Decided to get Mooc'ed

 Having read about them. watched video clips and hovered around the edge of actually registering for one, I finally took the plunge recently and signed up to a MOOC.  The course: - Second Life MOOC  ran from April 1 to 30 2014. 

The theme was connecting online for collaborative learning and teaching through Second Life. The live presentations included speakers reflective process on teaching and learning in fully online and blended learning formats.

 

Course Highlights included: -

• Experience Life in Second Life
• Avatars will Present about their Lives in Second Life
• Learn how to Teach in Second Life
• Get Acquainted with Learning Environments in SL

If you were not used to virtual worlds such as Second Life then there were sessions for  beginners and advanced Second Life participants alike. I was also pleased to see that Moodle was being used for asynchronous work with the synchronous side of things handled by WizIQ & Second Life. We also had recordings on WizIQ, Google Drive, YouTube, and Vimeo.

As part of our completion task we were asked to produce a learning resource that would be made available in-world on the subject of connectivism. I must say that I do enjoy Second Life and feel that its full potential as a learning environment is still to be fully explored and this  course really took every opportunity to bring us together in that particular virtual space; most enjoyable.

Our course instructor was Nellie Deutsch on Integrating Technology Toronto, Canada, and she did a great job, thanks again Nellie.

You will see that I have included a small screen shot of my certificate, soon to be placed on my office wall.

I recently posted on the use of games in education and today another guide dropped across my browser that I thought would be a useful accompaniment to the toolkit.

I like this guide because use real-world examples of how game-based techniques can energise online learning programmes and make a positive, measurable impact. Some techniques (such as immersive 3D virtual environments) require substantial levels of investment, while others can be produced quickly and cost-effectively with just a little imagination, planning and game-based thinking. If you're interested in gamifying the provision of learning in your organisation, this guide will give you some useful food for thought.

A few thought provoking facts are included that I thought worth posting here:-

By 2014, more than 70% of Global 2000
organisations will have at least one
‘gamified’ application (Gartner).

By 2015, more than 50% of organisations
that manage innovation processes will
gamify those processes (Gartner).

The average game player today is 37
years old, and 42% of game players are
women (The Entertainment Software
Association).

Students recall just 10% of what they
read and 20% of what they hear. If
visuals accompany an oral presentation,
retention rises to 30%. If they do the job themselves,
even if only as a simulation, students
can remember 90% (the Federation of
American Scientists, 2006).


This guide covers:
Why use game-based learning?
Story, characters and goals
Virtual role-play
Avatars and reward systems
Leaderboards, competition and
team games
Exploring virtual environments
Mobile games
Take-a-break games
Conclusion
Acknowledgements and further reading
Contents

Well that's all for now, but you have anything surrounding this post that you would like to share then please feel free to comment

Games and Learning

 Not sure really weer  am with the idea of Game Based Learning (GBL),but then I have yet to try it out. Sure I have been using both Second Life and OpenSim for some years now, but they are for me simulations not games. And so I was pleased stumble across a web site that offered an planning toolkit. Without going into too much detail surrounding the site as there is a lot of advice and case study material, the actual toolkit itself covers the following headings

• Realism (as opposed to pure fantasy)
• Complexity and Inclusiveness
• Learning Focused
• Flow
• Time Constraints and Flexibility
• Requirements
• Support
• General Curriculum
• Generic / Employability Skills

I have read through the material here and it has made me start to think more clearly about the application of GBl, so if you have any experience or views on the subject then please feel free to post a reply.

 I must admit to being a fan of infographics and so when I came across one for the Moodle vle the other day I thought I must include it in my next blog posting. 

Taking a look at countries by registration is a revealing chart, when you take into account the population count of the those countries. I was particularity interested in the 'Top plug-ins in the last year' which were Poodll and Aardvark

In case you have seen these two plugins before Poodll is free and open source and has designed around the needs of  language courses.  The feature comprises a collection of various plugins for the Moodle vle that include audio player, recording audio and video clips, draw pictures directly in real time. You will also find there are really interesting little widgets that include a Flashcard widget, stopwatch, countdown timer, click counter, webcam broadcaster, webcam subscriber, set of dice, audio/video pairs, a calculator and more. 

Aardvark, is a menubar based theme tool set from Bootstrap. If customisation is you thing then Using aardvark you will be able to customise the look and feel of your vle including icons.

if you use either of these on your own Moodle instance then please feel free to reply and lets all know your thoughts

 

Talking about sharing thoughts here are a some of my own of recent involving what I interpret as a possible synchronicity experience.

From Wikipeadia :- "Synchronicity is the experience of two or more events as meaningfully related, where they are unlikely to be causally related. The subject sees it as a meaningful coincidence. The concept of synchronicity was first described by Carl Jung, a Swiss psychologist, in the 1920s."

I was taking part in a webinar earlier last week, and the presenter mentioned the widespread adoption by both students and institutes of web 1 technology and yet when it came to web 2 such as Facebook and Twitter this seemed to be the domain principally of students. Why was this significant, well because this was not really the focus of the session and yet that was the very same discussion that I was having as I was leaving college that very evening with a colleague. The next morning I get into class and one of my students informs me that the class have been running a Facebook account as a course discussion back channel since the start of the current academic year; so is this an example of Synchronicity I am wondering?

Thats all for now and again do feel free to post you own views and expediences for us all to share.

Moodle 2.5 running and OK

Well we have a Moodle 2.5 instance up and running, so in the last couple of days I have been taking those snatched opportunities to run some testing of resources and browse through the many new features that the versions offers. Given the work that I am focusing on at the moment with implementing eLearning using scorm materials I was more than a little impatient to confirm that the launching and tracking of objects worked as before and of course they do, and why not. As we have been using a system of certification for training for the Moodle courses that I run here at the College using Bronze, Silver and Gold, I thought lets give badges a try and that worked really smooth also, a nice surprise for the other members of the course when they next logged-in. I like the idea of having a choice of Forums and set one of those up and have already noticed that it is attracting some engagement from my colleagues. All in all then looking good, very good.

If you have been following this blog at all then will have come across my posts for links to free tools, and I recently came across an extremely nice list of 321 no less, and so I am sharing that source with you here. if you have any others to add then do please feel free to reply to this posting.