Augmented Reality | Emerging Tech | Video Games | Virtual Worlds
ARVEL
www.ArvelSig.com
Applied Research in Virtual Environments for Learning
EXCLUSIVE
E-Interview Research Framework by JANET SALMONS ASK CHRIS
Research Advice from CHRIS DEDE PROPHETS OF SCIENCE FICTION
Science Fiction book reviews by SHARI METCALF RE-THINKING ASSESSEMENT
New Media, New Methods by LISA DAWLEY
OCTOBER-DECEMBER 2011
arvelsigSuperNews
The ARVEL SuperNews is an initiative of The Applied Research in Virtual Environments for Learning special interest group of the American Educational Research Association.
EDITORS: Jonathon Richter and Sabine Lawless-Reljic AUGMENTED REALITY EDITOR: Patrick O‘Shea EMERGING TECHNOLOGY EDITOR: Jeremy Kemp VIDEO GAMES EDITOR: Moses Wolfenstein VIRTUAL WORLDS EDITOR: …still rezzing ASK CHRIS: Chris Dede EDITOR AT LARGE: Jodi Asbell-Clarke SCIFI COLUMN EDITOR: Shari Metcalf CONTRIBUTING EDITORS: …roaming EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE 2011-2012 HONORARY CHAIR & NOMINATION COMMITTEE CHAIR: Chris Dede CHAIR: Lisa Dawley PAST CHAIR: Jonathon Richter PROGRAM CHAIR: Scott Warren PROGRAM CHAIR ELECT: Amy Cheney FINANCE/SECRETARY: Brian Nelson SPECIAL EVENTS: Patrick O‘Shea COMMUNICATIONS: Sabine Reljic MEMBERSHIP: Dennis Beck AWARDS: Shari Metcalf WIKI: Nicole Miller
CONTACTS: WEBSITE: http://www.arvelsig.com NING: http://arvelsig.ning.com EMAIL: arvelsig173@gmail.com
ARVEL SuperNews was powered by …..http://writtenkitten.net
Applied Research in Virtual Environments for Learning
CONTENT S WHAT’S THE BUZZ
SPECIAL FEATURE
4 Winter in ARVEL 5 Letter from the ARVEL Chair
14 E-Interview Research
AUGMENTED REALITY
REGULAR FEATURES
7 Teacher-Designed AR 9 Software/App Reviews EMERGING TECH.
10 Let‘s Talk about Bodies 13 Software/App Reviews VIDEO GAMES
19 Rating Video Games
Framework
6 Movie Review 17 Ask Chris 18 SciFi Column 25 Club Photo 26 Blog Alert 27 ARVEL@AERA 28 Art Reviews 29 Announcements
VIRTUAL WORLDS
21 Jonathon Richter and Sabine Lawless-Reljic
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|What’s the Buzz?
Winter in
ARVEL inter: brings to mind thoughts of snow, hot chocolate, and gifts. As companies offer new video games, new apps, and a myriad of new gadgets to interact with and learn from, the commercial hype is at its peak. Winter also marks the end of the year as daylight in the northern hemisphere ebbs and we reflect and prepare to renew ourselves with the rising of a new sun. We note the passing of efforts in our field: the loss of funding at the federal level for many areas of vital research, the closure of LEGO Universe MMO, and many other difficulties faced by children, educators, and the learning research community at this point in history. Now it is time that we all create hope and face the future. Scanning the horizon, things look like they will be increasingly interesting. Here at ARVEL, we‘ve been looking inward, too: times are changing quickly and we‘re galvanizing our determination to not only stay the course, but to be stronger and better at fulfilling our mission. While this fundamentally means stewarding a healthy Special Interest Group within the American Educational Research Association and all that that entails – we look to support that core by growing and engaging our community of practice. We‘re looking to better use the many media outlets that ARVEL has sprouted – the Research Wiki, the listserv, the ARVEL Ning Social Network, the ARVEL Immersive Learning Research Forum, the hands-on workshops and on-site experiences – and of course the high quality program at the AERA Annual Conference… as well as the ARVEL quarterly SuperNews – TOGETHER. Our organization is focusing on the purposeful, efficient, and meaningful use of this array of engagement opportunities to weave a fabric that embraces everyone in our immersive learning research community throughout the year. Together, we look to stick to our knitting and create this cozy ARVEL virtual sweater. On behalf of all of us at the ARVEL SuperNews, we wish you Happy Holidays and a sunny, enlightening and immersive new year! Jonathon Richter, Co-Editor
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ASSESSMENTS still very much alive. Instead of thinking about assessment as the evaluation of ―getting it right,― how can we engage in ongoing cycles of data collection, reflection and improvement that are customized to individual people? What types of data can we provide to learners that help them reflect on and interpret achievement of their own goals and interests, and in what forms can it be provided to create engagement and motivation in the learning process? I appreciate how Moses Wolfenstein and others start to lead us down that path in this issue with discussions of games-based learning.
Dr. Lisa Dawley is Mali Young in Second Life
Re-thinking Assessment for a New World How do immersive learning environments change the nature of assessment? By Lisa Dawley A hearty welcome to our new editors in this issue of the ARVELSIG SuperNews! We‘re thrilled to bring our members a variety of new perspectives and latest news about immersive learning.
Now, on to this issue‘s topic: assessment. I don‘t like the word ―assessment.‖ My mind begins to
visualize a multiple choice test where I must completely fill in the bubble, only to be informed of the results and how far I am from still being perfect, the 100%, the gold star on the paper. I‘m sure this stems from some childhood trauma, or perhaps my lessening tolerance for testing practices that have gone awry in today‘s educational system . One of my goals as an educator is to encourage others in the field (and myself) to reframe our thinking about the dreaded assessment word. This can be hard to do in K-12 educational system where high stakes testing is
As an academic who thrives on applied research and the use of design-based research in my work, I‘m very excited about seeing the data from my designs put into action. What data sets are meaningful, how do we aggregate and display the data, what patterns can we discern, and when we do, what do we do with that information? How do the players (learners) actually encourage the design of the system itself? AsbellClarke‘s article on educational gaming ecosystems helps us understand how the players themselves are part of a larger community and ecosystem that actually influences the design of the game, that then returns to have an impact on the player and community (issue Summer 2011). Very cool. Enjoy the issue. And get ready. AERA is just around the corner, and the ARVELSIG team has been busy behind the scenes to make this our best conference yet—we hope you‘ll join us on our Scholar‘s Journey (super secret project) where you can experience alternative assessments first-hand. We hope to see you in Vancouver in April!
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Movie Review
“Somehow my invented self was becoming a part of my real self, as if I’d somehow caused a dream to breathe.” Meadows, 2008, p12 (I, Avatar. New Riders: Berkeley, CA)
Source: http://www.mobile2u.com.pk/blog/desktop_wallpapers/hd_avatar_wallpaper.aspx
is an avatar? The etymology of ‗avatar‘ explains the descent of a deity to W hat earth: from Sanskrit (ava-tāra) (Compact Oxford English Dictionary, 2008). ‗Avatar‘ is a spiritual concept made in flesh. Authors have revisited the concept in science fiction novels such as Snowcrash (Stephenson, 1992) and movies such as The Matrix (Wachowski, Wachowski & Silver, 1999), in which heroes are humans who can electronically transfer their mind into computer-generated bodies in cyberworlds. The movie Avatar (Cameron, 2009) more recently pushes the technology advances to providing biological bodies (called avatars) operated via mental link by genetically matching humans in an effort to join the natives, the Na‘Vi, inhabiting the planet Pandora. The behaviors emitted by the avatars are thus controlled by the humans. Outside the movie industry, technology has yet to reach mind control over xeno-flesh capability yet. However, brain-controlled avatars are not too far behind as demonstrated by brain-computer interface research and emerging technologies such as the Advanced Virtuality Lab (AVL)‘s projects in Israel: Virtual Embodiment and Robotic Re-Embodiment (VERE) is funded by the European Union and aims to build interfaces for virtual worlds allowing users to control avatars mentally. VERE is a viable approach to the challenge of telepresence by providing natural avatar movements. Another AVL project, Being in Augmented Multi-modal Naturally-networked Gatherings (BEAMING project) produces lifelike interactions. A BEAMING proxy is a programmable bot that looks and acts like the person it doubles. Read more about AVL‘s projects at digitaljournal.com/article/314353. By S. Reljic-Lawless
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|Augmented Reality Patrick O’Shea, AR Editor: For this issue, I’ve invited Dr. Daniel Curry-Corcoran to present his thoughts about an initiative that’s taking place in the Newport News (Virginia) Public School System involving teachers and students creating their own Augmented Reality experiences. Enjoy.
A Newport News Public Schools initiative brings AR to teachers and students By Dr. Curry-Corcoran
Over the past year, Newport News Public Schools (NNPS) in Virginia implemented a pilot project to examine the impact of Professional development in our public schools has an innovative teacher training model. Using the latest in one primary goal - to improve teaching and learning. Given the vacuum in which many of these handheld computers and quick response (QR) technology, a trainings occur, many teachers struggle to transfer their new learnings into the reality of the classroom. professional development plan
was constructed to study the values of delivering content to students through teacher and student designed augmented reality (AR) experiences. This process involved a scaffolded approach to teaching educators the skills to develop AR experiences, and then having them teach those same skills to their students.
An Exploration of an Approach to Developing Teacher- and Student-Designed Augmented Reality Experiences Unlike traditional professional development sessions that utilize standard lecture and small group work to drive learning, this AR training focused on exposing teachers to a process of learning through the entire AR life cycle - from design, to development, through production. Rather than focusing on content mastery, teachers focused on the process of instructional delivery critical to ensuring their ability to lead AR experiences in their own classroom. Despite inevitable issues of procurement, access, and change management, preliminary findings highlight the potential of coupling handheld technologies and processbased learning to improve teaching and learning. First, initial teacher misgivings and doubts regarding the ability to deliver new instructional techniques were overcome as teachers were given ample time to question, plan, troubleshoot, and develop the final product they would use in the classroom. Teacher interest grew in relation to their direct exposure in leading the development of the various stages of the AR experience during training sessions. Teachers who had more direct involvement in facilitating learning sessions had a deeper understanding for each step in the development and production processes of an AR. Ultimately these teachers internalized a richer mastery for each of the AR development stages, which was also
reflected during interview sessions and their work in the classroom.
multi-step multiplication problems, a key content strand covered A second important finding came during the school year. In one instance, a in understanding how professional ―dognapper‖ demands a ransom of 100 development activities focused on $100 bills and 75 $50 bills. While this process and delivery helped teachers may seem straightforward, many become more reflective on their more students were puzzled as to the actual traditional approaches to content question being asked. While this led to delivery in the classroom. Reflecting some concern among the Hidenwood on the impact AR strategies could team given the amount of time spent on have on more traditional teaching this standard during lessons, teachers approaches was apparent in many were able to use the process-based debriefing sessions. In Dognapped, learning strategies of their AR to realize the second AR experience designed the need for more process learning in completely be the Fifth Grade team the classroom. at Hidenwood Elementary, students were required to follow clues to A third take away examines the discover the whereabouts of their lost philosophical debate on the role dog. This AR incorporated many technology plays in the classroom.
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Historically, technology has been used primarily as a support to instruction, but has not always been integral to instructional delivery. This is even the case with modern handheld computers. When used as a mere tool, despite their promise for changing the instructional process, these devices too can spend far too much time on shelves in the classroom as students become bored with overused applications or repetitive uses. A key finding in the augmented reality work at Hidenwood highlighted the promise that awaits us when technology becomes an integral component in instructional delivery. One key difference with the Hidenwood project in comparison to many projects using handheld computers was the focus on instruction rather than technology. Instead of providing content, these devices were used to create, deliver, and produce instruction. They were not merely used as a tool during a lesson but as tools necessary for the learning process. The experience of creating the augmented reality experiences, whether teacher or student developed, continued to
provide opportunities for all involved to use their creative powers to create instructional resources.
Regardless of any individual's personal feelings regarding technology, the rapid pace of technological development and the exposure that students have to it outside of the classroom will ultimately mandate that we find productive ways of using these devices in the classroom. While we can continue down the road of using handheld technologies as supports, our work at Hidenwood has shown the promise that exists when these technologies are coupled with innovative strategies to incorporate them into the work of teaching and learning. Students can take up the role of a reporter, a light technician, or even a geologist, and apply what they are learning in the classroom to collaborate and solve real scenarios providing authentic settings for students and teachers to learn from.
1. The ARG required students engage with virtual and real-world materials. 2. The activity in the hallway demonstrated how engaged the students were. 3. Students worked in pairs to follow the trail.
Dr. Curry-Corcoran is the Executive Director of Accountability and is responsible for the supervision of staff in the departments of state and local testing, applied research, program evaluation, and the division‘s student information system. Dr. Curry-Corcoran also serves as the principal researcher for the school division. Dr. Curry-Corcoran has over 10 years experience in program management, evaluation, and research in public school settings. These experiences have afforded Dr. Curry-Corcoran with innumerable opportunities to develop collaborative relationships and partnerships among both school and administrative staff necessary for the success of a project of this scope. His research focuses have included developing strategic evaluation plans for elementary and secondary reading and mathematics assessment programs, measuring the effectiveness of federally-funded Title I teacher training programs, and analyzing the impact of technology training on pre-service and in-service teachers. Dr. Curry-Corcoran‘s experiences as a researcher have enabled him to develop a strong understanding and provide in-depth support to educators in a variety of fields, including the development of technology infrastructure, appropriate uses of student-level data, curriculum development, and the professional development and training of school staff. Dr. Curry-Corcoran has a long history of working on large-scale school reform efforts involving technology integration and is currently supervising the deployment of the school division‘s new student information system and helping to coordinate the augmented reality training of fifth grade teachers at Hidenwood Elementary school. These efforts include the recruiting of teachers and administrators, coordinating the purchasing and testing of the iPod Touch devices used, and planning for the expansion and training initiatives to ensure the replication of efforts to other elementary schools.
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Layar
Junaio
www.layar.com
Software & App Reviews
www.junaio.com
Platform: iPhone, Android, Symbian
Platform: iPhone, Android, Nokia (N8)
GPS: yes
GPS: yes
Marker Based: No
Marker Based: Yes
Markerless: No
Markerless: Yes
Built-In User Actions: Web View
Built-In User Actions: Post text, post image, post photo, post 3d, social
Publishing API: Open key Publishing API: open key + crowd Application API: custom Application API: custom AR View Content: 3d, 3d-amin, 2d AR View Content: 3d, 3d-amin, 2d POI actions: Info, Audio, Music, Video, Call, Email, SMS, Map, Event
POI actions: Info, Audio, Video, Map, Event
Offline mode: Online only
Offline mode: Online only
Wikitude
Sekai Camera
www.wikitude.org/en
sekaicamera.com
Platform: iPhone, Android
Platform: iPhone, Android, iPad, iPodTouch
WIKITUDE API GPS: yes
WIKITUDE WORLDS GPS: yes
GPS: yes
Marker Based: No
Marker Based: No
Markerless: No
Markerless: No
Built-In User Actions:
Built-In User Actions:
Built-In User Actions: Post text, post photo, post sound, social
Publishing API: Bundled
Publishing API: open key
Publishing API: restricted+ crowd
Application API: open
Application API: custom
Application API: commercial
AR View Content: 3d, 2d
AR View Content: 2d
AR View Content: 2d
POI actions: Info, Event
POI actions: Info, Map, Email, Call Offline mode: Cacheable
POI actions: Info, Audio, Map,
Marker Based: No Markerless: No
Offline mode: Offline
Offline mode: Online only
This review information was retrieved from ―AR Browsers for Smartphones.‖ Read the entire report at http://www.scribd.com/doc/56146988/AR-Smartphones 9
|Emerging Technology Let’s Talk about Bodies Connecting our bodies with virtual environments for research Let‘s talk a little about their bodies. By Jeremy Kemp In my research of our graduate students of library and information sciences‘ willingness to accept all the user for troll environments as a learning system and a tool to augment our synchronous Web conferencing system and asynchronous learning management system, I was surprised to find that ―facilitating conditions‖ such as the students home computing environment and general feeling of EEs with technology overall had very little impact on their acceptance for Second Life. The general full wisdom among educational technologists has been that tools like Second Life are too cumbersome and unwieldy for our poor overwhelmed students to navigate and master.
One fascinating results of my survey research with over 400 respondents showed that problems with vision (albeit self-reported) did indeed have a very strong impact on our students‘ willingness to accept virtual environment tools in their learning milieu. But, contrary to my expectation, folks who reported having vision problems were MORE likely to accept virtual environment tools.
But, contrary to this general Screenshot of the default view in Second Life feeling that ―cognitive load killed the avatar,‖ the data is just not showing this, at least among my community of techno-savvy librarians. Our folks tend to be extremely hip to the latest computer trends and methodology for incorporating technology into the process of gathering, manipulating and sharing information in communities. San Jose State Screenshot of zooming on the map University School of Library and One further interesting result Information Science is the largest was that our women (and 85% of our such school in the country with over students are women) were much 2300 students working entirely from a more likely to accept these tools once distance. In fact, we never require they had passed their reproductive their bodies to visit our location. prime. Women in their 20s vigorously pushed back on the use of avatars and fantastical virtual environments as a way of interacting
with their classmates and conducting the business of education. Women 40 years and older, however, were much more willing to explore this brave new world. I honestly haven‘t a shred of evidence to describe the foundations for the psychological basis for this difference; my work was purely quantitative and based upon the Unified Theory of the Acceptance and Use of Technology. Now it‘s time to start using some mixed methods and reach out to our students to better understand the human reasons for this difference. But let me take a few semieducated guesses about why our students with vision problems and our students of different ages accepted the use of multi-user virtual environments in their online education in interestingly nonintuitive ways. Let‘s talk a little bit more about their bodies. I can only imagine the difficulties that sight-impaired have navigating around the world. How many bruised shins, aching shoulders and needlessly embarrassing situations must arise from having a foggy view of the world? I‘m not talking about total blackness, walking with a red cane, guide dog blindness. If you have any trouble with vision the physical world must become just that much more physically threatening; all filled with sharp edges and ankle-bending missed steps. I have to imagine that the Second Life viewer presents some wonderfully liberating controls in terms of zooming the view to an extreme close-up to any object or
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other person in the simulator. And what sight-impaired person wouldn‘t enjoy flying through cityscapes like Superman when those very same complex urban environments must present some daunting challenges from the ground level? Will we see any work in Vancouver concerning disabilities and avatars?
larger portion of whom are unmarried and without child. Teri Lind here at our school of nursing sees multiuser virtual environments as the perfect setting for exploring emotional and affective issues in healthcare simulation. Her brilliant idea is to impregnate all of her students!
A nursing colleague of mine is doing some very interesting work with her young female students, the
These young ladies (and a few men) become ―with child‖ on a fabulously awkward journey toward
deeper understanding and empathy. Terri was able to leverage the vast amount of user-generated content in the Second Life store to outfit each of her students avatars with a working uterus. With tummy‘s bulging ever larger over time and a dramatic culminating event, Teri explores primal topics such as the risk for mortality how it feels to…. Well, you get the drift. The IRB strains to comprehend appropriately bland euphemisms.
Pictures with permission Teri Lind, SJSU, School of Nurses.
Pregnancy Meanwhile, another colleague at Indiana University is gathering information off the bodies of real people in their response to the virtual environment. Eye tracking, galvanic skin response, electroencephalogram, and functional magnetic resonance imaging are all tools in our research chests (should they be well-funded). Another interesting area that arises from the earliest simulations in virtual environments developments have to do with our body‘s inability to withstand disconnected sensory stimuli. Researchers found very early on that sending the brain visual simulate that does not match the biological inertial guidance system in our ears can cause some problems. My wife demonstrates this concept on long trips in the car by her inability to read anything, or even to look back to chat with my girls. And it doesn‘t take a multi-million dollar, high fidelity, military-grade flight simulator to generate a physical response, including sweaty palms and
Delivery
Post Partum
fear-of-heights queasiness. It turns out these are cheap tools for tickling our amygdales.
love you SIRI). And, in fact, I am writing to you now through my headset using a tool originally invented and evangelized by Ray So what‘s so ―emerging‖ about the Kurzweil. His same speech thought of connecting our bodies with recognition engine used in Dragon virtual environments for research? and offered by Nuance is powering Well, perhaps I‘m more excited about the Apple voice-recognition tools. the pace of change here and how we Yes, that‘s the same Ray Kurzweil seem to have broken out of the 20-year who invented a reader for the blind WIMPy doldrums. We have been and who plans to maintain his body satisficing with Windows and icons for in a frozen state to await the time a decade, and are very recently when our minds can be is uploaded engaging -- at an explosive pace -- with to our silicon. physical interfaces shining forth like a supernova out of a little company in Cupertino. Indeed, our jobs as researchers have become much more interesting with touchy-feely, talky-wavy tools. Our constant connection to the cloud now comes standard with haptic feedback (bzzzzz) and our early missteps into affective interfaces (I curse you, Bob) have now been absolved by the dulcet tones of DARPA-birthed personal agents (I
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The interesting thing about fantastical predictions of the emerging technology is how the pinnacle development in most men‘s plans for the future (including Kurzweil‘s Singularity) seem to always happen within the predictor‘s lifetime. Thus Maes-Garreau‘s Law stating, ―most favorable predictions about future technology will fall within the Maes-Garreau Point", defined as "the latest possible date a prediction can come true and still remain in the lifetime of the person making it."
And, riffing on this theme of virtual environments, the cloud and body integration, Patty Maes work at MIT on the topic of fluid interfaces directly applies to my point. See her work also on ―sixth-sense‖ projected interfaces and my favorite new toy from sifteo.com. Beware the Owl Bear!
they were first explored as tools to simulate destruction, they have become so personal and ubiquitous that they are now useful in the most humble classroom and for the least martial effect. We may not live forever inside them, but at least we will see further and grow and heal with each other through them. -J
Emerging developments in applied research for virtual environments for learning seem to be headed toward a more physical, primal and sensual realm. Whereas
Jeremy W. Kemp is a full-time faculty member at SLIS and started teaching online in 1999. He keeps the official wiki for educators using the Second Life immersive environment — www.simteach.com . His instructional technology project connecting Moodle and Second Life has attracted hundreds of participants from around the world — www.sloodle.com . Kemp has a doctorate in education and master's degrees from Stanford and Northwestern University. He has been awarded "Picture of the Day" three times on Wikipedia and "Featured Video" twice on YouTube .
Kurzweil is involved in fields as diverse as optical character recognition (OCR), text-to-speech synthesis, speech recognition technology, and electronic keyboard instruments. He is the author of several books on health, artificial intelligence (AI), transhumanism, the technological singularity, and futurism. Read more about Raymond ―Ray‖ Kurzweil, an American inventor and futurist. >> http://bigthink.com/raykurzweil SixthSense augments the physical world around us with digital information and lets us use natural hand gestures to interact with that information. By using a camera and a tiny projector mounted in a pendant like wearable device (have you watch Time Travelers yet?), SixthSense sees what you see and visually augments any surfaces or objects around us. Read more about SixthSense, a wearable gestural interface. >> http://ambient.media.mit.edu/people/pranav/current/sixthsense.html Siftables are hybrid tangible-graphical user interface devices with motion and neighbor sensing, graphical display, and wireless communication. Siftables provide a unique opportunity to give children responsive feedback about the movement and arrangement of a distributed set of objects. Read more about TeleStory, an educational application developed on the Siftables platform. >> http://ambient.media.mit.edu/people/seth/past/telestory.html
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Rocket Math Last winter, while overseeing the library during recess, I noticed a large number of boys crammed around an iPad. I was immediately suspicious. Why were they all swarming together and furthermore what could possibly be attracting a large number of boys to the library during recess? They were playing Rocket Math! This app cleverly integrates learning math with experimenting with rocket design. Students can practice reciting math facts, counting money, telling time, recognizing fractions, decimals, geometric shapes, number patterns and even square roots. Every time a child completes a task, they earn money that can purchase rocket parts. This appears to be an exceptional motivator!*
Slice It!
Software & App Reviews
Students may not realize it, but this app is full of opportunities to apply knowledge of geometry, area, fractions, and percentages. The goal is to slice a given shape equally into a specified number of pieces. The shapes, number of cuts, and pieces change with each new turn. The puzzles vary in complexity and become progressively challenging. Invite students to play and then listen carefully to their conversations. Without prompting, look for evidence of math concepts previously taught. Ask students to take a screen shot of a solved puzzle and then have them discuss the reasoning behind the placement of their cuts. Have the class write step-by-step directions to solve a given problem. What math terminology is necessary in order to do this? This addictive app appears completely different from the traditional geometry textbook or worksheet, and yet it will provide a reason for students to access knowledge from prior math lessons.*
Find the Common Sense Media ratings at http://www.commonsensemedia.org/
Strip Designer Ask students to retell the sequence of events in a Revolutionary War battle, folktale, science experiment, or the states of matter in the context of a graphic novel. Strip Designer can import maps, images from iPhoto, or photographs taken with a mobile device directly into a comic strip template. There is a wonderful selection of fonts, colors, text balloons, stickers, paper backgrounds, frames, and filters from which to pick. Students will need to choose a page template that best matches the number of events they plan to retell. With all these wonderful graphic features, it will be a challenge for students to explain events succinctly while sticking to the facts. When the graphic novels are complete, simply save the comics to iPhoto, print them out, or email as a JPEG, PNG, or PDF file. The app will also connect to Facebook, Flickr, or Twitpic. Retelling events in comic strip format is definitely a great way to build understanding skills and spice up a traditional paper and pencil report.*
Project Noah Project Noah connects students to real world learning while promoting environmental stewardship. With this app, students can join the forces of other nature lovers across the world and collect photographs of local plants and animals. Students can collect photographic evidence on their own or for organized projects, or "missions," set up by scientists. Each time students take a photograph; they are documenting that particular species. They will need to be able to classify, describe, and create search tags for every image they submit. Project Noah can automatically access a mobile device's location and include that data with each sighting or students can choose to enter it manually. Geography studies quickly transform from an exercise in memorization, to purposeful understanding of how different locations support unique life forms. With this project, students will need an understanding of Life Science classification systems and be able to observe and describe the similarities and differences of a species.*
* Reviews reproduced with author permission. Dianne Darrow reviewed these apps for Edutopia.org at http://www.edutopia.org/blog/ipad-apps-elementary-blooms-taxomony-diane-darrow.
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|Special Feature Making Sense of Online Interviews with the EInterview Research Framework Changes in scholarly inquiry with e-research By Janet Salmons
The responsibility of the researcher is to explain the world to the world. Working within the discipline of a selected mode of inquiry, the researcher ventures into the unknown then brings new discoveries to the attention of scholars as well as to those who can apply findings and solve practical problems. Researchers in our time have opportunities to make ground-breaking discoveries, to generate new knowledge, and explain emerging ideas to those who can benefit from such understandings. But the worlds they seek to explain are such that accepted methods and methodologies are not entirely adequate. When Bob Dylan (1965) observed that "the princess and the prince/Discuss what's real and what is not" he could not have predicted just how lively that conversation might be today, given the liminality of modern life. Even the greenest digital immigrants experience the ill-defined threshold between real and virtual. As people become familiar with ways to communicate via technology for business as well as social purposes, they are learning to operate through online identities whether in the form of avatars or realistic, carefullyconstructed representations of words and images. The experiences they have in social media, game or virtual environments feel real and the resulting friendships and relationships
are meaningful. Is the individual one person in a physical world and another in a virtual world? Where is the boundary, or is there a boundary, or does it matter? These complexities have implications for everything from culture to commerce, politics to family life. And they have implications for the scholar who must determine how to conduct ethical research with credible, consenting, legal-age participants. In particular, the qualitative researcher who uses interviews may find it challenging to determine whether a research setting is public or private, or who, in what identity, can legitimately sign an informed consent agreement to participate. E-researchers must ascertain how style or mode of data collection will align with the research purpose as any researcher must, but consider as well additional matters about the communications type and technology, the digital identity and presence of the researcher, among other questions.
I believe that research and scholarship will be the next areas to feel shifts comparable to those that have occurred with the move from classroom teaching to e-learning. We already see that electronic production and delivery of academic journals is changing the way scholars convey their findings; this shift is transforming libraries and entire industries based in print publishing. How will the nature of scholarly inquiry — the questions asked, the characteristics of the researcher, and the instructional, institutional, and infrastructure systems that support research — change as e-research becomes yet more widely adopted? How will these changes affect the ways in which research is taught, conducted, and supervised? In this shifting environment those who guide or approve thesis or dissertation proposals, research fellowships or publication requests may find themselves in a quandary because clearly defined guidelines or standards do not exist in many emerging eresearch areas. They may respond to unfamiliar online research
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approaches by over-reaching to scrutinize the minutia, while missing important factors or risks. To address the needs of eresearchers as well as those who oversee their work I developed the E-Interview Research Framework. Components of the E-Interview Research Framework were introduced in Online Interviews in Real Time (Salmons, 2010), and developed further in the edited collection, Cases in Online Interview Research (Salmons, 2012), both from Sage Publications.
A letter from a doctoral student expresses a common dilemma I hear from e-researchers in academic institutions where research must go through a rigorous review process: "Many of my colleagues here have a kind of conservative opinion regarding how research 'should' be done, so your book has helped me in the work with finding substantial and reliable arguments for doing my research in a way that I think fits my research questions.�
Designing anything as seemingly formal as a framework might be seen as a futile attempt to construct something solid of something fluid. Communications technologies, the gadgets they run on, and the ways they are used are indeed in flux. The E-Interview Research Framework is organized as a flexible model that can grow to accommodate new and emerging best practices or protocols for online interview research. The circular display is intentional; categories explored alone will not provide the systems-level view essential to an understanding of the interrelated mechanisms of online interview research. Considered together, using the questions, typologies and models that comprise the Framework can provide a comprehensive picture of the study at hand important to the analysis of a study—whether one is designing original research or analyzing a study proposed or conducted by another researcher.
The E-Interview Research Framework The E-Interview Research Framework consists of eight interrelated categories. Using the Framework is not a linear process; the researcher is encouraged to circle back and forth throughout the design stage, as answers to one question stimulate new directions. Every study needs a clear purpose, so Aligning Purpose and Design is a typical place to begin the process. By exploring the theories, epistemologies and methodologies, we can gain an understanding of how the intended use of online data collection methods aligns with the overall purpose, methodological and theoretical framework of the study. Answers to these fundamental questions lead to the next category: Choosing E-Interviews for the Study. What motivates the scholar to collect data this way? Some researchers are motivated to study behaviors or phenomena that take place online by exploring them in the kind of setting where they occur, others want to study phenomena that occur in the physical world, but are motivated to conduct interviews online for reasons of access to a broader sample. Whatever the motivation, is the rationale for selecting it defensible? Who will the researcher interview, and how will credible participants be found? The rationale for choosing einterviews is closely linked to decisions about sampling and recruitment, the next category of questions in the E-Interview Research Framework. Among other issues, the e-interview researcher needs to be sure that potential participants are who they say they are, and have access and skills as needed to participate in the study. The relationship of the researcher to the participants, and degree of insider versus outsider status of the scholar in relationship to the study are explored in the category termed, "Positioning the Researcher.‖ The next two categories are also intertwined. Selecting the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) and Milieu to
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be used for interviews is directly related to choices made when Determining E-Interview Style. All interview researchers need to think through the level of structure, from highly-structured limitedresponse survey interviews to unstructured conversational, postmodern interviews and semistructured options in between. In online interviews "structure" takes on a great deal of significance since it refers to the degree of advance preparation of interview questions and the way questions will be asked and answered given the selected ICT. If some or all of the dialogue is to occur using a text-based ICT, such as the chat feature in Second Life, a researcher might find it difficult to think about, articulate and type questions quickly enough to retain the participant's interest and conversation flow. Choices related to use of visual methods in the interview are part of decision-making and selection of ICT. Mutual viewing of participant and researcher in videoconference or virtual face-to-face discussion, or use of researcher or participant-generated pictures, media, diagrams, digital artifacts and so on are possible online. The Typology of Online Visual Interview Methods (Salmons, 2010) is one of the models offered in the Framework to explain options and their implications. The selection of ICT may also be associated with selection of the research setting for the interview.
Selection of an immersive environment for the interview cannot be separated from the selection of the specific virtual world or game where data will be collected. A key question for many researchers is: will the interview setting be in a public or private online milieu? While all oneone or group interviews require informed consent of the participants, data collected from observations of the participant or his/her profile or environment may or may not be considered identifiable personal information that merits informed consent. The Framework Consent in Public or Private Online Milieux Continuum provides a basis for making such decisions. Of course none of these decisions will result in a contribution to the literature unless the researcher can actually carry out the interviews! Is the researcher adequately prepared to engage participants using the selected ICT and interview style? Conducting the Interviews is thus the natural next category in the EInterview Research Framework. Finally, the category termed Addressing Ethical Issues may send the researcher back around the full Framework circle, to ensure that every decision and stage of the study is carried out with respect for protection of human subjects. Once again, complex issues about what (or who!) is real or human emerge. The Framework offers key questions to ask, and guidelines for ethical einterview research design.
Taken as a whole system, the E-Interview Research Framework can be used as a tool for planning and designing as well as dissecting and analyzing research that utilizes online interview data collection methods. The Framework serves as the organizing principle for Cases in Online Interview Research, as the basis for commentaries on each of the ten cases and a metasynthesis of all ten cases in the concluding chapter. On the Sage Study Site you will find additional materials including resources for Institutional Review Board or dissertation/thesis committee members or other reviewers as well as sample syllabi and other instructional materials. The E-Interview Research Framework offers a springboard for dialogue with other methodologists and theorists, so that collectively we can create more acceptance of online research within the academy. I welcome your input, as well as your unanswered questions. Visit www.vision2lead.com or #einterview on Twitter to keep in touch, and to find updated information and news about webinars or related events.
Janet Salmons has served on the graduate faculty of the Capella University School of Business and Technology since 1999. She was a recipient of a Harold Abel Distinguished Faculty Award for the 2011-2012 year. She develops and teaches courses in leadership and team leadership, offers faculty development, serves as dissertation mentor for doctoral learners and as doctoral Colloquium faculty. She is a scholar-practitioner and consultant through her company, Vision2Lead, Inc.
References Dylan, B. (1965). The gates of Eden. New York: Sony. Salmons, J. (2010). Online Interviews in Real Time. Thousand Oaks: Sage Pub. Salmons, J. (2012). Cases in online interview research. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications.
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Ask Chris DEAR CHRIS: Many of my students are addicted to video games and talk about them before, during, and after class. How can I get them engaged with what I have to teach? ~ Steve Brushwell, 10th grade teacher, Bloomington, Indiana
Ask Chris is written by Dr. Chris Dede, Timothy E. Wirth Professor in Learning Technologies at Harvard‘s Graduate School of Education. It will become the most popular column, known for its uncommon common sense and humorous perspective. Send your questions for Chris to arvelsig173@gmail.com
DEAR STEVE: First, sign messages with a cool avatar name, like ―Brushbuster the Magnificent,‖ not some lame real world moniker like ―Steve‖. Second, you don‘t even tell me what subject you are teaching – no wonder your students find you confusing! Once you figure out what course you offer, then see my many publications on teaching through videogames, such as: Jane Austin and Lara Croft: Sisters under the Skin Teaching Quantum Electrodynamics through Weaponry Specifications in Halo No Justice, No Peace: Ethical Dilemmas of NightElves in WoW In a few weeks of following the instructions in my articles, you can ―level up‖ from pathetic to potent in your students‘ eyes. --Dread Lord Dede
DEAR CHRIS: We're using panel data drawn from server logs to assess in-game behaviors and mapping that to player feedback and what they learn as part of our sponsored research. We have been witnessing some interesting patterns around student preferences and content understanding. We're wondering, at what point should we abandon educational science and found our own gaming company? ~ Y.M., anonymous university
your publications - based on these, I recommend you start a company right away! My suggested game title is ―PhotoSINthesis‖, and I would play up how plants have a secret identity at night, sneakily consuming all that oxygen they made from carbon dioxide during the day. Your female biologist should dress in skimpier outfits, and the male botanist should be more buff. Build in some cheat codes to show deleted scenes between the two, discussing just how kinky ―crosstransforming‖ plants can be. My fee for this advice is 10% of gross sales, so let‘s get the show on the road! --Dread Lord Dede
DEAR CHRIS: Unlike years before, The Institutional Review Board at my university is now starting to ask our research team to define our virtual learning environment. The problem is, we, ourselves, are having trouble coming up with a mutually satisfactory definition. Can you help? ~ Gale Yedra, FiloDo University DEAR GALE: Your first mistake is going to the IRB at all. I just tell mine that we are teaching computational agents to play videogames, not people, so they don‘t bother me… Second, your team should just ―agree to disagree‖ – don‘t sweat the small stuff like words meaning the same thing. This issue has never bothered any other field in education, so why should we be different? --Dread Lord Dede
DEAR Y.M.: Thanks for sending
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Science Fiction and other unrequired-butnecessary reading for Immersive Educational Researchers by Shari Metcalf
For this inaugural column about virtual worlds in science fiction, I could think of no better place to start than Neal Stephenson‘s novel, Snow Crash, published in 1992. It‘s hard to believe the novel is almost 20 years old because the ideas are still so fresh and creative. The protagonist, actually named Hiro Protagonist, is a downon-his-luck hacker who lives in a converted storage unit and works as a pizza deliveryman for the Mafia, but when he jacks into the Metaverse he‘s one of the lords of the street, a warrior prince who‘s a celebrity in the wildly popular online world of which he was one of the original programmers. Get this book for great depiction of virtual spaces, including the nightclub in which Hiro reconnects with his girlfriend, and Hiro‘s virtual office, in which an AI librarian teaches Hiro the background in ancient Sumerian culture that Hiro needs in order to save the world. Hiro‘s quest is in fact to save the world - from a virus called Snow Crash that somehow affects both computers and humans. Hiro‘s exgirlfriend programmed the facial expressions by which avatars express emotions, which is why she can always read his feelings in virtual space. Along the way, you‘ll meet Y.T., a teenage tough girl Kourier on a motorized skateboard, encounter cybernetic canines, visit a floating city for refugees financed by a scheming billionaire, and see Hiro and Y.T. save the world with the help of both government agents and a Mafia boss.
Cyberpunk
Research the Future!
Genre:
Prophets of Science Fiction
ARVEL readers interested in the future of virtual worlds for education should also read Neal Stephenson‘s later novel, The Diamond Age: or A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer (1995). This book, which depicts an even more future world of nanotechnology, has as its centerpiece the Primer, a highly advanced interactive storybook. The Primer was designed as a gift for an aristocrat‘s daughter, but an illicit copy falls into the hands of a four-year-old girl, Nell, who lives in poverty. The Primer is designed to bond with its owner, and to learn from her interactions with it. The book‘s advanced programming is able to map archetypal story tropes and educational goals onto Nell‘s life experiences in order to shape an ongoing story. Nell interacts with the story through a virtual representation of herself and her toy companions as the primer guides Nell through lessons in reading and self-defense, and over the years, proceeding through advanced topics in math, logic, and philosophy. There‘s a larger story, of course, dealing with class and cultural interactions across Neo-Victorian and Chinese societies, and the potential impacts of a mass-produced version of the Primer. One particularly interesting feature of the Primer is that, as a ractive, the narration and animation are acted not by a computer program, but by a ractor, a human voice actor who performs the narrations in real-time, as directed by the software. Nell eventually learns of the human ractor with whom she‘s been interacting over the years, forming a personal relationship beyond their virtual connection.
What non-scholarly though important readings would you like other Immersive Academics to read? Send your suggestions for Shari to arvelsig173@gmail.com
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|Video Games Assessing Video Games for Engagement and Educational Value. Rating systems provide point of reference By Moses Wolfenstein
In order to provide you with a common mechanism for evaluating the games reviewed here, we‘ve included a couple of ratings for each title from independent sources. Ratings from the website Gamespot (1-10) are included to provide a point of reference for evaluating the games in terms of Engagement. The rating from Common Sense Media provide an independent perspective on the Educational capacity of each game. Common Sense Media provides a fairly nuanced rating system and we recommend reading the full rating there for any game you‘re interested in. We‘re presenting a simplified version of their age rating as well as their education rating (1-5) for each game. Please bear in mind that both Gamespot and Common Sense media ratings are the work of individual reviewers. While these are expert reviews, they are still subjective in nature.
Minecraft Gamespot score: 8.5/10 Common Sense Media rating: 3/5, Ages 13+ When it comes to commercial games with reach for education, Minecraft is the clear winner for 2012. If you‘re an ARVEL SIG member, chances are you‘ve already heard of Minecraft by now. In fact I‘m sure some of you have probably logged untold hours unleashing the full force of your imagination in Creative mode, or exploring procedurally generated game worlds by yourself or with friends in Adventure mode. Even though Minecraft has technically just come out of beta, Mojang Studio‘s breakaway hit has already seen uptake in a number of formal and informal educational settings. Two of the more visible examples are MinecraftEdu.com and the Minecraft in Schools wiki (a spinoff project by our friends at WoW in Schools). Note that MinecraftEdu is working with Mojang Studios to provide discount pricing on Minecraft for use in schools. Given its fundamentally creative orientation and highly modable nature, Minecraft makes an excellent site for educational researchers and practitioners looking for a virtual world to work with. Minecraft is available for both Mac OSX and Windows operating systems.
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Gamespot score: 9/10 Common Sense Media rating: 0/5, Ages N/A Upon looking at the Common Sense media ratings for this game, you might be wondering why ARVEL SuperNews is including a review for a game that was rated as having no educational value and not appropriate for children. Despite these marks, there are several reasons why Skyrim is worth at least reading more about (and likely playing) if you‘re in the ARVEL community and you have an interest in games. Blending classic RPG game structure with an exploratory open world architecture, Bethesda‘s fifth installment in the Elder Scrolls saga stands one of the more intricately built virtual worlds developed for a single player game. As with the previous Elder Scrolls games it has already developed a rich community of modders, and as additional features of the game are released in later
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patches we can expect to see a lot of creative player activity in the community. All of this is to say that by benefit of generally being an extremely well designed game, Skyrim hits on a large number of James Paul Gee‘s 36 learning principles that are found in video games. Finally, if you‘re doing work in and around adolescent gamers you can expect to hear a lot of talk about Skyrim over the next couple of months so you might want to familiarize yourself with it just to stay ahead of the curve.
Sesame Street: Once Upon a Monster Gamespot score: 8/10 Common Sense Media rating: 5/5, Ages 4+ Not all of our virtual environments are big open-ended worlds, and not all young gamers are tweens and older. If you work with, research, or have younger children then it‘s likely that Sesame Street: Once Upon a Monster (developed by ever innovative Double Fine Productions) has already come to your attention. You‘ll likely note that the Gamespot and Common Sense Media ratings for this game are both quite generous, and from experts I‘ve spoke with the game is definitely deserving of praise. That said it also comes with certain caveats. As some online reviews indicate, the Kinect doesn‘t necessarily work well with the wiggly nature of most younger children, and it might take additional calibration to get it working right (squirming aside). That said, the game has been extremely well received, and even its design flaws can be taken as an opportunity within a design research paradigm to ask what is necessary in terms of either game design or hardware design to create a system that works more effectively for even the twitchiest of kids.
Recent Publications
Open Calls: Conferences
ETC Press (2011). Well Played, a journal on video games, value and meaning. V1. n1 Becker, K., & Parker, J. (2011). The Guide to Computer Simulations and Games. Wiley Bogost, I. (2011). How to Do Things with Videogames. U of Minnesota Press Cutting, A. (2011). Missions for Thoughtful Gamers. ETC Press Squire, K. (2011). Video Games and Learning: Teaching and Participatory Culture in the Digital Age. Teacher College Press
GLS 8.0 http://www.glsconference.org/2012/ Role-Playing in Games Seminar http://roleplayingames.wordpress.com/ DiGRA Nordic 2012 http://digra-nordic2012.org/ Southwest Texas PCA/ACA http://www.swtxpca.org/index.html 3rd Augmented Human International Conference http://www.augmented-human.com/page/ah12-cfp University of Wyoming Playology http://www.uwplayology.com/ Contemporary Screen Narrative: Storytelling’s Digital and Industrial Contexts http://contemporaryscreennarratives.tumblr.com
Open Calls: Publications Journal of Gaming and Virtual Worlds http://tinyurl.com/6mnpjd4 International Journal of Game-Based Learning http://tinyurl.com/82fs8jx Dungeons & Dragons & Philosophy http://andphilosophy.com/submissions
Upcoming Conferences AltDevConf Feb 2012: http://tinyurl.com/7maazb2 Indiecade 2012: http://www.indiecade.com/
Miscellaneous Games and Learning Reference Library on Mendeley: http://tinyurl.com/coymg6v
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|Virtual Worlds, 1 Assessment Through The Looking Glass Determining learning potentialities of and within virtual worlds through science, traditional frameworks, and collaboration By Jonathon Richter Editor’s Note: While we seek to fill the Virtual Worlds Editor position, ARVEL SuperNews co-editor Sabine Reljic and I each agreed to contribute something for this column. ~ JR
S
etting out to write a piece specific to ―virtual worlds‖ resonant with this issue‘s Immersive Learning Methods & Assessment theme, my first thought was to try to somehow address the persistent issues of User Interface and Design that many of us who work to apply virtual worlds for learning persistently encounter. Virtual world platforms give us a toolkit that allows us to conjure digital ecosystems for our StudentPlayers. Somewhat like biological ecosystems, the methods for evaluating what we‘ve created in each digital ecology for each population of learners can thus be rather mind boggling, interconnected, and the components hard to delineate.
While this is a germane question for researchers engaged with learning in video games, augmented reality, or other new types of immersive play to grapple with and answer, those using ―virtual worlds‖ have particular challenges I think worthy of note.
Virtual Worlds – at least the way that I conceive of them – are more open with the user experience not being as much a priori constructed by professional designers than other types of immersive learning – save for, perhaps, augmented reality toolkits. On many virtual worlds platforms, the ability to MAKE STUFF is a big part of the user experience. Part of the selling point With a little more time to think, I of virtual worlds is that one can define your own avatar role, stuff to came up with this guiding question: do, or embed a narrative / back story ―What is the range of and conjure up your own raison considerations that learning d‘être. In your own virtual place, you scientists need to answer when choose your rules, background, undertaking questions about setting, lighting, and who can do learning assessment in virtual what, where. Educators can thus, worlds?” In other words, how do we create their own classrooms and know if and what students are learning define the parameters of the virtual in virtual worlds? experience for their students.
Such capacity, however, also presents a non-trivial challenge when it comes to defining not just how, but WHAT to assess. So while it‘s true that these construction toolkits in virtual worlds have potentially powerful implications for learning – they also present a wider possible range of research and assessment challenges, depending as much on the choices of the designer of the learning space in the respective virtual world as the user interface and learner cognitions and performances, themselves. Danger: Slippery Slope! Further, these challenges couple with regular and rapid changes in the virtual worlds platforms market to present learning researchers a frequently Sisyphean incline to make sense of and gather evidence of learning within these media. Our knowledge base erodes, is rebuilt and the virtual research wheel keeps getting invented, in isolation, over time.
(continued on page 22)
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|Virtual Worlds, 1 Assessment through the looking glass (cont.) (from page 21) Here, briefly then, are three things that I think we can do about this seemingly pernicious problem: First, we can remind ourselves that learning in the virtual sense is most likely not too different in many important ways than learning in other media – including face-to-face. These ―new worlds‖ may be fantastic, but what makes for meaningful learning still probably applies. Let us frame those practices and better port them to the immersive learning environment. Together.
By making a habit of systematically asking some basic questions – such as: ―Is content represented in a valid way?‖ or ―Is content consistently represented here?‖ or ―What are the criteria used to assess student understanding, skills, or performances in this virtual environment? – and sharing the findings, we can help one another, collectively, in our inquiries and grow as a field of study. Third, Recognizing the sheer complexity and difficulty involved in immersive learning research, groups such as ARVEL and their partners can advocate, communicate, and celebrate advances in research methods, tools, and results in our area. The following article by Sabine Reljic in this issue will explore this exciting notion a bit more. We look forward to collaborating with you. With that, we urge our ARVEL members and others seeking evidence of quality immersive learning experiences to contribute their knowledge to our shared database and community conversation.
Second, we can rely on and make connections with other experts in the learning sciences and use these new and traditional assessment frameworks to anchor the development of our shared understanding. By better defining the contexts and conditions for learning within and across virtual worlds‘ toolsets, we may create a more solid foundation for understanding and framing future research.
Further Reading: The Virtual Performance Assessment Project at Harvard University: http://vpa.gse.harvard.edu/ Virtual Worlds Assessment Group on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/ Virtual-Worlds-AssessmentGroup/88347640846 Assessment in Open Wonderland: http://blogs.openwonderland.org/2 011/08/12/assessment-in-virtualworlds/ Assessment in Virtual Worlds, a VWER Meeting (11/10/11): http://www.vwer.org/?p=1381
May 2012 be the Year of the Virtual Scholar !
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|Virtual Worlds, 2 Sharing Knowledge and Mentoring Research on a Global technology continue to feed on Scale in Virtual Environments themselves in an insatiable loop. Let ARVEL be your mentor By Sabine Lawless-Reljic
The ARVEL SIG is far from being the first group interested in building a community of like-minded professionals, but it is the first one with such a challenging goal: To provide an open collaborative Commons of research-based practices vetted specifically for immersive learning environments.
Talk about going down the rabbit hole. Do we have agreed upon terminologies and definitions for concepts and media that keep on evolving? CMC theories correlated to best practices across disciplines and specific technologies and media in a targeted culture? Pedagogies, lesson plans, activities, assessments? We are back to observing teaching and learning events from micro to macro in a universe currently expanding as rapidly as our imagination and
Notice the galaxy map below. The Institute for the Future (IFTF)‘s interstellar map focuses on six big scientific forecasts: Decrypting the Brain, Hacking Space, Massively Multiplayer Data, Sea the Future, Strange Matter, and Engineered Evolution. These six possibilities ―emerge from a new ecology of science shifting toward openness, collaboration, reuse, and increased citizen engagement in scientific research‖ (Pescovitz, 2011). All of A Multiverse of Exploration: The Future of Science 2021 By the Institute For The Future For the complete map that includes peripheral interstellar clouds of creations, go to http://www.iftf.or g/futureofscience
them can be prototyped, or linked to real-time data into virtual worlds for further experimentation and open citizen engagement. For example, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has been blazing a new frontier since 2006 when it opened its virtual headquarter
cyber simulators and real time data monitors in Second Life, attracting thousands of visitors and working with other federal agencies and more than 60 countries. Virtual explorations are indeed a global phenomenon. According to KZero‘s Q2 2011 quick stats for
virtual worlds registered accounts, North America and Western Europe dominate with more than 50 % in all age categories, followed by South America and Eastern Europe on the rise with an average of 20%. ARVEL Ning members are prominently from North America (72%), but the
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|Virtual Worlds, 2 Sharing Knowledge and Mentoring Research on a Global Scale in Virtual Environments (cont.) discussions are clearly international (Western Europe 15%, Others 23%). ARVEL‘s Immersive Learning Roundtables welcomed speakers from most continents (Australia, UK, Spain, Germany, China, Turkey, Russia and many other countries) and academic stages: doctoral students invited to
only of ARVEL‘s multiple channels such as the Ning, Wiki, SuperNews, Inworld Discussions, and AERA conference, but also of all the individuals and groups such as ToolsJam, Virtual World UnSymposium, SITE, and VWPBE that gravitate around each interstellar cloud given it more gravity, heavy with shared research-based evidence.
present their work –in progress or ready to defend-, while others were published researchers (Visit ARVEL‘s Archives). Doctoral students were provided with the opportunity to discuss their research and defend their methodology with an audience of professionals interested in generating deeper understanding in the new
proposed areas of research. In the ivory tower of dissertation writing, such interactive feedback and support is an instant intravenous shoot of cosmic energy. Many doctoral students mentioned how afraid and hesitant they were at first and bursting with renewed enthusiasm by the end of the hour. Most ARVEL presenters are educators eager to share the experiments, hit-andmiss anecdotes, with other educators and researchers in order to generate a common ground in taxonomy, methodology, cybergogy and assessment. Notice the ARVEL Galaxy on the left. Similar to the Multiverse of Exploration map as a star chart of possibility, ARVEL points the way toward opportunities for wonder, knowledge and insight in all disciplines. ARVEL‘s Galaxy is made not As Jonathon Richter mentioned References earlier, the participation of each ARVEL KZero (2011). Quick Stats: VWs by Size member is essential to the vitality and and Region. validity of ARVEL as a community. http://www.kzero.co.uk/blog/quic Discuss your research inworld. Present k-stats-vws-size-region your results at ARVEL@AERA. Blog Pescovitz, D. (2011). A Multiverse of your VW adventures on the Ning. Add Exploration: The Future of Science 2021. your resources to the Wiki. Ask questions Blog post. Dec 05, 2011. on the AERA_ARVEL Forum listserv. http://www.iftf.org/futureofscience
Make 2012 your Year of the Virtual Scholar !
Map Credit: Jonathon Richter
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3D GameLab Player Scorecard, Boise State U.
Tesla Project, Harvard GSE
AECT 2011 Virtual World PreConference. Tom Atkinson discusses the 4 principles of virtual worlds (Immersion, Interaction, Identity, Integration)
World of TeachCraft, by Kavon Zenovka
ARVEL Immersive Learning Research Discussions, Open Wonderland, 10/19/11
Club Photo ARVEL caught up with members for pictures of events and projects in virtual worlds, games and AR platforms. The New Media Faculty Fall 2011 had an awesome run facilitated by Liz Dorland and Robin Heyden; The Beta players at 3D GameLab (Boise State U) keep on questing; Harvard GSE amazes with the Tesla Project, EcoMUVE and EcoMobile; and more! Send us yours for the next issue! arvelsig173@gmail.com
EcoMobile, Harvard GSE
A kindergartener plays Disneyland Adventures for Kinect on Microsoft‘s Xbox
New Media Faculty Fall 2011 meets with Howard Rheingold
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Blog Alert ARVEL Home
Participants Blogs
Terra Nova • Notehall: RMT Comes to the Classroom Dec 13, 2011 • Dynamic Narrative Difficulty Adjustment Dec 02, 2011 • Paizo veterans to make a Pathfinder virtual world Nov 23, 2011 • CfP: Barcelona Conference on Law & Politics of Online Entertainment Nov 23, 2011 • The Billion-Dollar Game Nov 17, 2011 DiGRA • CfP: Special Session on Computational Intelligence and Games at the 2012 IEEE World Congress on Computational Intelligence Dec 02, 2011 • Job: Lecturer in Game Design, University of Bolton (UK) Dec 2, 2011 • CfP: DiGRA Nordic 2010: 2nd Call for papers, June 6-8 2012 Tampere, Finland Nov 30, 2011 • CfP: Foundations of Digital Games 2012, May 29-June 1, Raleigh North Carolina Nov 30, 2011 2¢ Worth • What if Curriculum was an Adventure? Dec 03, 2011 • The Page is Dead! Long Live Curriculum Nov 29, 2011
RSS Feeds
SIAI BLOG
• A brief summary of recent happenings at Singularity Institute Dec 11, 2011 • Video Q&A with Singularity Institute Executive Director Dec 10, 2011 • Draft of Muehlhauser & Helm, ‗The Singularity and Machine Ethics‘ Nov 18, 2011 • Comprehensive List of All Singularity Summit Talks and Video Links Nov 18, 2011 • Singularity Summit 2011 Videos Now Online Nov 18, 2011 • Interview with New Singularity Institute Research Fellow Luke Muehlhauser: September 2011 Sept 15, 2011 • Singularity Institute Now Accepting Applications Sept 15, 2011 What is Howard Rheingold tweeting?
• New schemas for mapping pedagogies & technologies ariadne.ac.uk/issue/conole/ Dec 15, 2011 • I‘ve become convinced that understanding how networks work is essential 21st century literacy. http://tinyurl.com/yfvhf8b Dec 15, 2011 • Future of Science map from @iftf is very rich iftf.org/futureofscience Dec 13, 2011 • @hrheingold Great to hear @BryanAlexander ‘s shoutout to upcoming book, ―Net Smart: How to Thrive Online,‖ during keynote #ljtchsmt Dec 08, 2011 • For scholars who want to publish on sociallymediated publicness CFP http://tinyurl.com/7eg8dyl Dec 08, 2011 • @MargaretAtwood @jeannieccrowley @HASTAC Can you say more abt how people are using watt.pad.com ? Dec 7, 2011
>>>> Send us the link of a blog that you follow. We will feature it here in the next issue.
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Friday, April 13 – Tuesday, April 17 Vancouver. British Columbia, Canada “Non Satis Scire: To Know Is Not Enough”
ARVEL @ AERA
Ready to ENGAGE? The Scholar’s Journey: The Quest
Congratulations to the authors selected for ARVEL@AERA. Papers are organized in 4 roundtable themes:
Virtual Worlds
Games
Exploration of Students' Sense of Community in Virtual Learning Environments, by Terry McClannon, Amelia Cheney, Robert Sanders, Krista Terry, & Les Bolt, (Appalachian State U.) Measuring the Effectiveness of a 3D Virtual Online Museum, by Greg Jones & Adriana D‘Alba (U. of North Texas) Exploring the Relationship between Afforded Learning Tasks and Learning Benefits in 3D Virtual Learning Environments, by Barney Dalgarno & Mark J. W. Lee, Charles Sturt U.)
Self-Regulation, Alternate Reality Games and PBL: Are Students Ready to Play to Learn? by Chris W. Bigenho (Greenhill School)
Simulations
Second Life
Teacher Perceptions of the Practicality and Effectiveness of Immersive Ecological Simulations as Classroom Curricula, by Shari J. Metcalf & Amy M. Kamarainen (Harvard U.) Effects of Virtual Manipulatives on Student Achievement and Mathematics Learning, by Patricia S. Moyer-Packenham & Arla Westenskow (Utah State U.) Designing smart worlds: Automated scoring of learners' transportation decisions in a virtual urban commuting simulation, by Benjamin E. Erlandson (California State U. - Monterey Bay), Andre R. Denham, Kent Slack, Lijia Lin, & Brian Nelson (Arizona State U.)
Symposia
Fifth Graders’ Flow Experience in a Digital GameBased Science Learning Environment, by Meixun Zheng, North Carolina State U.) A literature synthesis about games in education, by Albert Dieter Ritzhaupt, Nathaniel Poling, Chris Atkinson Frey, Margeaux C. Johnson (U. of Florida) Using Second Life® to Enhance Spatial Ability and Improve Chemical Education, by Zahira H. Merchant & Wnedy L. Keeney-Kennicutt (Texas A&M U.) Proactive Retrospective Installation in Second Life, by Chih-Feng Chien, Trina J. Davis, & Patrick Slattery (Texas A&M U.) Investigating Second Life for Language Learning: EFL Teachers’ Perspectives on the Use of Second Life and Which Factors Affect Their Desire to Integrate It Into Language Instruction, by Muhammet Demirbilek (Suleyman Demirel U.) Design, Play, Communicate, and Learn: Examining the Value of Learning History through Avatar Role Play, by Jenny S. Wakefield, Leila Mills, Scott J. Warren, Monica A. Rankin, & Jonathan Gratch (U. of North Texas)
1. Assessing Learning in Embodied Mixed Reality Environments. Chair: Robb Lindgren (U. of Central Florida), Discussant: Chris Dede (Harvard U.); Presenters: Robb Lindgren (U. of Central Florida), Mina Johnson-Glenberg (Arizona State U., Tempe), Karen Elinich (The Flanklin Institute), Jeffrey Jacobson (Public VR), Karla Saari Kitalong (Michigan Technological U.), Eileen Smith (U. of Central Florida). 2. Affordances and Constraints of Virtual Worlds for Formal and Informal Learning. 1-Collaborative Learning in a 3D Virtual Environment; 2-Science in Second Life: Embodying Scientific Inquiry in a High School; 3-Grounding Learning in a Motivating Real-World Context; 4-On the Internet, No One Knows You‘re a Dog: Teaching Communication Skills to Medical Students; 5-Hanging out in Desi: Straddling Multiple Universes through Second Life.
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Art Reviews Augmented Reality In April, May and August 2011, (Un)seen Sculptures, a mobile 3D augmented reality art show was staged in several locations in Australia. Read more about it at http://www.unseensculptures.com/
Emerging Technologies In November 2011, sound artist Ivo Bol (NL), in-residence artist at U of North Texas, Dallas, demonstrated the use of live instruments responding to physical gestures. In an event featuring interactive sound installations, sound sculptures, noise performance and multichannel sound works. Read more on the Initiative for Advanced Research in Technology and the Arts http://iarta.unt.edu/
Video Games
Machinima
The Art of Video Games is one of the first exhibitions to explore the forty-years evolution of video games as an artistic medium, with a focus on striking visual effects and the creative use of new technologies. See it at the 3rd floor North, Smithsonian American Art Museum, 03/16/2012 to 09/30/2012 and http://americanart.si.edu/exhibitions/archive/2012/ga mes/
Pookymedia and the Institute for Global Futures have just released an important episode in the next installment of their series about three college age teens who have to save the Future. The series showcases future careers in science such as geoengineering for alternative energy, nanobiolology and neuroscience for learning and health care. This series is also impressive machinimatography. See it at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVSrbms2mjo
Minecraft is one of the 85 winning games.
Minecraft, by Mojang
Time Travelers Episode 4 – The Pattern 28
VIRTUAL WORLD EDITOR WANTED: APPLY WITHIN
Email us your art, how-to, movie reviews, pictures, questions to Chris, new products, events & grant competitions to arvelsig173@gmail.com Picture Credits: Front page: RandomHoodoo Eclipse, Sabine LawlessReljic, Lego Universe. Icons: pp. 3, 4, 10, 16, 17, 25 from http://www.iconfinder.com
Club Photo Information: 3D GameLab Player Scorecard: Lisa Dawley. http://3dgamelab.org.shivtr.com/ Tesla Project: Chris Dede. http://www.teslaproject.org/ AECT 2011 Virtual World Pre-Conference: Tom Atkinson. http://www.aect.org/Secondlife/default.asp EcoMobile: Shari Metcalf. http://ecomobile.gse.harvard.edu/ Disneyland Adventures for Kinect: Jeremy Kemp. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PP8bqV92zl8 New Media Faculty Fall 2011: Liz Dorland. http://www.netvibes.com/vw-nmfs-f11#NMFS_Home Information Literacy: Stylianos Mystakidis. http://blog.edu.gr/archives/1113 EcoMUVE: Shari Metcalf. http://ecomuve.gse.harvard.edu/ ARVEL Immersive Learning Research Discussions: Sabine Reljic. http://arvelsig.ning.com/page/inworldsdiscussions World of TeachCraft: Kae Novak, http://www.urockcliffe.com/education/world-ofteachcraft/
Upcoming Issues / Submit your work to the ARVEL SuperNews! January – March: Engagement / Renewal April-June: Embodiment July – September: Preparation and Design October – December: Assessment Membership Call Has your smartphone become an augmented reality extension of your life – coloring everything you do and see? Or maybe you find yourself passionately talking about your involvement in virtual worlds or augmented reality, but your friends could care less? The solution is simple. You need to virtually hang with people who know what it means to get your first frag. You need people who understand that HUD doesn‘t stand for ―Housing and Urban Development.‖ You need ARVEL.
What‘s ARVEL? It is ―Applied Research in Virtual Environments for Learning‖ – a special interest group of the American Research Association (SIG#173). Joining ARVEL is inexpensive ($10) and can be done by going to https://www.aera.net/MemberPortal/Renewal/ PubSales.aspx. We are a group of researchers and practitioners who are passionate about the promise that virtual worlds, simulations, and augmented reality hold. Come and join us! By Dennis Beck, Membership Officer
ARVEL Stats(*) ARVEL SIG: 156 members (AERA members) ARVEL ning: 383 members (open to everyone) AERA_ARVE_SIG173_Announce list is automatically updated from the official AERA membership list
ARVEL Contacts General Info, Membership, SuperNews: arvelsig173@gmail.com JOIN ARVEL SIG http://arvelsig.ning.com/ http://twitter.com/ARVELSIG (use the hashtag #arvelsig)
ARVEL locations in VWs ARVEL in 3rdRock Grid (Tierra Paz 125,80,25) ARVEL in ReactionGrid (Ontos2 50,82,46) ARVEL in Second Life (CAVE 12,241,42) ARVEL in SmallWorlds
Do you own some space in a VW? Contact us to establish an ARVEL headquarter in your VW. (*) As of 11/21/2011 30