Educators attend Machinima previews in an immersive environment.

The annual SIGVE EduMachinima Fest is unique in that it is for both students and teachers.  Those who enter their work will have the opportunity to create and share their manipulation of images, sounds, music and words effectively to convey a message as it relates to the theme this year, Fiero, or to any of the categories listed on the SIGVE EduMachinima application.

Developing a machinima product is one way to demonstrate skills in media design, self-expression, critical thinking, collaboration, and knowledge of multiple academic subjects.  The skills are clearly aligned to Common Core standards and our digitally connected culture.  Machinima entries should be submitted  to bit.ly/machinima13 by June 7, 2013 at midnight PT.  The Fest will take place at the 2013 ISTE Conference in San Antonio and winners will be announced at that time.

The Categories for Machinima entries in both student and Teacher categories are:

Timed

• 60 Seconds and Gone (Educational Ice Breaker)
• 60 Second Work of Art
• 3 minute How-To? Instructional
• 60 Second – 3 minute Fiero (Show Us Your Fiero!)

No Time Limit

• Digital Storytelling
• Digital Sandbox/Building
• Narrated Gameplay
• Language Learning
• Science Show
• Mixed Media (at least 50% of submission is Machinima)

In addition to awards for those categories, there will be a People’s Choice Awards.

A panel of community judges will give awards for:

• Best Sound
• Best Special Effects
• Best Editing
• Best Machinimatography

Related articles

• Teachers, officials prepping for new Common Core standards (utsandiego.com)
• SIGVE Weebly – Machinima

An assignment  that a student fails to understand is marked with a grade that is averaged or used to report on the student’s achievement level.

Failure to successfully complete a task in a game is typically followed by an opportunity to try again. A game player may fail multiple times, eventually mastering the task.

Educators assess  learning  in a variety of ways including observation of behaviors/skill demonstration, artifact production, portfolio development, and testing.  We establish grades, inform parents and students, and record grades in a permanent record.  There is lively debate on assessment (particularly the bubble sheet, state-wide, multiple choice, high stakes tests) being used and whether or not these assessments are truly a measure of student achievement.   Alternative means (portfolios, observations, artifacts, anecdotal records) are difficult to quantify and standardize, but seem a better indication of a student’s abilities and knowledge acquisition.  Ultimately we need to consider the objective, is it to report on student levels or  to inform instruction?

Game-based learning looks at making mistakes and achieving mastery in a different way.   The making of mistakes and intermittent “failure” is built into the game to scaffold learning and contribute to eventual mastery.  A player then  analyzes, discusses, researches, and then  gets a “redo” based n the information.  The goal is mastery.

Game-based teaching has other attributes besides how games deal with mistakes, but it is the failure/mistake attribute that is particularly in conflict  with traditional school methodology that rates and fails students rather than using mistakes to learn.   If we believe that all children can learn, a more viable way to teach could be through the use of  this particular game mechanic.

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• SBG – Standards Based Grading (mrvaudrey.wordpress.com)
• How Do We Measure What Really Counts In The Classroom? (fastcoexist.com)
• Gamify with Zeos (powertolearn.typepad.com)
• Curriculum and Pedagogy Matter and ‘Reformers’ Suck at Those Things: The Math Edition (mikethemadbiologist.com)
• Fear of Failing?  Many Meanings of Difficulty in Video Games

Educators discuss their FETC presentation as they play in World of Warcraft

During the Summer of 2012, a free MOOC (massive open online courses) was conducted on games for learning. The session was led by Front Range Community College Faculty  who invited educators from around the country to contribute.  Over 400 educators from K-adult around the world gathered in Second Life, Opensim, and World of Warcraft  to hear experts, see demonstrations, create machinima, develop an ARG and play games together to explore emergent themes. Sessions included different levels of participation using Dr. Lisa Dawley’s  Social Network Knowledge Construction Model of experiential engagement. If you are at FETC this week you can attend a presentation from some who collaborated to support the global, networked community, the founder will be available online for Q and A. The community continues to create professional development opportunities.

Those at FETC in Orlando can attend  CS9256 – Game MOOC: Experiential Engagement and Transformation at 1:00 PM – 1:40 PM Thursday January 31.

• Join the GameMOOC Edmodo group to see resources and sign up for the next Game MOOC session
• Join the next Game MOOC at http://bit.ly/gamesmooc that starts  March 18, 2013 for 6 weeks til April 22, 2013 Next New Game MOOC Topics include:
–Build the Game using Apps
–AR and ARGs

A small change – My new year WoW Toon, a little out of my comfort zone an Orc Warlock.

“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.”

Charles Darwin

Change is inevitable and the new year brings the mindset and impetus to make some.  Change can be uncomfortable and we often hear “the way it used to be” referencing many years past to just a few years or even a year ago.  Those who started something new  5, 3, or even 1 year ago will benefit from some reflection and thought into how change could benefit personally and organizationally.

Changes occurring in the immersive environment and gaming communities are worth noting to determine what changes we are ready to embark on.  Some who have learned a new technology, system, strategy may be resistant to yet another change; a new browser, a new application, a new viewer, a new server, updates, plugins, version xyz, or mashup.  My advice is  roll with it.  It will happen anyway so do the best you can to learn it and play with, in the end it is likely that you will find it better.  I often hear “I have no time”, to which I respond “you will run out of time and be left behind”.  Technological changes will not wait for us to catch up, and it is impossible to do it all, so pick one thing for the year, the month, the week or day and then do it.  Try something new.  A great place to start is the “top” lists… go through the lists and find one that looks particularly interesting then use it, bookmark it, play with it, learn it.  That is my plan, learn something new and do my best to keep up with inevitable change.

Top 10 MMORPGs

Free Virtual Worlds for Kids Under 9

Top 20 Uses of Virtual Worlds in Education

Top 10 Opensim Grids

The event will last one hour and brings six youngsters aged  7-16 to the live-stream to explain a game played online.  Each child selected the game they wanted to show and is prepared to take viewers on a tour.  Moms and dads will be nearby so questions from the audience can be directed at parents as well as to the kids.   Be prepared for a child’s viewpoint of  the following games First in Math, Club Penguin, Poptropica, Wizard 101, and Kerbal Space Program.  

Each of these represents digital spaces shared with the educational community and other stakeholders to encourage innovation, reform and improvement.  My nomination for ” Use of social network”  is perhaps a little  unconventional because it is a 3D space rather than 2D, which all the rest are.   These types of spaces are becoming more popular as we play games and meet via avatar with our colleagues around the globe.  The link is for the 2D description but the space is far more than that, I highly recommend a visit on a Thursday night.  The rest of the nominations are for  sites I have found particularly useful or cutting edge.  I invite everyone to take a look at what some of our educators with intellectual curiosity are doing with their personal learning and with their students.  My nominations for the 2012 Digital spaces that contributed to teaching and learning are:

• Best individual blog – Educating Lotus - http://educatinglotus.wordpress.com
• Best group blog – Games Mooc - http://gamesmooc.shivtr.com
• Best ed tech / resource sharing blog – Illivisi (I Live In Science Land) http://iliveisl.com
• Best teacher blog – Ctrl Alt Teach – http://www.ctrlaltteach.com
• Best individual tweeter - @proximalzone
• Best twitter hashtag – #Gamemooc
• Best free web tool – Google Hangout - http://www.google.com/+/learnmore/hangouts/
• Best educational use of audio / video / visual / podcast – G.A.M.E. Webinar Series - http://g.a.m.e.shivtr.com/pages/webinarpage
• Best open PD / unconference / webinar series- G.A.M.E. Webinar Series - http://g.a.m.e.shivtr.com/pages/webinarpage
• Best educational use of a social network – SIGVE Diner on SL - http://sigve.weebly.com/sigve-diner.html

SPACE is, in my opinion, another factor.  Teachers are in their classrooms most of the day and even when they have a planning time they are generally isolated from other educators in the building whose schedule is likely opposite of theirs.  Common planning is difficult to achieve, particularly because we have not changed the basic infrastructure of how schools are run.  Changing building schedules and reworking the use of physical spaces  could certainly benefit all stakeholders but for now I will make an alternative suggestion.  Leverage technology for professional learning and collaboration.

A variety of online spaces are available and  used by educators to collaborate, share, and learn.  Educators are meeting and learning together in MMORPGs, virtual worlds, webinars, chat spaces, video conferencing, and forums.  Many of these meetings are synchronous, providing opportunity for immediate exchange and feedback.  Probably one of the most beneficial aspects of these meet-ups is the opportunity to communicate and collaborate with practitioners in different time zones.  Educators need not be limited to working with colleagues in their departments, buildings or districts (often difficult enough), but literally have the entire world of educators at their fingertips.  Time zone issues can be a challenge, but those with a similar focus seem to be able to adjust their internal clocks even to meet with someone on the other side of the planet.

Educators representing 6 time zones attend a webinar recorded on Google Hangout, broadcast through Youtube while sitting in the SIGVE Diner in a Virtual World. Audio was available as well as text chat.

My professional learning has been impacted by synchronous events online.  My membership in two teacher guilds (Cognitive Dissonance and Inevitable Betrayal) on WoW has given me the opportunity to experience gaming with fellow educators and learn how this particular game is used in the K-12 and higher education arena.  I was a little reticent to even try the game as the idea of “warcraft” was something of a deterrent at first.  The educators who convinced me otherwise were established in virtual worlds and demonstrated how MMORPGs were an extension of this type of learning.  The guild chat in these two groups ultimately returns to work with students and profession conversation.  Virtual Worlds provide a space that gives attendees a sense of “being there”.  The “there” can be a place of fiction or something more traditional, like the SIGVE Diner on Second Life.  Meeting up with fellow educators on Skype or Google Hangout allows for multiple layers of sharing.  These applications provide for voice, text chat, screen sharing, and video.  The possibilities are increasing and evolving making the issue of time and space a non-issue.

Teaching in virtual spaces has become more than publishing information for learners to read and respond to.  Thankfully, technology advances have made virtual spaces more creative, engaging, and interactive for teachers and learners.  Today, there are no tested standards for effective online teaching and the possibilities keep changing.  Virtual and online schools vary as much as the definitions of what online teaching is.

Educators who use technology in their teaching and those who teach primarily through technology must keep learning new applications and experimenting.  These educators are inventing the playbook. The badging movement may yield criteria that designates an “Online Educator”.  I hope that the criteria comes from those who actually are online educators, have experimented and explored technologies, and can verify that they work. Using virtual spaces for teaching and learning is a growing trend and those currently in the trenches would serve themselves and the future well by documenting their practice and learning.  We have an opportunity to use our experiences to codify promising practices as we continue to learn and practice newer ways.

Related articles

• Technology at school…lessons from a 6 year old! (education-ideas.com)
• Online Teaching Jobs (answers.com)
• Reflections at the beginning of an online teaching experience (rbbasinger.wordpress.com)
• Where is a new online instructor to start? (jjulius.org)

•      Document and display skills
•      Provide emphasis to an accurate measure of competency
•      Account for informal as well as formal learning

So what would a Virtual World Educator Badge look like?  What would the criteria for earning one include?  Would there be multiple badges or just one?  Virtual Wold educators are both consumers and producers.  Some use the spaces (which include the sandbox genre as well as game environments) effectively to teach groups of students, yet never produce within the environment.  Others have developed extensive technical skills like terrafoming, building, scripting, graphic design, 3D rendering , live-streaming music and machinima to create an environment specific to student needs and a curricular area.   Some educators use Virtual Worlds for their own professional learning while others use virtual worlds to teach others.

What would an educator have to do to earn the badge?  Would there be an artifact or proof of having met the criteria?  Who would check?  Who would issue such a badge?  With multiple schools, organizations, companies and agencies making use of virtual worlds for teaching and learning they may each design and develop badges aligned to their particular objectives and philosophies.  What a great opportunity for collaboration among these groups to determine the criteria for earning badges in the area of virtual worlds and education.  Perhaps a peer review of evidence would be appropriate and meaningful. With the amount of material written on the subject it seems that Badges will likely be a part of educator’s future.  My questions are not rhetorical, I welcome feedback on the topic to continue the conversation and perhaps influence the possibility of a Virtual World Educator Badge.

Related articles

• Virtual World in Training Simulator (dvidshub.net)
• OpenSimulator 0.7.4 (core.freecode.com)
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• Education is already Gamified: Dan Hickey on Badges (computinged.wordpress.com)
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Middle school students begin the school year on Art Island in Jokaydia Grid

Monday was a hurricane day so I got to spend it visiting a colleague who teaches in another state devoid of hurricanes.  Norma Underwood  invited me to meet her first hour class on Art Island in Jokaydia Grid, the class is in Arizona.  I had been the class when they had space on Reaction Grid about a year ago, but changes caused Norma to move the space to Jokaydia Grid, also an Opensim Grid.

Though  my timing was a little off, different time zones always kind of throw me, I managed to catch the last 20 minutes of class.  The new group of students appeared adept at moving about and explained that they were working on “stuff”.  They had a lot of questions about the storm in my state, pointing out the opportunity of using any real-time application for student interaction across states, time zones and cultural areas.

The Lincoln Memorial on Art Island.

Though this group of students was new to the class and concept of working in virtual environments, they all wore t-shirts they had made using graphics software and had no difficulty moving about the diverse terrain.  I had a quick tour of the island and hope to return at the end of the semester to see the fruits of their labor.  When asked about  a favorite location on the virtual island, one student was very clear that it was the Lincoln Memorial and insisted I come see it.  My avatar followed the student to the Lincoln Memorial with the reflection pond and the Washington Memorial at the other end.  Washington DC is quite a distance form Arizona, but these students virtually visit the monument every day.

Artistopoly Board, My avatar stands on a space dedicated to Van Gogh.

The next stop was an “Artistopoly” board that the student avatars could walk on.  The board is used in a gaming way to teach the students about artists.  This is one I would like to see in action, it would possibly make a great machinima.

The yellow Brick Road leading to an Art Resource Facility

Students led me down a yellow brick road path to an art resource building that provided information about art concepts (line, color, shapes…).  It serves as a resource as they create as well as providing information on art standards.

There was an art gallery and landscaping and lots of open space.  The open space is space for the students to  solve problems as they create, build and script the work that the teacher will guide them  in.

Though I was not physically in this classroom with the students, I certainly had a feeling of being present.  My presence was not a disruption, but a welcome opportunity to interact and exchange thoughts with these curious and excited students who were most likely sitting at desks and chattering as they manipulated hardware to move their avatar and to communicate with each other and with the visitor from another state.  I was personally enriched by the experience.