Emerging technologies for teaching and learning:

touring the 2010 horizon

One problem: How does academia tend to apprehend emerging technologies?

One theoretical question

What about technological determinism?

“In information ecologies, the spotlight is not on technology, but on human activities that are served by technology.”

-Nardi and O’Day, 1998, 1999

Alternatively:

“Out of the dialectical exchange between the media-technological ‘base’ and the discursive ‘superstructure’ arise conflicts and tensions that sooner or late result in transformations at the level of media…”

-Friedrich Kittler, 1999

How do information technologies change?

Janet Murray’s two-step argument1.Theater->film2.Printed page->Web

(Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace. Cambridge: MIT,

1997.)

The perception of user degradation:

“[T]his discovery of yours will create forgetfulness in the learners' souls, because they will not use their memories; they will trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves. …”

How do information technologies change?

“…The specific which you have discovered is an aid not to memory, but to reminiscence, and you give your disciples not truth, but only the semblance of truth…”

“… they will be hearers of many things and will have learned nothing; they will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing; they will be tiresome company, having the show of wisdom without the reality.”

-Plato, Phaedrus (370 or so BCE)Jowett translation

We see information overload:

“We have reason to fear that the multitude of books which grows every day in a prodigious fashion will make the following centuries fall into a state as barbarous as that of the centuries that followed the fall of the Roman Empire…”

How do information technologies change?

“…Unless we try to prevent this danger by separating those books which we must throw out or leave in oblivion from those which one should save and within the latter between what is useful and what is not.”

-Adrien Baillet, Jugemens des sçavans sur les principaux

ouvrages des auteurs (Paris, 1685)

Change the format: the humble marginal annotation

• Glossators (Franciscus Accursius, Denis Godefroi)

• Then the Geneva Bible

How do information technologies change?

New becomes old

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Rime of the Ancient Mariner - second edition, 1817

(Virginia e-text)

Generate new content types

Another response to overload

•Cyclopedia (Ephraim Chambers, 1728)

•Encyclopedie (1751-1772)

Re-see the past

Dr. Johnson the blogger:

“Of other parts of life, memory can give some account; at some hours I have been gay, and at others serious; I have sometimes mingled in conversation, and sometimes meditated in solitude; one day has been spent in consulting the ancient sages, and another in writing Adventurers.”

– Adventurer #137 (February 26, 1754)

Web 2.0 in 2009

-growing in scale

-growing practices

(after Schmelling, http://www.mcsweeneys.net/2008/7/30schmelling.html)

comScore MediaMetrix (August 2008)

• Blogs: 77.7 million unique visitors in the US…

• Total internet audience 188.9 millioneMarketer (May 2008) o 94.1 million US blog readers in

2007 (50% of Internet users) o 22.6 million US bloggers in

2007 (12%)

David Sifry, September 2008; Juan Coleon the Colbert Report (http://technorati.com/blogging/state-of-the-blogosphere/)

Universal McCann (March 2008)• 184 million worldwide have

started a blog | 26.4 US• 346 million read blogs | 60.3

US• 77% of active Internet users

read blogs

David Sifry, September 2008; ScienceBlogs

(http://technorati.com/blogging/state-of-the-blogosphere/

)

(first stat, Flickr blog, November 2008http://blog.flickr.net/en/2008/11/03/3-billion/;Second stat, Flickr CC search page, March 2009,http://www.flickr.com/creativecommons/ )

Social images are large• 3 billion+ photos in

Flickr• 4,230,432 -

32,170,657 shareable

• LinkedIn: 30 million users claimed

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/02/14/as-the-economy-sours-linkedins-popularity-grows/

(eMarketer, March 2009; Scott Sigler, 2008)

“There are currently 2,807,974 articles in the English Wikipedia.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Size_of_Wikipedia , March 2009)

YouTube nearly youbiquitous

Senate and House channels, January 2009http://www.physorg.com/news151139956.html

Facebook growth

400 million users (February 2010, http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics )

Realtime search• Emerging

market• Not always

useful• No clear

leader

Practices mainstreams: data mashups, Web 2.0 as platform

• Open APIs• Access to data• “Mashup”

(AccessCeramics project, Lewis and Clark College)

• Programming staff

• Perceived recognition

24 hours of Twitter’s #SLNSOLSUMMIT

Practice: tag clouds

Folksonomies mainstreamed

Classic forms developing

Diigo

Practices: years of edublogging

Selected, documented practices:

• Publish syllabus• Publish student

papers• Discussion• Journaling• Project blogs• Public scholarship

• Creative writing• Distributed seminars• Campus organizations• Prospective students• Library collections• Alumni relations• Project management• Liveblogging

External hosting reexamined

The specter of WikipediaWikipedia remains• growth and pedagogies

Web 2.0 content distribution models:

Rutgers;University of Mary

Washington;http://

www.journalofamericanhistory.org/podcast/

Beyond the classroom

• accessCeramics, Lewis and Clark College

• 1000 images, February 2009 (http://accessceramics.blogspot.com/2009/02/today-is-big-milestone-as-weve-reached.html)

PLE vs LMS• Self-created• Consumer

products• Personalization

• Small pieces, loosely joined

• Variable levels of presence

Beyond the students:Professional developmentReputation growth

New forms

River of news wars: Twitter vs Facebook vs Buzz

New… things

• Google Wave, SAP

Emergent future: one revolutionMobile devices• Phone, WiFi,

Bluetooth• Portability

Or ubicomp:• Mark Weiser, 1988ff• Ex: "The Computer for

the Twenty-First Century" (1991)

• “The most profound technologies are those that disappear. They weave themselves into the fabric of everyday life until they are indistinguishable from it.”

What it means, top-level

“A device ecology”

-Petra Wentzel, "Wireless All the Way: Users’ Feedback on Education

through Online PDAs" (presentation at the EDUCAUSE annual

conferenceAnaheim, Calif., November 7, 2003).

What do we already use and know?• Laptops• Mp3 players• Clickers • Netbooks• Machines with

IP addresses• Cameras

(through Flip)

• Tablet PCs• Palm Pilot• Pocket PC

Ecosystem model

• Types of wireless• Multiple,

connected devices

• Web services

Example: iPhoneExample: Kindle

Utah State Universityhttp://blogs.nitle.org/let/

2009/10/09/anatomy-on-the-iphone/

Evolving practices and issues

• Digital layer over spaces

• Expanded media consumption and capture

• Uneven uptake

• Social connectors

• Multitasking Small groups Attention

index On/off

Evolving pedagogies

In class• Quick polling

and associated activities

• Live search• Backchannel

Out of class:• Content

delivery• Information

and media capture

• Backchannel

Live search and content access

“Students who have superb search skills have introduced useful material or questions into discussion. In a few cases, I’ve had students find pertinent archival video in response to the drift of the conversation which I’ve then put up on the classroom projector.”

-professor Tim Burke, Swarthmore Collegehttp://weblogs.swarthmore.edu/burke/

2009/05/06/the-laptop-in-the-classroom/

Increased amount and variety of discussion

(for better and for worse)

• Chat, Twitter

Backchannel

(dotguy_az)

Smartphones

Uses out of class:

1. Content delivery

2. Social interaction

3. Content capture

“The mobile phone is the primary connection tool for most people in the world. In 2020, while "one laptop per child" and other initiatives to bring networked digital communications to everyone are successful on many levels, the mobile phone—now with significant computing power—is the primary Internet connection and the only one for a majority of the people across the world, providing information in a portable, well-connected form at a relatively low price.”

Can we apply clicker pedagogies to smartphones?

In class: assessment vs constructivist approaches

Pedagogical themes

• Anonymity yet universality

• Aimed at large size class, often

Can we apply clicker pedagogies to smartphones?Clickers for questions• Binary or multiple• Student-generated

Using results• Hide, reveal, or

share?• Snap poll• Discussion

generating

Apps for .edu

• iPhone in the lead• Campus life apps• Development kits and

forks

Smartpens• Text scanning

(OCR)• Audio

recording• Web service

Michael Weschhttp://mediatedcultures.net/ksudigg/?p=206

Uses in class• Discussion

recordings• Annotation• Grading (UQ)• “Pencasting”

Professor Shawn Evans,.Washington and Lee University

October 2009;http://www.livescribe.com/

ebook readers

Advantages

• Cost savings per book• Weight savings• Subscription updates• Dictionary • Public domain by cable

Ebook reader constraints

• Limitations of device interfaces• Device cost• Ebook limitations: DRM,

availability, quality• Annotation issues

Netbooks continue

Tablets 2.0

Likely usesFrom Tablet 1.0:• drawing (art)• drawing (math)• non-Latin

characters foreign languages

Since 1.0:• Multimedia

consumption• Appeal of

touchscreen

Emerging stuff for 2010AR moves into

a boom?

Rotterdam Market Hall;Mondrian;Abbey Road;http://layar.com/layar-30-

launched-5-cases-to-show-the-power-of-the-platform/

Emerging stuff for 2010Beyond the

mousehttp://blogs.nitle.org/archive/2008/07/22/move_over_mouse_gartner/

"For all its faults, the keyboard will remain the primary text input device. Nothing is easily going to replace it," he said. "But the idea of a keyboard with a mouse as a control interface is breaking down."

Gaming

Long history of gaming

• Predigital– Chess, go,

Senet, mancala, backgammon, dice, cards

– Kriegspiel– Cold War games

Digital• Spacewar• Zork to IF

boom (1980s)• 1990s rebirth

Gaming in 2008

Physical platforms• Console• Cell phone• PSP• Extended forms

(DDR)• New forms: Wii

PC• CD, DVD• Browser• Downloadable

…And these can be combined

• Size: huge – (WoW: 10

million subscribers, January 2008)

• Player range: genders, classes, nations

• Interface, device driver

Eve Online, from site

Gaming as part of mainstream culture

• Median age of gamers shoots past 30• Industry size comparable to music• Impacts on hardware, software,

interfaces, other industries• Large and growing diversity of

platforms, topics, genres, niches, players

Gaming as part of mainstream culture

Anecdata: Number of Facebook FarmVille players: 27,539,610 (http://statistics.allfacebook.com/applications/leaderboard/, as of December 2009)

(Casual games are more mainstream than most heavy-duty games)

Growing content diversity

• Current events (Kumawar)

• Political argument (September 12th, FoodForce)

• Religious gaming (Left Behind: Eternal Forces, 2006)

• Literary gaming (Kafkamesto, 2006)

(BBC Climate Challenge; Ayiti:

both 2007-present)

Genres

• First-person shooter

• Puzzle • Platform jumper• Strategy• “Adventure”• Sports • Minigame (Koster

fractals)

New forms• Katamari• Portal• Augmented reality

games

Diversity of game genres American teenagers, Pew Internet, 2008

Economics of games

Who creates games?• Businesses• Governments• Nonprofits• Amateurs

Scales• Large games

– $millions– EA, Microsoft

• Modding– Back to Doom,

hacking, View Source

– Neverwinter Nights

• Casual games

Other economics• Gambling• Gold farming• Currency trading

Offshoot:machinima

• Tools– Counterstrike, Halo– Second Life– The Movies

• Art movement– Machinima Academy of Arts and

Sciences (http://www.machinima.org/)

(Koulamata, “The French Democracy”, 2006)

Virtual worlds

Antecedents, early digital: science fiction

1984: William Gibson, Neuromancer1992: Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash“’Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation, by children being taught mathematical concepts. A graphic representation of data abstracted from the banks of every computer in the human system…”

-Neuromancer

Antecedents, digital: the MUD, Adventure (1970s-present)

(LambdaMOO, 1990-present)

Antecedents, predigital: Theater of Memory

(from Philippe Codognet, http://webia.lip6.fr/~codognet/)

Avatar spaces-Activeworlds-Atmospheres-There

(Activeworlds, 1995-present; image via www.virtualworldlets.net)

-Habbo Hotel-Cyworld

(Club Penguin, 2005-present)

2d-3d worlds

-Runescape-VMK

Google Earth

-Keyhole DB-2d: KML-3d:

Sketchup-reach-Geotagging

photos: videos

Mirror worlds

Augmented Reality

“Human Pacman,” Adrian David Cheok, circa 2005

-mobile devicesgame playersgeneral use tools

-science fiction explores (Vernor Vinge, Rainbows End)

Interactive FictionSpeaking of text

adventures:• 1980s boom:

Infocom• Ongoing art form• Nick Montfort,

Twisty Little Passages

(“Dead Cities”, from Lovecraft Commonplace Book project 2007

http://www.illuminatedlantern.com/if/games/lovecraft/)

Interactive Fiction

Speaking of text adventures:

• Inform 7, free IF editor

(Richard Liston, Ursinus College, classroom example 2008)

Narrative

Where is storytelling in a game?

• Sequence of activities• Cut-scene or

cinematic• Writerly player• Encyclopedia world

(Murray, Manovich)• Ludology vs.

narratology

Linearity?• Game on rails• Branching

outcomes• Multilinear• Open-ended

Alternate reality games• Permeability of

game boundary (space and time)

• Focus on distributed, collaborative cognition

• Increased ephemerality

(Perplex City, 2003-2006)

Political ARGs (ex: World Without Oil, May 2007)()

Gaming and education

“Video games… situate meaning in a multimodal space through embodied experiences to solve problems and reflect on the intricacies of the design of imagined worlds and the design of both real and imagined social relationships and identities in the modern world.”

21-century boom

• James Paul Gee (author of preceding quote)

• Marc Presnsky• Henry Jenkins

• John Seely Brown

• Mia Consalvo• Constance

Steinkuehler• Kurt Squire

James Paul Gee’s argument• Semiotic domains; transference• Embodied action and feedback• Projective identity• Edging the regime of competence

(Vygotsky)• Probe-reprobe cycle• Social learning (roles; consumption-

production)

Gee on Rise of Nations

More implicit pedagogies:• “Fish tank” tutorial• Strategic self-assessment

Multimedia literacies

• Gee: multimodal principle• Selfe et al: multimodal literacy• Bogost: procedural rhetoric

Dean for American game (2004)

Archived at http://www.deanforamericagame.com/play.html

Multimedia literacies

“…within games, there are in fact multitudes of literacy practices – games are full of text, she asserted, to say nothing of the entirely text-based fandom communities online that take place in forums, blogs and social networks.”

Constance Steinkuehler,FuturePlay 2007, Toronto

Quoted in http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=16264

Pedagogical functions

Summary by Jason Mittell, Middlebury College:

• Skills • Simulations• Politics (criticism, activism)• Media studies (psych, cultural

studies, media)– NITLE brownbag, January 2008

Which educational theory?• Ian Bogost: behaviorist versus constructivist

Image from Scot Osterweil, presentation to Learning from Video Games: Designing Digital Curriculums (NERCOMP SIG , 2007)

Issues summoned up:– Media effect

(violence)– Transfer across

domains, platforms

– Subjectivity and assessment

– selection

Which educational theory?

Issues summoned up:– Media effect

(violence)– Transfer across

domains, platforms

– Subjectivity and assessment

– selection

Responses:– Better media– Instructor

facilitation, by various media

– More research needed

– Research and collaboration

•Joost Raessens and Jeffrey Goldstein, eds, Handbook of Computer Game Studies (MIT, 2005)•Frans Mayra, An Introduction to Game Studies (Sage, 2008)•Pat Harrigan and Noah Wardrip-Fruin, eds. Third Person: Authoring and Exploring Vast Narratives (MIT, 2009)

Game studies as academic field

Maturing professional venues

Gaming and liberal educationWhat are the

intersections?Shared: classic

academic concerns

• Pedagogical uses• Support• Tenure/promotion• Fears

Image: Bryn Mawr College,Michael Toler

Gaming and liberal educationAnd what is liberal

education, again?• Learning for learning's

sake • Pedagogy (active

learning, faculty/student collab. etc)

• Democratic, engaged citizenship/leadership

• Specific institutional type

-Jo Ellen Parker, 2008 Scripps College library

II. A taxonomy of practices

Liberal arts uses

• Gettysburg, Hope, Depauw

II. A taxonomy of current practices1. Faculty research2. Faculty/staff game creation3. Classes and learning

A. Professional games delivering learning content

B. “ “ “ objects of studyC. Students creating game contentD. “ “ games

1. Faculty researchHarry Brown, Depauw University(M.E. Sharpe, 2008)• Part I: Poetics

– Chapter 1: Videogames and Storytelling

– Chapter 2: Videogame Aesthetics – Chapter 3: Videogames and Film

• Part II: Rhetoric– Chapter 4: Politics, Persuasion, and

Propaganda in Videogames – Chapter 5: The Ethics of Videogames – Chapter 6: Religion and Myth in

Videogames • Part III: Pedagogy

– Chapter 7: Videogames, History, and Education

– Chapter 8: Identity and Community in Virtual Worlds

– Chapter 9: Modding, Education, and Art

2. Faculty/staff game creationValley Sim, Christian Spielvogel (Hope College): MMOG

• American Civil War simulation

• based on primary documents already in digital archive (Valley of the Shadow)

• MMOG: Players experience and debate the war’s epochal events as avatars based on the lives of residents from two wartime communities

2. Faculty/staff game creation• Trinity University library: ARG

2. Faculty/staff game creation• Dickinson College, class on empires: game modding

3A: Games as learning content• Shalom Staub, Assistant Provost for

Academic Affairs, Dickinson College: Conflict Resolution course Peacemaker:

“integrate and apply the concepts and strategies that you will encounter elsewhere in the course.”

3A: Games as learning content• Todd Bryant, Dickinson College: teaching

German with World of Warcraft

http://www.academiccommons.org/commons/essay/bryant-MMORPGs-for-SLA

“If the game provides authentic language content and requires communication in order to progress through the game—and our students are willing to spend hours of their time immersed in this environment—we can greatly increase not only their overall exposure to the language but their motivation to learn as well.”

3B: Games as objects of study• Aaron Delwiche, Trinity University: COMM

3344, interactive multimedia (Spring 2006)

3C: Students creating game content• Chris Fee, Gettysburg: Interactive Fiction (2007-)

http://let.blog.nitle.org/2008/05/09/teaching_with_games_medieval_culture_and/

3D: Students creating games• Venatio Creo, Ursinus College

III. The role of NITLENonprofit, working to advance

technology in liberal education

NITLE programs

Professional development (workshops, videoconferencing)

NITLE Network• Several venues

(NITLE-IT, Summit)

Research• Exploration of field• Publications• Blogging• Network facilitation• Game co-creation

– ARG (ELI 2009)– Web game (futures

market)

The gaming initiative

• Web 2.0 networking• Conference (Dickinson, 2007)• Workshop (Bryn Mawr, 2008)

The gaming initiative

And:• MIV sessions (starting 2008)• Presentations (CNI, Educause, NITLE

Summit, NMC 2008-9)• Publications (Alvarado, Alexander, Bryant)“Overcoming the Fear of Gaming: A Strategy

for Incorporating Games into Teaching and Learning.” EDUCAUSE Quarterly Magazine, Volume 31, Number 3. 2008.

The gaming network

Faculty involved from:

• Albion College• Austin College• Depauw

University• Dickinson College• Gettysburg

College

• Hope College• Middlebury

College• Swarthmore

College• Trinity University

(Texas)• Ursinus College• Vassar College

The gaming network

Disciplines include:• Anthropology• Communication• English• History• International

relations• Languages• Media studies

• NB: strong emphasis on humanities and non-quantitative social sciences, so far

We launch one gameNITLE prediction markets

(http://markets.nitle.org/)

More social media strategies

• Diigo group (http://groups.diigo.com/group/gaming-and-the-liberal-arts)