An exercise in organization

This week we researched the role of organization in design an instructional message. After reading and researching I again applied what I learned to developing a lesson to teach my family better relationships communication skills. My children are young and new to the world of psychology, so I continue keeping it simple. Again I wanted to focus on more of the "remedies." I thought it could be beneficial to explain this in an alternate way, using an organizational chart, but that could also serve as a sort of clear overview of both problems and solutions. 

At first I had the graphic oriented portrait. Because I had so many concepts in the middle (problems and solutions) I decided to orient it landscape instead. I also thought it simply might look nicer. I added circles to try to help chunk the information (Lohr , 2008, p. 137) as well as the representation of the "problem words" that I had created previously, to be more visual and, consequently, more effective (Lohr , 2008, p. 149).

My wife critiqued it by saying the lines should have arrows (initially they did not). Because arrows strengthen relationships by showing cause and effect (Lohr , 2008, p. 146), I thought that was a great suggestion and the graphic now reflects that change. 

Lohr, L. (2008). Creating graphics for learning and performance: Lessons in visual literacy (Second ed.). Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Merrill.

Modern Narrative Games

As Narrative games took a quantum leap forward with better graphics and the internet, MMORPG's (like World of Warcraft) came along. The social espect put them in a league of their own. I played one for a few years, but it was a bit too time-consuming. Because of the virtual world experience and the social aspect, for some people it's easy to lose track of time and enjoy them too much, moreso than "conventional" games.

I think that's the unique aspect that can add to education. A virtual world and social experience, albeit in a game context. Much can be done for learning with any of these three, and the combination is incredible. You can go places, experience things, build things, play, work with others, build relationships, talk and learn.... all in one. It is a remarkable combination. As technology continues to advance, this will advance as well, until we are doing this with holograms, substrate-independent type avatars, etc. It' worth understanding better now to lay the foundation for the tsunami to come.

Narrative Game: The Legend of Zela

For some reason, during a good decade of my life, I was in some sort of digital black hole in regards to video games, where I wasn't up on what was going on. I think it was high school years, where I was busy and played PC old games but had no console, and then went on a 2 year church mission and came home and was busy with school and girls for several years after :)

At any rate, there's this whole epoch of game history that I did not participate in. Sega, Nintendo and yes, Zelda. I've seen it but never played, till now. Fortunately I lived through early, primitive video games enough to smell the excitement that is Zelda, even today. It's enough action and RPG and story mixed in with puzzle to make me appreciate the puzzle. All puzzle, not my taste. And maybe there's a lesson here when using games for education: try including a variety when possible, because people (players) have different tastes. If an educational game is 100% puzzle, you've lost me. But if it's part puzzle, part RPG, part story-based etc. like Zelda.... ahhhhh.

Peasant's Quest

I just played a game that came out when I was 9 year's old, Peasant's Quest. It bored me out of my mind for about 15-20 minutes until finally some big pig faced monster pounded me on the head and schmooshed me into the ground and the game ended. Wandering all around in the game forever was sort of neat for the first few minutes, in a retro, old school nostalgic way. But with little to do the simplicty was lost on me, especially because I don't really enjoy puzzle games - and because the whole point was to figure out what to do, it was a big puzzle. I'm so grateful games, like movies, have come so far!

Blender interactions: Week 3 of EDUCAUSE's MOOC #BlendKit2015

This last week was Week 3 of EDUCAUSE's BlendKit: Becoming a Blended Learning Designer MOOC. Its stated goal "is to provide facilitated assistance to faculty members and instructional designers in developing and designing blended courses through (1) a consideration of key issues related to blended learning and (2) practical step-by-step guidance in producing materials for a blended course (e.g., developing design documents, creating content pages, and receiving peer review feedback at one's own institution)." The option I am pursuing is the UCF/EDUCAUSE Certified Blended Learning Designer credential. This blog post is a reflection based on what I learned this week, woven in with a recap of my own notes to better learn the concepts.

The topic this week was Blended Assessments of Learning. It very well may be because I have been extremely pressed for time and perhaps rushed this week's learning, but I was a little disappointed. I felt like it was mostly a review on the basics of assessments, and not particularly focused on adapting assessments to blended learning environments as much as I had hoped. There was mention of authentic assessments, which I believe are in a big uptrend, but not mentioned so much in terms of blended learning and how that might look or work, but rather more about what authentic assessments are. I think there is incredible opportunity here to really explore how authentic assessments could be adapted and work when blended, as opposed to all online or all face to face. 

Chapter 3 seemed to really get into the blended part of assessments toward the end with a checklist of preparing an assignment to be blended, and then a discussion on informal assessments. The one sentence summary is a good strategy, but I think more would be better. The video was much more informative, but the format makes it difficult for me to take notes like the reading does and I fear I didn't gather as much as I did the reading where I was able easily go back and re-read things..

Four Horsemen project: reminder/inspiration

This week we researched the role of color in design an instructional message. After reading and researching I again applied what I learned to developing a lesson to teach my family better relationships communication skills. My children are young and new to the world of psychology, so I continue keeping it simple. This week I wanted to focus on more of the "remedies," something that my children can have present in their rooms to remind and inspire them. Lohr mentioned the fact that "color can attract and control attention"(2008, p. 266) and my first thought was "bingo."

We went to the movie Cinderella last night as a family, and I was very moved by the theme "have courage and be kind." It fit very well for this Four Horsemen project. I also remembered the "teaser" movie poster which was blue with a glass slipper. So I decided to borrow that, not minding it is Disney's since this will simply be used in the walls of my own home. I thought there were interesting things going on with color.

It seemed that there is so little going on in this image that text I would add must be symmetrical so as to not jump out looking awkward (Lohr, 2008, p. 274). In the same vein, I used the abundant white space to chunk and call attention to the text: if the text was larger and crowded, or competing with many other graphical elements, it would have been lost as a jumble (Lohr, 2008, p. 272). I made sure to use the same color (white) and to pick one that would contrast well with the background, and compliment the white that was already present around and in the shoe image.

My wife critiqued it by saying the text should be smaller (done now and fixed) and otherwise was happy. I'd love to hear more feedback.

Class in Second Life

One of the interesting things about Educational Games & Simulations class this semester is being in class synchronously via Second Life. Here is a screenshot from perspective of my avatar flying a shuttle. The interesting things about virtual worlds is how they can, to a degree, mirror real life experiences: flying a shuttle is more fun than walking or running around on two virtual legs. It also makes me more nervous because I don't want to "screw up."