Where I’ve Been (weekly: June 24-30)

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~ A record of places on the web I want to remember ~

25 Jun 12

Technology – Bill Davidow – What Happened to Silicon Values? – The Atlantic

Apple controls our virtual landscape, bounded by iTunes to the north, the iPhone to the south, the iPad to the east, and the iPod to the west, giving it increasing power to deprive customers of choice. It exercises that power aggressively. Google appears to have a culture that condones shamelessly violating consumer privacy. How else can you explain a company that bypasses Apple’s iPhone privacy settings in a reported attempt to strengthen advertising revenues?

It is hard to believe that Dave Packard or Andy Grove would ever tell a group of entrepreneurs that he did “every horrible thing in the book to just get revenues right away,” or brag to trade publications that his company used behavioral psychologists to design “compulsion loops” into products to keep customers engaged. But Mark Pincus, the founder of Internet gaming giant Zynga, has done just that.

When corporate leaders pursue wealth in the winner-take-all Internet environment, companies dance on the edge of acceptable behavior. If they don’t take it to the limit, a competitor will. That competitor will become the dominant supplier — one monopoly will replace another. And when you engage in these activities you get a different set of Valley values: the values of customer exploitation.

24 Jun 12

‘Active’ Video Games Don’t Make Youths More Active – NYTimes.com

But exergames turn out to be much digital ado about nothing, at least as far as measurable health benefits for children. “Active” video games distributed to homes with children do not produce the increase in physical activity that naïve parents (like me) expected. That’s according to a study undertaken by the Children’s Nutrition Research Center at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, and published early this year in Pediatrics, the official journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

23 Jun 12

Are You Using Gaming for Learning? – Chief Learning Officer, Solutions for Enterprise Productivity

Games are ubiquitous online, and they’re not just for kids. With the right mechanics and strategy they can significantly increase learning engagement and retention for adults.

According to Xerox research, consumers see about 3,000 media messages a day, pay attention to 52 and only remember four. With those stats, odds are slim that learning messages will make it to the employee’s final four. For this reason, many learning organizations are embracing gaming as a way to break through the clutter.

Gaming is prevalent online, and elements of it can increase the likelihood that learning will be effective when paired with adult learning principles and gamification research.

An April 2011 press release from technology research organization Gartner said half of all organizations that manage innovation processes will gamify them by 2015. In 2010, Scientific American reported in its article “Innovations for a Bright Future: Better Living through Gaming” that gaming is one of 10 world-changing ideas. In 2009, Tom Chatfield of The Observer reported that games outperformed Hollywood movies as the primary source of global entertainment. Essentially, gaming is here to stay, and it has implications for the workplace.

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New Rule: I am NOT Going to Apologize for Crying.

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WHAT?

Where did that come from?

I’m getting resource material together for a class I’m teaching on Digital Game Based Learning that starts next week. As long as I’ve been keeping this blog, some of the posts I’ve done have been things I would say in a class if I were teaching a class on this subject.

What’s that got to do with crying?

I’ve been reading through my past posts to find the ones that are a good fit for this class. In the process I’ve also come across the posts I made just after my brother and my mother died. They both died last year – less than four months apart. It’s been a really hard year.

I mean REALLY.

Renate Bischof (my mom)
May 29, 1932 – May 10, 2011

It’s only been in the last few weeks that I could look at pictures of either of them without starting to bawl. But I can now. I have pictures of both of them right where I can look at them while I type. My mom’s pictures are on the shelf right above my monitor. I look at them dozens of times a day. 90% of the time they give me comfort. BUT 10% of the time I can feel that thing we feel just before we start to cry – you know – almost like a sneeze coming on.

I got the same feeling reading through the posts from the times that they died.

Throughout the last 18 months I’ve felt compelled to apologize each time I start to cry because of my grief. I fight that ‘about-to-start-crying’ feeling every time. Sometimes I even  avoid talking to people I care about because I just KNOW that those feelings will surface and it will be all I can do to NOT cry.

Well, I’m done with that.

If I am brought to tears because I am still sad that I have lost my entire immediate family, so be it.

Michael Becker (my brother)
Nov. 26, 1954 – Jan 16, 2011

If you don’t like it – tough.

If it makes you uncomfortable, that is no longer my problem.

Until my brother and mom died, I had no idea what to do or say either (for all those people who told me about someone they lost and who got nothing more than the traditional, socially acceptable “I’m sorry.” from me, I’m REALLY sorry. I had no idea what you were going through.) Admitting you have no frame of reference is far better than pretending something false.

 

Just to round things off – here’s a picture of my dad. He died when I was a kid (he committed suicide).

I miss them all.

Every day.

Klaus Becker (my dad)
April 6, 1923 – Oct. 18, 1971

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Gamification: Are Badges and Points Enough? Will Monetary Rewards Fix It?

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Badges, points, and leaderboards: Is Gamification good or bad?

The short answer is: YES.

Part of the problem is that some people who are jumping on the gamification bandwagon don’t actually know much about games.
Like a great many other fads, gamification is viewed by some as a panacea – a simple fix that can be slapped over a broken system to give the appearance of having done something.

Children are not fooled by edu-games when they turn out to be the same old worksheets wrapped in a game (see my Decorative Media Principle), and your employees will not be fooled by a veneer of gamification.

 

Badges, points, and leaderboards are no different from “Employee of the Month”, if they are not representative of something real and worthwhile – worthwhile in the eyes of the ‘players’. In the end, it doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks of them. It especially doesn’t matter what management says about them, if they are not tied to something real.

Is money real enough? Well, it’s certainly something tied to the real world, but while it is a common belief (especially in America) that monetary rewards motivate employees, there is plenty of evidence that if you have a reasonable salary, monetary rewards are not especially motivating. Rewards that DO motivate should involve these things (purpose, autonomy, opportunities to demonstrate mastery).

Also, leaderboards, like Employee of the Month awards ultimatly serve to pit co-workers against each other in competition. While everyone may want to be named (EoM), one can only win if everyone else loses, and that’s not good if you want people to really be a team.

Gamification can be useful framework, but your organizational structure has to actually match those aspects of gaming that make good games work. Much of the truly useful aspects of gamification aren’t actually new – individualized learning, clear and measurable objectives, choice, the ability to keep at something until you get it right,…. these are all worthwhile elements of games that can be used effectively in many other contexts. What gamification gives us is a sexy new veneer for a collection of useful approaches to organization, teamwork, and learning.

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The End-User View of Technology – Not Good Enough

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Sadly, this is the POV (point of view = perspective) that most teachers have. I don’t blame them – it’s not really their fault.

On the other hand, the professors who teach them should know better. Them I do blame. They’re the ones who decide what you need to know to become a teacher.

My experience has been that majority of Education Academics don’t know very much about tech. Even those in the field of Educational Technology don’t usually have a sufficient grasp of the technology in which they claim expertise to be considered anything more than end-users. Most of them can’t program. Many of them can’t create anything without the help of some wysiwyg tool. They’ve convinced themselves that they don’t need to know this. I think they’re wrong. I’m not the only one.

Programming should be a fundamental competency if you are involved in tech. Educational Technologists are designers who use tech, so they need to know key concepts of computational architecture. This is learned by learning to program.

I did my degrees in CS before software engineering became a popular term. Along with electronics and logic, we learned systems analysis. I learned a great many details about various computers, operating systems, and programming languages – most of which no longer exist. The details of the languages and operating systems are now only of historical interest, but the fundamental concepts I learned as a result of learning all these languages and systems remain as useful today as they were 30 years ago.

Those are the things that are important to learn – not how to use Facebook, or Moodle, or ScoopIt!. These things are merely tools for achieving some goal.

Suppose we wanted to understand cars: how to use them most effectively, and what they are capable of.
Would it be enough to learn about wrenches? Hardly.
What about learning to drive? Essential, but insufficient.

You need to know how the engine works. You need to understand about the suspension, steering, and braking systems.

Only THEN do you have sufficient knowledge to comprehend what this vehicle is capable of and how you can use it to get what you want out of it.

If we look at technology from the user end alone, it is indeed a dizzying and fast changing field. It seems almost impossible to keep up.

If, on the other hand, we look at technology as a set of tools for doing something else, it starts to take on a manageable form.

You need to learn to program.

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A New Definition for STEM?

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There’s a discussion going on on on of the LinkedIn forums. Someone is trying to come up with a definition for STEM. Here’s the draft:

STEM Education Defined: STEM Education is the integration of the interdependent educational disciplines of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math; with the aim of optimizing student learning relevancy for both college and career readiness.

It seems to me this is related to my last post about the tendency Educators have to obfuscate perfectly straight-forward terminology for…. well, I’m still not sure exactly why. Becuase it’s cool?

Here’s my response:
What’s wrong with defining STEM as simply:

The combined disciplines of Science, Technology, Engineering and Math?

Why is a new definition needed?

The most useful and enduring terms tend to be the simplest ones.
You’re not going to fix what’s wrong with education in these disciplines by re-defining what they should mean. What needs to be fixed is what and how we teach.

I’ve been a scientist and computer science instructor since 1979. My first two degrees are in Computer Science. I’ve only recently become an ‘official’ educator by earning my terminal degree in Education.

My approach is that of someone who has been living and teaching these disciplines my entire adult life.

Let’s decompose this definition and see where it takes us:

the integration of the interdependent educational disciplines of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math;

We can probably agree that it is helpful to name the disciplines that make up the acronym, so:

S = Science
T = Technology
E = Engineering
M = Math

OK so far. What about the first part?

integration of the interdependent educational disciplines

They’re not really educational disciplines – they are disciplines in their own right. You can get PhD’s in them. The acronym STEM is often paired with the word Education to produce “STEM Education”.

The integration of things that are interdependent seems redundant to me. In computer science, as in math redundancy is to be eliminated – so we don’t really need that phrase at all. It doesn’t add anything to our understanding of the term STEM.

That leaves us with:

with the aim of optimizing student learning relevancy

That is a worthy aim, but I would think it’s a given in education. Do we ever NOT want to do this? If true, it also adds nothing to the definition (except more words).

for both college and career readiness.

This is also a given. Do we ever NOT want to do this when we are teaching? See above.

That leaves us with:

STEM: The combined disciplines of Science, Technology, Engineering and Math?

The rest should be discussions about the details and the how’s and why’s. Those discussions absolutely need to take place. I think that would be more useful than a new definition for STEM.

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Where I’ve Been (weekly: June 10-16)

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~ A record of places on the web I want to remember ~

BBC NEWS | Health | Video games ‘can improve vision’

Playing action video games can boost an aspect of adult vision previously thought to be fixed, a US study shows.
Researchers found playing the games improved the ability to notice even very small changes in shades of grey against a uniform background.

“Contrast sensitivity” is important in situations such as driving at night, or in conditions of poor visibility.

The Nature Neuroscience study raises the possibility of using a video game training regime to improve vision.

Contrast sensitivity is often one of the first aspects of vision to be affected by ageing.

There is some evidence that the visual system can learn
John Sloper
Moorfields Eye Hospital

It can also be affected by conditions such as amblyopia, known as “lazy eye”.

Improving contrast sensitivity usually requires physical changes in eye optics, through eye surgery, glasses or contact lenses.

A team from the University of Rochester studied expert video game players playing games involving aiming and shooting at virtual targets.

They found that they had better contrast sensitivity when compared with players who played non-action video games.

13 Jun 12

The PA Report – Banning E3 booth babes isn’t good manners, it’s good business

The first thing I saw at E3 this year was a group of scantily clad ladies giving out energy drinks in front of the Los Angeles convention center. There was another group of female models posing for pictures upon entering the building, and to the right was another pod of “booth babes” giving away T-shirts. Going up the escalators I was greeted by yet another leather-clad group of women pitching a war game. The amount of female flesh on display before you even enter the show floor was impressive, and impossible to miss.

The message it sends is clear: This is a show for men, with advertising, promotions, and booth design aimed at grabbing male eyes. In a time when console makers and major publishers are struggling to connect products with gamers, this is a dangerously short sighted marketing strategy. The issue of booth babes isn’t about being sensitive, it’s about selling to the actual video game market, and not the perceived reality of an all male audience. Video games are a diverse art form, and it’s time for our most important show to reflect that truth.

Study Shows Dogs React to Human Tears – ICTMN.com

Dogs react to a person who is crying whether it is their owner or an unfamiliar person, University of London Department of Psychology researchers found, reported Live Science.

The study, published online May 30 in the journal Animal Cognition, reveals dogs are more likely to approach someone who is crying than someone who is talking or humming. They typically responded to a human’s tears with submissive body language. While their behaviors suggest dogs understand our pain, it’s not proof that they do, researchers noted.

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | The dog’s eyes have it

Clever canines can do something which not even our closest relative, the chimp, can manage.

Dog, BBC
Thousands of years spent in human company
They can follow the human gaze or a pointing hand, figure out what it is we are looking at and seek out the target.

Dogs have spent thousands of years living with humans so a Hungarian research team set out to investigate whether this cunning ability came from wolves, the genetic ancestors of today’s dogs, or developed during domestication.

 

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Effective Teaching Should AVOID Jargon

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As promised, here is PART TWO:

“Memory is not talked about much in education, but it is critically important,” Wieman said, and the limited discussion that does occur focuses primarily on long-term memory while short-term working memory is ignored.

He compared the latter to a personal computer with limited RAM. “The more it is called upon to do, to remember, the harder it is to process. The average human brain [working memory] has a limit of five to six new items, it can’t handle anything more.”

A new item is anything that is not in the learner’s long-term memory, he continued. “Anything you can do to reduce unnecessary demands on working memory will improve learning.”

Among them is elimination of unnecessary jargon.

The thought that immediately jumped into my head is how fond Educationists are of creating new jargon.

I am teaching a course this summer on Digital Game Based Learning. I’m excited about because I love designing courses, and I haven’t done one since the winter term of 2010. The last time I taught an Education course was in 2008 – it was actually this course.

I have always struggled with the terminology (a.k.a. jargon) in Education – it seems that the ordinary words and plain language are passe. In Education, it seems, if you can coin a new term, that’s almost as good as actually doing something that’s new. In a few cases, it turns out to be better – especially if you can convince people to use your term in favour of the plain language that ‘ordinary’ people might understand.

Here’s an example: The last time I taught, I gave assignments. That’s a term that’s pretty descriptive, and one that’s been used long enough that pretty much everyone knows what you mean when you say it. This time, I’m supposed to call them learning tasks. Assignments, I’m told are not descriptive enough, or doesn’t capture the spirit of what we’re trying to achieve, or something.

How, I ask, does this improve things? I’m sure that many Educators would be at least slightly insulted that I might refer to this as jargon, but, to anyone outside the discipline, it is, because that’s not the term normally used.

Does it actually improve learning? Doubtful. So, then, why?

To be fair, at least part of the time, these things are driven by a sincere desire to create better descriptions of things. Hover, once a term is accepted and understood to mean something, why change it? Doing so adds to the cognitive load of the learners.

“Software Engineering” is NOT about the engineering of software, but it is the commonly accepted term, so what would I gain by calling it something else?

Looking at things a little cynically, I would suggest that the other part of the time (and we can argue of proportions if you like) it is done:

  • to make something old sound new;
  • to be more politically correct;
  • to give the appearance of progress where there is none in fact;
  • to justify parts of a discipline that could probably benefit from less flowery language and more practical effort.

There.
I said it.

I think the field of Education is hugely important. Unfortunately it suffers from the same weaknesses as most other disciplines, namely the application of Sturgeon’s Law, which states that “90% of everything is crap.” This is true of the academic discipline of Education.

I think we should worry less about what kind of “21-Century Leaning” label we can attach to something, and more about what we are doing and how it will make things better.

I would never use a long word, even, where a short one would answer the purpose. I know there are professors in this country who ‘ligate’ arteries. Other surgeons only tie them, and it stops the bleeding just as well.

—Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-94)

———————————–

A man of true science uses but few hard words, and those only when none other will answer his purpose; whereas the smatterer in science thinks, that by mouthing hard words, he proves that he understands hard things.

—Herman Melville (1819-91)

————————————–

The inflated style is itself a kind of euphemism. A mass of Latin words falls upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outlines and covering up all the details. The great enemy of clear language is insincerity.

—George Orwell

————————————-

The chief virtue that language can have is clearness, and nothing detracts from it so much as the use of unfamiliar words.

~Hippocrates

AAAS – AAAS News Release – “Nobel Laureate Carl Wieman: Effective Teaching Should Create Students Who Think Like Scientists”.

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Effective Teaching Should Create Students Who Think Like Scientists

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I was alerted to this article by Mark Guzdial’s blog: Carl Wieman on Effective Teaching « Computing Education Blog. (Mark’s blog almost always has something I find interesting – thanks Mark!)

There are a few things that really jumped out for me:

The goal should be to have “all students think about and use science, mathematics, and engineering more like scientists do,” Wieman said. “The most valuable metric” for evaluating effective teaching should be creating patterns of scientific thinking.

Expertise, Wienman says, is characterized by:

  • Extensive factual knowledge of the subject area. Gee, I guess that means that simply being able to Google something ISN’T enough. You’ll get no argument from me here. Of course, which facts we need to keep in our heads and which ones we can safely leave “out there” to look up is an open – and probably ever-changing – question.
  • A mental framework for organizing that knowledge so that it can be effectively retrieved and applied to solve problems. Yup again.
  • The ability to monitor one’s own thinking and learning in the areas of expertise,” he said. It includes “self-checking or sense-making, of examining one’s thinking and coming up with ways to check if their answers make sense.”

I found this bit on memory particularly significant:

A new item is anything that is not in the learner’s long-term memory, he continued. “Anything you can do to reduce unnecessary demands on working memory will improve learning.”

Among them is elimination of unnecessary jargon.

The thought that immediately jumped into my head is how fond Educationists are of creating new jargon. THIS deserves it’s own post so as not to get buried in talk about science.

AAAS – AAAS News Release – “Nobel Laureate Carl Wieman: Effective Teaching Should Create Students Who Think Like Scientists”.

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