Michael Jackson's Glove

Today in the NY Times Style Section there was an article about Michael Jackson. As I read about this incredible artist, it occurred to me that it would be interesting to do a semiotic analysis of his glove. Certainly it has taken on a meaning of its own. And what about the Pop King himself? What does he represent to us, especially those of us born in the 60s? Another day perhaps.

Today I will simply listen and enjoy.

Photo from The Directory of New York City.

Integrating Globaloria into my Curriculum

In the adoption of Globaloria for my game design class I have found myself at odds between two concepts: The advantages of using an integrated system that the students are familiar with, and the benefit of a more extended learning community with expanded content. I keep trying to figure out how the two would not be mutually exclusive.

SAKAI

Shepherd uses Sakai, an online learning tool that offers the following features/tools: Wiki, Calendar, Integrated Messaging, Podcasts, Grade Book, Drop Boxes, Resources, Tests & Quizzes and Site Statistics. Note: There are many more tools available, but these are the ones I use most often.

Sakai was universally adopted by the University last year. I was an early tester of the system, so some of my students have been using Sakai for two years. (We also tested Moodle.) Like any online environment, it has its strengths and weaknesses. I wish it had an attendance module for example, and some file formats are not readily posted. On the plus side, Sakai is easily navigable and modular. Each tool provided to the educator and student is designed specifically for a certain task. It doesn't try to make one tool do all things. I can add tools as needed, keeping the screen clean and uncluttered.

Sakai's Site Statistics tool gives me a good idea of how the students are actually using the site. I can look for example, at the usage from my Advertising and Imagery class.



You can see that they are looking at each others work, documenting/discussing things in the wiki, and posting/reading assignments with regular frequency.

GLOBALORIA

From my experience with Globaloria, I was very impressed with the overall content. The modules are broken up intelligently, and supporting resources are very well researched. The teachers utilizing the curriculum within my state of West Virginia are great, and have glowing reports on student responses. A disadvantage I found in my exposure was that by making the wiki contain everything, the usability has suffered somewhat. During a recent training session educators often had trouble finding they needed. With that said, the wiki format provides a huge advantage by allowing all learners on Globaloria to have access to each other. It also allows the Globaloria administrators to constantly update and improve content and have it distributed immediately.

WHAT NEXT?

So what do I do for my class? I'm leaning toward doing a hybrid of the two. The students could enter Sakai, and in a lesson module find the direct link to the Globaloria content. (This would bypass any navigational confusion.) Doing this would also allow me to integrate my own curriculum easily. Maybe this first semester they use Sakai's wiki tool, but use Blogger as specified by Globaloria. This does limit the ability of other learners to access their work, but as Shepherd is the first university-level participant this may not be such a huge problem for now.

Happily, the folks that run Globaloria are open to suggestions. This first time through will no doubt be challenging, but I'm hoping for the best of both worlds. No matter what the reults, students will find themselves immersed in a digital learning environment, with plenty of opportunity for collaboration.

Everything I needed to know I learned in 3rd-5th Grades

I was born in 1963, and attended elementary school in the 70s. As a country, we were immersed in the Vietnam war. Every night on the news I would see Walter Cronkite report on the casualties, while a graphic appeared over his shoulder with a large number of the total war dead. The unrest in the country, paired with the remnant idealism of the 60s, made many a school district reexamine its approach to education.

Genesee Hills Elementary School, in DeWitt New York (a suburb of Syracuse) was definitely exploring alternative means to teach its student body. As a third grader, I found myself in an experiment. It was called "Multi-Age." My class consisted of 75 students, grades three through five, with three teachers and probably as many student teachers. They took three classrooms and removed the walls completely between two of them, and carved a wide open passage to the third space.

The idea behind Multi-Age was that the students would interact and learn from each other as much as from the teachers. Some of the concepts applied were:

• Independent learning: At the beginning of the week I created my own schedule. I was presented with a grid, and knew I had to have mark so-many boxes for math, language arts, reading etc.
  
• Learning at your own pace: If a 5th grader was "behind" in math, they would get the appropriate content for their own skill level. There was no real differentiation from 3rd grade work versus 5th grade work (at least in the student's mind.) So there was no stigma associated with "failing" a grade. You simply learned math.
  
• Peer teaching. I felt empowered helping other kids with their work. Older kids served as mentors for me. I had friends of all ages and both sexes. Cliques really didn't exist.
• Tinkering (!!!): In one corner of the classroom was a wood shop. You could schedule a block of time to do art or whatever. Yes, sometimes there was hammering while I studied Math.
• Experiential learning: Our class raised money and leased a pumpkin patch. We went and harvested the pumpkins and sold them for Halloween. We also set up a small bookstore in another corner of the room. We used the money from the pumpkin sale to stock the shelves, Students kept inventory and worked the store. We studied geology by going to a nearby quarry.
• Democracy in action: Every morning we had a group meeting to talk about what was going right, and where we could improve. Now I recognize this as transparency. We kids knew what was going on, and had a voice in our own education. I remember very clearly going on the yearly overnight camping trip and having an unpleasant experience. A young woman, Jo-Anne, was constantly teased by the boys and accused of stuffing her bra. Apparently she finally got fed up, marched the boys into the woods, lifted her shirt and showed them that no, she indeed did not use toilet paper. Not surprisingly, word of the incident spread like wildfire among the students. Eventually our teachers found out, and around that night's campfire Mr. Barnello had the awkward task of addressing the group. We were asked to decide Jo-Anne's fate. Like some crazy kid's version of Survivor, the majority of students voted her off the island. I felt sorry for Jo-Anne, and had wanted her to stay.

I remained in Multi-Age from 3rd through 5th. I flourished under the system. It seemed to have polarizing results. You either loved it, or did poorly. Kids with less structure at home tended not to do as well, not knowing how to manage the independence afforded them. However, I'm not so sure those same kids would have had any better luck in a more traditional system.

Sixth grade was quite a shock. I moved into a Middle School where the other kids clearly didn't come from a Multi-Age environment. The attitudes were different, and I found myself with hurt feelings an awful lot. Happily, my study skills had already been established so I excelled in the rest of my academic career. And slowly I learned how to deal with the "mean kids," and find like-minded friends.

I feel a tremendous sense of gratitude for having been in such a system. Mr. B, Ms. Moser and Mrs. Shadlack remain some of the most influential people in my life.

A favorite first person shooter?

Shooter games have always annoyed me. No matter what the subject matter, they all seem like veiled references to gunplay. Disclosure: I'm a (neurotic/pacifist/treehugger) mom of three and we don't have "water guns"... we have "water squirters."

Last year I traveled to Boston to see the Institute of Contemporary Art's exhibit Design Life Now. This is the design world's Mecca... showing the best of the best from the past three years.

Among the installations I spotted what was clearly a virtual reality game. "Ug" said my inner voice. "VR is so 90s." Boy was I wrong. Snow World is a game made to help burn victims deal with the pain associated with their injuries. Men who have been injured in Iraq (due to real point and shooting) don the game's glasses, lob snowballs at snowmen and feel relief.

That's a FPS even I can support.

You cannot live on games alone...

To me, the perfect Sunday morning is spent at Barney Greengrass, on Amsterdam and 86th. An "everything" bagel is on my plate: one half lox, the other sable. Cream cheese, red onion, capers, and cucumbers accompany the fish, making an impossible-to-resist combination of flavors, textures and colors. This meal wouldn't be complete without a side of the Sunday New York Times. My husband reaches for Frank Rich, and my cousin and I share the Style and Entertainment sections.

I have now lived in West Virginia for 15 years, and visions of what they wear on 5th Avenue or in Milan become increasingly irrelevant to my life. Yet the need to touch base with some of the best writers and thinkers in the country persists. While living in a small town like Shepherdstown has wonderful advantages, I recognize that I'm certainly not living on the cutting edge of anything. Happily, I can rely on the Times to provide me with information to at least stop me from becoming dull.

Bits (Business, Innovation, Technology and Society) is a blog on nytimes.com that keeps me aware of what is going on in the tech arena. While it doesn't pertain specifically to games, it highlights things that influence the development of games from both a creative and platform standpoint. I find the smallest mention can sometimes start a hailstorm of new ideas for me.

If I want a gaming-specific perspective, I can always turn to Wired's GameLife. It keeps its finger on the pulse of new games and platform improvements. It does it so well that I can even forgive its 90s remnant title using the TwoWordsSmashedIntoOne trope. (Sorry, even great writers and thinkers sometimes succumb to marketing trends.)

If GameLife occasionally seems a bit too pragmatic, I can find solace in reading Jesper Juul's blog, The Ludologist. It covers deeper and more sophisticated theories of gaming as well as " other important things." It makes me feel like I'm engaging with an intellectual. I like reading about things like semiotics, or The Collapse and Reconstitution of the Cinematic Narrative. (Clearly this guy also reads The Economist. And isn't afraid to reference it visually with his own banner.) For me, Juul helps bridge the gap between sticky fingered teenage boys clutching controllers and crusty old academics clinging to their spectacles. And it is somewhere in that gap that I live.

photo used courtesy of a Creative Commons license.

First day of training

This is my first day of training for Globaloria. While everything has been pretty much review for me up to this point, we saw a cool video during lunch.

http://video.ted.com/talks/podcast/ClayShirky_2005G_480.mp4