool), namely the effect of students’ use of real-time imaging generated from a FLIR i3 IR camera, students’ interpretation of static IR images, and students’ deployment of traditional thermometer apparatus. Eight 7th-grade students (12-13 years old) worked in pairs across the three experimental conditions, and were asked to predict, observe and explain (POE) the temperature of a sheet-metal knife and a piece of wood before, during and after placing them in contact with their thumbs. The participants had not been exposed to any formal teaching of thermodynamics and the ambition was to establish if they could discover and conceptualise the thermal interaction between their thumbs and the objects in terms of heat flow with minimal guidance from the researchers. The main finding was that a cognitive conflict was induced in all three conditions, as to the anomaly between perceived ‘hotness’ and measured temperature, with a particular emotional undertone in the real-time IR condition. However, none of the participants conceptualised the situation in terms of a heat flow. From the perspective of establishing a baseline of the understanding of thermal phenomena prior to teaching, extensive quantities, e.g. ‘heat’ or ‘energy’, were largely missing in the participants’ communication. In conclusion, although an unguided discovery or inquiry-based approach induced a cognitive conflict, it was not sufficient for adjusting the students’ conceptual ecologies with respect to the age group studied here. Future research will exploit the promise of the cognitive conflict observed in this study by developing a more guided approach to teaching thermal phenomena that also takes full advantage of the enhanced vision offered by the thermal camera technology."

If you happen to be at WCPE 2012, drop by his poster: Session - 1.04, Date & Time: 7/3/2012 / 13:00 - 14:00, Room: D406 (3rd Floor).

If you don't know what thermal visualization is, visit our InfraredTube website.

Investigating the Kármán vortex street using Energy2D

noreply@blogger.com (WGS) — Sat, 30 Jun 2012 18:49:00 +0000

Run this simulation.

The Kármán vortex street is a repeating pattern of swirling vortices caused by the unsteady separation of flow of a fluid over bluff bodies. It is named after the great scientist Theodore von Kármán who co-founded NASA's JPL. This effect is observable in nature like in a stream, but you need some luck since it requires some picky conditions that are not always there for you.

Now, with our online simulation program Energy2D you can create and investigate the Kármán vortex street in your browser without depending on Mother Nature to give you an opportunity window.

For example, you can test how big an obstacle should be in order to produce this effect. You will find that an obstacle must be large enough to create a steady vortex street. If the shape of the obstacle is not streamlined, what will you see?

If you stick a thermometer in a thermal vortex street, you should see that the temperature will swing pretty regularly between a high value and a low value (see the image to the right). This means this effect could be used to warm and cool an array of things periodically. Could there be some engineering use of this?

Serious Play Conference 2012 Program Announced

noreply@blogger.com (WGS) — Tue, 26 Jun 2012 18:51:00 +0000

The Serious Play Conference Program has been announced. I am so excited about the brain trust we have assembled. Take a look!

Serious Play Conference

2012 Program

Tuesday, August 21
8:30 a.m. Welcome, Overview of Conference: Clark Aldrich, Conference Director; Sue Bohle, Executive Director, Serious Games Association; Claude Comair, Chairman, DigiPen Institute of Technology

9 – 9:45 a.m. Ran Hinrichs, 2b3d, “Getting the Best vQuotient”

10 – 11 a.m. Panel: “Are Educational Simulations and Games Becoming a Key Training Method in Large Organizations?”
David Metcalf, UCF
Phaedra Boiondiris, IBM
James Oker, Microsoft
Parvati Dev, CliniSpace

11 – 11:30 a.m. Break

11:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. Concurrent Sessions
Phaedra Boinodiris, IBM: “From Process Optimization to Complex Problem Solving in the Corporate Environment”

Parvati Dev, CliniSpace: “Virtual Environments for Healthcare Training”
Bob Waddington, SimQuest: “Where Do Games Fit in Employee or Public Training?”
Helen Rutledge, PIXELearning, “Why and How Serious Games Work”

12:30 – 1:30 Lunch in DigiPen Cafeteria

1:30 – 2:15 p.m. Plenary TBD

2:30 – 3:30 p.m. Concurrent Sessions
Chuck Hamilton, IBM: “Play to Win -- IBM's Smart Play Framework”

David Metcalf, UCF: “Mobile Games and Simulations for Health”
James Oker, Microsoft, Topic TBA
Douglas Whatley, BreakAway Games: “Why Don't We Teach More with Games?

3:30 – 4 p.m. Networking Break/ Awards Voting

4 – 5 p.m. Concurrent Sessions
Andrew Miller, Edutopia, “Game Based Learning as Education Reform”
Pamela M. Kato, Dorpsstraat 14, TBA
Puja Dasari, California Academy of Sciences: “Game Creation and Civic Engagement”
Richard Boyd, Lockheed: “Lowering the Barriers for Serious Play”

5:15 – 6:15 p.m. Concurrent Sessions
Sponsored Session for Technology Providers
Awards Voting
Wednesday, August 22
8:30 a.m. Welcome and Announcements

8:45 – 9:45 a.m. Morning Panel: Sizing the Potential Market
Tyson Greer / Sam S. Adkins, Ambient Insight: Mobil Games, Education
Burnes Saint Patrick Hollyman, the Digital Entertainment Alliance: Virtual Worlds
Michael Cai, Interpret: Corporate

10 – 10:45 a.m. Concurrent Sessions
Burnes Saint Patrick Hollyman: “Second Lives 2.0: The State of Virtual Worlds Today”
Andrew Phelps, Rochester Institute of Technology: “Games and What They Teach Us About Creative Culture”

Paul Thurkettle, NATO: “Serious Games and the Smart Defense Initiative”
David Martz, MuzzyLane: “The Economics of Serious Game Projects”

11:a.m. – 11:45 a.m. Concurrent Sessions
Sam S. Adkins, Ambient Insight: “The 2011-2016 Worldwide Game-based Learning Market”

Dan Baden, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: “Educating the Public about Health”
Heidi J. Boisvert, futurePerfect lab: “Moving Players Beyond Clicktavism”
Susan D. Meek, BreakAway Games: “Silos Support Farmers, Not the Learning Ecosystem”
Brock R. Dubbels, University of Minnesota, TBA

Noon – 12:45:p.m. - Lunch

1 – 2 p.m. Afternoon Panel: “The Challenges of Measuring Game Effectiveness”
Eva Baker, CRESST at UCLA
David Gibson, simSchool
Ken Spero, Immersive Learning University
Jenn McNamara, BreakAway
Jason Scott Earl, Brigham Young University-Idaho

2:15 – 3:15 p.m. pm: Concurrent Sessions
Eva Baker, CRESST at UCLA: “Serious Measurement, Serious Results”
Lisa Galarneau, Anthropologist/Writer: “Serious Learning in Entertainment Spaces”
Tyson Greer, Ambient Insight: “Innovations in the Global Mobile Edugame Market”

Dan Norton, Filament Games: “The Geemotizer”

Pamela Kato, University Medical Center Utrecht: “Research Roundup: Springboard to the Future of Games for Health”

3:15 – 3:30 p.m. Break

3:30 – 4:15 p.m. Concurrent Sessions
Mary McLean-Hely, The Girl Scouts: “Using Graphic Novels and WordPress for eLearning”
Ken Spero, Immersive Learning University: “Simulation Scorecards as Drivers for Calculating ROI in Addition to Feedback”
John Low, Carney: “Shine a Light: An Approach to Performance Oriented Design”
Brendan Noon, ScienceWithMrNoon.com: “Game-Based Strategies for 21st Century Learning”

Manish Shyam Nachnani and Neeraj Kakkar: “Leveraging Social Media Gamification to Influence Health Behavior”

Lester Frederick and/or Chris Keeling, Full Sail University: “Fun-Learning: The Design and Development of an EduGame”

4:30 – 5:30 p.m. Concurrent Sessions
Patrick D. Shepherd, U.S. Office of Government Ethics: “No Budget, Low Tech, High Impact Alternate Reality Games”

David Gibson, simSchool: “Some Challenges of the New Psychometrics”
Ronald Dyer, Grenoble Ecole de Management: “Risky Play - Minimizing the Threat with Serious Games”

Kevin M. Holloway, PhD, National Center for Telehealth and Technology: “Virtual Worlds and Gaming for PTSD Education and Intervention”
Jenn McNamara, BreakAway: “Building Measurement and Assessment into Games and Simulations: Back to Basics”

6 -- 6:45 p.m. 2nd Annual Serious Play Awards Ceremony
Thursday, August 23
An Early Start on Our Last Day: Welcome and Announcements

8:30 – 9:30 a.m. Panel: “What is the Future of Serious Games?
Jim Lunsford, Decisive-Point
Ross Smith, Microsoft
Jason Tester, Institute for the Future

9:45 – 10:30 a.m. Panel: – “The Future of Gamification”
Dr. Chris Haskell, Boise State University
Scott Randall, BrandGames
Manish Shyam Nachnani and Neeraj Kakkar, Healthcare consultants
Anne Derryberry, I'm Serious

10:45 – 11:30 a.m. Concurrent Sessions
Saul Carliner, Concordia University, “Informal Learning: Serious Games and the Life Cycle of a Job”
Stephen Schafer, Digipen Institute of Technology: “Harmonizing the Cognitive Unconscious with emWave Technology”
Jayne Gackenbach, Grant Ewan University, “Gameplay for Nightmare Protection”
Michael Cai, Interpret, “Where Are the Opportunities?”
Anne Derryberry, I'm Serious, “Designing Badge Systems for Learning”

11:45 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. Concurrent Sessions
Nick Berry, DataGenetics:

Roberto Dillon, Formerly with DigiPen Institute of Technology – Singapore: “Achieving 'Fun' in Serious Games: An Analysis”

Dr. Chris Haskell, Boise State University: “The Game-Based Classroom”
Lawrence Suda, Palatine Group: “Using Simulations to Train Future Project Leaders at NASA”
Jason Tester, Institute for the Future, “Government for the 100%: Games To Democratize Innovation And Innovate Democracy”

12:30 – 1:30 p.m. Lunch

1:30 – 2:15 p.m. Concurrent Sessions
Scott Randall, BrandGames, “Gamification: Learning for the Next Generation Workforce”
Bill Guschwan, Columbia College: “Serious Game Techniques for the Classroom”
Scott Rigby, Immersyve: “Optimizing Motivation, Learning and Behavior Change in your Serious Game”
Jason Scott Earl, Brigham Young University-Idaho, “Over Two Standard Deviation Improvement: Simulation Training Compared to Traditional Training”

2:30 – 3:15 p.m. Concurrent Sessions
Jim Lunsford, Decisive-Point: “Serious Games for Leader and Team Development”
Ross Smith, Microsoft: “The Future of Work Is Play”

3:30 p.m. Wrap Up
Clark Aldrich, Conference Director, Serious Play

Debating Education...

noreply@blogger.com (WGS) — Wed, 13 Jun 2012 23:55:00 +0000

YouTube Physics features our infrared videos

noreply@blogger.com (WGS) — Fri, 01 Jun 2012 14:37:00 +0000

AAPT's Physics Teacher runs a column called YouTube Physics edited by Diane Riendeau, an award-winning physics teacher. In May, the entire column featured five intriguing YouTube videos from our IR website and recommended instructional strategies to use them effectively in the classroom.

Diane recently wrote about the YouTube Physics Column: "Through the use of YouTube, we can show our students demos that we do not have the capability of doing in class. We can use these videos to inspire them and show them some of the cutting-edge discoveries in our field. We can also show them videos from around the world. Students need to realize that the physics community is global, not just national. They should learn to marvel in the discoveries made by physicists from all nations."

We resonate with her vision, which is why we are publishing our IR videos on YouTube to allow students from all over the world to learn thermodynamics, heat transfer, chemistry, and other science subjects in everyday phenomena through IR vision. In the long run, we hope this effort will give birth to an "IRTube" that collects IR views of many scientific phenomena. With the introduction of thermal imaging technology into the classroom, we hope students will begin to upload their own IR videos to the IRTube. Darren Binnema, a student from the King's University College in Edmonton, Canada, has contributed the first IR video to the "IRTube." His IR video visualizes the heat of solutions of NaOH and KCl (see the above image).

For more IR videos, please visit the IRTube website.

From The Archives...

noreply@blogger.com (WGS) — Wed, 30 May 2012 14:15:00 +0000

I was reading today, in eSchool News, about a new report featuring 'Six technologies that soon could be in your classrooms.' It nudged me to look backwards as well as forwards.

I periodically look at random snippets of my past writing and see how they read today. Here is part of a piece I wrote at Gartner in 1999 called: Understanding E-Learning Market Dynamics: 2000-2002.

I said that the critical different types of educational content in any ecosystem will be:

Classroom: The students and teachers meet at the same time and in the same location.
Synchronous: The students and teachers meet at the same time, but in different locations. This includes virtual classrooms and virtual seminars. Virtual classrooms are optimized around one instructor and 15 or 20 students, while virtual seminars may have as many as 1,000 students with one presenter and a group of assistants.
Asynchronous: Students access the classroom, book-style material and tests on their own. This is also called self-paced classes.
Simulations: Students take on new roles and solve problems in a computer-generated environment.
E-Communities: Providers and consumers of information are linked through virtual sites that feature chat rooms and other exchange mechanisms.
Just in Time: Technologies and processes are deployed to deliver small chunks of customized information close to the point of need. In some systems, called self-accessed learning tools (SALT), student pull the information. In others, predictive help is pushed from the application.

While I would tweak a bit of the wording today, I am pretty happy (and relieved) with how well that framework holds up. And with Unschooling Rules, I believe even though the content is more sweeping and controversial, it will hold up even better.

See a list of much of my published work here: http://unschooling-rules.blogspot.com/p/clark-aldirch.html#books. And feel free to hold me accountable!

When we serve...

noreply@blogger.com (WGS) — Sat, 26 May 2012 13:28:00 +0000

“Most people haven't the faintest notions of what their life mission is... [But] when we serve [others] with depth and sincerity, we get a glimpse of the essential quality of who we really can become.”

- Greg Anderson, The 22 Non-Negotiable Laws of Wellness

Unschooling Rules 13. Include meaningful work.

(For obvious reasons, this quote makes me think of Jeff Sandefer.)

Education Evolution - Some Wrong and Right Questions

noreply@blogger.com (WGS) — Fri, 25 May 2012 12:19:00 +0000

We can't evolve education until we start asking the right questions. Here are some wrong questions and right questions.

Wrong "Big" Questions

How can we help teachers?
How do we better assess students?
How do we better assess teachers?
How do we better assess schools?
How can we create better textbooks?
How can we design better tests?
How can we increase graduation rates?
How can we better teach geometry?
How can we reduce the differences in children/ make more children the same?
How can we get schools to change?
How can we pay schools to implement reforms?
How do we increase number of Phd’s?
How do we improve school management?
How do we encourage schools to go after grants?
How do we better subsidize education?
How do we have free ("open-source") educational content and media?
How do we reduce the meaningful role of parents and corporations, delegating them to "donors" and "helpers"?

Right "Big" Questions

How can we decrease the time kids spend in classrooms and doing busywork?
How can we help each person find out where they are better than anyone else?
How can we develop entrepreneurship?
How can we teach leadership?
How can we better teach nutrition?
How can we get more students into productive real world environments sooner?
How can we help children find their passion?
How can we reduce the roles of schools in education?
How do we increase the real diversity of education opportunities?
How do we make end-to-end education funding more transparent?
How do we have a vibrant marketplace for educational content and media?
How do we increase the meaningful role of parents and corporations, elevating them to "guide"?

What else? Please add in the comment section!

How a game designer would 'teach' cell structures

noreply@blogger.com (WGS) — Fri, 25 May 2012 11:51:00 +0000

The restrictions of traditional passive media have shaped schools and formal education experiences more than we can possible imagine. So it is useful to consider how content might be structured using new technology.

Cell Sim - Learning Objectives
The goal of the Cell Sim is to develop in the player a knowledge of the core components of cells, and how and why differences in cells exist. (And story, badges, et al can be added. This is just a core interface and gameplay design.)

Cell Sim - Set Up

In this sim, the player will have to design cells to meet stated challenges. Players will do this using a toolkit of simple building blocks that correspond to real world cell elements (suggested building blocks are presented below). The graphics will be accessible and encourage experimentation.

Cell Sim - Basic Screen Interfaces and Interactions
The player gets a 'board' in which they can place cell elements. The cell they define will exist in the surrounding environment, and will have a shape based on the placement of these elements (the membrane auto-adjusts the size). In this most simple of example (the level one) below, the player has to build a cell that can carry a signal from the right to the left, using a few different options.

Almost invariably, the cell the player will create will be long and thin, which maps to the cell properties of a real world transmitting cell.

The player could in the next level connect several signals and receptors, and design a cell that had the natural properties of a neuron.

Subsequently, the player could design increasingly complex cells, and for a wider variety of purposes, including some ready for growth and replication. Rather than simply be a puzzle, however, the cell can evolve dynamically during the course of a gameplay. In a similar structure to the popular iPhone game Plants vs. Zombies, the player can harvest nutrients to build functionality while defending against hostile forces. A screen shot may look similar to this:

Over the course of the gameplay, players would develop for themselves different types of cells. They would also engage in all of the essential cell activities, eventually making a multi-cellular organism.

Technical names and timelines could be used in game and interjected during transition screen to reinforce necessary vocabulary.

Cell Sim - Conclusion

The entire module could take less than 30 minutes to engage. But the player would remember core functionality and properties for years, if not longer.

How a game designer would teach polynomials

noreply@blogger.com (WGS) — Fri, 25 May 2012 11:51:00 +0000

Polynomials Sim - Learning Objectives

The goal of the sim is to develop a comfort level with polynomials, and bring an increased competence in solving traditional polynomial problems such as presented on national tests. This will be accomplished in part through a rethinking and presenting of the mechanics behind the math symbols traditionally used. (Bells and whistles can be added - this is just a core interface design.)

Polynomials Sim - Set Up
While some sims will have stories and scenarios, this sim will keep things a bit more abstract. The player/student will manipulate objects in order to solve presented math problems.
It is possible that different skins could subsequently be used to make the interactions more contextual, such as using, as examples, farmers with fields, friends at a party, or money in a bank, depending on player interest.

Polynomials Sim - Basic Screen Interfaces and Interactions
The sim will start off very simply and get increasingly complex. Instructions will only be minimally used.
The first level would be very easy, and consist of a single challenge. As with all levels, it will show both the traditional math symbols at the top of the screen and the workbench view below. In the workbench mode, the player/student would drag down a box until the two lines were equal. The player would hit [enter] when they believe they have solved the problem for x.

(The interface would also have other features, such as allowing the player to move around the right blue column via the other gray box, not to add or subtract value but to arrange the table in various size rows (here, 1 X 10 could be turned into; 2 X 5; 3 X 3 remainder 1) if they saw fit.)
The second level would then be slightly more complex.

(The player could also drag the red column to the right side of the equation and subtract from the right side that amount.)
The next level could add the next level of complexity. Here, a squared relationship can be introduced. The player can drag the corner to change the value of x, which will also change the non-squared X as well. The player is understanding visually and kinesthetically what these symbols really means.

The next level of complexity will be adding multipliers, which can be visualized through stacking. The player may be able to choose between how they wanted the material to be visualized.

Other levels of interactivity would be introduced. The sim can also highlight patterns, such as a lens showing if everything divisible by 3, for example. Various math steps would have kinesthetic analogies. In the sim, the role of the symbols can start taking on a higher role, and traditional technique for solving problems presented.
Finally, in more complex levels, there will not just be one solution to each challenge. The players will feel as if "their" solution is unique, and they can take pride in it.

Polynomials Sim - Conclusion
This sim will provide a visual and kinesthetic take on traditionally symbolic content. It will support, but not overlap, with traditional methodologies. By having a rigorous level structure, players will get a bit more ability, as well as a bit more complexity, each incremental level, providing motivation. Finally, it will increasingly show the role of symbolic manipulation to have efficiency in dealing with greater complexity.
There is a caveat, of course.
As with so many school related subjects, the better we collectively get at teaching them, the more limited, brittle, and useless the current curricula will seem. Even more tragically, this stick is often used to punish the innovative media, not the original program (see Schools: What if we are at a false peak?).
In this case, the problem is that math isn't real. Math itself is a pedagogy - a perfect self-contained microworld to (hopefully) eventually but imperfectly onto our imperfect world with imperfect results but to make better plans and decisions. Ultimately, it is this perspective that must be embraced to really teach math, rather than the self-referential quixotic rathole of today's school tracks.
However, as long as schools and tests are the context of math today, this would be one approach I would use to 'teach' it.

My Interview on Simulations and Serious Games on WAMC Northeast Public Radio

noreply@blogger.com (WGS) — Fri, 25 May 2012 11:49:00 +0000

Click here to hear the interview.

In Education, Bill Gates is Acting More Like John Akers

noreply@blogger.com (WGS) — Tue, 22 May 2012 11:15:00 +0000

Business organizations tend to shift back and forth between centralized and decentralized. In healthy organizations, the pendulum takes about ten years to make a complete cycle.

Businesses centralize to be efficient, forcing standardized processes, common metrics, data driven decisions, and high command and control. The Quality movement (including six sigma) was the result of centralized thinking. Middle managers are expected to be, in fact, managers.

Then, businesses decentralize to become more innovative and nimble. These smaller business units work closer to the customer to better meet needs. Middle managers are expected to be leaders with profit and loss responsibility. Innovation is rewarded rather than efficiency.

This shift in businesses is often in reaction to competition, such as to truly decentralized, entrepreneurial start-ups that can completely dethrone reigning market leaders. And these shifts do not represent reversals of strategies, but the evolution of the organization.
Similarly, our notion of food has also faced cycles, albeit it longer.

For decades, the technology and trends increasingly allowed the centralization of food production. Freezers, microwaves, fast food restaurants, giant agri-corporations, interstate highways, canister shipping systems, and soft drink companies all enabled food that looked the same and tasted the same season to season and state to state.

Then came the decentralization movement in food, including farmers' markets, locovores, organic food, whole wheat flour, and CSAs.

This shift occurred as individual "food consumers" became increasingly unhappy with the industrial offerings. They took matters into their own hands, and over time both grew their market and eventually even had some impact on grocery store offerings.

Centralized food...

...Looks different than decentralized food. Which offering is a better analogy for schools today?

In many ways, I wrote the book Unschooling Rules to (re)present decentralized education (something that has proven to be very hard for most people to imagine anymore), with ideas taken from the people who really practice it. (Our education system today more closely resembles a franchise model, but that is another story.)

Decentralized education moves away from large classrooms, standardized tests, highly structured school days, rewarding conformity, and rigid curricula, and moves towards encouraging passion, authenticity, creativity, and individualism.

Ultimately, then, what one chooses to do with this rediscovered, increasingly widely used, decentralized view of education is up to the reader.

For some, it is a suggestion that the emperor has no clothes. Education today is stuck in a giant rut, and the best a family can do is walk way.

For others, Unschooling Rules can be treated more like a diet book. A diet book may have a lot of suggestions, and the moderate readers will pick and choose. After flipping through it it, some may still get fast food, but also increase the amount of local fruit and vegetables. Any reader of Unschooling Rules will at least get some suggestions to make incremental improvements in the authenticity of the education delivered.

The changes typically proposed to schools today from various think tanks and blue ribbon panels, made up of full time academics and their customers, represent the slightest bumps in either greater command and control or customization, all in the name of being practical. Cost effective scalability and disintermediation and subjectation of home lives are necessary to their thinking.

But they will continue to fail. Because no closed system ever became more decentralized on its own. Customer panels never helped a monopoly evolve. Bill Gates is wasting his legacy, because he is acting more like John Akers. He has surrounded himself with insiders, making TQM-style improvements, talking a good game but having no vision.

Ultimately, as shown by the growing number of families opting out of the industrial model, to really improve our nation's schools we have to imagine more.

Isaac Asimov on Personalized Learning

noreply@blogger.com (WGS) — Sat, 19 May 2012 18:48:00 +0000

“In the old days, very few people could read and write. Literacy was a very novel sort of thing, and it was felt that most people just didn’t have it in them. But with mass education, it turned out that most people could be taught to read and write. In the same way, once we have computer outlets in every home, each of them hooked up to enormous libraries, where you can ask any question and be given answers, you can look up something you’re interested in knowing, however silly it might seem to someone else.

Today, what people call learning is forced on you. Everyone is forced to learn the same thing on the same day at the same speed in class. But everyone is different. For some, class goes too fast, for some too slow, for some in the wrong direction. But give everyone a chance, in addition to school, to follow up their own bent from the start, to find out about whatever they’re interested in by looking it up in their own homes, at their own speed, in their own time, and everyone will enjoy learning.”

- Isaac Asimov, Bill Moyer Interview, 1988

Unschooling Rules 33: In education, customization is important like air is important.

Mass Customization in Education? http://www.eschoolnews.com/2012/02/21/mass-customized-learning-the-key-to-education-reform/
The Daily Pennsylvanian: Redefining the college diploma: http://thedp.com/index.php/article/2012/02/students_pursue_individualized_majors
Deeper Dive: Education is Individualistic

Some "Learning to Be" Questions

noreply@blogger.com (WGS) — Wed, 16 May 2012 15:21:00 +0000

The premise of Unschooling Rules is that education should be centered around the student, not the providing institution. Curricula should be around what children need and love, not what schools are able to teach. Education "reforms" that ignore these facts will fail.

Specifically, the sole purpose of education is to enable every person to:

Discover what skills he or she can do better than anyone else. (And master some need-to-have basics.)
Discover what their deepest passions and beliefs are, including how to best serve.
Engage in projects to test, expand, and refine these skills.
Create a sustaining career that aligns skills, projects, and passions.

This is necessarily an individualistic journey. Here are essential questions, loosely (and sometimes inaccurately) categorized.

"Learning to Be" is essential for both understanding each person's unique skills, and also understanding one's passions and mission. Some "Learning to Be" questions are:

About what are you passionate? How can the world be made a better place?
What are your strengths? Where is your talent?
What is your story? How would someone describe you?
What makes you uncomfortable? Do you need to get better, or can you work around that?
If you could spend your life doing anything, what would it be?
Of whom are you jealous?
What blogs do you read? Who do you follow?
What is your greatest fear? What is your greatest frustration?
What do you do to avoid doing what you are supposed to do?
What gives you energy? What drains energy?
With whom do you associate?
What is your role in a group?
What is your voice?
Where are you generous?
What is your brand?

In contrast, "Learning to Do" requires significant practice. Some "Learning to Do" questions are:

Where do people come to you for help?
What do you have/want the most experience doing?
What tools are necessary for you to master? What tools do you use everyday?
What do you want to deliver? What do you want to be paid for doing? Do you want to serve individuals or broad markets?

"Learning to Know" can highlight new places to either "Learn to Do" or "Learn to Be."

Project KTracker kicks off

noreply@blogger.com (WGS) — Wed, 09 May 2012 20:09:00 +0000

Watch a demo video

We have started to develop a high quality three-dimensional motion tracking system for science education based on the Microsoft Kinect controller, which was released about 18 months ago. This development is part of the Mixed-Reality Labs project funded by the National Science Foundation.

KTracker will provide a versatile interface between the Kinect and many physics experiments commonly conducted in the classroom. It will also provide natural user interfaces for students to control the software for data collection, analysis, and task management. For example, the data collector will automatically pause while the Kinect detects that the experimenter is adjusting the apparatus to create a new experimental condition (during which the data collection should be suspected). Or the user can "wave" to the Kinect to instruct the software to invoke a procedure. In this way, the user will not need to switch hands between the apparatus and the keyboard or mouse of the computer (this "hand-switching" scene seems familiar to the experimentalists reading this post, huh?). The Kinect sensor has the capacity to recognize both gestures of the experimenter and motions of the subject, making it an ideal device for carrying out performance assessment based on motor skill analysis.

KTracker is not a post-processing tool. It is not based on video analysis. Thanks to the high performance infrared-based depth camera built in the Kinect, KTracker is capable of doing motion tracking and kinematic analysis in real time. This is very important as it helps to accelerate the data analysis process and contributes to enhancing the interactivity of laboratory experiments.

KTracker will also integrate a popular physics engine, Box2D, to support simulation fitting. For example, the user can design a computer model of the pendulum shown in the above video and adjust the parameters so that its motion will fit what the camera is showing--all in real time. Like the graph demonstrated in the above video, the entire Box2D will be placed in a translucent pane on top of the camera view, making it easy for the user to align the simulation view and the experiment view.

KTracker will soon be available for download on our websites. We will keep you posted.

Kinect-based motion tracking and analysis

noreply@blogger.com (WGS) — Thu, 03 May 2012 20:27:00 +0000

Click here to watch a video.

Microsoft's Kinect controller offers the first affordable 3D camera that can be used to detect complex three-dimensional motions such as body language, gestures, and so on. It provides a compelling solution to motion tracking, which--up to this point--is often based on analyzing the conventional RGB data from one or more video cameras.

The conventional wisdom of motion tracking based on RGB data requires complicated algorithms to process a large amount of video data, making it harder to implement a real-time application. The Kinect adds a depth camera that detects the distances between the subjects and the sensor based on the difference of the infrared beams it emits and the reflection it receives. This gives us a way to dynamically construct a 3D model of what is in front of the Kinect with a rate of about 10-30 frames per second, fast enough to build interactive applications (see the video linked under the above image). For as low as $100, we now have a revolutionary tool for tracking 3D motions of almost anything.

The demo video in this post shows an example of using the Kinect sensor to track and analyze the motion of a pendulum. The left part of the above image shows the overlay of trajectory and velocity vector to the RGB image of the pendulum, whereas the right part shows the slice of the depth data that is relevant to analyzing the pendulum.

The National Science Foundation provides funding to this work.

What is the highest priority for managers of educational programs in new media?

noreply@blogger.com (WGS) — Sun, 29 Apr 2012 15:40:00 +0000

In March 2007, eLearning Guild’s landmark report Immersive Learning Simulations presented the following data: Managers of educational programs, both academic and corporate, were asked about relative importance of various factors in a new educational simulation program. They ranked “ease of deployment” over every other category, including “better meets learning objectives” and “fun and exciting for participants.”
(Raw figures: 57.4 percent said ease of deployment was very important and 37.2 said it was important; 34.6 percent said better meets learning objectives was very important and 41.4 percent important; and 50.2 percent regarded fun as very important, while 28.4 percent rated it important.)

- Clark Aldrich, The Complete Guide to Simulations and Serious Games, 2009

If you care about learning, start with food.

noreply@blogger.com (WGS) — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 20:08:00 +0000

Unschooling Rules 15. If you care about learning, start with food.

ABC News Do Fatty, Processed Foods Lower Children's IQ?
Washington Post: School lunch debates heat up
Deeper Dive: To gain insight into schools, look at how they treat food.

"Semi-digital" fabrication technologies

noreply@blogger.com (WGS) — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 01:50:00 +0000


A street made by using Energy3D.

Emerging digital fabrication technologies such as 3D printing could trigger a new wave of industrial revolution according to New Scientist. While 3D printers are becoming more affordable and they are growing more powerful, versatile, and speedy, they will likely not be immediately available in the classroom.

Fabrication in schools is fundamentally important to engineering education. The lack of appropriate educational technology that supports students to transform ideas into products could impede student learning and creativity. To meet schools' immediate needs and fill the gap between now and future, we have been developing a flagship app called Energy3D that provides a "semi-digital" solution for fabrication.

The current version of Energy3D focuses on designing, constructing, and testing model buildings. The program supports students to conceive and design a building on the computer. It then converts a computer design into a sketch on paper that can be printed out using a conventional printer. Students can then cut out the pieces from the sketch and then assemble them into buildings as designed. The reason we call this technology "semi-digital" fabrication is because, while the computer helps generate the sketch, students still need to cut and assemble manually.

This has a catch, however, as it assumes the pieces are all as thin as a piece of paper. But for education, it is perfectly fine because it reduces the design and manufacturing complexity for young students, allowing them to address a tractable number of important questions related to math, architecture, engineering, and science.

We are going to the 2012 USA Science and Engineering Festival to be held in Washington DC in April 28-29 to demonstrate this technology. If you happen to be there and are interested in seeing how it works, meet us at the Concord Consortium's Booth #2758 in Hall B.

Would you require every student in the country to take a mandatory year-long class in order to find the 5 percent who excel?

noreply@blogger.com (WGS) — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 12:31:00 +0000

Let's suppose you were in charge of a country, say the Soviet Union in 1975. And according to your experts, your country was facing a short-fall of chemists. What would you do?

The Education Ministry reaction would probably be to require all students in an age range, perhaps 12 and 14 year olds, to take a year or two of chemistry classes with rigorous standardized testing. The hope would be that this process would identify the 5% of students who have an aptitude to go into the profession and meet the national need.

And yet the immorality, inefficiency, and even ineffectiveness of this "solution" is self-evident to any parent and any school child.

Granted, one goal of education is exposure. But it is only through enabling self-directed interest (with periodic and restrained help from a guide) can passion be achieved, vital communities be formed, and the mind-numbingness of misaligned classes be avoided.

Broad, blunt curricula is the enemy of widespread excellence, not the enabler. But then schools have always been by and for the top 5% of students.

The Limitations of Creativity (and why I am interested in the work of unschoolers)

noreply@blogger.com (WGS) — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 13:40:00 +0000

From the Unschooling Rules Tumblr