I am volunteering a little with Khan Academy for Bulgaria – translating things and helping with advice. One of the recent discussions we had was actually about the design of the logo for a Khan Academy BG initiative. There were suggestions from many people, but none of them really communicated what was intended. I shared with them some of our readings and general tips on logo design. Design has always been something very important to me, whether for digital or physical products. Through my company, Boglio, I’ve learned a lot about what works and doesn’t work regarding mobile design. Two of the biggest lessons have been that although everyone thinks they can make a logo or design an app, few people can actually do it in a meaningful and effective way; and “business owners need to realize that their design is a reflection of their business even if it is not intentional. If you don’t care about your design then your design is telling people that you don’t care about your business.”

The readings for this week were very useful to me regarding my final project, which is a mobile web-app to walk college students through the beginning research process. The iPad usability study, although a couple of years old, spells out very important and relevant findings. However, I still see far too many apps not heeding the advice spelled out by Jakob Nielsen. One of the first things that made an impression to me was when the author drew attention to how it is better to conduct a usability study by watching users perform tasks than asking them about their experience. Many people would complain much less about design flaws, once they’ve had a chance to explore an app and learn its navigation specifics. As researchers, we won’t learn much from a person sharing their experiences post-use since they will most likely filter out the little issues they run into during their narrative. At Adelphi, we used the “watch users” strategy with our last website usability study and utilized some unexpected techniques to gather rapid feedback. For example, as we were prototyping the website’s look, we decided to hold small focus groups where we showed print-outs to students and asked them to circle areas they would click on in order to complete tasks we posed. Since we didn’t have a functional site, the printouts worked great in allowing us to experiment with different design BEFORE we made a development site for further testing. I will actually be presenting about our usability strategies at the biggest library technology conference this year, Computers in Libraries.

This week’s readings made me realize how much everything we have read so far has affected the way I think about designing my company’s apps and multimedia training. I think all the readings have prepared me to design better educational apps by utilizing concepts from different theories that aim to strengthen understanding and promote deep learning. Reading through Richard Mayer’s Five Features of Effective Multimedia Messages article, put a lot more into perspective of why the app I chose to review this week promotes successful deep learning (see my other post).

According to Mayer’s cognitive theory of multimedia learning, students process information in two channels – visual and auditory. When students learn about how causal systems work, they create mental models that make sense of all the moving parts and the relationships between them. To help them in this modeling process, Mayer encourages the use of explanative multimedia messages that follow five specific concepts in order to be effective. In my own work creating presentations and training, I had learned from experience and have been following Mayer’s suggestions unintentionally. I also believe in the power of the visual and the engagement of the learner’s other senses in the learning process. Although Mayer doesn’t talk about tactile engagement in learning (he touches only on visual and auditory), I think he would agree in including it as appropriate in certain types of training. For example, in a tablet app teaching a bus driver what the different buttons and levers in the bus controls are, it will help to have the driver actually push, pull, swipe, etc. the virtual controls in a simulation. This will be in addition to the multimedia training provided.

When talking about systematicity, Mayer discusses pre-training and this is something I plan on using more when designing multimedia at Adelphi. During pre-training, students can get exposed to the individual components in the system they will be studying. Pre-training can also allow for a sort of hands-on exercises where students play with different components and animation while they understand how everything works. This concept (and Mayer’s general thoughts) are related to constructivism and situated cognition because Mayer shows that context and exposure to that context (how individual parts fit) in advance is very important to learning.

The discussion of the concepts of conciseness and sociability reminded me of experiences I’ve had throughout school. In public speaking classes during my MBA, we had to create multiple presentations and being concise and to the point was very important. We had to omit anything unrelated to what we were presenting or anything we felt like adding just for some flair or color. Slides with more than one concept on them were ineffective and clipart or sound effects were just distractions that didn’t engage our audience. Simple really is best. Mayer’s own research also seems to show that less is more. While presenting our powerpoints, we also spoke in more informal ways and made sure we were sociable. Light humor was very effective in connecting with the audience and having them follow through. I’ve also noticed that I have learned the most from professors that are more personable, sociable, and connect with the students better in order to actually engage them in listening to the material presented. Mayer talks about the importance of sociability when it comes to the voiceover used in multimedia presentations, but I think it is also important when we give actual in-person presentations.

Steve Ritter et al.’s article on applied research in mathematics education centers on the Cognitive Tutor computer application and ACT-R theory. The authors do not really describe in detail their ACT-R model of cognition (briefly introduced), but rather discuss their work following the model and developing Cognitive Tutor. The authors’ theory is definitely related to the concepts Mayer discusses, although it generally views things differently. In ACT-R, learning is a process of encoding, strengthening, and proceduralizing knowledge. There is no discussion of mental models creation, but ACT-R relates to Mayer in that “learning takes place at the level of the knowledge components,” which have to be individually explored similarly to how the components of a causal system should be explored individually in order to elicit better learning. Ritter at al. discuss the importance of the learning context – something that, as previously written, I believe Mayer indirectly touches on as well. Students break things down into individual parts that are put into specific contexts through practice.

The readings this week were quite interesting to me for the main reason that, at work, we’ve been having a lot of discussions about changing needs for library literacy classes. The changes from traditional literacy to more of technological and information literacy is something that has prompted big changes in the services libraries provide and in the job responsibilities of librarians. Last semester, I actually wrote a paper about the changing librarian profession. Because of the different types of literacies needed nowadays, librarians have to learn many new skills and turn into support personnel even for things such as media creation. They will take a more central role as educators and guides to authoritative information. Methods for literacy instruction have also changed drastically at the library – we now utilize our Library Moodle block, a variety of web and video tutorials, a mobile information literacy app that I will develop as my final project for this class, and an augmented reality app for expanding what our print guides offer. The change from print to electronic and the advent of ereading have really affected academic libraries.

Hillesund’s article gives an interesting look at that change and the differences between physical and digital reading. I had never read an article on this topic that focused on the tactility in reading and ereading and was quite eager to learn more and relate it to my own experiences. It was interesting to see how my reading evolved as I read about the different types of reading. I started reading the article on my laptop by mainly skimming it, but I didn’t find the medium well suited to go in-depth. Thus, I converted the page to Adobe PDF and opened it in my Adobe Reader on my tablet. There I explore different reading modes, including one, which allowed me to take notes and highlight things directly on the virtual page, albeit slower than I would do it on paper. I decided to take advantage of that and go completely digital this week.

As I was reading about the skimming, my roommate, Steph, immediately came to mind as I always see her with books, but she never reads them linearly and always skims. I think her style of reading has largely been affected by ereading on the computer, which I believe may be negatively affecting a lot of people. There are so many distractions on the computer screen as ads, images, videos, etc, that we have become conditioned to always seek more visual stimulation while reading and not to go too in-depth or focus on the reading as much. I think this inability to devote full attention to a piece of text is affecting a lot of students’ performance in classes.

As Hillesund was covering the different materials available digitally, I was reminded of the extreme cost of ebooks that our library pays. In fact, right now it is, on average, more expensive for libraries to buy ebooks for lending than physical books. I have always found that situation ridiculous and hopefully things will soon change. Otherwise no matter how wonderful devices get, if it is not affordable and cheaper to get the actual content for them, it wouldn’t matter if I can have my textbook on my iPad or as an actual book. This is where the second article from the New York Times comes into play.

The articles for this week were quite interesting and related well to our previous discussions. One the first things that made an impression on me while reading Facer et al.’s article on mobile gaming and learning, was how games, because they emphasize fun and pleasure, are seen as a distraction in education. Games are often viewed as not a suitable medium for delivering education because they are fun! The first thing that popped into my head was a series of TED talk videos by Jane McGonigal that I had seen. In them, she discusses how gaming can make a better world and has many positives - http://youtu.be/dE1DuBesGYM We seem to forget that learning and education can and should be fun too. It should be a pleasure. In fact, I remember research I’ve read that spoke about how we learn better when we enjoy the material and have fun.

  I liked how gaming and the digital world were combined with a physical experience in the Savannah game. Exploring an actual physical space and a den adds a much deeper level of engagement and opens up more possibilities for “learning by experience”. Students felt like they were actually experiencing the savannah. One thing I had recently read was about the big trend for experiential gaming that is developing right now. People are not happy with just immersing in a digital world on their screens – they want to feel physically immersed as well. Mobile gaming is distinctly different than desktop gaming in this regard – it provides more opportunities for bridging the physical and digital worlds. As the article suggested, we should take more advantage of this – few mobile games I know of really take advantage of the possibility for cross-over to the physical world. Augmented reality games are a step in that direction.

  The Savannah game article confirmed something I had already been aware of – that formal schooling in a game environment rarely works well. In a game, as in everyday life, learning happens naturally and just-in-time through the gameplay and social interactions. This made me think of connectivism and how such an approach may be beneficial to designing educational games. Emphasis needs to be placed on building the learning network available while leaving it up to the students to chart their own learning and reach outside of the offered resources to what interests them.

  The game-based learning in science continued on the topic of how gaming can work in education and offered very useful list of game principles applied to science education. I loved the discussion on World of Warcraft as I’ve noticed similar learning in other games I’ve played online. In fact, there is a lot of literacy going on in any multiplayer game I’ve been part of – especially in “strategy” games. I played “Magic: the Gathering” card game at some point in life and that is a great tool to learn about probability, valuation, strategy, etc.

  The discussion of authentic resources and tools being directly embedded in the game is exceptionally important. Many games have whole books available for players to find in the virtual environment so they can learn more about the world around them, its mythologies, etc. This furthers their new identity commitment and game immersion. The author concludes that game-based approaches to learning should have us look differently at learning and education. I wholeheartedly agree with this statement as I don’t think our current educational paradigm is suited for anything more than the idea of “transmission” of knowledge from a sage-on-the-stage to a student. Education as it is currently revealed (hi Heidegger) does not work in a game where learning happens in a more natural manner.

The readings this week were quite interesting and I think meant to provoke us, to open our minds to other definitions for terms we have gotten used to or for processes we had grown to accept as a given.

I liked Evgeny Morozov’s talk the best and actually spent some time afterwards looking him up and watching more videos of his. I think he clears up something important and it’s that ‘more internet’ doesn’t necessarily equal more democracy. To think that by giving people more access to technology, social media, or broadband you can have them fight for more democracy is a utopian idea. The idea that someone who has an iPod is also more likely to support Western values does sound logical, but it is never as straightforward as that. Being from Bulgaria, I’m quite aware that owning an iPod doesn’t make me aspire to democratic change any more than owning an old Russian vinyl disc player aspires me to communist ideals. There is a lot more at play and I’m glad Morozov is drawing attention to how different political, social, and cultural aspects influence actual change.

There is something else Morozov talks about that I think is also very important to keep in mind, especially with all the issues with the NSA spying on Americans that have been in the press recently. He talks about how social media can be a double-edged sword because of how one’s actions can be visible to anyone. In the past states used to torture to get data and information out of people and now they can just go on Twitter. Governments can use postings against people and use the information they find to tailor their campaigns or to figure out exactly what to say. “How much do people know about what is the extent of our spying on them? Not much? Ok, then we won’t say anything extra.” In any case, at the end Morozov asks some important questions and we have to keep in mind that technology and social media in itself is never enough to enact real social change. Thousands of Facebook groups and tweets won’t necessarily always get young people into the streets because, maybe, they simply don’t care, for example.

The other articles cleared up quite a bit about terminology we use nowadays. I liked Adrian Mayer’s explanations of a network and quasi groups. When he started discussing how those groups are ego centric and depend on a specific person for the main organization, it made me wonder about the group called “Anonymous”. Are they a quasi group? A faction? I wonder how much they are organized around a particular person that steers them.

Bruno Latour’s discussion was a very good one in the way it challenged our common use of the word “social”. It truly has been used as a sort of an ingredient in many situations or as if it’s a type of metal – like silver. Latour argues quite well that we have tried to focus the meaning of the word too much, we have shrunk the definition of “social.” The truth, which I agree with, is that “the social seems to be diluted everywhere.” I like that Latour writes that he will be opinionated in his article because his theory can be easily squashed by others – he just wants us to give it a chance, to have it be something we consider. He had me convinced by the end of it and I read with more critical eyes the rest of the readings and the media items.

Manuel Castells had a very good discussion of media and politics. Power relations are definitely increasingly decided in the communications/media field. In Bulgaria, it isn’t as much as in the US, but I have noticed recently the same could be said for power and media there too. The article made me think of Obama and how people were attributing a big part of his win to his social media strategy. I also kept thinking of Jon Stewart for some reason. I like how his show debunks a lot of what we see on TV.

Castells drew attention to an important point about how the media are not actual holders of power, but constitute the place where power is decided. I’d be quite interested to see what Morozov thinks of Castells. I have a feeling that he won’t approve too much of how Castells reasons.

Chaiprasurt et al.’s article, albeit very hard to download from Chinese servers, provided some very useful ideas about motivating students more in classes and integrating mobile technologies to improve various motivational factors. Right in the beginning, the article hit a chord with me, stating something I’ve mentioned on multiple occasions in my previous blog posts. Online learning can cause a lack of sense of community and alienation – something both the authors and I seem to agree on. Chaiprasurt et al. even suggest that blogs, such as Tumblr, and chat don’t fully help with reducing that sense of alienation. According to their study, however, integrating more mobile technologies do make a difference. Although, the numerical results the authors showcased didn’t seem that conclusive to me. The most interesting part of this article for me, however, was the description of the ARCS model. I didn’t know about this model previously and plan on using it more in my work at Adelphi.

The PDAs in teacher training experiment ended with mixed results, but I was not surprised by that. The author concluded that teachers viewed PDAs as mostly personal devices and I couldn’t help but giggle at that statement since PDA stands for “PERSONAL digital assistant”. From my experience working with faculty at Adelphi, it wasn’t surprised that immediacy of communication was not deemed a very important factor by the faculty using the PDAs. Teachers definitely have different needs and uses for mobile devices than students and future studies should attempt to identify and factor these in better.

The study about iPods usage in education was quite informative, but right from the beginning it was obvious the writing with biased in favor of Apple (which makes sense since they paid for it). Some of the uses for the iPads, such as a video/audio player weren’t very compelling because there are multiple alternatives to this device that don’t cost as much and can serve as better media devices. Anyone who has tried to watch a movie on the tiny screen that used to be the iPod’s screen a few years back, knows that we’d watch an educational movie on it only if we have to, not because it is more convenient or useful to us.

I started the readings for this week by first taking a look at the OLPC video and reading a bit more about the initiative on Wikipedia. I had known about OLPC for a while and almost bought one of their first laptops when they had their “buy one – give one” program. I had read a lot of negative press on OLPC (including this study that showed learning didn’t really improve) and it was interesting to hear about the initiative from some as deeply invested in it as Negroponte is.

Negroponte brings some valid points that OLPC needs to work on. I agree with him that primary education is a big problem in the world and it is almost not about what you learn, but about learning to learn itself. However, I was often left questioning throughout the video whether people in those 3rd world countries didn’t have needs that outweighed in priority the need for a laptop/tablet. However, thinking about the UN’s MAMA initiative I got involved in, I do realize technology is important as an access point to satisfy some of those other needs – such as more information about what to do during pregnancy.

As I went back to read the other two articles and read the research synthesis about one-on-one computing initiatives, my hesitation about OLPC didn’t change. The Penuel article introduced the reasons behind why we’d need a program such as OLPC, but the results and analysis the author shared weren’t as convincing to me – mainly because the studies examined weren’t as thorough or expansive as needed. I think that an important point the author brought was about the role of teachers’ attitudes and the professional development they receive in the success of one-one-one computing initiatives. There’s only a limited value that can be provided by dropping an OLPC laptop on a child. To have it truly affect their learning and development, other factors need to be in place – including the full cooperation of teachers and the support they get in order to take the best advantage of those systems and not use them simply as word processors.

This leads me to the first article assigned for the week, Papert and Harel’s “Situating Constructionism.” Initially, I got confused and mistook the term for constructivism. Luckily the authors spent some time defining the differences. I appreciated that, essentially, the authors allowed us, the readers, to construct our own definition of constructionism. Furthermore, they didn’t make any claims it was the best theory available – after all, everybody learns differently and there’s no best method of learning. The examples Papert and Harel provide, however, seem not just interesting, but also important in the context of OLPC and the other reading. Are we able to just learn by reading about something? By typing or solving equations non-stop? Is it enough to just have a computer in order to boost our learning capabilities and test scores? Papert and Harel think, essentially, that there is a lot more value in learning through practice, in constructing.

The Logo work the authors discuss reminded me a lot of a class Prof. Curinga had where students learned programming through NXT Lego robots. It certainly is logical that someone learns better when they are more excited to learn. Thus, using construction kits in order to learn math or having children build learning software instead of just using it is a great idea. This is something I think the OLPC (and other one-on-one initiatives described in the second article) doesn’t particularly consider or strive to do. While it certainly is interesting to find whether kids can “learn to read on their own” as Negroponte is attempting to do, it makes me feel like OLPC initiatives approach 3rd world countries as a big lab to perform behavioral psychology experiments in. Are they really doing something to drastically improve education and learning there?