Kevin's Reading and Thinking Notes, Week 9

ENGL665: Teaching Writing with Technology

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Kevin's Reading and Thinking Notes, Week 9

Kevin Norris
Week Ending: 10-26
Professor Rodrigo
October 21, 2014
3D Game Lab 10-19

The first thing I did today was add my avatar to my profile.

It’s a picture of a bird. I guess it doesn’t show the bird too well, but it does show the serenity of the ocean and captures the freedom of the bird.
I navigated to one of the Forums, but it didn’t give me permission to vote. The next thing I did was go to the help. There, it gives directions on how to use 3D Game Lab, and it also gives directions on how to create an account. The help link gives directions on how to build a quest, how to decorate the quest, how to add students, what to do on the first day and some of the tools available.

From there I watched the “My first machinima - Welcome!” which explained why I should sign up for 3D Game lab, which has prompted me to ask a question about signing up and my permissions.

Touring the 3D Game lab, I discovered site called the gallery. It has a plethora of pictures of participants

Notetaking Challenge-Storify
Storify is a site that allows you to create a collage of stories and pictures from social media sites. I have never used it before, but it easy enough to use, plus it was free. At first, I was a little nervous because, the tutorial mentioned that you use social media.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=luZcU2E5cgI

Then I realized that you could use “Google” and “YouTube.” Therefore, I believe this is something I can use with my students. Below is the link to my storify.

https://storify.com/kevinnorris/new-story-1
https://storify.com/kevinnorris/new-story-1

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Comment On Kevin's Week 9 (Heather)

Kevin,
I found this interesting: "The help link gives directions on how to build a quest, how to decorate the quest, how to add students, what to do on the first day and some of the tools available." I had been taking the OER Quests each week, but I guess that I didn't realize that 3D GameLab was a platform where anyone could create a interactive learning game. Could be a fun choice for a future note taking challenge, maybe? Thanks for sharing this information!

Posted on 22 October 2014, 8:18 pm by Heather Laslie | Permalink

Amy's comments

Like Heather points out, I was surprised to find that I might be able to create my own learning game for students in 3D GameLab. A few semesters ago, I learned Shelley and another ODU student had been creating this one, but I hadn't decided how to make it work for my 1010 / 1020 students. A note taking challenge might be the way to go for them too. Maybe a way to teach citation?

Posted on 24 October 2014, 11:52 am by Amy Locklear | Permalink

Last comment was deleted, sad face

Apparently my earlier post never made it, so I'll suffice to say that reading your post and Heather's reply made me wonder if I might use GameLab as a way to teach / reinforce citation practices with my ENGL 1020 class.

Posted on 24 October 2014, 12:03 pm by Amy Locklear | Permalink

Shantal Week 9 Reading Notes and Challenge

Game Lab

3 D GameLab is an online learning environment. The lessons we have been learning are for instructors interested in using digital media in their courses. The lessons include instructions on where/how to find digital media such as texts, images, and video, to discussion pieces about legality and morality. It is an interesting interactive environment.

The lessons I did this week were about finding images and texts, about legality vs morality, and tracking resources.

In the advice about video, I connected it to Brain Rules's chapter about attention. The 3D Game Lab lesson "Finding Video" suggests that videos should be no longer than 10 minutes- just as Brain Rules does. I also connected much of what I learned in 3D Game Lab to "Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century". In this article, the authors point to several problematic areas in the teaching digital media the participation gap, the transparency problem, and the ethics challenge (3).

3D Game lab addresses the participation gap by giving instructors resources that their students could then use. Repositories like compfight could help students create multimedia projects without worrying too much about copyright. Some of the lessons also deal with attribution, which would be important for instructors and students to learn. 3D Game Lab addresses transparency by suggesting ways instructors could use open-content in their own courses. The Common Sense ratings mentioned in the lesson "Legality vs Morality" also speaks about how media can transform the way children look at things, thus it is important for media resources to be age-appropriate. The ethics challenge is also addressed in "Legality vs Morality" through the Code of Ethics for Bloggers. The code, adapted from the Code of Ethics for the Norwegian press, urges its audience to think carefully about the information they put available online and how they should make sure to represent themselves truthfully.

Brain Rules 8 Note Taking Challenge

Link to Capzle

This week I used capzles, an environment in which you can create an outline. I like the different themes that you can choose and I found the program very easy to learn- uploading media rather than being able to take it from the internet is rather tedious, however. I condensed the information a lot this week on each blog for the timeline. Capzles work a bit like a simplified Prezi or powerpoint- you can make your blog posts slides that have images or sound embedded. I wish there were more customization options.

Responses

Kevin's response and note-taking challenge were interesting. It's a good idea to enter screenshots of the site. I also found his storify for brain rules very informative- the videos do speak for themselves and its a good use of embedding.

In Kim's reflection notes, she talks about the gap between the variety of online resources and the knowledge of how to use them without infringing copyright. While education often gets a fair use exception in the classroom, if teachers are trying to put their work online it may be important to know. Creative Commons copyright is very useful for this kind of thing. Clicking on a creative commons symbol will take you to the CC website where it will tell you what you can and can't do with the material. Kim's comment about access to computers in community college is also important to think about. OERs could get rid of expensive textbooks, as Kim said, but not every student has access to a reliable computer with reliable internet connection.

Posted on 26 October 2014, 7:12 pm by ShantalFigueroa | Permalink

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