Week 7 Collage

Introduction

As part of the educational discourse in digital storytelling each week, I will conduct a reflective practice self assessment. These ‘reflections’ will serve as both formative and summative assessment to the learning goals of the course INTE 5340.

See learning goals in the INTE 5340 syllabus. See DS106 syllabus.

Requirements and Production

DS106 Assignment Bank (Video Assignment)
Creative Education Compilation: VideoAssignments1736

Response to Lankshear & Knobel “New Literacies” chapter one and selected scholarship
Social Learning Trajectories: A Response to Lankshear & Knobel Chapter 8

Digital story critique
The Cake is Not a Lie: A Critique of Portal 2 Puzzle Maker "Making Space for Physics"

Comment peer critiques (x2)
Week 7: Critique

(I only found 1 critique to examine posted by other classmates this week!)

Comment peer chapter responses (x2)
Moving Towards "Pull"- Last L&K Response

We need a remix for that books ending!

Reflective summary
Trajectories and Reflections: Week 7 Reflective Practice

What was challenging?

As usual, the assignment chosen from the video assignment bank was the most challenging product of the week. I had to search for and review dozens of YouTube videos around the focal theme of ‘the importance of creative arts in education.’ Then I had to figure out how to process these YouTube videos into something I could import into Adobe Premiere. Once imported, I made many clips from the videos to merge into a single cohesive video that synced with the music. Some parts synced better than others, although I was happy with the completed result. Another challenge this week was finding a quality ‘remix’ that I wanted to critique using Lankshear & Knobel literacy dimensions and coordinate with the focal theme. I did happen to find a great digital story about modding as used in education and synthesized with core subjects. The critique of which was challenging however due to lack of depth in the story. Overall I think many of these digital stories available for critique lack some depth because they are designed for rapid consumption on the internet. Overall, with both the video assignment and critique, I had to reach to get what I needed.

What was most enjoyable?

The most enjoyable part of the week was seeing the video I created come to life with the music. It brought me great joy to remix these videos of students enjoying creativity and the arts along with the music. This week was also enjoyable to Tweet with members of the course about looking forward to wrapping up this class. Also a couple of students created interactive, collaborative stories that were fun to read and engage with. Although I missed the boat on contributing to the story because I was very busy working, I enjoyed seeing the collaboration.

What was learned about the focal theme and what issues / questions have emerged?

What emerged this week as an issue or area of concern was brought to light by Anne Melzer in her response to the Lankshear & Knobel text. She was very critical in her response and mentioned that it may be unfair for instructors to teach who do not know how to use technology, or may be illiterate in ‘new literacies.’ My question for her was essentially, “how can we help?” As students and teachers at CU in the ILT masters program we hold a unique responsibility in our communities to, in some ways, inform others about these ‘new literacies’ and how they may be leveraged in courses and communities of practice. My concern is that there may not be ways to reach current instructors from K-12 to higher education in our communities because there are not systems set in place to inform and instruct. I can say from experience at the two year technical college where I teach, there are some workshops, but seldom to never do these workshops inform others about how to use ‘new literacies’ in their classes, and more in general, how to be computer literate. This is touchy and complicated issue because many of my colleagues are of mature age where they perhaps did not ‘learn to be’ with digital technologies. Some may not wish to learn these new technologies or simply have a hard time grasping ‘new literacies.’ My hope is within the next couple of years I can work through the systems, and build some programs to support faculty and staff better to integrate and understand current technologies to facilitate learning and engagement.

Points earned 10/10?

Although we were assigned less work this week, I still challenged myself through the video assignment and critique. I also researched potential ways to deliver the portfolio final assignment by practising with various applications. I discovered, through Emily May’s assignment in Storify, that it seems it is the best platform to produce a portfolio for this class because of the ease to leverage social media. I appreciated the awareness by Remi to drop the daily creates so we could spend some time preparing for our portfolios and produce quality and depth in our last assignments. I also noticed an increase in engagement on Twitter this week and there were some great discussions and collaborations. For continued self-criticism and engagement with others, I give myself 10/10 points this week.


Citations
New Literacies: Everyday Practices and Social Learning Third Ed by Colin Lankshear and Michele Knobel. McGraw-Hill Education 2011.





 

 

 

 

I now not only wonder what this website will look like 3 years from now, I wonder what the elearning industry will look like.

 

As part of the continued practice in digital storytelling, in INTE 5340 MA ILT at CU Denver, I will consume a digital stories and offer critiques. Until now the course has focused on Jason Ohler’s assessment traits as criterions to assess stories. For the remainder of the critiques in the course, I will focus on “everyday remix practices” as described in the Lankshear and Knobel text New Literacies: Everyday Practices and Social Learning Third Ed by Colin Lankshear and Michele Knobel, on pages 127-140.

To coincide with my theme, ‘the importance of creative arts in education,’ I’ve reviewed and critiqued some everyday remix practices of teachers in creative curriculum settings. This week I wanted to look at another creative way students ‘remix’ learnt material. I was inspired to look at Institute of Play after reading chapter 8 in Lankshear & Knobel “New Literacies.” Chapter 8 describes in some detail how Institute of Play creates ways for K-12 students to engage in creative and social learning that utilizes ‘new literacies.’ As can be seen in the video, using game mods in an excellent way to solve problems and experiment with practical applications of math and social learning.

Kind of Remix: Modding video games

From modding video games: “Likely to involve lots of trial and error and retrial, etc..”
Math students use Portal 2 Puzzle Maker, a mod of portal 2, to create scenarios that can demonstrate learnt knowledge such as solutions to mathematical problems. Lisa Castaneda, a teacher at The Evergreen School describes how she used Portal 2 Puzzle Maker to demonstrate parabolas and vertical motion. However, the process of creating this was not directly shown in the video, I can imagine it took several tries to successfully create a level that operated correctly and applied mathematical problems. Joshua Weier, Project Lead at Valve,goes on to describe how Portal 2 lends itself to the creation of these levels and puzzles by mod communities. What was done in puzzle maker reduced the barrier to entry easy so that any student or teacher can create their own puzzles. Although accessibility makes the mod and game easy to create with, it still take lots of trial and error to make a fun and functional mod level that makes sense. Yasser Malaika,Developer at Valve talks about playtesting, iterating, and implementing as processes that Valve uses to create levels and how Valve wanted to give this process to the creators in the puzzle maker mod community.

From modding video games: “May involve sharing tips and problem-solving advice on forums.”
Joshua Weier talks about how a week after Portal 2 Puzzle Maker launched they received nearly 120,000 level submissions. He then talks about how it’s exciting because people are sharing their maps. Today there are several communities where ‘puzzle makers’ can contribute tutorials and commentary about level creation. For instance, on the Steam Community (Steam is a platform utilized by Valve to download and play video games, chat with other gamers, share achievements, etc.) web site for Portal 2 there are 88 guides to ‘modding.’ There are wikis, blogs, YouTube videos, and a website dedicated to teaching with portal called teachwithportals.com. The product was such a success there are many social learning communities to engage with.

From modding video games: “Paying attention to design, layout, what can and cannot be done within the terms of the original game to make the mod workable or user friendly, etc.”
The primary way to interact as a player in Portal 2 is to create portals in the walls to move from an area to another. The level creator will design levels to make moving from area to area a challenge. Leslie Redd, Director of Education Programs at Valve talks about a “low threshhold” and being able to transfer from the tools to build a level to actually playing the level within seconds. This makes the mod user friendly and relatively easy to engage creators and players. This promotes engagement with ease, which is why this mod is so appealing to learners and educators.

Overall, Valve created a really inspiring product that just so happened to be useful as an educational tool. It’s nice to see that once Valve learned how their product was being used in schools they developed programs to support this learning. I really enjoyed learning about how this mod was used in educational settings. I just wish the video demonstrated more clearly the practical applications such as the parabola example given in the first part of the video. How was this problem given to the students and how did they solve it?
Citations