Video: Overview of Multimedia Learning Principles, Importance of Visual Learning, Richard Mayer

Richard Mayer has devoted his career to the study of multimedia learning. He is a professor in the Department of Psychological & Brain Sciences at UC Santa Barbara, and the author of Multimedia Learning, 2nd Edition. Although the book was published in 2009, years ago, it is a must-read for anyone interested in this topic.

With the popularity of interactive whiteboards and tablets/iPads in education, it is important for educators, designers and developers to become familiar with the basic principles of multimedia learning. It is also important subject for researchers.

Quick Link: 68 interesting ways to use an iPad in the classroom -Josh Fassbind

68 Interesting Ways to use an iPad in the Classroom

Serious Games in the K-16 Classroom: Google Tech Talks Video, via Jonathan Brill

In the following video, Victoria Van Voorhis discusses educational software and the Serious Games in Education movement:




Thanks to Jonathan Brill for the link!


SOMEWHAT RELATED
Below is a presentation I gave at the 2008 Games for Health conference:

Descriptions, stories, and links related to the screen shots of the first slide of the above presentation: (Some of the links may need to be updated.)

The science screen is an interactive 'gizmo' from Explore Learning. Something like this could be incorporated into an educational game. http://www.explorelearning.com


I’m pretty sure that the picture of the ancient building was from the VAST project, described in the article 'Reviving the past: Cultural Heritage meets Virtual Reality' by Anthanasios Gaitatzes, Dimitrious Cristopoulos, and Maria Roussou. (2002, ACM) The Foundation of the Hellenic World was involved with this project. http://www.fhw.gr/fhw/


Maria Roussou has been involved with a variety of interesting immersive projects: http://www.makebelieve.gr/mb/www/profile/index.html


The people from the Institute for Advanced Technologies in the Humanities at the University of Virginia are doing similar work through the Rome Reborn project:
http://www.romereborn.virginia.edu/




Note: I thought that it would be cool to have a game for health that integrated with history, so that students could learn about how people from the past handled health and diseases, and learn how scientists from the past came up with solutions that help us today.


The picture of the dragons on the space station was from a game called 'Relax to Win', created by Phil (gary?) McDarby and the MindGames team when he was at MediaLab Europe, which disbanded in 2005. Here is an article about Relax to Win, from 2002:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/1972571.stm
McDarby now works as the creative officer of Vyro Games, which focus on stress management.
Rationale: Stress management games are good for health!
McDarby: http://www.vyro-games.com/company/phil_bio.php
Media Lab Europe and MindGames: http://medialabeurope.org/
Vyro Games: http://ww.vyro-games.com/


The cool geometric image was from a project from the Interactive Media Group, Vienna University of Technology: Educating Spatial Intelligence with Augmented Reality http://www.ims.tuwien.ac.at/research/spatial_abilities/
The project targeted high school geometry students, with a goal of increasing spatial ability and improving transfer of learning. The program is consistent with Universal Design for Learning principles.
I think that some of the applications involved in this application could be useful in games designed for cognitive rehabilitation or habilitation. Related to this project:  'An Application and Framework for Using Augmented Reality in Mathematics and Geometry Education': http://www.ims.tuwien.ac.at/research/construct3d/ and Hannes Kaufmann’s Dissertation: Geometry Education with Augmented Reality: http://www.ims.tuwien.ac.at/media/documents/publications/...


The remainder of the pictures:
The Cloud Game: http://intihuatani.usc.edu/cloud/


The picture with the two people is from Kar2ouche, from Immersive Education. Kar2ouche is a creative role-play, picture making, story-boarding and animation software. It is enabled for use on interactive whiteboards: http://www.immersiveeducation.com/kar2ouche/


Hazmat HotZone is a multi-player simulation game used to train first responder teams: http://www.etc.cmu.edu/projects/hazmat_2005/


The underwater scene is from FreeDive, from FreeDive, that is used as a pain distractor. I also think it could be used for stress reduction for children.
http://www.breakawaygames.com/serious-games/solutions/hea...
The game pad is a DanceDance Revolution pad, used as an 'exergame' in many schools to combat the increase in numbers of students who are overweight or obese.


'Dance Dance Revolution: Healthy for Kids'
http://news.digitaltrends.com/news-article/12201/


The classroom scene is is from a virtual reality application:
Rizzo, A., Bowerly, T., Buckwalter, J., Klimchuk, D., Mitura, R., Parsons, T.D. (2006). A Virtual Reality Scenario for All Seasons: The Virtual Classroom. CNS Spectrums, 11, 1, 35-44. http://vrpsych.ict.usc.edu/

People-Centric Public Media, Public Media 2.0, & New Media: Considerations for Interactive, Collaborative Multimedia Content

I followed a link from an article written by Andy Oram, of the O'Reilly Radar and found some interesting information related to public media. The graphics and quotes below are from a publication, Public Media 2.0: Dynamic, Engaged Publics (pdf), written by people from the Center for Social Media at the School of Communication, American University.

Public Media 2.0: Dynamic, Engaged Publics    Full Report pdf

Center for Social Media,  School of Communication, American University



"Multi-platform, participatory, and digital, public media 2.0 will be an essential feature
of truly democratic public life from here on in. And it’ll be media both for and by the
public. The grassroots mobilization around the 2008 electoral campaign is just one
signal of how digital tools for making and sharing media open up new opportunities
for civic engagement.

But public media 2.0 won’t happen by accident, or for free. The same bottom-line logic
that runs media today will run tomorrow’s media as well. If we’re going to have media
for vibrant democratic culture, we have to plan for it, try it out, show people that it
matters, and build new constituencies to invest in it.

The first and crucial step is to embrace the participatory—the feature that has also been most disruptive of current media models. We also need standards and metrics to define truly meaningful participation in media for public life. And we need policies, initiatives, and sustainable financial models that can turn today’s assets and experiments into tomorrow’s tried-and-true public media.

Public media stakeholders, especially such trusted institutions as public broadcasting, need to take leadership in creating a true public investment in public media 2.0."

Action Agendas
"Public media institutions and makers need to develop a participatory national network and platform; to cross cultural, social, economic, ethnic, and political divides; to collaborate; and to learn from others’ examples, including their mistakes.

• Policymakers need to create structures and funding to support national coordination of public media networks and funding for production, curation, and archiving; to use universal design principles in communications infrastructure policy and universal service values in constructing and supporting infrastructure; to support lifelong education that helps everyone be media makers; and to build grassroots participation into public policy processes using social media tools.

• Funders can invest in media projects that build democratic publics; in norms setting, standardization of reliability tools, and impact metrics; and in experiments in media making, media organizations, and media tools, especially among disenfranchised communities."
Some key points from the article:
Five fundamental ways that people's media habits are changing - The Five Media Habits:
Choice
Conversation
Curation
Creation
Collaboration
Trends with possibilities for public media 2.0:
Ubiquitous video (choice, creation, collaboration)
Powerful databases (curation, creation)
Social networks as public forums (conversation, collaboration)
Locative media (choice, creation)
Distributed distribution (choice, curation)
Hackable platforms (creation, collaboration, curation)
Accessible metrics (creation, curation)
Cloud content (choice, creation)
Pervasive gaming (choice, collaboration)

RELATED
Eight Public Media 2.0 Projects That Are Doing it Right
Jessica Clark, Mediashift, 10/6/09
("MediaShift tracks how new media -- from weblogs to podcasts to citizen journalism -- are changing society and culture.")
The intersection of media literacy and public media 2.0
Katie Donnelly, Public Media 2.0, 10/16/09
VoiceThread "VoiceThread is a powerful new way to talk about and share your images, documents, and videos"

I'll update this post with some of my thoughts/reflections about Public Media 2.0 and interactive multimedia content development.

Off topic: Interesting motivational video clip: "If you never failed, you never lived". (Do you know who is sitting in your classrom?)

Good motivational video clip: "If you never failed, you never lived" (Do you know who is sitting in your classroom?)





(cross-posted on the TechPsych blog)

NECC 2009 Conference June 28-July 1st: Technology in Education

If you are interested in virtual worlds, serious games, interactive multimedia technology, and emerging technologies in education, the 2009 NECC conference is the place to be!

NECC 2009 Conference Website

ISTE Website

Live Streaming from the NECC conference

CITEd (Center for Implementing Technology in Education) will be at NECC at the end of this month, where CITEd staffers will be keeping in touch via Twitter and Facebook.

The following information about virtual worlds and learning is from CITEd-e-News:

"Follow CITEd as we attend NECC 2009, the largest educational computing conference of the year. If you're attending this year, check out the agenda to see where we'll be; if you can't make it, we'll be Twittering the conference at TechnologyinEd. New to Twitter? Check out The Ultimate Guide for Everything Twitter or Twitter in Plain English. "

Source: NMC Second Life Flicker Photostream

Virtual Worlds for Teaching and Learning

Virtual worlds, particularly Second Life and Teen Second Life, are a hot topic in education as schools and universities around the world begin to make use of virtual learning environments. With a wide variety of educational projects, Second Life is home to virtual conferences, professional development workshops, "field trips" to exotic locales, in-world classrooms and collaborative learning activities. In this issue of eNews, we take a look at some of the ways educators are using Second Life to enhance learning and teaching. Learn more at www.cited.org.

	Avatars Teach Teens about Self-Image Read about how one health teacher used avatars (alter egos) in Second Life to teach students about body image issues, media representations of beauty, and self-image.
	ICT for the Non-Specialist - Virtual Worlds If you've ever wondered about using virtual worlds with your students, but don't know where to start, check out this short video highlighting several schools as they explore using Second Life in their teaching.
	Teen Second Life Guide for Schools Suffern Middle School in Suffern, NY has maintained a virtual presence in Teen Second Life since 2006, with a focus on standards-based curriculum. Based on their experiences, teachers have created an in-depth guide for moving your school or classroom into the virtual world.
	Global Kids Second Life Project Thinking about using virtual worlds in your school? Global Kids has used Second Life to work with urban youth since 2006 and offers free sample curriculum materials and professional development opportunities. Be sure to visit the blog written by teens in the project!

---

Whatever your technology need, CITEd's web site offers unbiased, reliable and timely resources and information for implementing technology in the classroom, school, and district. Want to know more? Visit our home page!

www.CITEd.org

(I'm on a cruise vacation, otherwise I'd be at NECC!)

Interacting and Communicating with HP TouchSmart Notes: Photo, Video, Audio, and More

The HP TouchSmart Notes application can be used in a variety of interesting ways. I have an HP TouchSmart PC, and I like how easy it is to slide the notes about the screen using this multi-modal application. It allows the user to take capture pictures, video, or audio to create notes, as well as traditional "stickies" that allow for typing or finger-writing input. You can even draw or write over photos. It is an application that has many accessibility features. It also supports many of the principles of Universal Design for Learning (UDL).

The various notes can be put together in a variety of ways, and allow for video or photo storytelling and interesting ways of leaving messages- even a song or two.

I did some hunting and found the more information about some non-verbal students with autism who are learning verbal skills through this technology at Hope Technology School in Palo Alto, California.

Video of student using the HP TouchSmart Notes application at Hope Technology School:






Here are a few "How Two" videos that demonstrate the TouchSmart Notes features and interactions:

HP TouchSmart Voice Notes


TouchSmart Text Notes


The pictures below are from the HP TouchSmart Notes Application Review , by Peter Redmer 11/14/08



Text/Drawing Note Creation Panel


Icons for selecting input method for notes



Photo notes input panel:



You can draw on your photo-notes:

Digital Students@Analog School videoclip from 2004: Do the sentiments of the students still ring true?

It is the beginning of the school year, the best time of the year to for educators to seriously reflect on the many ways they can play an important role in engaging and inspiring their students.

I learned about the above video today from "Back-to School Tech Ideas for K-5", written by C.C. Long on her Tech Integration in Schools blog, and I thought it was worth sharing. The video was created by several college students in 2004, and can be found on TeacherTube. It is similar in spirit to the videos I included on a post about engaged learning earlier this year.

Here are a few quotes from the students in video:

"We are more visual learners, we use different technologies to express ourselves, we don't use just pen and paper".

"99 % of the teachers do it the old fashioned way of ...sit down, you listen to someone lecture for 40-50 minutes...

"Just lectures, it limits my learning."

"There are several options in expressing yourself and expressing your viewpoints. And I think the university limits that."

"I was given one way, and that was how I had to do it."

"The professor still wants to teach it the same way they learned.."

"I figured I'd have to to write papers, I figured I'd have to do problem sets, but I thought there would be more options."

"It is frustrating, because it doesn't seems that college is accommodating the visual learner"

"Anywhere you go outside of the classroom, the technology is being used. I don't understand why we aren't applying it to class."

"Listen. Sit down and talk with me. Give me a choice to express myself in their class."

"I think it would make it more exciting for them."

"When I become a teacher, I am going to have to learn and assess that students are going to have even more that is accessible to them. And if I don't adapt to that, I'm going to start to lose my students."

My hunch is that many educators still do not feel comfortable keeping up with world of the tech-savvy. To do so takes quite a bit of effort, time, and determination. And frustration. If you've worked in public schools for a while, you know what I mean. Much of the technology that educators have been handed over the years has been teacher-unfriendly.
.
Things are changing.

It has been six years since CAST and the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development created an on-line "how-to" book about technology and the concept of Universal Design for Learning (UDL). This online multimedia book, Teaching Every Student in the Digital Age, still provides a good foundation for teachers who plan to integrate technology into teaching and learning activities to support all learners.

It is exciting to know that many school districts have initiated study groups provide on-line resources for their teachers to support the implementation of UDL. . At the university level, the concept of using technology to support universal design for instruction is not as alien as it might have been 10 years ago.

Mindful, reflective use of technology, including interactive multimedia technology, can support multiple means of learning, communication, collaboration, and knowledge sharing among among all learners, no matter what age. In turn, an engaging and meaningful environment for learning can be sustained.


So what now?

If you are an educator, it wouldn't hurt to see what new educational applications have arrived at your school. Volunteer to be the teacher who teaches with the new interactive whiteboard. Sign up for the Wi-Fi laptop cart once a week for a semester. Hunt down the digital video cameras and do a search for where the video editing software might be hiding. Don't let the tech-savvy teacher down the hall hog it all, even if you consider yourself to be a technophobe!

Most importantly, establish a relationship with the technology "go-to" person at your school or university department, and see if it is not too late to order a few new technology tools. Find a few other people who have decided to do more with technology this year. Then sign up for a few workshops before your calendar is filled. There are no guarantees, but you just might have the best school year ever.

If you are new to this blog, do a search for what might interest you. I am sure you will find links to information that will help. Be sure to visit C.C. Long's Tech and Integration blog for specific technology related activities you can implement right away.

For reflection, take the time to watch the video clips on C.C. Long's blog that were used during Thinkfinity training.

For more inspiration, you might enjoy following a few of the links below:

Engaged Learning Revisited: Four videoclips for reflection....

Response to Intervention, Universal Design for Learning: Resources for Implementation

Visual Literacy and Multimedia Literacy Quotes - Odds and Ends PART TWO

Engaged Learning and Social Physics: Phun, an Interactive 2D Physics Sandbox

Updated MegaPost - Resources For All: Interactive Multimedia and Universal Design for Learning

Digital Storytelling, Multimodal Writing, Multiliteracies...

Digital storytelling, multimodal writing, and multiliteracies are overlapping concepts that weren't around during my first round as a university student. As more people of all ages create and share digital content on the web in new and imaginative ways, teachers and university scholars have taken notice. Is there a consensus that the printed word, as we've known it, is in the middle of a digital transformation?

Let's start out with digital storytelling.

By now, everyone knows about YouTube and vlogs as new means of communication. There is more to digital storytelling than uploading a few hastily put-together video clips from the family camcorder, or slapping together a PowerPoint presentation with a few bells and whistles. There are now some standards. Digital storytelling is an art.

The following definition is from an article from EduCause, 7 things you should know about Digital Storytelling.:

• "Digital storytelling is the practice of combining narrative with digital content, including images, sound, and video, to create a short movie, typically with a strong emotional component. Sophisticated digital stories can be interactive movies that include highly produced audio and visual effects, but a set of slides with corresponding narration or music constitutes a basic digital story. Digital stories can be instructional, persuasive, historical, or reflective. The resources available to incorporate into a digital story are virtually limitless, giving the storyteller enormous creative latitude. Some learning theorists believe that as a pedagogical technique, storytelling can be effectively applied to nearly any subject. Constructing a narrative and communicating it effectively require the storyteller to think carefully about the topic and consider the audience’s perspective."

Petter Kittle, from the Northern California Writing Project, Summer Institute 2008, touches on the topic of multimodal writing in Multimodal Texts: Composing Digital Documents. Related to this is the concept of digital writing.

"Multiliteracies is an approach to literacy which focuses on variations in language use according to different social and cultural situations, and the intrinsic multimodality of communications, particularly in the context of today's new media."

• "...it is no longer enough for literacy teaching to focus solely on the rules of standard forms of the national language. Rather, the business of communication and representation of meaning today increasingly requires that learners are able figure out differences in patterns of meaning from one context to another. These differences are the consequence of any number of factors, including culture, gender, life experience, subject matter, social or subject domain and the like. Every meaning exchange is cross-cultural to a certain degree." -from Kalantzis and Cope's Multiliteracies website

Here is a short list of resources:
The Center for Digital Storytelling
Multimedia Storytelling
What are multimodality, multisemiotics, and multiliteracies?
(Ben Williamson, Futurelab)
Reading Images: Multimodality, Representation, and New Media
(Gunther Kress)
New Learning: Elements of a Science of Education
(Mary Kalantzis & Bill Cope)
Multiliteracies
The Multiliteracy Project
Multimodal Writing
http://multimodalwriting.com/
(new website, under development)
Multimedia Blogging
(a post from 2004, worth reading for historical context)
Thinking about multimodal assessment
(Digital Writing, Digital Teaching)
Standards related to digital writing
(from Teaching Writing Using Blogs, Wikis...)

I conclude this text-based post with a promise to incorporate more multimedia experiences in my upcoming posts....stay tuned.

Visual Learning Lab Supports Effective Teaching and Learning

It seems that the UK is often on the cutting edge of using multimedia technology in education.

Here is a quote from the Visual Learning Lab website, at the University of Nottingham about ways the Humanities department is using visual learning technologies:

‘Showing Seeing Centre’ & ‘Visual Analysis Lab’

"Archaeology and Classics are both highly visual disciplines. In order to further develop the use of visual in teaching and learning, the VLL supports the creation of two new facilities, the Showing Seeing Centre and the Visual Analysis Lab."

"The Showing Seeing Centre will provide a context for students to work with visual resources using 3D-enabled computers for access to virtual reconstructions of archaeological sites and ancient civilizations, e.g. in gaming environments. Students will also have access to a range of equipment for digitzing and analysing visual material and for producing presentations and portfolio material. The equipment provided by the VLL consists of a wall-mounted LCD-screen, 4 high-spec laptops, a
high-spec A4-scanner, colour laser printer and a Playstation."

"The Visual Analysis Lab will provide facilities for teaching and learning in relation to the identification of archaeological remains (such as plant materials, animal bones and ceramics). The equipment provided by the VLL consists of two high- quality microscopes linked to digital cameras, a laptop and a data projector."

A 2007 report (pdf) from the University of Nottingham's Visual Learning Lab reviews of how visual learning technology will be used by departments such as pharmacy, veterinary medicine, medical sciences, modern language and cultures, biosciences, humanities, fildm and telvision studies, learning sciences, and computer sciences.

Link to article from the University of Nottingham: Visual Learning for the 21st Century

Related information:

FutureLab, of the UK, hosted a debate of the educational merits of interactive whiteboards, one of the technologies used to support visual and interactive multimedia teaching and learning. With the rush to adopt this technology for primary and secondary students, the participants pointed out that in order for teaching and learning to be effective, appropriate teacher training must take place.

If you have been following the Interactive Multimedia Technology or the Tech Psych blogs, you know that I'd like to see something like Microsoft's Surface in classrooms. Touch screen displays, such as the NextWindow Human Touch, appear to be more effective if they aren't dependent on a projector.