IBBY Silent Books: Final Destination Lampedusa Exhibit

IBBY Silent Books: Final Destination Lampedusa Exhibit

By Andrea Gonzalez on Oct 16, 2015

In an era where educational technology is in constant flux and digital platforms rise and fall in popularity, it is often argued that books have taken the passenger seat to more famous digital devices. As terms such as e-learning and flexible learning have become 21-century buzzwords, children have become increasingly familiar with tablets from the Kindle to the Nook. Nevertheless, as the original educational tools, books from graphic novels to picture books continue to be essential vehicles for classroom learning.

If there is anything that can steer children’s imagination forward at a universal scale, it is visually engaging wordless picture books. With the support of IBBY Italia representative and storyteller Mariella Bertelli, LLED (Language and Literacy Education) professor and renowned illustrator Dr. Kathryn Shoemaker curated and produced an exhibit in Rare Books and Special Collections titled “Silent books: Final Destination Lampedusa”, with books from various corners of the word. As an illustrator and LLED instructor for Introduction to Children’s Literature, Shoemaker teaches her students how they can use illustrated literature in the classroom, with a real focus on picture books, wordless book and graphic novels.

“The collection was initiated by the International Board on Books for Young People, or IBBY, and started after World War II with the idea of unifying children around the world with literature. In response to refugees coming in from Africa into an island called Lampadusa, the people at IBBY Italia realized that there was a diversity of languages among the migrant refugees and their families. So they created a library of wordless books, called Silent Books, that children of any language would be able to access. Following stops in Italy and Mexico city, the exhibit is now in Vancouver and will be traveling to Edmonton after this stop.” said Shoemaker.

Click on the slideshow to see more images. (9 total)

Having heard of Shoemaker’s involvement in Children’s literature events and activities, Bertelli reached out to her to set up the exhibit in Vancouver. Bertelli then coordinated the arrangement to bring the books to Canada, ultimately leading to the decision to showcase the books at Rare Books and Special Collections at UBC’s Irving K. Barber Library for the general public.

“The public and anybody who wants to come in can come and see them. They are all books that we want people to handle. In order to understand them, they need to go through them. ” adds Shoemaker.

Although vastly different in their content, the books are unified by the recurring themes of journeys and secrets, as readers are transported from one place to another and prompted to uncover hidden puzzles. “There has been a proliferation of these books because they work so well with ESL students. It can level the playing field because you don’t have to have to have the language. It is also a way of helping a new language learner talk about things, either first in their own language or with the new language they are learning, particularly some of the sequential ones where you have to predict the course of events” said Shoemaker.

When incorporated into the classroom, there is a potential for these books to bridge the gap both for ESL students and students with learnings disabilities. Although grounded within a cultural milieu, the beautiful illustrations in these books transcend language boundaries, offering up a vast pool of opportunities for Teacher Candidates to experiment with them in elementary classrooms. As the books have no text, children are encouraged to truly read the pictures and construct a meaning based on them, generating the space for their creativity to thrive. Perhaps by reflecting on the books and developing innovative and even tech-savvy ways to integrate them into the classroom, teachers might help to remedy the frayed relationship between picture books and children.

Additional Resources

 

Hybrid Pedagogy: Using Twitter as a Teaching Mechanism

By Andrea Gonzalez on Oct 05, 2015

The Twittersphere finding its way into the classroom

Does the Twittersphere now encompass contemporary classrooms?

One of the most renowned social media platforms, Twitter has rapidly become a marketing tool to craft individual and collectives social media presence, reaching out vast audiences with the touch of a fingertip. It has worked its way into the marketing psyche of companies: you are always just that one click away from reaching an ever expanding number of interested viewers.

As an increasingly tech-savvy generation of students advance towards higher levels of education, some instructors are embracing innovative technological approaches to liven up their courses. From September 20th to October 3rd , Digital Pedagogy Lab Instructor Jesse Stommel offered an online Teaching with Twitter course, showing teachers how to integrate social media platforms and writing styles into contemporary classrooms. According to the course description, Teaching with Twitter is intended to introduce teachers to approaches for using Twitter in classroom and online teaching. Rather than striving to make teachers absolute experts in the platform, the course emphasizes how the Twitter platform can be leveraged in multiple pedagogies. From exploring ways to create assignments in Twitter to inciting lively discussion, students will then be encouraged to reflect on the value of social media platforms as a potential educational technology. Assignments vary in scope, yet Stommel draws attention to his “Twitter Essay”, an assignment he has devised where students are asked to condense an argument into 140 characters.

At first glance, for teachers to even consider using Twitter an a supplement to their course might seem counter-productive; after all, won’t having access to this social media platform distract students and discourage them from discussing face-to-face with other students? The fears abound: wouldn’t the abbreviated “Twitter-speak”, with its 140 character limit, reduce the amount of information accessible to students and distort their grammar?

On the contrary, according to Stommel, composing a tweet is “most certainly a literate and sometimes even literary act… relying on conventional sentence structures and words to create clear contexts”. In fact, research on the potential of Twitter in education has demonstrated that Twitter can also increase interactivity and engagement with students, motivating them to collaborate and participate in class (Nicholson & Galguera). Writing a condensed 140-character message is a learned skill, one which requires creativity and experience in generating succinct and effective messages for all types of audiences.

As an Arts student, one of the challenges I encountered in my first year (and truthfully, even in my second year at UBC) was developing a clear and concise thesis arguments that fully encapsulated my position on a given topic. Over time, as I gained more exposure to the academic style of writing, I started finding out the types of sentence structures and words that allowed me to successfully send my message across to a scholarly audience. Although completely different to Twitter, brevity and clarity are still vital ingredients. While this two-week course might not transform someone’s writing style, assignments such as the Twitter essay might help to develop the types of literacies that are not only vital in higher education and the workplace, but also in our increasingly interconnected and Internet-centric world.

Much like tweets condense messages into 140 characters, poems also compact meaning into a series of charged lines and verses. In the UBC Faculty of Education, Language and Literacy Education professor and poet Carl Leggo demonstrates how creativity and clarity can be incorporated into teaching practices. In addition to multiple collections of poems, Leggo has written a book about reading and teaching poetry, titled Teaching to Wonder: Responding to Poetry in the Secondary Classroom. You can learn more about Leggo’s work here.

Additional Resources

 

Technology in Transit — Duolingo

Duolingo was September’s technology of the month for Technology in Transit. Presenter Natasha Rivera demonstrated how she used Duolingo to make learning languages fun and visually engaging for students as well as to challenge them to advance to higher levels. Duolingo enables students and teachers to learn a number of languages from Portuguese to Ukranian with an interactive and user friendly interface and provides a teaching opportunity for Teacher Candidates to enrich and support their students’ learning. Each lesson includes a diverse array of beginner and advanced speaking, listening, translation and multiple choice challenges, and instantly grades your answers, keeping students engaged and motivated.

The information sheet from this presentation can be found here.

Presenter

Our featured student this month is Tasha Rivera from the Faculty of Education.

Tasha Rivera

Tasha is a Bachelor of Education student in Secondary Core French and Japanese. She just finished her MA in Asian studies here at UBC this summer. She is very interested in both learning and teaching modern languages and the new technologies available to help with that goal.

Technology in Transit – Duolingo

Session Information


Date: September 30th, 2015
Location: Scarfe Main Foyer
Time: 12:00pm – 1:00pm
Registration: Not required

Event Description

Come to Scarfe Foyer at lunchtime on September 30th to see this month’s Technology in Transit showcase, which features Duolingo!

Duolingo is a science-based language education platform that enables users to learn multiple languages, from Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Italian, Dutch, Irish, Danish, Swedish, or English in a fast, fun, and free way. The application offers amazing opportunities to teachers, educators and students, allowing them to support classroom learning with bite-sized lessons where they can answer multiple-choice questions, speak translations into a microphone, and type in phrases in a structured tree of learning. In addition to its website, it can be accessed as a language-learning app on Android phones and iPhones!

At Educational Technology Support, one of our key goals is to raise technology awareness and demonstrate the various applications of technology in teaching and learning. On the second Wednesday of every month, Educational Technology Support (ETS) hosts Technology in Transit. Technology in Transit provides a space for Teacher Candidates and graduate students to display the different technologies that they have been actively using in their courses. The one-hour session offers passers-by the chance to observe and engage with educational technology as they walk through Scarfe Foyer during their lunch break.

Presenter

Our featured student this month is Tasha Rivera from the Faculty of Education.

Tasha Rivera

Tasha is a Bachelor of Education student in Secondary Core French and Japanese. She just finished her MA in Asian studies here at UBC this summer. She is very interested in both learning and teaching modern languages and the new technologies available to help with that goal.

 

Student Spotlight: ArcGIS, and Getting Creative in the Elementary Classroom

By Eleanor Hoskins on Jul 24, 2015

A customized map of Nunavut created by a student

A customized map of Nunavut created by a student

In the days before our recent second annual TEC Expo, I was talking to my family about the topics our presenters would be showcasing. When I mentioned that one of the students would be talking about using ArcGIS with her grade 4/5 students, there were a few double-takes from my relatives who work in forestry and parks. Apparently, they have both have staff who are paid and trained specifically just to use this mapping software! So why use this particularly sophisticated program with such young children?

Amanda Younger, the presenter in question, first used ArcGIS as a geography student at Kwantlen University. During her practicum, she was looking for unique ways to share her passion for the subject with her students, and came back to GIS (Geographic Information System) technology. Again, this software is used to collect, store and share very detailed data from a vast range of fields–but this means that students have a hands-on, highly self-directed way to explore and learn Canadian geography. As part of their assignments, students had to include a legend and a basic set of map details, but after that they had the opportunity to customize them with whatever other information they considered important, relevant or interesting. This allowed students to learn about the natural features of the province they were studying, and also skills in recognizing patterns and thinking critically about presenting data.

Amanda’s work shows the power of using what you know to convey what you are passionate about. And the technology she used provided students with an experience that was more engaging and interdisciplinary than more conventional assignments like colouring in a map or listing facts about a province. Her class had the chance to work with extremely current data and powerful software tools to create very high-quality projects. Not all technologies are usable at an appropriate level for the elementary classroom, but sometimes very strong educational tools and resources come from unexpected places!

Check out Amanda’s blog post below for more details and sample maps.

Additional Resources

 

TEC Expo 2015

On July 8th and 9th, 2015, ETS hosted the second annual Technology Enhanced Classroom (TEC) Expo. This event showcased creative, innovative and effective uses of technologies for learning by both faculty and students in the Faculty of Education. The Expo highlighted face-to-face, hybrid, and online learning in classrooms on UBC campus, in Metro Vancouver, and around the world! Our goal was to encourage visitors and presenters to find inspiration, share experiences, and start conversations about the role of technology in their classrooms.

TEC Expo uses technology to enhance a traditional poster session format, with presenters able to dynamically display their courses on electronic screens. While browsing between the tables, visitors are able to view demonstrations and engage in conversation with presenters. For TEC Expo 2015, we also introduced a fast-paced feature event, 60 Seconds of Fame, for faculty to describe their topics, as well as an interactive Mini Makerspace where visitors could experiment with technology-based tools.

Event Photos

Presenters

Online Literature Circles

Marianne McTavish, Senior Instructor, LLED

Literature Circles, derived from reader response theory, is a collaborative and student-centered reading strategy that provides students with opportunities to engage in critical thinking and reflection about texts. Literature circles are often used in face-to-face classroom contexts that highlight discussion, student response, free choice and collaboration. This presentation focused on how literature circles can be used very successfully with students in online environments, and in particular, with UBC’s Connect platform.

Using the PeerWise Online Resource to Promote Collaboration in Methods Courses

Marina Milner-Bolotin, Assistant Professor, EDCP

The presentation showcased how a free on-line collaborative resource, PeerWise (https://peerwise.cs.auckland.ac.nz/), can be used in methods courses to promote teacher-candidates’ collaboration on designing conceptual multiple-choice mathematics and science questions. A UBC team collected research evidence proving that this collaboration helps teacher-candidates gain Pedagogical Content Knowledge in the field as well as acquire important skills in question-driven inquiry-based pedagogy.

Video Lecturing Using Camtasia

David Anderson, Professor, EDCP

This showcase featured how Camtasia can be used to create and integrate video lectures using Powerpoint, and how it affects online course delivery.

Preventing Academic Misconduct in Online Adult Education Courses

Dave Smulders and Carolina Palacios, Sessional Instructors, EDST

The combination of mainstreaming of online courses at UBC and opening up registration of adult education courses to a wider target audience over the past few years has resulted in many more students enrolling in Adult and Higher Education (ADHE) courses than ever before.
As the student numbers increase, so have the incidences of suspected academic misconduct. While the Internet and social media have impacted academic misconduct, online digital tools can also be utilized to help ensure student work is done sincerely and originally. In this presentation, Dave and Carolina shared what they have learned and considered potential solutions that can both reduce academic misconduct and enhance the teaching and learning experience.

The Dadaab Project

Elizabeth Jordan, Senior Tenured Instructor, ECPS

Elizabeth Jordan showed some of the ways UBC instructors are presenting courses to untrained teachers in the Dadaab UN Somali Refugee Camp in Kenya. Each course has had a number of technological challenges, so much of the presentation dealt with workarounds for these difficulties.

Teaching Children’s Literature Online

Kathryn Shoemaker, Adjunct Professor, SLAIS, Sessional Instructor, LLED

This presentation focused on creating and teaching an online class on teaching children’s literature that included interactive engaging activities and opportunities for learners to reflect and respond to a variety of texts in multiple forms and modalities. I began this work with some fear that I would miss the stimulation of face-to-face teaching, the chemistry a group of teachers usually brings to the course, the highly visual content, and the opportunity to respond immediately to the interests of the students. Happily, some of the things I worried about were replaced by wonderful new teaching experiences. While I am truly a technology immigrant treading water, my work with Connect and support staff produced an interesting and engaging course.

Digital Storytelling in Career Counselling

Barbara Smith, Instructor, ECPS

There is a significant trend towards narrative approaches emphasizing storytelling in career counselling. Students in my sections of CNPS 363 transformed an informational interview project into a digital story. They learn intervention, technological and story telling skills, and how creativity is not only possible but essential in career counselling practice to effectively engage clients in more meaningful ways.

Ponderosa Innovative Classroom

Kirk MacDonald, Project Manager, IT A/V Services, and Ken Watanabe, Senior A/V Designer, IT A/V Services

Kirk and Ken introduced everyone to the Faculty of Education’s Innovative Classroom in the upcoming Ponderosa Phase II. Their presentation focused on the design and functionality aspects of the room.

Reconciliation Through Indigenous Education: A Massive Open Online Course

In January the Faculty of Education launched its first MOOC: Reconciliation Through Indigenous Education. On September 29th we will launch it again! This massive open online course created a free opportunity for thousands of teachers in Canada and the world to learn about Indigenous education and how it can be incorporated into their practice. Ian Linkletter from Educational Technology Support shared some of the lessons learned about designing and delivering a course at massive scale.

Collaborative Learning Annotation System

The Collaborative Learning Annotation System (CLAS) enables students, instructors, and other observers to embed notes and video feedback directly on a video timeline. It streamlines the commenting and reviewing process, and encourages more active engagement with the video. In a flipped classroom, CLAS can be used for students to post questions or bookmark parts of the video to review later. CLAS has been used in peer assessments, peer learning and collaboration. When students actively engage with video content and build knowledge collaboratively, they become responsible for one another’s learning as well as their own. Sharon Hu from Educational Technology Support and Thomas Dang from Arts ISIT co-presented this session.

Learning beyond 4 Walls: Community & Collaboration with ELL/ESL Learners

Janis Griffioen, PLTech BEd 2014 Alumna

As technology expands, learning beyond four walls is becoming not just a fad but a necessity. The focus of this presentation was on how to establish a classroom community and develop digital citizenship using classroom websites and student blogs, with an emphasis on ELL learners.
Come examine how a personal classroom website facilitated the collaboration between a local ESL/ELL district teacher and her colleagues, students, and their parents. This inclusive learning environment was created using Weebly and KidBlog. These tools enabled students to practice skills learned in class while also building a positive digital passport.

Games & Learning

Dominic Maggiolo

Game mechanics are an integral part of learning. The design concepts, much like designing learning goals, curriculum and lessons, can be tied to the ways in which we learn. I hope to link learning styles and gaming mechanics in ways which educators can apply practically in a variety of forms.

Game mechanics allow students to evaluate situations, make decisions which involve a dynamic perspective, and drive logic. Blended-learning, innovative pedagogy and game mechanics enable students to immerse themselves within an environment that is challenging and creative, but more importantly familiar and safe.

Integrating Technology Education

Duncan McDonald

Every course can be made hands on and involve technology. I don’t mean smart boards, I mean designing courses that have students using technology education to assist with the learning process. Benjamin Franklin once said, “Tell me I will forget, teach me and I will remember, engage me and I will learn.” Technology is a means of engaging students. Every course can build aspects of Technology Education into their courses to engage students.

Explaining Everything

Brittney Merryweather

Explain Everything is an easy to use interactive whiteboard and screencasting app. Teachers or students can use the app to visually represent information, materials, and lessons. The app allows you to draw, type, and import images, videos, pdfs and PowerPoint presentations. The whole process can be recorded with or without narration. The app can be used by teachers as supplementary instruction, instructional review, media at a specific station during collaborative group work, and by students to demonstrate understanding of a concept or task, to record work with narration for later studying, and much more. Explain Everything allows you and your students to create dynamic multimedia content to support teaching and learning.

Personal Response Devices

Reid Teichroeb

Reid discussed how he used personal response devices in his practicum and some research about it.

Using Geographic Information Systems in the Elementary Classroom

Amanda Younger

Amanda shared how she used GIS, specifically ArcGIS, with her grade 4/5 students to increase their understanding of Canadian Geography by choosing which information they wanted to display on their final output maps, and observing the relationship between different layers of information.

Fresh Grade

Michelle Torresan

Michelle demonstrated how FreshGrade can be used as a grade book, a platform to showcase students’ work, a communicative tool and more. She chose to use Fresh Grade in her classroom because it is easy to use for both the teacher and the students. It encourages student growth and allows the teacher to note and record academic growth in one user-friendly platform.

Makerspace Facilitators

Milana Cecco and Justine Johal

And many thanks to Justine and Milana, who are Teacher Candidates from the 2015 PLTech Cohort, for helping our interactive Makerspace run without a hitch!

Acknowledgements

Our thanks to Dean Frank, Dr. Mark Edwards, UBC PDCE, the UBC Dean’s Office, the UBC Bookstore, UBC IT, UBC AV Services, and, of course, all of our presenters and volunteers for helping to make this year’s event such a success!

TEC Expo Home Page

tecexpo banner

TEC Expo 2015 — Profiles

tecexpo2014 banner2

On July 8th and 9th this year, ETS will host our second annual TEC Expo event. The Technology Enhanced Classroom (TEC) Expo is an annual event designed to showcase and celebrate creative, innovative, and effective uses of technology in face-to-face, hybrid, and online classrooms within the Faculty of Education.

This year the event will be held from 3:00 to 5:00 pm on each of the two days. The first day will have instructors showcasing the technology they use in the classroom, and the second day will feature students presenting educational technology they are passionate about.

TEC Expo uses technology to enhance the traditional poster session format, with presenters able to dynamically showcase their courses on electronic displays. While browsing between the tables, visitors are able to view demos and engage in conversation with presenters.

Don’t Miss!

 

On July 8th, 2015 TEC Expo 2015 will kick off with Sixty Seconds of Fame, where faculty presenters will have exactly one minute to tell us about their topic. What happens if they go over time? We can’t say for sure, but it might involve a gong.

 

 

On July 9th, 2015 TEC Expo 2015 gives you an opportunity to play at our Mini Maker Space, where you can interact and experiment with play-based technology tools. Get your hands on Squishy Circuits or Raspberry Pi at this hands-on station!

Presenter Information

Online Literature Circles

Marianne McTavish, Senior Instructor, LLED

Literature Circles, derived from reader response theory, is a collaborative and student-centered reading strategy that provides students with opportunities to engage in critical thinking and reflection about texts. Literature circles are often used in face-to-face classroom contexts that highlight discussion, student response, free choice and collaboration. This presentation will focus on how literature circles can be used very successfully with students in online environments, and in particular, with UBC’s Connect platform.

Using the PeerWise Online Resource to Promote Collaboration in Methods Courses

Marina Milner-Bolotin, Assistant Professor, EDCP

The presentation will showcase how a free on-line collaborative resource, PeerWise (https://peerwise.cs.auckland.ac.nz/), can be used in methods courses to promote teacher-candidates’ collaboration on designing conceptual multiple-choice mathematics and science questions. Our research team has collected research evidence proving that this collaboration helps teacher-candidates gain Pedagogical Content Knowledge in the field as well as acquire important skills in question-driven inquiry-based pedagogy.

Video Lecturing Using Camtasia

David Anderson, Professor, EDCP

This showcase will feature how Camtasia can be used to create and integrate video lectures using Powerpoint, and how these affect online course delivery.

Preventing Academic Misconduct in Online Adult Education Courses

Dave Smulders and Carolina Palacios, Sessional Instructors, EDST

The combination of mainstreaming of online courses at UBC and opening up registration of adult education courses to a wider target audience over the past few years has resulted in many more students enrolling in Adult and Higher Education (ADHE) courses than ever before.
As the student numbers increase, so have the incidences of suspected academic misconduct. While the Internet and social media have impacted academic misconduct, online digital tools can also be utilized to help ensure student work is done sincerely and originally. In this presentation, we share what we have learned and consider potential solutions that can both reduce academic misconduct and enhance the teaching and learning experience.

Teaching Children’s Literature Online

Kathryn Shoemaker, Adjunct Professor, SLAIS, Sessional Instructor, LLED

This presentation focuses on creating and teaching an online class on teaching children’s literature that includes interactive engaging activities and opportunities for learners to reflect and respond to a variety of texts in multiple forms and modalities. I began this work with some fear that I would miss the stimulation of face-to-face teaching, the chemistry a group of teachers usually brings to the course, the highly visual content, and the opportunity to respond immediately to the interests of the students. Happily, some of the things I worried about were replaced by wonderful new teaching experiences. While I am truly a technology immigrant treading water, my work with Connect and support staff produced an interesting and engaging course.

Ponderosa Innovative Classroom

Kirk MacDonald, Project Manager, IT A/V Services, and Ken Watanabe, Senior A/V Designer, IT A/V Services

Kirk and Ken will be introducing everyone to the Faculty of Education’s Innovative Classroom in the upcoming Ponderosa Phase II. Their presentation will be focused on the design and functionality aspects of the room.

Coming soon: Elizabeth Jordan on Dadaab and Barbara Smith on Digital Storytelling!

Games & Learning

Dominic Maggiolo

Game mechanics are an integral part of learning. The design concepts, much like designing learning goals, curriculum and lessons, can be tied to the ways in which we learn. I hope to link learning styles and gaming mechanics in ways which educators can apply practically in a variety of forms.

Game mechanics allow students to evaluate situations, make decisions which involve a dynamic perspective and drive logic. Learning resource management, spatial analysis, critical thinking, creativity, history and physics; game-based learning has transformed pedagogy. Blended-learning, innovative pedagogy and game mechanics enable students to immerse themselves within an environment that is challenging and creative, but more importantly
familiar and safe.

Integrating Technology Education

Duncan McDonald

Every course can be made hands on and involve technology. I don’t mean smart boards, I mean designing courses that have students using technology education to assist with the learning process. Benjamin Franklin once said, “Tell me I will forget, teach me and I will remember, engage me and I will learn.” Technology is a means of engaging students. Every course can build aspects of Technology Education into their courses to engage students.

Explaining Everything

Brittney Merryweather

Explain Everything is an easy to use interactive whiteboard and screencasting app. Teachers or students can use the app to visually represent information, materials, and lessons. The app allows you to draw, type, and import images, videos, pdfs and PowerPoint presentations. The whole process can be recorded with or without narration. The app can be used by teachers as supplementary instruction, instructional review, media at a specific station during collaborative group work, and much more. The app can be used by students to demonstrate understanding of a concept or task, to record work with narration for later studying, and much more. Explain Everything allows you and your students to create dynamic multimedia content to support teaching and learning.

Applications for Teaching and Learning

Louai Rahal

I am an instructor, a tutor and a web developer, and I create web applications to support my teaching. I will be showing some of the tools I have created.

    1. Group Mind: A tool for randomly generating groups for group work.
    2. Growth Mindset:A website where content about the growth mindset is presented in a multimodal way (videos, links, tests, and summaries).
    3. Online French lessons: I am working on personalized exercises that generate a different exercise for different users.

My website includes more information about my teaching experience, my research and my work: http://louairahal.net/louai/index.html

Personal Response Devices

Reid Teichroeb

I will be discussing how i used personal response devices in my practicum and some research about it.

Using Geographic Information Systems in the Elementary Classroom

Amanda Younger

I am sharing how I have used GIS specifically ArcGIS with my grade 4/5 students to increase their understanding of Canadian Geography by choosing which information they wanted to display on their final output maps, and observing the relationship between different layers of information.

Place-Based Learning Technologies

By Eleanor Hoskins — Posted on Jun 02, 2015

aris screencap

One thing that many courses, especially in the Faculty of Education, are beginning to emphasize is the importance of place-based learning. Education that involves the geographical location it occurs in is re-emerging as a great way to engage students. It also gives lessons an added practical, demonstrated dimension that isn’t necessarily present in conventional Western models of teaching. Place-based learning is an integral component of Indigenous ways of knowing, which was covered extensively in our recently offered edX MOOC, Reconciliation through Indigenous Education.

My last post discussed a new mobile game called the Things We Carry, which is an app that follows a fictional student at Ohio University. Besides immersing users in an emotionally charged narrative, the application also relies heavily on geographical data to measure progress, and it actually requires the player to interact with physical objects in the location to move forward. All of these geographical functions are enabled by a platform called ARIS.

ARIS, or Augmented Reality and Interactive Storytelling, is a piece of free software for creating mobile games developed by a team at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. It features a simple, user-friendly interface, and it uses QR codes and GPS data to trigger game events and interactions. Players can interact with characters, collect items and complete quests within the app, and its open-source code makes it adaptable to very creative uses.

The application is easy to learn, and is a great way to enhance or gamify a field trip, to teach students about writing, game design, and logic, and to encourage new ways of exploring familiar places. Several institutions have programmed integrations that customize the experience even further—for example, a university in Spain has developed a game that uses a mobile microscope to allow students to analyze and identify local plants.

In further developments in place-based learning, UBC’s First Nations and Indigenous Studies Program has created Knowing the Land Beneath our Feet. This initiative includes a digital tour of campus that provides information about First Nations history and cultural landmarks. Knowing the Land Beneath our Feet is an opportunity to discover the physical reality that underpins the frequent recognition of the “traditional, ancestral and unceded territory of the Musqueam people”.

Mobile technology often gets a bad rap for distracting people from their surroundings, but programs like these call into question how deserved that reputation is. Clearly, they have immense potential to draw our attention back to physical place.

Additional Resources

 

Emotional Educational Gaming

By Eleanor Hoskins — Posted on May 15, 2015

REOOUQZp2NF9a-qn-F4tucCxiRpDmEFQ-Fj4j_Ky7wJUGNda0EOWsxozHf1xpg_m3_YPuw=s2048 One of the buzzier words in the field of educational technology is “gamification”: the notion that making learning more like a game results in better results and a more positive experience for students. Two researchers in the instructional technology program at Ohio University have developed “The Things We Carry”, a free game that expands the scope of conventional attempts at educational gaming.

The game uses a location-based host app to guide students around the Ohio University campus, and ties together physical locations and objects into a nostalgic narrative about a fictional student’s graduation. The graduate students’ goal was to explore the amount of emotional investment it was possible to generate from a phone-based game. They speculate that the educational value of this type of this game could range from an immersive experience of literature, to a more place-based approach to learning, to a tool for writing reflection and inspiration (like Elegy for a Dead World).
 
 
 
 

Researchers used Gone Home, a heavily narrative-based game, to attempt to test for emotional understanding

Researchers used Gone Home, a heavily narrative-based game, to attempt to test for emotional understanding

However, “The Things We Carry” also represents a step in game design that has the potential to give students immersive, accessible and place-based lessons in emotional intelligence. As a recently published study in Social Psychological and Personality Science showed, participants who played games with immersive, emotionally charged narratives displayed slight improvements in their “theory of mind”, or their ability to assess the mental states of others. This skill is often overlooked in traditional educational settings, but many forward-thinking elementary programs have been developed to encourage emotional learning. These often use stories and activities to teach children strategies for making friends, helping others, resolving conflict, and being assertive. Emotional education programs have been proven in longitudinal studies to reduce future mental health issues and crime rates.

Strong video games allow players to make meaningful choices that shape the narrative and capture their imagination—a participatory dimension that many traditional forms of narrative and art lack. The interactivity and self-direction allowed by good gaming gives the player an opportunity to examine events and actions from a larger perspective outside the protagonist’s point of view. By making these lessons and skills in empathy more accessible and adaptable, educational technology could be a game-changer.

Additional Resources

Selected Games about Emotional Learning, Narrative and Writing

 

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