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Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Learning...learning...learning

Today's reflection has been around how excited I am to be learning about virtual worlds through virtual world use myself. Is this not exactly why I am excited about using virtual worlds with learners? So they too can learn to do by doing?

I'm reading Clark Aldrich's Book - Simulations and the Future of Learning. - and am thoroughly enjoying his blog
Here are some of his quotes from Wikipedia:
"If I had six hours to learn anything, I would spend four of it practicing."
"An inexperienced learner is thrown by frustration, but a good learner uses it."
"The simulation interface is part of the content, not just a conduit to the content."
"We are at a time in the history of education when everything can change. Our minds can be as well developed and nurtured as our bodies… the work of a few people will echo through the ages, changing the very wealth of nations."

One thing that interests me even more as a distributed learning teacher is his unschooling project as many of the families I work with aim to, and succeed at, bringing these philosophies into their child(ren)'s learning experiences. He outlines 33 Critical Skills Seldom Taught, Tested, or Graded in High School which are a good reminder of where sometimes as educators we are missing the boat...

So...back to today's learning activities. Tree planting in Active Worlds, checking out several simulations to use with Grade 3 learners and then maybe an adventure in Second Life. I feel lucky to live in such an amazing time...

Alissa

Monday, April 12, 2010

Today...and next steps

Well...we're continuing our journey toward figuring out the role virtual worlds and simulations may have for our learners...
We know something is engaging some of the kids but finding hard and fast evidence is difficult. We've decided to survey the kids involved in the virtual world/sim. approach this year to see if we could garner any feedback that might help us to move forward into next year.
Our hope is to use what we find out to help us further develop our school's foray into this area.

Results and conclusions to the survey results to come soon!