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Gamification of the First World War

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Thursday, 28 Aug 2014, 08:45

 Fig.1. The BBC's First World War 'game'

Powerful. Rich. Fast. Makes you think. The perfect morning opener to a history lesson - though the 'F***!' word would not be welcome. I'd question its use. Many soldiers were 'God fearing, church-going Quakers'. And it will be a barrier to its use in many schools. 

The idea of having linear drama interspersed with choices is a 'cross media' or 'multi-platform' gold standard that was dreamt about, even proposed, a decade ago - but quite impossible except at huge expense and on DVD. It offers an interesting way into narratives such as 'Sliding Doors' or 'Back to the Future' where you as the viewer and protagonist could make choices about what you do and how you respond. 

A detailed report in Creative Review

Watching Horizon last night on Allergies I was tempted to go online. Try transcribing what is said in these programmes and you might not fill a couple of sides of A4: they don't say much. For me this is a simple example of how video is often the last thing you need as a piece of learning: a TED lecture would be better, a dozen TED lectures better still.

For all the buzz and excitement around distance and online learning I wonder if the connectedness of the Internet and the gargantuan levels and variety of content is the e-learning legacy - creating the environment in which people can travel virtually rather than prescriptive learning.

More WW1 games from the BBC 

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Design Museum

E-Learning Works

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Tuesday, 1 July 2014, 08:14

Fig.1. The remarkable rise of the game-player turned racing car pro.

Successfully translating the experience of the game-world to the real one successfully heralds a tipping point in this kind of e-learning. The Times ran an article yesterday on the progress of Jann Mardenborough, a global-Virtual F1 teen online game-player sensation. Mardenborough has taken what he can do from his bedroom to the race track and by all accounts is demonstrating that enough accurate and useable adaptation has occurred; that the kit, software and download times put at a game-players fingertips an experience that is a simulation, not just a simplified gamification.

I have found that Rosetta Stone works - the gamified language learning App. 

I have studied and tried QStream (used to be Spaced-ed) and know that it works too (more in this blog)

On my third and fourth Future Learn online modules I both enjoy and value what I am learn and wonder at the coming of age of the platform: clear, smart, intuitive, friendly, a partnership of student choices and control, a variety of ways into and around the content (though this requires a degree of digital literacy confidence and experience).

 

 

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Design Museum

G is for Google

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Wednesday, 7 May 2014, 06:12

This is as far as I got with G in relation to e-learning. Gagné is really learning and learning design, rather than the e-learning subset. Google of course is the big one. Just type your question directly into Google and take it from there. Google Scholar works so well I may sometimes start with that before putting a refined search into the OU Library. As students we used Google Hangouts often during Master of Arts in Open and Distance Education (MAODE) modules - and we did just that, 'hung-out', usually with coffee, sometimes a glass of wine. I only use Google Docs. I won't use Microsoft Office at all except where submissions require it; I love the simplicity and functionality of Google Docs and happily move between multiple devices. For an excellent example of gamification in learning I'd look at Rosetta Stone - I'm some nine months into improving my French and loving it. Another example is from the Merriam-Webster online dictionary: I love it for the quality of definitions, the video clips and the games. 

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Design Museum

Gallipoli: The First Day - learning in new ways about events nearly 100 years ago

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Thursday, 27 Feb 2014, 16:50

Fig.1. Screengrab from 'Gallipoli: The First Day' - an extraordinary multimedia, interactive 3D consideration of the events of this tragic conflict.

This ABC Australia, award winning 3d virtual tour of the first day of Gallipoli deserves attention.

http://www.abc.net.au/innovation/gallipoli/

This is the 'Avatar' of production values. Sympathetic. Balanced (I hope, it includes the Turkish perspective) and compellingly engaging. It sets the benchmark for delivering this kind of content. It says something too of the blood-letting, nation-creating, soul-searching in relation to loss in this way and on this kind of scale that many European countries will need to revisit over the next few years.

A teacher will never have the budget to create this kind of content, so how do they willingly use it in their teaching?

Does it motivate someone new to this story to find out more? How does it work as education or entertainment? Where does the funding come from? As mash-ups go this is very professional. The learning design and its gamified values are second to none.

(First posted in OpenStudio in my R&R 'concept board' as part of the MA ODE module H818: The Networked Practitioner).

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Design Museum

True or False

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Monday, 11 Feb 2013, 10:26

Eye%2520-%2520Merriam-Webster.JPG

The 15 second quiz

Merriam-Webster - the 'sticky' web dectionary using gamification to build the brand and hold your attention.

Who'd have thought it a decade ago.  'Sticky' was the Holy Grail - but applied to an online dictionary?

I love words.

I have used many online dictionaries, including 'the dictionary' and the OED, and of course Wikipedia. Increasingly I pick Merriam-Webster from the list offered.

The response page is clean (ish) i.e. you get an unclutted, quick and short defintion, which is all you want if you are trying to read a text.

You can, by default, find you are 'embedding' your relationship with the word by adding a comment. What brings you here? Why were you after this word? You may then be intgrigued by the responses other people have left.

Then there's the quick 15 second quiz.

A crafty way to up your Pub Quiz or Mastermind General Knowledge.

Merriam-Webster%2520Video.JPG

And there's a pithy video clip on some highfalutin stuff about words. Except of course it isn't, you'd just expect it to be so. They're very down to earth. There's the best explanation of the important difference between - its and its - for example.

My distraction? My word(s)

  • Foveal
  • Profoveal

That collection of nodes in the retina we subconsiously use when focusing on the fine detail of something - often used for reading tough texts where the 'profoveal words' i.e. those just out of vision and typically a few down the line from your centre of focus couild distract if and where the word is bold, in colour, underlined ... or the purposes of the research papers I am reading, if the word or phrase has a hyperlink.

Do you want you reader to read at an uninterupted measured pace - or tangle their eyes in barbed wire?

The aim, as they eventually figured out with the printed word, is a form or set of patterns and guidelines that make the reading of text on a screen easier, engaging enough so the the issues and facts begin to stick, without it being a mess.

I often wonder if a 'porta-pront' App - so you read as a Newsreader would do, offers the most uncluttered way to read text?

We're still a long way short of a digital expression of the written word - the guitliest group are academic papers. These are for the most part highly formalised layouts based on analogue moveable print.

Where I can I cut and paste and entire paper into Google Docs, then reformat so that I can scroll through.

Now what on earth did I get up to do 20 minutes ago?!

Ah yes.

This little gem.

Risse, S, & Kliegl, R 2012, 'Evidence for delayed parafoveal-on-foveal effects from word n+2 in reading', Journal Of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception And Performance, 38, 4, pp. 1026-1042, PsycARTICLES, EBSCOhost, viewed 11 February 2013.

 

 

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Design Museum

History of Art

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Masterpiece%2520Complete%2520Board%2520Game.JPG

I played this with my Mum in the 1970s and eventually knew every painting in the set. No formal lessons, some visits to galleries but these were initially confined to the North East of England.

Masterpiece%2520Cards%2520SNIP.JPG

What lessons do we learn from such games when it comes to teaching? That it can be fun? Exploratory? By default?

How or where else could this be applied, whether as a commercial game 'for all the family' or to use in the classroom, meeting room, board room, lecture hall?

  • Cloud Formation
  • Breeds of Cattle
  • Car Makes
  • Body Parts (Human, as in First Year Medical Students)

Please do add your suggestions ...

 

 

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