Month: February 2016

I’ve never really given this much thought, but video games do foster learning. In this video, James Paul Gee talks about one of my favorite games ever (Portal!). I can rave about this great puzzler/problem-solving game all day, but I’ll contain my excitement for now. While I’m on the topic here were some other fantastic games from my school days: Battle Chess, Midnight Rescue. The Battle Chess gameplay (anytime you took pieces there was a brief animation/fight sequence showing the capture) was so brilliant to 7-year-old me, that I got hooked onto playing chess. Although, I had always wanted to learn more about the game (strategies, opening/ending games etc.), those kind of resources were just not available to me back then. Midnight Rescue was another brilliant game that was able to integrate learning fabulously into a PC game.

The key message James Paul Gee tries to convey in his brief lecture is that games today are only half the picture; when people get passionate about a game, they read up more about it and dig deeper. For the case of Portal, there are numerous active gaming forums and wiki pages that discuss the game, suggest and implement modifications and research the physics behind the gaming. While these are great learning resources for a gaming enthusiast, how many of us have read the gaming manual/forums or wiki pages before playing the game? I would probably guess none. All that wall of text makes much more sense once we’ve immersed ourselves into the make belief world of the gaming environment. We have thousands of textbooks in school, what we need are video games for those textbooks.

Reflecting on the material for this week, it occurs to me there is much to these new ways of creating learning with our students. In previous discussions about mindfulness, the importance of being fully present in the learning experience with our students was critical to create the open spaces for learning to occur. This week’s focus on ways of learning outside the traditional lecture offers many different options for opening the learning space up and giving our students a genuine voice in the learning process. My concern is how to do it well. These are all very inspirational and motivating concepts, but where is the discussion about how to take these ideas and really turn them into a real classroom experience. The Reacting to the Past website (https://reacting.barnard.edu/curriculum) does offer a learning forum for teachers who want to or are implementing these games in their classes. But, I want to make sure my students are getting their money’s worth of learning in my classes. It would be nice if there was some sort of test lab where I could try out some concepts and learning models without making my students guinea pigs for a few semesters while I figure out what works or not. And how do we as junior faculty get a fundamentally different learning experience through the gatekeepers given what I perceive are the challenges of course approvals, meeting accreditation requirements and institutional cultures.

** After thought – this list of quotes are phrases that spoke to me, but I have not quite wrestled with, yet.

“The power and importance of play”

“from production to participation”

“collective expertise”

“embodied and situated experiences”

storytelling & exploration

It is very inspiring to learn from this week’s reading materials that games (i.e., video games and role playing games) can contribute to student learning. Games are not only designed for fun. They can motivate and actively engage learners in the learning processs, and kills utilized in games can be translated to the real world. Thus, Game-Based learning and gamification get a lot of attention and are fast becoming used in the classroom (see more information about Game-Based learning from Jessica Trybus’s paper “Game-Based Learning: What it is, Why it Works, and Where it’s Going“). It seems like bringing games to the classroom might be an acceptable, even accredited, alternative strategy to education.

I would also like to share an interesting TED talk by Jane McGonigal: Gaming can make a better world. According to McGonigal, if we can create engaging and fun games based on meaningful real world problems, we can leverage the combined knowledge, energy and enthusiasm to solve the world’s biggest problems and we can change the world.

There is always a tension between what is and what ought to be. These tension, which mostly arises within individuals, triggers imagination. If we see imagination in this view, then it is not mysterious at all. Imagination does not happen “just like that”. Neither is it present more in a certain group of people and less in others, nor does it require inborn talent.

This also implies that learners can be encouraged to be more imaginative. To do so, we would have to make the learners aware of the currently existing system and provide them the opportunity to use that knowledge to envision something. To make learners aware of the currently existing system may involve pedagogical practices like delivering lectures, group discussions, literature review and research work, technology-enabled information transfer, etc. Depending on the context, different methods could be used.

To encourage students to use their knowledge work on something they have envisioned, we need to support them and allow them the freedom to be imaginative. This support involves allowing autonomy in thinking and deciding their works, designing learning environments that are flexible to the individual needs of the learners, and providing ample opportunities to learn skills and gather information that is necessary to envision the idea. The most important part, in my view, is that larger portion of the learning time should be allocated to playing with the knowledge they have. Playing may involve engaged discussions, projects, write-ups or other modes of expressions, or even thinking alone. Learners should not be bogged down only on information and knowledge gathering process – which we generally enforce by adhering to broad syllabuses. All these resonate with my earlier post where I had highlighted the importance of autonomy and personalization in learning environments.

Imagination is important not just to support creative endeavors, but to ensure meaningful learning experiences. However, there is no one “correct” way to do create an imagination-supportive learning environment.  If you had the opportunity to design such a learning environment, how would you do it?

The post Imagination supportive learning environment appeared first on Aakash.

Two limitations for imagination are funding resource and the government’s support for research. In this post I want to criticize the current policy in developing countries in the Middle East, then I want to introduce a recent established national institution in Iran. I think this institution may be an appropriate way to support students to improve their imaginations and skills.

Developing countries like many countries in the Middle East are sending their students to European and American countries to study in graduates programs. They support their students completely. They believe that these students will come back and improve the higher education in their countries. But, I believe that these type of activities cannot be enough and they should consider other aspects of higher education systems as well. One of the most important advantages of higher education systems in Europe and America is funding resources for projects. Most developing countries forget this important part of the higher education system. I believe that if the researchers cannot find good resources for their ideas and projects, they are not able to fulfill them. Therefore, higher education systems may not be beneficial for the society without any applied funded projects.

National Elite Foundation (NEF)

NEF was established in 2005 [3]. This institution has some specific rules to identify elite students and faculties. The qualified individuals are supported by NEF completely. NEF supports them by providing stipends as a fellowship. I could not find fellowships in Iran like in the US, but if one person can be a member of NEF, he/she receives awards for all his/her academic education. There are three levels of NEF members. The first level is a great opportunity for Iranian students. Because, NEF supports them completely and provides several facilities for them such as: housing, stipends, funding for their research, loans, and jobs after graduation. NEF also supports the first level to create their own business. Therefore, a lot of students try to be a member of this institution. The manager of this institution is the vice president of the Iranian government. So, he/she has significant authority to create new laws for supporting the NEF’s members.

As a past member of NEF, I should mention that NEF’s laws were variable in the first five years (2005-2010). But, after 10 years, they created stable laws to identify the elite students. For example, the students those were top ten in national entrance exams can be members of NEF.

In conclusion, though there are some progress related to funding resources in Iran, more efforts are required to support scientific projects regularly.

Ah, the prius. One of the first truly successful and long-standing hybrid cars. Perfect for in-town and highway driving; tirelessly working to reduce your carbon foot-print (whatever that is) while providing you the reassurance of good old gasoline. With this car, you don’t have to “pick a side” (e.g. 100% electric or gas-powered).

In many ways, I’m kind of like a prius…
As a cusp between “Gen X” and “Gen Y” I find myself with a very mixed view and preference on everything from favorite childhood games (lite brite, anyone?) and cartoons (in case you were wondering TMNT was in my top 3) to music, and even to learning style. I’ve never fully been able to identify with either generation, and instead often find myself with this eclectic mesh of perspectives.

While some my age are entirely Gen Y immersed and consider themselves progressive in all their technologies and “waves of the future,” I find myself clinging tightly and fighting to preserve “old fashioned” sentiments. I find myself annoyed when someone tells me “there’s an app for that;” I hate going through self-checkout at the grocery store; and I loathe when in-person interactions are perpetually disrupted with phone calls, text messages, etc. However, I love that technology has bridged distance with inventions such as facetime, that more and more cars are becoming “hybrid-ized,” and that diversity in all aspects of life is increasing! I really don’t align with one strict point-of-view.

As a student, this really serves me quite well. I think it has made me receptive and compliant to a vast array of teaching methodologies and experimentations.  As an instructor, this has made me receptive to feedback, because, well I didn’t invent the proverbial wheel, did I? However, when teaching it seems student capacity to just sit-and-listen gets shorter with each incoming class… This piqued my interest, last semester actually, and is what inspired me to write my essay in PFP on “how to engage the millenial.” One thing I consistently kept finding, was that of all the generations to-date, the millenial generation has a higher tendency toward boredom and a greater need for variety. I’m excited to hear all the thoughts from the disciplines represented in our class as we progress toward exploring how to engage student imagination in a digitally-based classroom!

Feel free to share insights and comments below!