Word of the day

Tweckle (twek'ul) vt.
to abuse a speaker only to Twitter followers in the audience while he/she is speaking.

Don't you love the way technology can hijack our lexicon?

Linking up my social networking

(This blog post is really an experiment to see if I can get my blog to link to my Facebook account.)

Part of this week's assignments for FOC 2010 is an instruction to 'join a social networking group such as Facebook, Ning or LinkedIn'. Well, I already have accounts with all three, so I thought I'd reflect briefly on my experiences of each before trying to figure out how I could link some of my accounts together.

I joined LinkedIn about three years ago, and haven't found it overly useful. Of course I only signed up for the free version which is really limited. One of the major drawbacks of this version was that it would only allow me to link to other members in the same country. As a new immigrant to New Zealand, my local professional network was really small, and because of the account restrictions I couldn't use LinkedIn to connect to my existing network in South Africa, which was a pity because I used to do a lot of freelance work. I have also noticed that lots of people (like me) join but don't really do much with their accounts.

I loved Ning, when it was free. I liked the fact that it was simple and easy to use, and that I could create multiple networks really easily. It is much more user friendly (I think) than Facebook, especially in terms of the privacy settings. But it is no longer free, and I feel duped!

I use Facebook, sporadically... it has certainly enabled me to make contact with long-lost friends. I think Facebook is an interesting tool, but it doesn't really do it for me - I like more depth to my connections.   In the spirit of intellectual curiosity (!!), however, I'm going to try to figure out how to link my blog to my Facebook page. I'd love to see some South African dots on my visitor map!

Christchurch earthquake

Strength to all of the FOC 2010 team who have been affected by the earthquake this morning... the devastation is staggering, and the fact that there were no serious casualties is a miracle. What can those of us who weren't affected do to help?

Game Dynamics

At the risk of sounding like a David Hopkins echo, he posted this really interesting clip on his blog recently. Game dynamics are something I haven't really thought much about, but this presentation certainly made me reflect on how I could apply it in my work building online learning for tertiary students. The clip is 20 minutes long (although I think, given the speed at which Priebatsch speaks, it should really be 30 minutes!) and the word-for-word transcript feels a little disjointed, so here's my summary of Priebatsch's main points.
Game dynamics – the motivations that keep people gaming - can be used to motivate study behaviours. Four game dynamics mentioned in his talk are:

1. The appointment dynamic – in order to succeed, players have to do a predefined thing at a pre-defined place. In real life, this is reflected in practices such as ‘happy hour’. Examples that can be seen in the gaming world include Farmville in Facebook – water your crops every few hours or they’ll wilt…
Using this dynamic to motivate student learning, we could award points for students completing certain formative activities within a certain time frame, or deduct points if they don’t.

2. Influence and status - the more points you get, the higher your status. Banks and airlines already use this by awarding ‘gold’ cards and platinum status to customers… the attached status means that more people want them. In online gaming, status allows you to go from this to this:

In schools, the same principles are applied at a very basic level, where your grades can go from an E to an A. According to Priebatsch, Princeton University is extending the gaming dynamic by offering opportunities to ‘level-up’, so if your grades are low, you can complete a series of quizzes which earn you experience points, allowing you to improve your grade level.
I guess we already use a basic version of this by using the Moodle quiz results block which displays the names of the students scoring highest (or lowest) on a particular quiz. We don't really provide level-up opportunities, and the implications for getting such an idea through all the curriculum approval hoops boggles the mind, but it is a really interesting (and student-centred) idea.
3. The progression dynamic – many games require you to move through a series of graded steps in order to make progress. When presented with a progress bar, people are driven to do what is needed to move the slider across from the left to the right. We could use the progress dynamic to drive students to certain activities in order to complete the progress slider and unlock rewards.
I have done this to some extent when using the Moodle lesson function, but I haven't attached any reward to completion other than personal satisfaction. It would be fun to create some sort of nurse-avatar who could earn equipment and move up levels as a result, wouldn't it!
4. Communal discovery – everyone has to work together to reap rewards. A real example of this was when the website Digg got going – Digg is a news website where people contribute the news stories. People could move up and down a leader board based on points readers awarded to the stories they posted. The gaming aspect of the leader board became so powerful that it overtook the purpose of the website. A group of seven at the top of the leader board joined together and worked to make sure that they remained at the top by closing out other people’s stories while recommending their own.
I guess this one is key, and it links to the FOC 2010 course by reinforcing the value of social networking and collaboration. We're still not doing this one particularly well, although we are getting better at it. Encouraging students to see the value of networking and collaboration is an ongoing project requiring constant reinforcement and modelling.

Game dynamics is definitely something I want to learn more about... I know from observing students engaging with Moodle for the first time, that the resources they access first and spend most time on are those that involve interaction and gaming, even if at the most basic level. Whilst I'm not an online gamer myself (give me a good book any time) I can see the power that gaming strategies could have to transform education.

Social networking

Another infographic this one by Jess3...

I was surprised to see that Skype is so much bigger than Facebook. People certainly are connecting.

Blogging is child's play...

Yesterday my family and I had dinner with friends. Andrea Bing is a primary school teacher, currently working with a small group of new entrants (5-year olds) at Manchester Street School here in Feilding. After supper, she showed me her classroom blog. Working as I do with tertiary students, it was refreshing to see what people do with social networking at the foundation level. Andrea's blog provides a wonderful way for parents to keep in touch with what their children are learning and doing at school, and it provides a great place for the children to display their achievements. I particularly liked the idea of students recording themselves reading and uploading the resulting MP3 files - what a wonderful way to motivate reluctant readers! Andrea has some lovely gadgets on the page, such as picture puzzles and scratch cards, which should keep young visitors well entertained! One I particularly like is the visitor location map (available from Cluster Maps) which I've added to my blog... imagine how exciting it would be for 5-year olds to see people from all over the world visiting their blog! It's a free geography lesson too!

Skype etiquette...skyptiquette?

David Hopkins' blog, Don't Waste Your Time, is one of my favourite resource-sharing blogs. His posts are always detailed, thoughtful and balanced, and he provides great links. He tends to deal with themes rather than having one-off posts. His latest post, on Skype etiquette, contains a link to a great video which will strike a chord with anyone who  has accidentally hit the enter button mid-message (watch below if you don't feel like clicking through to the blog itself).

The blog itself struck a chord with me because I haven't trained myself to ignore comfortably the skype ring, and I am occasionally ambushed online at an inappropriate time, such as during a training session, by a call from the other side of the world. And boy, are some people persistent! If only they'd get the message and hang up after 4 rings! My other issue with skype is to do with the webcam... we have it set up so that the kidlets can stay in touch with family and friends in South Africa, but I always find myself frantically checking what I (and the room behind me) look like before I hit answer!