Second Life experience

In my first session in Second Life, I have travelled a bit in several locations, just to familiarize myself with this world. I have found myself in a wonderful disco on the sea. I spend half and hour in trying to make my avatar dancing like the other people who were there, but my efforts didn't have success. I bumped onto so many walls that I can't cocunt them, and I ended into the sea at least five times...I didn't talk to anybody, maybe next time I will try to do it in order to understand better why so many people like Second Life.

The second time I searched for place with educational features, and I went to the Smithsonian Latino Museum, where I have explored different exhibitions.
The aim of this museum is creating a virtual representations of the Latino cultural, exploiting the possibility to collect together materials and artifacts which usually are displayed in different locations. This is really an interesting characteristic, which allows the visitor to learn much more things than he could do in a "real" museum, although I have to confess that I still prefer a real experience...

To conclude, I have found the description of a future project that I would like to explore: have a read at it, I think this could really be of interest for teachers.

Project Name: Religion Bazaar

Creator: Helen Farley aka Rupert Uriza
School: Studies in Religion at the University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia
SLURL: Not yet open to the public but will be soon!

Description: We’ve tried to represent as many traditions as we can squeeze onto one small space. We’ve created a church, a synagogue, a mosque but also a Hindu temple, a Buddhist temple, a Freemasons Lodge (to satisfy my urge to know what goes on!) and some natural spaces too. One of our staff members is involved in researching spirituality and the environment. For her we have a rocky outcrop overlooking a sea full of brightly coloured fish. One of my postgraduates is investigating the ritual in ritual magic so we have some spaces to accommodate that intriguing and important research. Did I mention our very distinguished and ancient-looking Greek temple? Students will be able to adopt an identity and enter into one of our religious spaces to participate in a ritual or a re-creation. Students can swap roles; walk a mile in someone else’s moccasins. They must observe the traditions of that religion: shoes off, wash before entering, appropriate clothing only - male and female. And unlike real life spaces, there will be plenty of information and interactive activities to give students the information they need. We are not recreating genuine religious services - that’s not the point - but through them students can learn what they are like.

An idea of learning/teaching activitity with Geospatial technologies

Hi all

I have thought to link Geospatial technologies with the 'traditional' activity of reading a novel.
Let me explain. My students and me were used to spend one hour a week reading a book. We read aloud in turn, then we had discussions about issues arising from the book itself, as well as about matters of style, textual structure and so on. The range of activities depends heavily on the age of target students and the kind of book you have chosen.
The last book I used for these reading activity was 'My family and other animals', an autobiographic novel written by the naturalist Gerald Durrell whose family transferred from Britain to Corfu when he was 10 years old. The book is quite hilarious and funny; beyond telling tales on this eccentric family in a period of 4 years, it provides also interesting descriptions and episoded starring the fauna and flora of the island.
I can remember that my students (they were 12 years old) asked me often details and explanations, especially about the animals in the story, but sometimes they found difficult to deal with the long descriptions of places ( which they found quite boring...)
Thus, students and teacher could design a google map tracing the itinerary of the Durrells from UK to Corfu, inserting in the map of Corfu lables and descriptions of the places D. portrays, as well as pictures of the described animals. This map could be fruitfully used also for interdisciplinar activities in collaboration with the Science teacher, in order to deepen the study of the animal species and of naturalistic and environmental issues emerging from the novel.

Visualizzazione ingrandita della mappa

Free blogs!

Hi everyone,

I'm asking you to support a campaign to keep Italian blogs free from licensing.
Italian government is proposing a draft law which, if approved, will make individual blogs equal to professional blogs, submitting them to pay for a license and in the end to be monitered and controlled.
If you want to give a hand to Italian bloggers, just follow this instructions:

Send in your photos with the words: FREE BLOGGER":
Send an email to freeblogger@beppegrillo.it with:
- subject: your name
- text: the address of your blog
- attached: a photo of you with a sign saying “FREE BLOGGER”.
The photos will appear in the top bar of the blog: http://www.beppegrillo.it/en/2008/11/free_blogger.html

Thanks!!!!

Girls and videogames

Having read Squire's article about videogames, I've decided to particularly focus on the issue "girls and videogames".
First of all, I have searched for some historical or diachronical data: Squire reports that from a 1990 research only the 20% of girls surveyed had been found regular players. Things seem to have changed more recently, as it reads in the article of Prof. Jenkins "Reality Bytes: Eight Myths About Video Games Debunked ": he reports that female have slighlty outnumbered men players.
Looking for reasons for this change in playing trends, I have come across "Gender and Technology", a multi-disciplinar course taught via blog. An embedded lecture from a disegner of videogames for girls, Brenda Laurel, tells us that, grounding on a 2 years research (1998) with girls aged 8 to 14, the classic videogames "shoot 'em all" have been defined boring and not interesting by the majority of surveyed girls. Girls also added that they didn't find interesting the "boys" videogames characters. Laurel and her colleagues collected girls' desiderata about videogames, and then they designed a product called "Rockett's new school", which broadly consists in a visual novel. The protagonist is a girl who is entering a new school, facing all the social and emotional issues linked to finding oneself in a new environment.

A first possible implication: girls nowadays play more because there are videogames purposely addressed to them. The girls games' features include some sort of narrative structure, developed characters and don't display violence at all.

Other information I collected say that "In terms of game genre preference, it has been found that girls prefer solving puzzles more than exercising their eye-hand reflexes (Gorriz & Medina, 2000), which is boys’ favorite. Kafai’s research indicated adolescent girls prefer games that do not require quick-paced interactions (1996). Likewise, college males reportedly favor games
that require fast reactions (Sherry et al., 2001) while females prefer games they can play
quietly such as puzzle solving and trivia games." (Do Girls Prefer Games Designed by Girls?
Carrie Heeter, Kaitlan Chunhui Chu, Rhonda Egidio, Punya Mishra, Leigh Graves-Wolf, Michigan State University, November, 2004).
Moreover, girls games have been considered by the sample "better for learning" (ibid).

Have also a look at the following list of favorite games for girls :
Barbie Games (no need for details) , Cooking Mama (see above), Hanna Montana, The Sims (raise & care for a pet) , Sing-Star Pop, Be Bratz (a puppet similar to Barbie). (Source:http://kidconfidence.com/blogs/2007/11/28/video-games-for-girls/)

Suggested implication: game playing seems to confirm classical gender charactheristics (or stereotypes?). Boys like action, girls prefer stories, developed characters, and more quiet activities like problem solving. Boys=body, girls=mind?

As a conclusion, I cannot decide between these two different perspectives:

1) the one suggested from the above articles and researches: many (not all ) girls prefer these kind of games because of the natural existing gender differences, not to be necessarily seen as a negative (think at the preference for the "learning" and problem solving games).

2) the feminist perspective: many (not all) girls) prefer these games because, from the very moment they were born, they are fed with gender stereotypes: pink dresses, puppets instead than cars, dance courses instead than sport courses, and so on. When they have grown up, they have already developed some characteristics instead than others, thus they keep on choosing the same pattern of activities, also when they play.

Group in Facebook

Hi

I joined a group called "Let's fight against the disappearing of the subjunctive". Okay, I can see that some of you are thinking "gosh, what a boring stuff! "... but it's not! I describe it quickly. It's an Italian group, or better it is addressed to Italian speaking people, since participants are from many different countries. It hosts many different sub-discussions related to the use of correct Italian language, the detection of funny , or I should better say horrible, grammar mistakes, but there is also a poetry's corner, a space to discuss about "good and bad" books, another dedicated to neologisms or italianizations of "internet words" (quite scaring) and so on. I'm participating in some discussions, as one about words that are unfortunately disappearing, and I'm working hard to contribute to a section where people plays on words modifying just a letter in an existing word to create another one with a different funny meaning.
Well, I guess this is an example of informal learning, gained in a very relaxed and joyful way, as well as a way to speak and know new people with whom I share common interests (many are teachers or academics...).
Now I'm going to play :-)

Hi
I've found this article published by one of the most famous bloggers, Andrew Sullivan, published on "The Atlantic". It's an interesting reflection about the nature of blogs and its relationship with journalism. He points out some of the features of Web 2.0 we have talked about during the next class, namely the opportunity to be immediately linked to the sources on which claims and statements are grounded on. Another reflection I agree with is the following about readers: "They will send links, stories, and facts, challenging the blogger’s view of the world, sometimes outright refuting it, but more frequently adding context and nuance and complexity to an idea."

If you are interested, here's the link:
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200811/andrew-sullivan-why-i-blog

Veronica

An interesting research by British Library and JISC

Hi
I've found this research about the "Google generation" and possible scenarios of access and interaction with digital resources in five to ten years’ time. The following bit is not encouraging...but I keep on feeling positive about future developments.

"Children (especially) tend to make very narrow relevance judgements by considering the presence or absence of words exactly describing the search topic: as a result they miss many relevant documents and end up repeating searches. Information seeking tends to stop at the point at which articles are found and printed, especially for younger users, with little regard to the document content. "

Here is the link to the research: http://www.bl.uk/news/pdf/googlegen.pdf

Enjoy the reading.

My laptop makes me feel free...

I didn't know about the existence of TeacherTube, do you?
There I've found this video about perceptions and opinions of students about ICT in education. I find it quite disturbing, if not scaring. Do these pupils seem sincere to you? Are they advertising laptops or what? Or am I overeacting?

http://www.teachertube.com/view_video.php?viewkey=9aae08821d40e3b402ff

Monthy Python: Philosophers' football game

Hi
Today I was surfing and searching serious articles about critical thinking and stuff like that...then I bumped into this Monty Phyton's video. It has really boosted the mood of my day!
If you have five minutes to spare, have a look at it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79vdlEcWxvM

I'm spending a lot of time in reading your blogs and comments. Yes, it is time-consuming, but maybe this wandering can give us an idea about what this blog-stuff is about, what is for and how could we use it for educational purposes. I would like to share my first thoughts about this with you.
What is for: we are a little community but quite various. We share some interests but we also have different ones. Well, like every class... Last week, before posting my blog, I asked George to what extent our blogs should be "personal": this is one of the points I'm struggling to grasp. Blogs and education? How? And what kind of education? Is it "education" posting a blog about the books or the music I like? Is it education posting a link to an article which doesn't have apparently specific links to education? Of course, it depends on one's idea of what education is. Don't get me wrong: I really believe that education consists also in giving students specific knowledges and abilities in specific subject. Blogs or Facebook are certainly not that useful to teach a class the list of irregular verbs in a linear way, this is true. And they present constraints with regard to the age of the learners...even though probably my son will be able to use these tools earlier that I can imagine now. But this is another story.
Maybe, tools are not the only thing that has to change in education. Maybe education should encompass more stuff that what is being taught now. Maybe these tools could permit us to broaden our range of educability: I mean, I will keep on teaching the irregular verbs as I did, but I could also post an article for my students about whatever topic, to make them exercise in recognizing the verbs within a context AND at the same time to make them reading something I find interesting for their general growth as individuals.
Does it make any sense?
Talking about individuals and what this word means, here's a link to an article I have read some time ago. It is not about education in the strict sense, but I believe there are some interesting concepts about what is I. If I had a class ( at least 16 years old) now, I would certainly post it in the class wiki...:-)
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200811/multiple-personalities
See you soon!

Self presentation

Hi everyone,

my name is Veronica, I come from Italy originally, but I have been living in Manchester since last year. I applied to this course because I was keen to learn new skills which could help me in being a more creative teacher and, why not, a more creative person... and as the course proceeds I know I'm in the right place.
I'm not sure if I should add details about me in general, but it really seems a bit difficult to condense a life in few fines ...we could do better this in front of a beer in a pub, or in further posts with distant students.
So, from where to begin to present myself in this very moment, and what I really like to do?
First of all, I'm happy to be back to school again! I have finished my university studies many years ago, and I thought that, except for preparing my classes, the learning period was already gone. I saw my job as a long flat path of days repeating the same pattern, lighted up mostly by the human relationship with students. Quite boring, isn't it? My personal development was left away, and my idea of reading consisted just in novels.
But now I'm discovering the pleasure of reading not just for the sake of it, reflecting, studying, being challenged, and last but not least learning with and from the others. I wouldn't be so glad if it had been just a matter of reading stuff by my own...I like this kind of learning because of its communicative feature and because we are so many and so different.
Talking more specifically about activities I like more, I can say that I prefer theoretical tasks rather than practical ones. What I mean is that I really enjoy edit texts or choosing images and contents to be put in a project, software or whatelse. So far, the tasks I enjoyed more have been designing contents for presentations and discussing with all of you, besides to reading, analysing texts and writing. I know, I have mentioned this already, but it is true...
Programming or alike don't appeal me that much...but I'm becoming more open to the new, thus I would conclude saying "never say never".
That's it for the moment.
Looking forward to reading your posts,

Veronica.