Interacting with media and technology

I found this interesting article that look at divers types of technologies apply in multicultural education context.. I hope someone find it useful! I copied here the abstract: The purpose of this paper is to discuss several technology applications that are being used to address current problems or opportunities related to multicultural education. Five technology applications or technology-related projects are discussed, including a teacher education literacy tool, social networking communities, massive multiplayer online role playing games (MMORPGs), virtual patients, and an International Leadership in Educational Technology (ILET) consortium. Research and practical implications of this paper include the introduction of new technologies for improving multicultural education, research findings on the use of these tools, and potential opportunities or pitfalls as such tools are implemented and evaluated. The paper concludes with a call for new research in the area of technologies for multicultural education.

There is a variety of software that can be used to create a digital story. We've listed a few options below along with links to tutorials.

What's New:Shared Time Project Launched!

In this study, we investigated the effect of using the social network site Facebook for discussions in an online course. Data were collected from concurrent offerings of an introductory educational psychology course, one using Facebook discussion boards and the other Moodle forums. We measured student perceptions of social presence and the frequency and length of their discussion interactions. Evaluation of this data indicated that there were no differences in our measures. We discuss why the potential benefits of Facebook for online teaching may not have emerged in this study and provide suggestions for further research in this area.

I agree with Lucas. It is still kind of difficult to deal with it, but it will become natural. However it does not sound odd to me. Not at all. It is simply a question of time. The same happened with the Email taking over the traditional "sending letters ritual". It is the natural course of technology! :) As far as I am concerned it can work out pretty well. We have the example of moodle within our master and I also have already the experience with facebook for school discussions (within my german course). One of my friends, who is TOTALLY addicted to facebook, was telling us the other day that she spends so much time on facebook that she gets now the feeling that she is "outdated" when it comes to news. And we told her to join/add one newspaper (or so), which has a facebook page. Like this she would get the information anyway. It is a good point also valid for education. Why not to "combine business with pleasure"? It is not only usefull, but it can also be a motivator for the students.

one year later... :) it is interesting to see how facebook and its use actually changed during this year. For our Media class with Charles Max we made a little research on whether the students from the Master program use the Socializing Forum of the Moodle platform or not and why. While one year ago the Moodle platform was the main space where students shared and discussed ideas about academic topics and issues, this year it turned out that the students prefer to communicate and discuss things through facebook rather than on Moodle. Facebook seems to become an easy and handy way to communicate and exchange ideas not only on a personal level but also for academic reasons.

Media and advertising companies still use the same old demographics to understand audiences, but they're becoming increasingly harder to track online, says media researcher Johanna Blakley. As social media outgrows traditional media, and women users outnumber men, Blakley explains what changes are in store for the future of media.

About TASTE COMMUNITIES - in contrast to "(…) genre categories that assume that certain demographic groups like certain things… that 'hispanics' like certain things, that 'young' people like certain things, … This is far too simplistic!"

This is a really interesting video. Thanks for sharing. I like the very end of Blakley's talk when she mentions that the future development of media and advertisement companies will be based on understanding and working WITH the people's interests and tastes, rather than continuing to work on stereotypes and demographics, which are no longer valid, or maybe they have never actually been?!

I find it interesting to think of how we function in the traditional school system, where we are taught to learn things or concepts by heart (like for example mathematics) without really needing to reason or understand what we are actually doing. This article shows how children, thanks to this technological tool, "[d]eepen[...] mathematical understanding and higher-order thinking skills (HOTS)[, meaning] communicating about mathematics (Analyzing), [d]etermining values of shapes (Evaluating), [c]reating equations to explain relationships between shape values (Creating)". (Polly, 2011)

With social media networks ubiquitous in American life, it's time to shift the debate from whether it's a good idea for educators to use this new medium to how to use it wisely and well. Here are 10 tips to help get you started in social media for school communications.

Following Miriam's posting about videogames I would like to share this article about game literacy that analyses the concept of game literacy; the authors make an effort to give meaning to the term game literacy; they argue that literacy has become a vague synonym for competence or skill as the literacy terms proliferate: economic literacy, emotional literacy, even spiritual literacy are some of the "fashionable literacies" that deprive the term of its validity.The authors analyse a game designing process at a school in order to give a model of game literacy and to untangle its functional, critical and creative dimensions.

For those who are interested in videogames, is a microethnography and cybertextual analysis that articulates the everyday context of a smallscale event of videogame play. This event is studied as the collusion (the coming together in play), of a heterogeneous network of human and nonhuman part(icipant)s: the conventions, rules and prescriptions of games software; children's embodied knowledges, pleasures, anxieties, imaginations; play practices and rules; screen media images and characters; and the inaesthetics and virtual physics of videogameworlds.

I think the thesis posted by Miriam is good reading for everyone who is interested in how micro-ethnography is being transformed through the digital media and not just for those interested in video games. What I liked is this idea of non-human agency that is taken from Latour; we also saw it in Professor Portante's literacy studies in relation to the agency of texts. In the case of videogames the agency of the material actors is an integral part of the study and not just an additional, secondary factor that influences the agency of the human actors. According to Latour's irreducibility principle nothing -either human or non-human- is reducible to anything else.

I just discover that From 1888 to 1890, the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg was literally overwhelmed by a transatlantic migration wave, the so-called Argentinienfieber - an expression which could be translated into English by Argentine fever. In less than two years, more than one thousand Luxembourgers - representing 0.5 per cent of the entire population - decided to emigrate to Argentina.

HI Myriam can you explain me how this post is related to the "interacting with media and technology" topic of the entire folder

Sorry, wrong folder. It still interested! :)

According to the synopsis, John McCutchan, SCEA's lead for Game Systems and Developer Support, will be on hand to discuss the "Move Server project that will make it possible for academics and hobbyists to develop software using the PlayStation Move controller on their own PCs.

As our project was based on analysing our interaction with the tv through the tool that is Playstation Move, I think the info, that further research might be driven by connecting it to a PC or a Mac is quite interesting! :O)

I think this a very interesting approach to get a clearer picture how convivial Facebook really is - and also a good example of a small study on a test group, methodologically speaking. Even though this is not representative, I can confirm, that these numbers do in fact mirror my own networking habits with my 'friends'… but I think you also have to pay further attention to other factors like context of the FB user - as a college student is bound to communicate more than a 50 year old housewife for example… or a couple which gets engaged or the birth of a baby might create a false result, if you do not analyse it as a longitudinal study… never mind the size of the network. So yeay fir a test study, but for the real study they need to clarify some details and pay further attention to some critical variables!

I wanted to share a blog entry about using the Nintendo DS in school as a learning tool. I chose this because I have already had experience with this gaming device in an educational setting. At the Lushootseed language camp I was at this summer, the tribe had purchased about a dozen nintendo ds and created and installed a few different programs for learning and practicing Lushootseed. I see the value of the tool for language learning, yet in my experience it was not so successful. The kids of course did not want to do the language learning programs and very quickly figured out how to play other games and play with sounds and things. They were so distracted by the device that rarely did they complete and language learning tasks. Part of this was the rather informal non-classroom context (it might work well in a classroom setting) and it was almost impossible to force each child to use the programs. There was some success when the children were engaged in a collaborative game where the teacher would say a word in Lushootseed and the kids would have to write it on the ds. The first person to write it correctly got a point. They enjoyed this and it worked somewhat ok because everyone was engaged and they were competing, unlike all the other "games" which were individual and the kids had no motivation to do them. What do you think about using an individual gaming device such as this for language learning?

Uaaaa very interesting to see that you can use a game can be transformed and used for another purpose than just entertaining the children. I´ve been always against the dependence of the children or young people toward these kind of games. It´s good to see how someone can integrate the game with education´s aim. Now days, it´s important to find different ways and tools to adapt the education with the new changes happening around us.

Some of you might have already discovered this link, concerning a school which bases it's whole curriculum on videogames, on our multi-LEARN unveil group or through Martin aka. James Kirks' profile - if not: http://video.nytimes.com/video/2010/09/15/magazine/1248069030957/games-theory.html?scp=1&sq=Video+game+school+design&st=cse In contrast to this article, they use the videogames as a holistic and transdisciplinary approach to teach or rather convey all the branches through integrating them in the development - as they play games like Little Big Planet, in which they have to create worlds through basic designing/programming… and in order to achieve the assigned goals, they have to develop specific skills/competences, while making strategic use of their knowledge… learning mathematics, physics, chemistry, languages etc literally, whilst playing! So even though I think it's nice to use a DS during class, like in this rticle - if it's only to train your brain with computation problems or preparing for SAT scores, I think that's sth that would rather be appropriate for the home use, as training or fun homeworks… but in order to take it to the next level, they should rather follow the example of this school in the US and not just use technology just for the sake of using it?!

The internet in this case has assumed the role of a very effective uncensored news agency from which every broadcaster and news corporation have been able to freely source newsfeeds, raw from the scene.

Interesting! This makes me wonder if government-controlled media is an idea that will disappear in the coming years as social media grows. It might just become archaic and completely incompatible with the world situation. I feel like governments can only have so much power in this and as the world becomes even more connected, perhaps other countries will have similar revolutions. Iran? China?...even North Korea? (I think that one might take a long while though. They are pretty isolated).

very funny to see that people are tracking slang on twetter ! never used so don't know how it is used, but it is interesting to see the changes depending on the region... would this be analyzed as a mark of identity, like what we analyzed with the sms in Mondada's class? I guess also a deeper research could be done in this direction to see why people are using more often certain emoticone depending on the region. What does that relate and imply?

An extremely interesting, funny and very modern article. Although I have never used Twitter, it seems quite a good tool to track the development across time, whether it's accents, slang, geographical location or anything else for that matter...

The University of Luxembourg just started the process of evaluating/rating the classes and programs that are offered throughout the year. The students are the main actors in this process as their input is requested. The link and article that I propose, relates to a topic related to evaluating the quality of education, focusing on the teachers. The usefulness and validity of self-selected online student ratings of faculty is taken into consideration, as these ratings appear to be increasing in importance, particularly as students utilize them as guides in their choice of instructors. Validity is investigated by analyzing the pattern of relationships of online ratings for 399 randomly selected faculty. Analysis suggests that online ratings in their current form may be useful, even though possible abuses could limit validity in specific instances. The authors of the research believe that this study is timely and important, as Ratemyprofessor.com ratings are growing in usage and popularity with students, their parents, academics and authorities that have the duty of evaluating further the educational programs that are offered throughout universities and colleges. Such ratings affect student decisions about which professors to take and in addition, students are developing expectations of instructors based on peer comments in online ratings websites. If the websites do not provide valid information, then the ratings would not provide accurate information and thus students would probably respond to correct the ratings. On the other hand, to the extent that online ratings can be demonstrated as valid measures of instructors' abilities to inspire learning, online ratings have potential value. Increased transparency of the ratings should have virtuous effects for students to select professors who conform to their learning styles. And instructors should improve their teaching methods in order to improve their ratings.

Simina, this is very interesting. Thanks for sharing it with us. I agree with the article and with you. Evaluating the professors/teachers/instructors and the classes is a great tool to improve the system. It is like when us, the students ask for feedback as an essential step towards our development. Besides that, if the students have access to these evaluations it can be of great value for both for the student and for the professor or teacher. The student can base his/her choices on something and the professor can count only on students to participate in his/her class who are actually interested on class. Like this we avoid these classes we thought would be very interesting but it turns out are not corresponding at all to the description, and the professors/teachers don't need to deal with uninterested students, which sometimes can spoil the class.

Singing Bob Marley or The Ramones... It does not matter! Karaoke can help students developing their capacities. :) This article brings up a very interesting issue: using karaoke as a learning tool for Special Education Students and English Language Learners. A short quotation to increase your curiosity about the article: "SSHH! YOU CAN'T SING IN THE LIBRARY I first had the idea of introducing karaoke into my middle school library program after going to a local club on karaoke Night. People got up and seemed to become someone else-more confident-regardless of their ability to sing. I got up my courage to try it and the same thing happened to me. I chose Gloria Gaynor's "I Will Survive," and not only did I survive, I felt on top of the world!" It is very interesting, however not new to us (us, the ones who couldn't participate in the symposium in Munich...) because Gudrun had a similar idea for our session... :)

Interacting with media: not only funny, but also extremely useful. This article explores the reality of people with dementia, who are not always able to communicate and to interact with their caregivers. Thus, the authors evaluate an interactive touch screen (named CIRCA) that allows this communication and interaction between them. I won't tell you the results (so that if you're interested... you read the article :), but CIRCA has several applications. which aim to stimulate the memory of people with dementia... and it kinda works out well... :) It is pretty amazing. Great to see people interacting with media with useful objectives.

http://www.sciencedirect.com.proxy.bnl.lu/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6V0D-4YS9RMV-1&_user=6605268&_coverDate=07%2F31%2F2010&_rdoc=1&_fmt=high&_orig=search&_origin=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_acct=C000053072&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=6605268&md5=1b53ab21d77c669ef551e1099178456e&searchtype=a Try out this huge link in case the other does not work, thanks!

This is the article that we just presented during our last class, Just to refresh your mind, the author present the interaction of children with media tools. Understanding the concept of "Embodiment means how the nature of a living entity's cognition is shaped by the form of its physical manifestation in the world" As we saw the theory is basis in the believe that the nature of the human mind is largely determined by the form of the human body. Then, Dividing the cognition then in Spatial, Physical and finally Metaphorical. Moreover the Embodied Child were analysed by the interaction with the computer, categorizing in Input design, interface design and interaction design.