Reading this interview with Larry Prusack was one of those moment when I really had to pause and think for a moment. Prusack's is questioning many of thing I've been interested in recent times (online learning) and at the same time a lot of what he says ring true for me eg most training is a waste of time, dialogue and human connections are the most important things.
These sort of ideas are linked to the current interested in Personal Learning Environments.
Maybe we focus to much on the tools and methods of learning, constantly seeking what seem new and shiny. Maybe I focus to much on what is new and shiny. Maybe what is important is a someone desire to learning/change and then that learner having the supports and information to be able to make those changes happen.
]]>Finally !!!!
This is the prototype of the art business game/simulation in excel. It doesn’t have a lot of data or game elements in it. What making I has allowed me to be able to do is figure out the model behind the game interface and the code. When I’ve show it to Andrew the student working on the visuals I think he thought it looked really scary. What feels great about this that I’ve now got the back up plan done so if worst come to worst I could use this.
The next step is figuring out the class and xml files and the general structure of the code. This will be based on excel spreadsheet and the visual basic code in the spreadsheet.
When I’ve been reading about games and learning one idea I’ve come across is the students learning by design games. To develop this model I’ve been thinking about how features working marketing sense and how these related to personal values. I’ve had to do quite a bit of learning and thinking about how an art business works and how that relates to small business in general. I remember when I was doing visualisations of ocean data realising what the scientist’s where often really interested in was as how the model was working not the actual results of the model. It’s about modelling to understand the working of instead of modelling to simulate.
I’ve now got a few ideas for this in terms of getting the students to design the rules of game as a way of understanding abstract concepts. Maybe they could think about redesigning the rules of the art business game, or after playing it trying to figure out the model behind it.
]]>Went to the launch of Salamanca Arts LAB, listen to quotes from Richard Florida
Sent student work of the remote and rural learning conference
Choose the work for Post from here
Showed the Art Business prototype to some people.
What I did want to do is make some notes/reflection on using Alice with student trying to learn actionscript. This is experience has been interesting.I doing it with two groups of student one a CERT IV group of students that I have high hopes for and a Diploma group of students. The CERT IV students don't seem engaged but I think that is because they really see why the should be learning actionscript and they are feeling the pressure of time. The Diploma student have been more engaged and I think that is because of the timing, they have just started the client projects and this all going a bit slowly for them, so they have happy to be "lead" by the teacher for a while.
What I've tried to do is show a concept in Alice and then explore the application of that concept in Actionscript. This has been really hard because I've had to jump over bits of actionscript code saying "we will do that later". I think the student comment that put a finger on this was "Alice is just so easy compared to actionscript" I think next time I will just work in Alice for while and get the students starting to solve problems in Alice and then move them on actionscripting when they confident with the full range of concepts. The problems with this is the students might see Alice as irrelevant and just play and not something they need to learn about. Maybe Alice could be explored in just one day .
Some of thing I've done during the sessions I've been really happy with, but the sessions have been really "teacher lead" I would like try and develop an approach that was more about the students exploring the concepts. Some of the simple games etc where Ok. But some of the younger students didn't have lot patience for those.
]]>Because market research does taken the complexity of being human, eg expression, innovation, creative.
I wonder how I can model this in my art business business simulation.
]]>The project will trial games and simulation based solutions to teaching business skills in the creative industries. This project will seek to develop an innovative, engaging, art and design prototype business game in Adobe Flash, which could be re-used in other contexts.
The project will focus on the commercialisation stages of business development:
PROJECT CONTEXT
From September 2007 the game will be used with Diploma of Art, Craft and Design students. These students are used to hands-on learning in a studio based setting. They are often strong visual and kinaesthetic learners with literacy and numeracy issues, and are mostly mature age students. In the past the students have struggled with the business units in the course; and we have had a pass rate of around 30%. The teaching and learning approach has been:
The students are often not interested in learning these business skills however these skills are key skills for success in the creative industries. This project is about taking a radically new learning approach for the area.
PROJECT TARGET GROUPS
STRATEGIES FOR SHARING KNOWLEDGE
The development of the project will be tracked on my blog at http://www.otheredge.com.au/weblogs/teaching/ This has been started.
Other ways the project will be shared are:
Learning Strategies |
Timeline |
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Blog |
Started to use and is ongoing |
Literature review |
Major Review completed by June |
Review and experimentation with business games mods |
Completed by June |
Conversations with other game developers e.g. Nursery Live |
Completed by June |
National online conference |
June |
Conversations with other educators about using games (note these may be online conversations) |
Ongoing |
Developing the actual game |
July - September |
|
July |
|
July |
|
July and then ongoing
|
|
August 16th mid term progress session |
|
July completed by September |
Trial with students |
September to November |
Sharing of the results |
November networking event and December showcasing day. |
ANTICIPATED OUTCOMES
LEARNERS / CLIENT / INDUSTRY ENGAGEMENT
From September 2007 the game will be used with Diploma of Art, Craft and Design students
IMPACTS ON LEARNER / CLIENTS
The impact for the students will be
The students will be able to learn through a simulated experience:
This impact will be measured by student feedback and improvements to pass rates.
REPORTING END OF PROJECT
The final report will take the following forms.
Risk analysis
Risk |
Strategy |
The project being too large |
Prototype in Excel first and then this Prototype becomes the backup |
Other non-teaching parts of Team Leader role take over |
Use the time release in way where blocks of time can found. |
Lack of IT skills in the Art, Craft and Design students |
Focus on easy to use simple interfaces. |
Forio
Chirs Debe
Here is a nice summary from Bill Kerr about different teaching methods
Challenges - student has to struggle for mastery, the teacher is a guide on the side providing hints or direct guidance occasionally.
Demonstrations - teacher shows how to do it, student is relatively passive at first, construction is optional.
Tutorials - Step by step instruction provided by teacher, student follows. This can be too passive, not enough exploration or struggle is required.
Kerr goes on say that he think Challenges are the best. Which I agree with. It's interesting that he uses the work struggles because this is the problem with Challenges, often as teachers we don't like seeing our students struggling (even if it's good for them !!!)
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