Re: [Math 2.0] interesting article

[Maria Droujkova]

Robin,

This project is a rare case of when I am very jealous of people working at a school. I love the thoughtful design of all aspects of the school to be game-like, not just "games inserted into the traditional setup." I think it has a very high potential for changing the landscape of education.

This year, I am working on a NASA project to design an integrated high school science and math unit of 40 lessons that includes game elements. Some of the Quest to Learn ideas will apply.

One of p2pu people, Michael Nelson, is working on a project called Learning Goals for peer-to-peer tracking of learning projects. We are having a discussion on his brand-new list (three members as of tonight) about his system, and using some game design elements for fun and (learning) profit: http://groups.google.com/group/learning-goals

Cheers,
Maria Droujkova

Make math your own, to make your own math.

 

On Sun, Oct 3, 2010 at 1:49 PM, Robin Rider <RRi...@uwb.edu> wrote:

Interesting article on video games in learning

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/19/magazine/19video-t.html?pagewanted=1&_r=3&hp

 

Robin L. Angotti, PhD

Assistant Professor

Education Program, Box 358531

University of Washington, Bothell

18115 Campus Way NE

Bothell, WA 98011

425.352.3605 (office)

425-352-5234 (fax)

"Without data, you're just another person with an opinion."

[Michael Nelson]

On Mon, Oct 4, 2010 at 1:07 AM, Maria Droujkova <drou...@gmail.com> wrote:

Robin,

This project is a rare case of when I am very jealous of people working at a school. I love the thoughtful design of all aspects of the school to be game-like, not just "games inserted into the traditional setup." I think it has a very high potential for changing the landscape of education.

Yes, I love that the school grades with  “pre-novice,” “novice,” “apprentice,” “senior” and “master.”, using 'levels' of mastery. On that note, I was once inspired by Kathy Sierra's article "What software can learn from Kung-Fu":

http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2005/07/what_can_softwa.html

to map the boring "Units of competency" that comprised our web-development course onto game-like levels, where the initial levels could be completed in a short, achievable time-frame (3-5 days). It was great fun!

 

This year, I am working on a NASA project to design an integrated high school science and math unit of 40 lessons that includes game elements. Some of the Quest to Learn ideas will apply.

That sounds interesting Maria... is that part of http://quest.nasa.gov , or is there a link where I can read more about your project? 

One of p2pu people, Michael Nelson, is working on a project called Learning Goals for peer-to-peer tracking of learning projects. We are having a discussion on his brand-new list (three members as of tonight) about his system, and using some game design elements for fun and (learning) profit: http://groups.google.com/group/learning-goals

Thanks for the intro :). One of the main reasons that I (personally) see the need for this type of tool came out of the work I did a few years ago that I mentioned above. Once we had people working towards the "next level" in the course, we found that it was (obviously) not helpful to try to keep people all at the same level. Some raced ahead, others worked equally hard but had much less time available to invest etc. Back then, I would have *loved* to be able to look at one page that gave me a visual overview of the progress of all in-progress individual and group goals. If you're interested, you can read more (and see a very raw demo screencast) at:

https://www.drumbeat.org/project/learning-goals

Cheers,

Michael 

--

-

Michael Nelson

http://liveandletlearn.net 

[Maria Droujkova]

On Mon, Oct 4, 2010 at 2:54 AM, Michael Nelson <absol...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Mon, Oct 4, 2010 at 1:07 AM, Maria Droujkova <drou...@gmail.com> wrote:

Robin,

This project is a rare case of when I am very jealous of people working at a school. I love the thoughtful design of all aspects of the school to be game-like, not just "games inserted into the traditional setup." I think it has a very high potential for changing the landscape of education.

Yes, I love that the school grades with  “pre-novice,” “novice,” “apprentice,” “senior” and “master.”, using 'levels' of mastery.

The idea of telling someone "You did this task poorly. Move on!" seems anti-pedagogical. This is what typical grade systems, in combination with fixed curricular pace, manage to accomplish.

I like levels because they measure useful, satisfactory achievements of varying difficulty. In life, doing the task of any level poorly usually makes no sense, but doing simple, beginner tasks well is useful and can be rewarding.
 

On that note, I was once inspired by Kathy Sierra's article "What software can learn from Kung-Fu":

http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2005/07/what_can_softwa.html

to map the boring "Units of competency" that comprised our web-development course onto game-like levels, where the initial levels could be completed in a short, achievable time-frame (3-5 days). It was great fun!

Another useful reference here: "Princess rescue app." http://www.lostgarden.com/2008/10/princess-rescuing-application-slides.html

It has graphs of difficulty increases, at pages 4-8 of the pdf, that every educator should memorize (at the master level) :-)))
 

 

This year, I am working on a NASA project to design an integrated high school science and math unit of 40 lessons that includes game elements. Some of the Quest to Learn ideas will apply.

That sounds interesting Maria... is that part of http://quest.nasa.gov , or is there a link where I can read more about your project? 

We just started, no public link yet, but I will let people know when there is. It's a brand-new project, though we will use previous interactives.

[Michael Nelson]

On Mon, Oct 4, 2010 at 1:19 PM, Maria Droujkova <drou...@gmail.com> wrote:

The idea of telling someone "You did this task poorly. Move on!" seems anti-pedagogical. This is what typical grade systems, in combination with fixed curricular pace, manage to accomplish.

Yeah. If someone sets a learning goal, and is making good progress, but doesn't happen to complete the related tasks when the school/college ends its term, it is crazy to label the person as "Not competent".

I like levels because they measure useful, satisfactory achievements of varying difficulty. In life, doing the task of any level poorly usually makes no sense, but doing simple, beginner tasks well is useful and can be rewarding.

Me too. I'd be interested to see any examples that you've got with your Maths work of levels. A while ago I trialled a level-based approach with some students that were part of the web programming course I was facilitating (warning: lots of link-rot):

http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Web_Design/New_Structure

Personally I found it easy to plan the first few levels, but later as skills become more specific (and required more time for specific learning) it was very difficult to define levels that would be fun to achieve. In retrospect, maybe it would make more sense to have separate levels for each learning area after the first 4 or 5 holistic levels.

For me, the great point of having those levels was that they could be used as scaffolding/templates for learners when setting their learning goals.

 

 

On that note, I was once inspired by Kathy Sierra's article "What software can learn from Kung-Fu":

http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2005/07/what_can_softwa.html

to map the boring "Units of competency" that comprised our web-development course onto game-like levels, where the initial levels could be completed in a short, achievable time-frame (3-5 days). It was great fun!

Another useful reference here: "Princess rescue app." http://www.lostgarden.com/2008/10/princess-rescuing-application-slides.html

It has graphs of difficulty increases, at pages 4-8 of the pdf, that every educator should memorize (at the master level) :-)))

Yeah, the graphs on pages 14-15 too (showing new learning for each level). That's great,  and has got me thinking now about the strategy I'd used in the past for helping learners learn to set their own goals. During the first 3-6 weeks of our course I would work with learners to set goals, but I'd do all the input/admin for creating and updating the goals myself - so learners could focus on what they actually want to learn. I'd later gradually hand over control of the learning as the course progressed. But maybe if it was incredibly simple to get started setting your own goals, that wouldn't be necessary.

This year, I am working on a NASA project to design an integrated high school science and math unit of 40 lessons that includes game elements. Some of the Quest to Learn ideas will apply.

That sounds interesting Maria... is that part of http://quest.nasa.gov , or is there a link where I can read more about your project? 

We just started, no public link yet, but I will let people know when there is. It's a brand-new project, though we will use previous interactives.

Great, I'll look forward to it! Thanks again for stimulating some discussion :)

-Michael

-- 

[Maria Droujkova]

On Mon, Oct 4, 2010 at 2:11 PM, Michael Nelson <absol...@gmail.com> wrote:

Me too. I'd be interested to see any examples that you've got with your Maths work of levels. A while ago I trialled a level-based approach with some students that were part of the web programming course I was facilitating (warning: lots of link-rot):

http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Web_Design/New_Structure

I really liked the "tags" you used there - technical, communication, design activities. I am adding you to an "expert system" prototype, a google doc, which I made last year for the topic of fractions. It has a metro map of levels.

 

 

On that note, I was once inspired by Kathy Sierra's article "What software can learn from Kung-Fu":

http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2005/07/what_can_softwa.html

to map the boring "Units of competency" that comprised our web-development course onto game-like levels, where the initial levels could be completed in a short, achievable time-frame (3-5 days). It was great fun!

I also really liked "the Featuritis" graph there: http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2005/06/featuritis_vs_t.html

[Michael Nelson]

On Fri, Oct 15, 2010 at 2:02 PM, Maria Droujkova <drou...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Mon, Oct 4, 2010 at 2:11 PM, Michael Nelson <absol...@gmail.com> wrote:

Me too. I'd be interested to see any examples that you've got with your Maths work of levels. A while ago I trialled a level-based approach with some students that were part of the web programming course I was facilitating (warning: lots of link-rot):

http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Web_Design/New_Structure

I really liked the "tags" you used there - technical, communication, design activities. I am adding you to an "expert system" prototype, a google doc, which I made last year for the topic of fractions. It has a metro map of levels.

Thanks! I wasn't sure what you meant by "a metro map of levels", but the document did remind me of some work I'd done a while back to translate official units of competency into something usable by learners directly (the official units of competency in Australia were written for educators, not learners :/ ). The main differences from what you've got in your document were (1) we tried to keep learning activities separate from the objectives/competencies, as often they can be re-used, and (2) rather than specifying assessments, we tried to enable learners to collect multiple pieces of evidence for each objective, creating evidence sheets like this:

http://liveandletlearn.net/wp-content/uploads/2007/02/icab4135a_evidencesheet.png

(sorry, low-res, more info on the actual post at 

http://liveandletlearn.net/my-vision-for-learners-in-the-21st-century/ )

We tried to provide background for each unit of competency on Wikiversity like this:

http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/ICAB4135A_Create_a_simple_mark-up_language_document_to_specification

The long-term goal was to end up with units of competency for which learners could collect and demonstrate their own evidence, but unfortunately afaik the units of competencies in Aus are still written for "teachers" and need translation :(

 

On that note, I was once inspired by Kathy Sierra's article "What software can learn from Kung-Fu":

http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2005/07/what_can_softwa.html

to map the boring "Units of competency" that comprised our web-development course onto game-like levels, where the initial levels could be completed in a short, achievable time-frame (3-5 days). It was great fun!

I also really liked "the Featuritis" graph there: http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2005/06/featuritis_vs_t.html

Yeah, me too... soo applicable to educational learning experiences.

-M

[Maria Droujkova]

On Fri, Oct 15, 2010 at 2:51 PM, Michael Nelson <absol...@gmail.com> wrote:

The long-term goal was to end up with units of competency for which learners could collect and demonstrate their own evidence, but unfortunately afaik the units of competencies in Aus are still written for "teachers" and need translation :(

I think it needs to be way shorter, more visual, and more situated. Some of the virtual learning programs, like Aleks, have pretty clean progress tracking devices that young kids understand.

Cheers,
MariaD

[Michael Nelson]

Cool - I'll check that out. We were working within an adult education, but even then the official units of competency were too long and needed translation/adapting to be useful to learners. But note, the idea wasn't just progress tracking, but that learners are collecting their own multiple evidences against the official competencies, so that they can determine themselves when they are ready to demonstrate their evidence to an assessor.

[Maria Droujkova]

On Sat, Oct 16, 2010 at 3:48 AM, Michael Nelson <absol...@gmail.com> wrote:

Cool - I'll check that out. We were working within an adult education, but even then the official units of competency were too long and needed translation/adapting to be useful to learners. But note, the idea wasn't just progress tracking, but that learners are collecting their own multiple evidences against the official competencies, so that they can determine themselves when they are ready to demonstrate their evidence to an assessor.

I would look into "portfolio assessment" and also "expert systems" - though the second is more about automatic tracking and quiz-like evidence.