Kim Breuninger's List: Articles

New Survey on E-book Trends

Dec 08, 2010

Mr. Administrator, Tear Down This Firewall!

"Supporting the use of multimedia-rich and interactive textbooks in K-12 will require much more digital bandwidth
By Katie Ash


Most school districts have the technical infrastructure to support the basic digital textbooks of today. But as far as supporting the kinds of textbooks tech-savvy educators would like to see—multimedia-rich, interactive, Web-based materials—schools have some serious catching up to do in increasing network speed and connectivity, providing professional development for teachers, and persuading lawmakers to revisit state textbook-adoption policies.

"Right now, as long as all we're doing is PDF files, the bandwidth and infrastructure in Virginia isn't going to be a problem," says Lan W. Neugent, the assistant superintendent of technology, career, and adult education for the Virginia Department of Education.

"But we're going to see books become multimedia extravaganzas," he says, "and the minute that happens, then suddenly the bandwidth is going to be pitiful.""

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation have announced the Next Generation Learning Challenges initiative. This multi-year project aims to help improve both college readiness and college completion in the U.S. through the use of technology. Administered through the nonprofit EDUCAUSE, the program will provide grants to organization that will help develop technology tools to more teachers, students, and schools.

Here is an excerpt that I find fascinating from this interview with Constance Kamii:

"So let's assume there are success metrics built into the game and those metrics align with what your learning objectives are. Its logical that by having someone play a game, you'll see how well they know something or know how to do something. Right?

Nothing is ever that easy. There are lots of aspects of game play that depend greatly on how the game was designed. For one, games have an intrinsic layer of cognitive overhead that may not exist in real life. For example, as I've been learning how to play Call of Duty 4, I first have to master the use of my PS3 controller. No, this isn't a learning game, but the same principles apply...it's why real guitar players get irritated playing Guitar Hero...there are skills that you need to develop to play a game, or to be successful in a game, that don't exist in real life or don't mirror the skills necessary to be successful at real life tasks. I think it becomes clear in first person shooter games, where your ability to operate your game controller does not directly translate to being able to accurately fire an automatic weapon in a combat environment. For any assessment, you have to make sure you're not just assessing how well someone plays the game, but how well they have mastered the real skill or content. In using games for assessment, you run the risk of assessing how well someone plays the game, not the objectives you are hoping to assess.

Another issue with games for assessment is the gender differences in how people play games. I'm about to talk about broad generalizations, so bear with me and recognize that some women game like "guys" and some guys game like "girls"...but there are different ways that people approach game environments and those differences do tend to follow along gender lines. Men are bigger risk-takers and explorers; women like to be guided, understand the environment, and follow the rules. Depending on how you design your game, you risk alienating a whole group of players if you don't consider the gender differences in game play. Worse, if y