eLearning eVolution

According to a recent article in eSchool News, this was the message of FETC keynote speaker James Brazell, who makes some interesting points:
- Video gaming is not just for entertainment
- There are new models of playing, learning, socializing
- You can get more data into a video game than any other education area
- Learning is embedded in play
- Consider gaming part of a blended learning approach

But the key take away is that gaming is not an end in itself. Rather, instructors must decide what they want to teach and determine if gaming is the right vehicle.

At Elluminate, we learned that online gaming was indeed a popular topic when hundreds of attendees participated an our recent webinar, “Teaching with Online Games,” with Dr. David Gibson, who also wrote the book, “Digital Simulations to Improve Education.” Click here to view the interactive recording.

As Dr. Gibson says, we’re all on the learning curve about using gaming in education. Time to start the conversation!and stimulate some thinking! Are you using online gaming in your F2F or virtual classroom? If so, tell us more.

Keep on Elluminating!

- Beth, Elluminate Goddess of Communication

My last post talked about the rising cost of fuel driving (pun intended) a significant rise in online class enrollments. Here’s something else for academic institutions looking to save big time on gas to consider: the virtual field trip.

For example:

- Florida Virtual School uses Elluminate Live! for virtual field trips, like “visiting” the Grand Canyon using Google Earth, connecting with a class in England to hear a speaker from Parliment, and sending streaming video of a trip to a zoo to those students who couldn’t attend in person. Learn more.

- Tom Moncrief from Union County Public Schools uses Elluminate vRoom to take his students on virtual field trips to interview the cast of the musical Rent or view a laparascopic surgery and talk to the surgeon. Learn more. Plus here’s an article about another virtual field trip organized by Moncrief during which some fifth-grade students got some face time with NASA engineers.

So where do you want to take your class today? I guess the answer is that you’re only limited by your imagination. But you sure don’t have to be limited by the cost of gas.

- Beth, Elluminate Goddess of Communication

Gary here. Almost every day, I hear from people who say “Yeah, but can you really teach with this?” or “Why would I want to do that online?” I have some really great answers, but then someone will tell me that of course I feel that way, I sell the stuff! (This, even though I am not a sales dude – plus I am also sincerely concerned about maximizing the use of my education tax dollars and increasing the efficacy of learning – but that is another post altogether [that I hope my boss will approve].)

Lucky for me, at Elluminate we have customers and partners like Dr. J Ricky Cox at Murray State University in Kentucky, USA. I got on a web conference with him, hoping to get a few anecdotes about either pen computing or interactive whiteboards and his use of them with real time collaboration for a presentation I am working on.

I literally asked Dr. Cox one question, and here was his answer. (The content pretty is much unedited except to make it shorter.)

(Click image to pop the 5 minute presentation )

Warm regards, and “keep onlinin’ ”

Gary Dietz

P.S. I really like conversing with people online and whipping out Adobe Audition or Techsmith Camtasia and editing together a nice story. I can even do this over the phone with my handy-dandy Olympus digital audio recorder. If you want to create a story with me this way, drop me a line at gdietz@elluminate.com

Great BBC video about how students who can’t be in a physical school setting (due to health or other reasons) are really getting “Real Education” even when at a distance. Thanks to our UK partner, Accipio Learning for this video. Check it out at http://youtube.com/watch?v=4hMGbTPnWIc

Rajeev