You know when I was a kid my teachers encouraged me to think for myself. You need to know how to learn things on your own. You need to develop independence. You need to be creative.
Well guess what. When I went to get a teaching credential, you know what they hammered into me ( academically speaking that is) from day one? Students need to develop creative learning. They should have real projects to develop independence. Students need to develop confidence and the ability to learn on their own.
So now my child is in school. Guess what is stressed in school today? Teaching to the test. Standardized testing, testing and more testing! What's wrong with that?
If the purpose of school is only to memorize facts then testing is fine. But if that's the purpose of school then it's just a step above baby sitting. It's baby sitting with memorization!
The purpose of school should be to develop mental agility. Learning how to think and problem solve.
The purpose of school should be to develop skills. Social skills, organizational skills, work skills, blue collar skills and athletic skills.
The purpose of school should be to exercise our creativity. While other countries have set the academic bar far higher than we do, we are the best with creativity. That is up until recently. We're switching to a model of standardized testing, this will only diminish our creativity. How can you be creative when you're expected to memorize facts? We're giving up something we're excelling in. Why?
Thursday, September 18, 2008
Friday, September 5, 2008
Stupendous Adventures of Heroes and Villans
Kids love show off their work. Especially if its something they enjoyed doing. So you won't hear most of them say "Hey you want to read my essay for english class?" to their friends. On the other hand, if they made a movie on their computer using Virtual Reality technologies, you bet they would be showing it over and over. Everyone they know would see it. But what educational value is in a movie?
Before I go on let's suppose a structured educational environment, one with teachers of different subjects working together to facilitate a particular project. Though I risk losing 99% of my readership with the following very heinous words I must write them; Interdisciplinary Collaboration! Yuk. The concept is great don't mistake my feelings on this. It's just that the words are so ... boring and tedious and awful. Let's value the concept and strive towards it, but never speak the words again!
So what value is there in making a VR Movie?
Well lets start with imagination. The subject of the movie could be fiction, religious, history or the experiences of the student. Regardless of the topic the pupil will need to imagine what will happen. Decide on the setting and background. Plan for the dialog and the interaction between the characters.
All of this also sounds like organized thought.
As educators, teaching students writing skills can be challenging. Students know what they mean when they write but often it doesn't make sense to the reader. Their thoughts aren't always organized. Other disciplines, wood shop, for example, objectively shows students the value of organization. For example when building a bird house, forgetting to put a hole in it renders it a non bird house, while making it crooked with nails evilly sticking out of the split wood makes it a source of ridicule from the other students. It is obvious when the bird house was not made well because it's objective. Writing on the other hand is subjective and so students don't see what's wrong with what they wrote.
Turning their writing into a VR Movie will make it objective. Students will see why something they wrote doesn't make sense because it won't make sense in the movie. And what a learning experience it would be if their writing was poor but their movie was great. The educator could point out the differences between that which was written and that which appeared in the movie.
In the next part I'll expand on the values of Virtual Reality in Education.
Before I end for today, I bet you're wondering about the title. You may have guessed that the title referred to topics students in Middle School or High School would love to animate. Sure they might enjoy that but that guess would be wrong. Instead, you probably wouldn't have read this far had I called this piece "Benefits of Interdisciplinary Collaboration using Virtual Reality Software and Techniques." Would you have huh? Titles such as these make one feel as though one is working on homework assignment!
Stan Cerin
IvyDataSciences.com
Before I go on let's suppose a structured educational environment, one with teachers of different subjects working together to facilitate a particular project. Though I risk losing 99% of my readership with the following very heinous words I must write them; Interdisciplinary Collaboration! Yuk. The concept is great don't mistake my feelings on this. It's just that the words are so ... boring and tedious and awful. Let's value the concept and strive towards it, but never speak the words again!
So what value is there in making a VR Movie?
Well lets start with imagination. The subject of the movie could be fiction, religious, history or the experiences of the student. Regardless of the topic the pupil will need to imagine what will happen. Decide on the setting and background. Plan for the dialog and the interaction between the characters.
All of this also sounds like organized thought.
As educators, teaching students writing skills can be challenging. Students know what they mean when they write but often it doesn't make sense to the reader. Their thoughts aren't always organized. Other disciplines, wood shop, for example, objectively shows students the value of organization. For example when building a bird house, forgetting to put a hole in it renders it a non bird house, while making it crooked with nails evilly sticking out of the split wood makes it a source of ridicule from the other students. It is obvious when the bird house was not made well because it's objective. Writing on the other hand is subjective and so students don't see what's wrong with what they wrote.
Turning their writing into a VR Movie will make it objective. Students will see why something they wrote doesn't make sense because it won't make sense in the movie. And what a learning experience it would be if their writing was poor but their movie was great. The educator could point out the differences between that which was written and that which appeared in the movie.
In the next part I'll expand on the values of Virtual Reality in Education.
Before I end for today, I bet you're wondering about the title. You may have guessed that the title referred to topics students in Middle School or High School would love to animate. Sure they might enjoy that but that guess would be wrong. Instead, you probably wouldn't have read this far had I called this piece "Benefits of Interdisciplinary Collaboration using Virtual Reality Software and Techniques." Would you have huh? Titles such as these make one feel as though one is working on homework assignment!
Stan Cerin
IvyDataSciences.com
Thursday, September 4, 2008
So exciting I'm Giddy!
Ok we've seen people addicted to virtual reality (VR) we just haven't been cognizant of it. Modern video games of course, love them or hate them are predominantly VR worlds. For a long time a small community of people have been trying to adapt gaming to education and some have even succeeded! I applaud the successes. I also congratulate the failures for trying to make education fun. Gaming though imposes certain limits on education that another type of VR does not.
Virtual Reality modeling is a very exciting technology that's available to everyone. The "Story Telling Alice" software from Carnegie Mellon University specifically can be a potential learning goldmine if utilized properly. How?
Get someone excited about something and they'll want to do it and learn as much as they can about it. That's what makes video games so popular. Some people REALLY get into them. An "F", "D" or "C" student academically may surprise you with his/her extensive knowledge of a particular game, its intricacies and peculiarities. Without looking at this persons grades you might think they were excelling academically.
Take this same person and get them excited about story telling and that person will surprise you academically. After all everyone likes to tell stories especially kids. They want to tell you about their problems, successes, issues important to them, friends, plans for the future or a million other topics. The problem is the tools they use. Pen and paper or word processor don't excite most people let alone kids. That becomes a chore. Put them in a class that is specifically designed to make them tell stories in worlds that they've created, with characters of their choosing and with stories that they've imagined and they will pull out the pen and paper or the word processor to write their stories so that they can put them into VR worlds. Now the story telling isn't just for the teacher, it's for everyone. No one but the teacher would read their story. But with a VR project they can post their work on the web on myspace or utube and share their stories with the world.
Kids want to do real work, not school work. VR makes their work real. It's something that they can show the world.
Now that's exciting!
Did I mention interdisciplinary studies? We'll save that for next time....
Stan Cerin
www.ivydatasciences.com
Virtual Reality modeling is a very exciting technology that's available to everyone. The "Story Telling Alice" software from Carnegie Mellon University specifically can be a potential learning goldmine if utilized properly. How?
Get someone excited about something and they'll want to do it and learn as much as they can about it. That's what makes video games so popular. Some people REALLY get into them. An "F", "D" or "C" student academically may surprise you with his/her extensive knowledge of a particular game, its intricacies and peculiarities. Without looking at this persons grades you might think they were excelling academically.
Take this same person and get them excited about story telling and that person will surprise you academically. After all everyone likes to tell stories especially kids. They want to tell you about their problems, successes, issues important to them, friends, plans for the future or a million other topics. The problem is the tools they use. Pen and paper or word processor don't excite most people let alone kids. That becomes a chore. Put them in a class that is specifically designed to make them tell stories in worlds that they've created, with characters of their choosing and with stories that they've imagined and they will pull out the pen and paper or the word processor to write their stories so that they can put them into VR worlds. Now the story telling isn't just for the teacher, it's for everyone. No one but the teacher would read their story. But with a VR project they can post their work on the web on myspace or utube and share their stories with the world.
Kids want to do real work, not school work. VR makes their work real. It's something that they can show the world.
Now that's exciting!
Did I mention interdisciplinary studies? We'll save that for next time....
Stan Cerin
www.ivydatasciences.com
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