the future of e-learning research blog

Here's how you look at big questions...

There is a group known as The Edge. It is a non-profit, 501 (c) (3) and according to their official write-up it:

"was established in 1988 as an outgrowth of a group known as The Reality Club. Its informal membership includes of some of the most interesting minds in the world. The mandate of Edge Foundation is to promote inquiry into and discussion of intellectual, philosophical, artistic, and literary issues, as well as to work for the intellectual and social achievement of society."

Here is a little tip folks - they aren't joking when they talk about their members being some of the most interesting minds in the world - its understatement on the order of Bill Gates saying that he is 'well off.' Every year, this group poses a question ot its membership and publishes their answers. These are not small questions as you can see by the list of past questions:

"WHAT QUESTIONS ARE YOU ASKING YOURSELF?"

"WHAT IS THE MOST IMPORTANT INVENTION IN THE PAST TWO THOUSAND YEARS?" ... AND "WHY?"

"WHAT IS TODAY'S MOST IMPORTANT UNREPORTED STORY?"

"WHAT QUESTIONS HAVE DISAPPEARED?"

"WHAT NOW?"

"WHAT'S YOUR QUESTION?"

"WHAT ARE THE PRESSING SCIENTIFIC ISSUES FOR THE NATION AND THE WORLD, AND WHAT IS YOUR ADVICE ON HOW I CAN BEGIN TO DEAL WITH THEM?" —GWB

Then there is this year's question....

The Research Continues: Welcome George Siemens from eLearnspace

Alright, for those who don't know, Elliott Masie was kind enough to allow me to extend this research project, under the Masie Center banner (and wearing my Boise State student hat - Go Broncs!) for another year. During this next phase I will add a growing lit review to the pile and will of course continue to conduct interviews. *I do need to apologize to those attempting to grab the RSS here - evidently there was some small flaw in the move from Moveable Type to Typepad that added an unreadable character to the mix which I am now deleting by hand. Your patience is appreciated.

George Siemens, is an instructor at Red River College in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, and publisher, editor, chief writer, CEO, etc., of the wonderful and informative (really is one of those emails I look for) eLearnspace.org. He has evidently slipped up somehow and agreed to do an interview here and for that I am deeply grateful. As always, your comments during this interview are welcome and encouraged but George and I reserve the right to address them as they fit the flow of the interview.

All that being said, what really kicked off this interview was a question that popped into my head recently. One of my favorite historians is Robert Darnton. Now, in one of my favorite books by Darnton, The Great Cat Massacre, he makes the point that...

IAETE Soapbox: What Can Education Learn from the Video Game Industry?

"In my opinion, the only thing that really works here is a combination of pure creativity and high passion. Both must come from two directions--creativity and passion about the subject matter, and creativity and passion about the medium. I think "true" subject matter experts (i.e., expert practitioners) who want to create a game about their subject need to think along the following lines: "How could what I do so well be thought of as a game that only I, or someone with my experience and know-how, could win?
- Marc Prensky"
A panel discussion with Marc, Dr. Christopher Dede, Wirth Professor of Learning Technologies and chair of the Learning & Teaching Area at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, Dr. James Paul Gee, a professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, recently published What Video Games Have to Teach Us about Learning and Literacy and "Cory,"* a high school student and game player, bravely kept the academics grounded in reality.

Could a student sue for in-cleass created IP?

The State of Play: Free As In Gaming?


Posted by James Grimmelmann on Thursday, December 04 @ 00:25:25 EST


The State of Play conference was a couple weeks ago. The big news at the conference, of course, was Fridays morning's announcement that Second Life is disclaiming any copyright interest in the content its players add to the gameworld. (See also the discussion at Terra Nova and Slashdot.)

Near the end of the question-and answer period, Yale's Yochai Benkler rose to pose a most provocative question. Here, in very rough paraphrase, is what he said:
I'm baffled by this embrace of IP rights, given your own descriptions of what you find valuable. You're creating this world in which people come to play and be creative, and yet you've given this world a system that has been extensively criticized as limiting creativity. Haven't you just given them a new set of hurdles to creativity?
I'd like to devote the rest of this piece to explaining just how deep Benkler's question was, just how many unresolved issues of law and gaming it ties together.

**UPDATE 9 December: If you are smart enough to go and read this article, then do yourself a favor and scroll all the way down and read the comments at the bottom.
**Further update: Now think about this - how much of a stretch is it to see a situation in which a school or e-learning provider, can sued via copyright infringement by a student over IP created in class?

Research Slides from TechLearn 2003

Click here to download the PowerPoint slides I used for the briefing on my Masie Center Research.

Click here for the executive summary of the final research report.

Click here for the draft (that's right, I'm still touching it up) of the entire final report.

you guys really P*ss me off...

You know, I work hard all day and then think I'll just check the blog scene real quick the play a little Civ III and off to bed I go. One day I'll learn...this post by Sam Adkins on the Learning Circuits blog is essentially a recap of his TechLearn presentation but thought-provoking as the original (do yourself a favor and spend $750 wisely on the full version of workflow learning available here).

So what? So, Sam is right and so is Godfrey Parkin (see comments). So what? So I still feel something missing from this discussion. Perhaps it is the fact that I am all about context and the current discussion - while wide-ranging - and beyond my current intellectual pay grade in some regards, still feels limited. Now, understand that one of the reasons I left grad school was that I felt the field of history was not allowing for the development of a faster response time to changes in society. It is thus a bit perplexing to me then to find myself starting to hunger for a longer-term view of developments. Maybe it's not longer but broader term.

Research Questions

The field is now open! I have uploaded my little starter set of questions on my future e-learning models research. I invite all who are interested to download and reply - please include (if nothing else) some kind of identifier as to country, level of experience, industry, etc. Thanks!

Download file

Truly Unreal

I've always said that the most powerful things about the games that are out today are not there engines but their communities, specifically their mod (modification) communities. Well, Epic Games is taking this to a whole new level. They are sponsoring a contest (along with the usual suspects like nvidia) for people to create the best mod for their current Unreal game engine. Two catches: at www.masteringunreal.com you'll find a site they created to train people how to create the mods! According to the site, there are over 120 hours of training available for free! The first headline you read on the site screams 'WELCOME TO THE FUTURE OF LEARNING.' Amazing. They aren't kidding ? here is the description for a 101 class:
'The Unreal Technology Level Editing 101 class is designed to teach the student the necessary skills to create their own game levels for use with Unreal. The first module will introduce the student to the latest version of UnrealEd, the powerful editor that is included with the Unreal Tournament 2003. The module will cover an introduction to the UnrealEd user interface, and an explanation of many of the necessary tools for level creation. The module lecture will actually walk the student through creation of their first level, including lights, textures, and population of the level with static meshes.'

Powerful stuff? but wait... there's more - the Grand Prize winner will receive a full license of the current Unreal engine and the next-gen version! hey people! That is a $350,000 (US) prize!!! It could turn that one person into to their own game publisher overnight! The winner will be announced at the Game Developers Conference on March 22, 2004. What does this mean for people clinging to their educational content like that is what is going to drive an economic engine?

Welcome to Sam Adkins

Next up in the interview que is Mr. Sam Adkins. Thanks a bunch Sam.

For those of you who don't know him, Sam has spent almost 20 years in the training industry. The last company he worked for was a small U.S. Northwest company known as Microsoft. While at Microsoft, Sam, in his role as Group Learning Program Manager, helped create the online learning university known as the Microsoft Online Institute or MOLI.

SAMADICO, Sam's own product research company was started in 2000 and Sam's work there on issues such as Workflow-based eLearning, has helped solidify his place as one of the leading e-learning researchers in the field today.

We are lucky and happy to have Sam here with us...and now on with the interview!

Sign o' the times

Found at ThinkGeek.com