AECT in Second Life: Prims, Plans, & Projects
As an AECT member, I attended a great webinar by Ross Perkins on Second Life (SL). It offered a basic introduction to the virtual world of SL and gave a glimpse as to how AECT and its members are leveraging SL.
Ross was kind enough to record his talk and make an archive available. It’s a must-watch for anyone interested in the educational possibilities of SL.
Groups vs. Networks: The Class Struggle Continues
Stephen Downes shares this presentation he gave at e-Fest in Wellington, New Zealand. It’s his first extended discussion of groups and networks. Slides and audio are also available, along with the original diagram he drew comparing groups vs. networks and his initial video explanation.
mLearn 07
This series of posts from Stephan Ridgway summarizes, and even better, provides audio from, the mLearn 07 conference. Stephan Ridgway, Talking VTE Podcast
http://talkingvte.blogspot.com/search/label/mlearn07
One session in particular that caught my eye is the session entitled, “Studywiz: A Big Platform in a Small World”. I hope to download the mp3 file of that session to listen as well as several of the others as well. It looked like it was a great conference. Anyone who attended, feel free to comment with your reflections.
Persistent Social Learning: An Emergent ID Model for Virtual World Design
Lisa Dawley from Boise State University offered a webinar entitled, Persistent Social Learning: An Emerging ID Model for Virtual Worlds. I wasn’t able to attend the session but stumbled across the link to the archive from the MailBucket aggregation of the Second Life Researcher’s List and Second Life Educator’s List.
http://edtech.acrobat.com/p17101188/
Thanks to Lisa for posting the link to the archive.
Lisa/Mali
***********************
Lisa Dawley, Ph.D.
Associate Professor & Chair
Department of Educational Technology
Boise State University
1910 University Drive, MS 1747
Boise, Idaho 83725-1747
208-426-5430 Office
208-426-1451 Fax
http://edtech.boisestate.edu EDTECH island: http://slurl.com/secondlife/EDTECH/105/132/24/
Downes’ Response to Kirschner, Sweller, & Clark’s Attack of Minimally-Guided Instruction
Stephen Downes provides this response to Kirschner, Sweller, and Clark’s paper entitled, Why minimal guidance during instruction does not work: An analysis of the failure of constructivist, discovery, problem-based, experiential, and inquiry based teaching.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6353305476431305581Downes makes a thorough critique of the assumptions espoused by Kirschner, Sweller, and Clark and argues with the core debate of cognitive structures that the authors build their perspective upon. He presents an exhaustive approach to constructivism and connectivism and is a must-view presentation for anyone studying the principle differences between instructivist and constructivist approaches.