Machinima, film-making in virtual worlds

I've been spending a little more time in Second Life and attending more functions. There are so many interesting things going on. Today I attended a seminar on machinima, at the Caledon Oxbridge Lecture hall http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Caledon%20Oxbridge/73/137/29

Machinima is defined as "animated filmmaking within a real-time virtual 3-D environment".

Machinima is recorded in real-time, and real people can act and control the camera. Essentially you use a screen capture tool such as FRAPS or Jing (Camtasia) to record and edit the real time activities in a virtual environment such as SL or an online game. You then use the tools to edit sound and video. With careful planning, artistry, and some reasonable easily acquired skills the end product is very good. This lovely piece by Bryn Oh is an excellent example. World Expo Shanghai-No Love

Make sure you watch it in the full screen player.

Click To Play

Not Perishing...

Much as I love blogging it is time for me to work toward a book. Just such an endeavor is underway. I've developed a proposal to send to Jossey Bass. I hope they like it because I like them since they included me in the JB Online learning conference last year. It was a great experience. They also seem to have some pretty good author supports and information. http://www.josseybass.com/WileyCDA/Section/id-290030.html
The book idea emerged from a syllabus I am writing for a Fielding course which may be offered starting Jan 2011. It would be great if I just happened to have a book ready to go about that time. We will see. Fortunately, I have bits and pieces already written in various blog posts so it is partly a question of collecting and polishing for a at least a couple of chapters.
Sue is also keen and will be able to contribute to a couple of the chapters directly and to the whole project overall.

Tappers and Listeners Great sensitizing concept

I've been reading an interesting book on stickyness of information. (bought the ebook on my iTouch)
The book is Make to Stick: Why some ideas Survive and others die by Chip and Dan Heath. Early in the book they reference Elizabeth Newtons 1990, PhD dissertation, Overconfidence in communication of intent, heard and unheard melodies. In an experimental situation subjects were asked to tap out a simple and familiar song for others to guess. They were asked to estimate how many of the songs that the others would guess and they estimated 50%. The actual rate of correct guessing was 1 in 40. The tappers could not believe that the listeners did so poorly, they thought they did a great job. The book goes on to describe the implications of this for leadership communication skills especially when linked with the "Curse of Knowledge" phenomenon, the notion that the more you know about something the less likely you are to be able to make your messages clear about the topic.

So the take away is this. We think we are communicating way better than we actually are.

Lots of interesting social psychology on the concept of overconfidence much of it nicely summarized in an article by Dunning, Heath and Suls (2004).They have an excellent section on the implications of overconfidence for the field of education. One of the issues for education they describe is that we have a system of bulk upload mass education that exacerbates this problem. The system is good at transmitting a message but is not so good for long term retention of information or transfer to application.

All very interesting and it sparks lots of interesting ideas for me.

As I have been trying to put all this together for myself, a side issue has appeared Where is Elizabeth Newton? I want to read her actual dissertation for myself but I can't find it anywhere. Doesn't seem to have been published elsewhere. Is she still being held hostage by her PhD committee? I see that the Heath's of Made to Stick are faculty in Newtons school and I am very pleased that they have given her a citation in their book but it seems a little odd that she has such a low profile. I'll have to keep digging although I'm unlikely to be willing to pay the Stanford fee to read the dissertation if is even available. None of the databases I use has access to the Stanford collection or am I doing it wrong.

Dunning, D., Heath, C., & Suls, J. M. (2004). Flawed Self-Assessment. Society, 5(3), 69-106.

Heath, C., & Heath, D. (2007). Made to stick:Why some ideas survive and others die. New York: Random House.

Newton, L., 1990. Overconfidence in the communication of intent: Heard and unheard melodies. unpublished doctoral dissertation, Stanford University, Stanford, CA

Update

Long time no see.
Activity report since last post.
Applied for various positions and worked toward developing a consulting agency. I guess I am a white collar farmer or a Wifi Homesteader as Clark Aldrich describes:

More and more people are trying to untangle themselves from toxic institutions, from box stores to, in some cases, schools, and taking control of their own lives.

I've picked up some work teaching for Northcentral University as a mentor for their online masters and doctoral programs. Most of my work for them has been mentoring for a series of research methodology classes for doctoral candidates who are preparing to begin the dissertation process. It has been an excellent experience as I have had to re-familiarize myself with many of research fundamental. I was recently approved by NCU to mentor classes relating to eLearning in their Masters of Arts in Education program.

I was approached to instruct a class for Assiniboine Community College through their Continuing Studies program. The course was a trades qualification program for a group of Hutterian Brethren who wanted to challenge the Inter-provincial journey-person exams. The biggest attraction for me was that the course was taught using the Hutterian Broadband Network. Thirty Hutterite colonies in Manitoba are linked with their own broadband network which includes a comprehensive videoconferencing system. I mostly taught from the studio at Green Acres Colony near Wawanesa, MB but the class participants were members of 12 different colonies located all across southern Manitoba. It was a great bunch of people and the experience was very rewarding. I will be writing an article with an analysis of their system and the possibility it presents for rural economic development.

The ICT class that I teach for Brandon University MEd program was offered this spring and I had 9 excellent participants. These are all teachers and administrators located across rural Mb and we conducted the class entirely using web-based tools. I have yet to meet any of the participants face to face. I will be writing this experience up in a separate article for publication.

Most recently I was contracted to deliver an ICT class for the Brandon University Northern Teacher Education Program (BUNTEP). This was essentially the same ICT class that I teach to the masters group but with some of the critical analysis elements trimmed out (i.e.) No APA format final paper.

Now I will get a chance to do some writing and put together some things for another MA in Ed program that I hope will start up this fall.

Always something to do on the homestead.

Organizational Shadow in Ed Tech

I've been taken with the concept of organizational shadow recently after reading a 1991 article by Bowles. From the abstract...

Organization Shadow is understood as facts which organizations wish to deny about themselves, due to the threat posed to self-image and self-understanding and, more generally, the need to be viewed in a favorable light by others. The Shadow is repressed, and, as unconscious content, is projected onto others, often those who are incapable of resisting it.

Interesting to watch the dynamics of this playing out. A 2008 book by Collins Rethinking Education in the Age of Technology recently received a controversial review by Jenna McWilliams.

I think she pegged it right when she pointed out the "damning by faint praise" offered in the book to the notion of self-directed education supported by new web-based affordances. The old guard of the existing educational establishment is not going to give up power and control that easily. They have too much to loose. They have convinced themselves that they are a last bastion and that the education system for all of its, presumably known and lovable, it preferable to the crazy chaos of self-directed learning.

I listened to a recent interview with McWilliams on CBC Sparks where Norah Young interviewed Jenna by Skype and then posted the interview as a podcast. For me it was the media being the message and predisposed me to suspect that she had put her finger on a nasty sore spot on Collins. Collins responded to the review: http://blog.acm.org/elearn/2009/11/allan_collins_on_jenna_mcwilli.html


Bowles, M. (1991). Organizational shadow. Organization Studies, 12(3), 387-404. doi: 10.1177/017084069101200303

Collins, A., & Halverson, R. (2009). Rethinking Education in the Age of Technology: The Digital Revolution and Schooling in America. The TEC Series. New York: Teachers College Press.

The New Panopticon

Haven't spent much time here for a while as I prepared for the final oral review of my dissertation. That is done, now to tweak the dissertation and send it off to the publisher.

One of the dimensions of my dissertation research was to generate a theory of basic patterns of social behavior. The patterns that I observed led me to formulate a theory which I called "Keeping Your Distance".

Here is the abstract.

This analysis began with inquiries into the substantive area of distance education using the classic grounded theory method. Analysis revealed a pattern of problem solving behavior, from which the theory “Keeping Your Distance” emerged.

The theory is an integrated set of concepts referring to the conscious and unconscious strategies that people use to regulate distance, physical and representative, in their everyday lives. Strategies are used to control physical, emotional, and psychological realities and to conserve personal energy in interactions with individuals and/or institutions.

Keeping Your Distance is presented in terms of a conditions/consequences/covariance theoretical model adapted from Glaser (1978), Theoretical Sensitivity. Conditions evoke a system of strategic response patterns which result in consequences. Responses and their consequences change conditions and result in additional adjustments, made on an ongoing basis. For all social interactions, people use a personalized algorithm of engagement that mitigates conditions and consequences and preserves optimal distance.

Keeping Your Distance provides a theoretical starting point for considerations of the changing notions of distance. In part, these changes have been brought about by developments in the fields of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and online social networking.

This emerging, multivariate, conceptual theory may be of interest to scholar-practitioners examining distance education, psycho-social processes and critical pedagogy. Elements of this theory may be of use to higher education policy makers charged with instructional design, institutional advancement and marketing.

My dissertation research grew out of an interest in various aspects of distance or distributed education. One of the reservations that people have about distance education is that is perceived as distant, as in alienating and devoid of human contact. This may have been the case in the early days of technology, however as ICT technology has advanced the opportunity for people to manage their distance from institutions is seen as a good thing. As it turns out, it looks like people may prefer to keep their distance.

I read an article this morning about The Digital Evolution of Surveillance

Ash, K. (2009, June 17). The digital evolution of video surveillance. Education Week: Digital Directions-Trends and Advice for K-12 Technology Leaders. Retrieved June 18, 2009, from http://www.edweek.org/dd/articles/2009/06/17/04videosurveillance.h02.html.

This article and many others discuss the great effort and money that place-based education institutions expend on the illusion of security and safety. However, the more I read about the draconian measures that many institutions adopt, the more I am reminded of Foucault's discussion of Panopticon.

Foucault, M. (1977). Discipline and punish: The birth of the prison (1st ed.). New York: Pantheon Books.

Foucault discussed education specifically and observed the relationships between power, control, conformity and education. Sad to think that this is the direction that institutional education is moving; toward environments of more oppressive control.
The theory of Keeping Your Distance suggests that people will avoid institutions that try to restrict autonomy in this fashion. If institutions want to support learning, as opposed to education then they will consider ways that people can acquire learning with out exposing themselves to the risks and oppression associated with institutions that put such a premium on surveillance and control.

It all depends on how you ask the questions

Just reading a report of a research study done by the EKOS group for the Council of Ministers of Education, Canada. The whole thing seems to be framed from industrial education perspective and doesn't even consider some very viable alternatives for PSE.

EKOS. (2009). An examination of barriers to pursuing PSE and potential solutions. Final Report, Council of Ministers of Education, Canada. Retrieved May 20, 2009, from http://www.cmec.ca/Publications/Lists/Publications/Attachments/196/EKOS-FINAL-16-03-09-An-exam-of-barriers-EN.pdf.

Long involved study, interviewing high school students and their parents about their future plans for education. The study was framed in the context or identifying barriers to participation in PSE and purported to look for solutions that would reduce barriers.

Looks like a wonderful study but it is loaded with preconceptions. These are apparent in the use of language through-out the research and report.
Two phrases stand out for me. "pursuing" and "go to...."

This study explores who is not pursuing PSE and the reasons why. Key issues explored in the
discussions include: the obstacles that are faced by students and how these obstacles interact with
one another; what roles are played by key players in helping students make these decisions; the
factors influencing post high school plans; barriers to PSE; the perceived importance of these
barriers and the interaction among barriers; and the impact of finances, academics, information
and motivation on plans for after high school. The importance of: the level of information about
PSE (e.g., its costs and benefits); availability of financial aid; information on financing PSE; selfidentifying
as being or not being a potential PSE student; career plans; specific post high school
plans (both in short versus long-term plans.

All this implies that you can only participate in PSE by leaving your present location and going to another spot for education. No mention of the possibility of having PSE come to you.


The researchers asked, in their written questionnaire and their focus group questions.

Did you think in grade 8 that you would be going to PSE? In grade 9 or 10? Did you ever think
about it at all? What were you thinking that you’d be going to? What kind of school (university,
college, trade school, etc)? (p.40)

Did you think that your son or daughter would go to PSE? (p. 48)


The discussion of alternatives to PSE seemed to be limited to "not going". No discussion of PSE coming to your choice of learning location.

Oh, and the other thing that came out fairly strongly is the general disgust that high school students have for the current process of education.