Konrad Glogowski - Bookmarks

edna workshop in Second Life

Participants in the Second Life session of edna's online workshops get the opportunity to collaborate on an original work of music. This international event included participants from Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the US. Many thanks to Jo Kay, Konrad Glogowski, Jude O'Connell, Dean Groom and the residents of the islands of jokaydia. Produced by KerryJ.

Tags: ednaworkshops08, edna, education.au, sl, secondlife, jokaydia, workshop on 2008-06-25 -All Annotations (0) -About

in list: Second Life Research

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Parents to be shown how to protect children online | Technology | The Guardian

Tags: teens online, parents, education, children online on 2008-06-02 and saved by2 people -All Annotations (0) -About

in list: 21st Century Learners

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Warning to parents over children 'being raised online' | Society | The Guardian

Tags: teens, teens online on 2008-06-02 and saved by3 people -All Annotations (0) -About

in list: 21st Century Learners

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British children are spending more than 20 hours a week online, most of it at social networking sites such as MySpace, Facebook and Bebo, and are in effect being "raised online", according to research from the Institute for Public Policy Research.
British children are spending more than 20 hours a week online, most of it at social networking sites such as MySpace, Facebook and Bebo, and are in effect being "raised online", according to research from the Institute for Public Policy Research.
The research reinforces the belief of big online brands that social networking sites are the way to get advertisers in front of the lucrative youth market
the lack of awareness among parents about what their children are doing on the internet.
"My mum will ask sometimes 'Is it safe?' but she doesn't really know," a 16-year-old girl told the IPPR. A 14-year-old boy added that even the sort of child-locks that are put on internet access at school can be circumvented by youngsters, who often know more about IT systems than their teachers. "We have restrictions at school but we can just get an administrator's account and take them off."
Children are also aware of the restrictions that the sites implement, with one 15-year-old girl telling researchers: "Everyone lies about their age 'cos I think it's like if you're under 18, your profile gets set to private."
The report suggests there is a lot of work to be done in educating parents about what their children are doing online. Ofcom already looks at the level of what it terms media literacy among consumers, but the IPPR wants the Department for Children, Schools and Families to have overall control of media literacy, with better information and support for parents

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Virtual classroom project coming to a close « Learn Online

Leigh Blackall reflects on his virtual residency in the Virtual Classroom Project

Tags: self-directed teacher development, teacher education, virtual classroom project, pd on 2008-05-03 -All Annotations (0) -About

in list: Teacher Professional Development, Second Life Research

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"polished, finished, packed with closure" - these are important words for educators in SL because the environment offers the opposite of that - it encourages creativity and makes it easy to engage in the process of constructing spaces.
post by teachandlearn on 2008-05-03

learning about architecture, sustainability, and SL rendering.
The simplicity in learning the drawing tools, coupled with the ability to meet numbers of other people in the actual model who would then discuss and help me build the model was a very potent learning experience.
people who would be there for me, who would look at and discuss my drawings as I did them, and who would share with me links and other information relating to what I was doing for the simple enjoyment of sharing and helping.
It doesn’t matter if the ideas I had - or the way I was trying to express them were any good or not.. what I’m talking about is the need we all have for encouragement and motivation to improve on and further our own learning. I could have enrolled in a course and paid a teacher to give me that … attention, but even then it would have felt disingenuous and limited by what that one teacher could muster after 20 years of putting up with it.
This amazing project that Konrad has taken me on boils down to is this:

I have drawn a concept for a building I want to one day build, using Second Life and its communities to draw and develop the model.

I have used numerous online networks to research and inform the model, and this drawing is only one step in many for this long term plan I have. That network has given me the motivation to take it all further.

In the process I have learned a lot about sustainable building, drawing in SL, communicating with online networks beyond my normal peers, and in that I have gained new confidence.

Now I am coming to an end with the VirtualClassroomProject, having reached the limitations of the model in SL Jokaydia, and want to take it further.

I have made numerous attempts to connect with a local group who are developing sustainable building designs, but what was that I said about powering down?

I think it will turn out that I will install the model somewhere more permanently in SL and continue to tweak the model, make variations and details, do a costing analysis for a real build, develop a website for it, and continue to try and find useful contacts who I can work with and possibly take something like this further - no doubt I will find them online… I already have one lead in Melbourne!
this project has helped me to render my private and two dimensional ideas into a public and socially supportive domain.

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Gaming helps students hone 21st-century skills

Gaming helps students hone 21st-century skills
Environments such as Second Life can both stimulate and educate, experts say

Tags: Second Life, 21st century skills, eschoolnews, games, gaming on 2008-04-28 and saved by2 people -All Annotations (0) -About

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Online gaming can help students develop many of the skills they'll be required to use upon leaving school, such as critical thinking, problem solving, and creativity, agreed educators who spoke during an April 16 webinar on gaming in education.
gaming and simulations are highly interactive, allow for instant feedback, immerse students in collaborative environments, and allow for rapid decision-making
repeated exposure to video games reinforces the ability to create mental maps, inductive discovery such as formulating hypotheses, and the ability to focus on several things at once and respond faster to unexpected stimuli.
"I call Second Life an engine for creativity," she said.
L'Amoreaux cited a team of students in an internship program studying museum creatorship, who partnered with others for a Second Life activity that involved a recreation of the Night of Broken Glass (Kristallnacht), an anti-Jewish pogrom in 1938 Nazi Germany. As participants, the students assumed the roles of reporters, exploring the events for themselves.
Still, Trevena cautioned that teachers, administrators, and technology staff must work together and be prepared to support a Second Life program. Identifying sustainable funding sources, upgrading computers and investing in hardware, and having a backup plan if the Second Life platform is down are all necessary.
A 2006 NCES and University of Michigan study found that by age 21, the average youth has watched 20,000 hours of television and played 10,000 hours of video games, said Ntiedo Etuk, the CEO Tabula Digita, which offers games centered on pre-algebra and algebra.
"The reason that [gaming] is successful is obviously that it's relevant to students--it allows for the notion of competition, which gets students going, there's an opportunity for socialization, and there is instant feedback on what they're doing right or wrong," Etuk said.

Video games also foster collaboration, because instead of a teacher standing in front of a classroom, students begin to help one another and become teachers themselves, he added.
Teachers can set difficulty levels and receive reports on student data, including the last time a student played their game, what their score was, right and wrong answers, and the topics they covered.
"We found that students in our project have improved their self-efficacy in science,"
Video games engage students and help foster some of the 21st-century skills, such as problem-solving, which may be more difficult to acquire in a traditional classroom with a textbook.
"When you think about the skills that students need when they leave school, like creativity and curiosity...identifying problems and solving them--these are skills that [can be] hard to teach in the traditional face-to-face classroom," Clarke said. "And a lot of these technologies are being used in the corporate world--IBM is now using games to train its employees, so you see simulations and games emerging outside of K-12 education."

blog of proximal development » Blog Archive » Virtual Classroom Project Reflection

Reflection on the Virtual Classroom Project with comment by Clay Burrell

Tags: virtual classroom project, teacher professional development, Clay Burrell, Leigh Blackall on 2008-04-25 and saved by8 people -All Annotations (0) -About

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BTW, teen writing may cause teachers to :(

Impact of informal speech and MSN talk on formal writing in teenagers.

Tags: teacher professional development, writing, composition, teenagers, blogging on 2008-04-25 and saved by4 people -All Annotations (0) -About

in list: Writing

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two-thirds of teens admit in a survey that emoticons and other informal styles have crept in
The Pew Internet and American Life Project, in a study released Thursday, also found that teens who keep blogs or use social-networking sites such as Facebook or News Corp.'s MySpace have a greater tendency to slip nonstandard elements into assignments
It's a teachable moment," said Amanda Lenhart, senior research specialist at Pew. "If you find that in a child's or student's writing, that's an opportunity to address the differences between formal and informal writing. They learn to make the distinction ... just as they learn not to use slang terms in formal writing.
Teens who consider electronic communications with friends as "writing" are more likely to carry the informal elements into school assignments than those who distinguish the two.
- Teens who keep blogs are more likely to engage in personal writing. They also tend to believe that writing will prove crucial to their eventual success in life.
- Parents are more likely than teenagers to believe that Internet-based writing such as e-mail and instant messaging affects writing overall, though both groups are split on whether the electronic communications help or hurt. Nonetheless, 73 percent of teens and 40 percent of parents said they believe Internet writing makes no difference either way.

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Creating a learning space for real life, in second life, 2 weeks on. « Learn Online

Leigh Blackall, the first Educator-in-Residence at the Virtual Classroom Project in jokaydia (SL) reflects on the first two weeks of his residency.

Tags: Second Life, Virtual Classroom Project, Leigh Blackall, third places, architecture, learning, education, home on 2008-04-15 and saved by2 people -All Annotations (0) -About

in list: Teacher Professional Development

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my insistence to use real life proportions and limitations
I have applied permaculture design processes and principles to this project, and thought of the space in Second Life as though it was a real space in real life. I very much enjoy the permaculture design process for its very holistic, even universal design ethic - and given its focus on sustainability and self sufficiency it is also very timely in todays world
Then I decided to focus on the building design, and for this I’m using discarded 20′ shipping containers as the basis of the building. Shipping containers are great to work with. They are readily available for reuse, reasonably cheap, structurally sound, transportable (obviously), durable, and come in remarkably good dimensions for proportioning an efficient living and working space
I am trying to work out how to make it so that all the materials and objects that are used in the build can be packed inside the containers, and that any modifications I make to the containers will not compromise their structural integrity, or ability to be transported
To my mind, nothing these days should be built or developed without careful consideration of these issues. Nothing ever should have been actually! But regarding the challenges of designing a learning space, I am using these primary considerations within a frame of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Its obvious that if people’s basic survival needs are not being met, then they are not in a very good position to be learning things beyond what it takes to survive. If they are stressed, hungry, or uncomfortable, then we are hardly in an ideal space for learning about abstract concepts or developing new skills. Or if the learning space itself is struggling to pay out money for energy, food, or waste management, then it too is in less of a position to commit to learning. And so it is with a real world sustainability and self sufficiency approach that I’m considering these needs
I don’t believe that institutions are the ideal place for learning. Actually, I think it could be proven so… Instead, I’m going for a family home.. but one that can accommodate up to 15 people if need be
disruption through architecture
my design is for a family house that is large enough to host 15 or so people from time to time; that is fully self sufficient in providing for its own energy, water and food needs; that is a system that produces no waste; and that uses building materials and structures that are reused, portable and make minimal impact on the area being occupied