We are excited to announce that we have combined two of our most popular online courses:
Introduction to Scripting in SL
Introduction to the ImagiLearning Logic System
The result is “Creating Interactivity in Second Life” a 10 week, live online course introducing a wide range of skills for creating interactive activities in SL for learning, games, or most anything else.
This is a structured learning activity beginning the week of May 20.
More information is available at:
Our Summer 2013 courses include Introduction to INFORM7. INFORM7 is a program used to create what are commonly known as “interactive fiction” activities, or as the classic “text adventures”. While many have placed text adventures in the category of “relics” from the early history of computer games, others are finding that interactive fiction can be an easy way to create an entirely new level of “story problems” to enhance learning.
We are all familiar with the usual, “One train leaves Baltimore at 8:00am, traveling 45 miles per hour, and a second train leaves Washington D.C. at…” Using INFORM7, without the need for sophisticated “programming”, why not place the learners on one of those trains in an interactive “story”, and allow them to solve the problem in a “real” way? Whether used in Math, Science, History, Literature, Creative Writing or any other field, INFORM7 let’s you take advantage of the power of “story” to create connections with learners that go beyond activities “about” content.
Also on the schedule are Introduction to Unity3d Parts 1 and 2. Part 1 of this 10 week course provides an entry-level introduction to Unity3d, as well as an introduction to the use of the CML-Evolution plugin as an easy way to create create dialogue-driven, performance-based activities for learning, training or entertainment. Part 2 continues the learning from Part 1, which is a prerequisite for Part 2. These courses are designed for those who may have interest in using 3d environments and game technologies to create more effective learning activities, but have little or no prior experience in Unity3d.
Additional courses will join the schedule, including Introduction to the Logic System for Second Life, Introduction to Scripting in Second Life and OpenSim, and more. The full schedule includes a mix of synchronous and asynchronous online activities.
All of our courses are designed as experiential “hands-in” classes, with the goal of having our participants use their new learning in real ways during the course, rather than learning “about” the content.
More information and registration can be found at ImagiLearning.net.
“Tranceformational Learning(r) is more than games, more than simulation and more than problem-based learning. The core of TL is the creation of individualized and highly personal “experience”. The result is a natural and powerful internal and emotional response from the learners that creates the level of connections required for authentic learning.” – John Jamison, PhD.
ImagiLearning, Inc. is very pleased to announce that we are now developing eLearning courses for the Washington State Nurses Association.
Located in Seattle, Washington, WSNA’s primary goal is to advance the nursing profession and facilitate nursing’s contribution to the health of the community.
ImagiLearning, Inc. is developing online courses that are used by practicing nurses for their continuing nursing education, and is publishing those courses on the SimplyDigi Learning Management System.
ImagiLearning uses the TranceFormational Learning® approach to design and create online eLearning materials, innovative face-to-face direct training activities, and provide support and training for other training developers in learning the TranceFormational Learning® approach. ImagiLearning is also a certified reseller and support-provider of the SimplyDigi Learning Management System.
ImagiLearning is very pleased to be working with clients such as WSNA to help them think differently about how they can create the most effective and engaging training programs possible.
I thought I would share a post I just posted for my students in one of my online courses this term. I have two reasons for occasionally posting these in my courses. First, is to help explain how I grade, and what I think is important in the coursework. Second, is to provide a bit of input for how they might make the best of their learning experience to stand out in the crowd.
Hello!
As we begin our final two weeks of activities in the course, I would like to present a few ideas that are in my mind from our work together so far. Just a few observations, recommendations and challenges for you to consider and do with as you wish.
1. Thoughts about discussion questions.
The main thought in my mind is to just remind everyone of how important it is to ‘read the question’. Take the extra few minutes to re-read the questions, and jot-down a simple list of exactly what the question is asking you to do. This will save you some points, as well as some time. For example, some responses to our last discussion questions were very good, and included lots of good detail, but simply did not answer parts of the questions being asked.
Lets’ take a quick look:
As I read this, I would make the following list:
1. Select tech tools that can be used for summative and formative assessment.
2. Those tools must measure assessment in both ways.
3. Explain “IN DETAIL” how the tools meet the need IN MY OWN ENVIRONMENT.
4. Include outside resources.
5. Find an assessment tech tool that could or would be used IN MY CLASS PROJECT.
6. Review that tool.
7. Share the link to my review in my response.
That’s what I hear the question asking for. For a 10 out of 10, I need to respond to each part.
Note that the question never asks me to describe or define formative or summative assessment. It is ok to add that if you want, but taking the time to do so is optional, and more importantly, including it in the response doesn’t impact the grade, because it is not being asked for.
Most central to my response, since it is mentioned more than once, is the need to relate what I find to my personal situation and to my class project. Leaving this part out is going to cost me.
The question says nothing about the length of my response, so my goal is to just answer the specific questions. If I can do that in two brief paragraphs, that seems to be as effective as filling 3 pages.
So, to save time and points, read and outline the question, and then just work your way through those key questions.
2. “As it relates to your personal educational environment”
You see this line time and time again in the questions for discussion posts. From my perspective, this is actually the most important and most valuable piece of those questions and is the information I am most interested in seeing in a good response.
For me, this piece is asking you to take whatever you have searched for, reviewed and thought about, and to make the attempt to relate it to your personal, specific, real-world, “what you do during the day”, activities. This is the part that takes the content from being “about” something, and makes it something that has meaning in your world. While that sounds a bit “60′s” and academic-babble, it is actually (In my opinion) focusing on the entire reason you are taking these courses in the first place.
While it takes time to search for tools and think about how they might be used in “education”, “corporate training”, or used in a general sense “instructors might do this…”, stopping here means you are not getting your money’s worth out of your coursework. I’ve worked with people who have heads filled with tons of this “instructors might do this…” kind of information, but who have absolutely no ability to actually “DO” anything with that information. They have never made the actual connection between “instructors”, and “me”. Those people who do make that connection stand out in the crowd!
Here’s the deal. In writing the formal papers and project things, we want and need to avoid focusing on ourselves and our work. But in the informal discussions and blogs responding to the questions, it is how the material relates and connects to you personally, and to your unique work activities that is the gold. Anyone can tell me what “instructors” could do….I want to know what YOU could do in a specific situation in your unique place in the learning world.
The problem is that this is hard. It is much easier to stay at the superficial level and write generalities about what some hypothetical “instructor” might do. But my guess is that your goal is not to earn a hypothetical degree. So, I would encourage you to take that next step and when the question asks how the information “relates to your personal environment”, take a specific activity from your world and figure out how it actually might relate…how might you actually use that tool…what would you actually DO with it…what would your learners actually DO with it…and what do you think the result might be. I can tell you quite honestly that the extra effort will be fully worthwhile.
3. Thoughts about using technology to enhance learning.
One of my personal concerns, and therefore has not been a part of how I’ve graded anything this time, is the limits we educators put upon our personal vision for the potential of technology to enhance learning. When we talk about assessment, we usually limit ourselves to searching for technology that is “designed for” doing some form of assessment. As is normally the case, our first view of integrating technology into learning and training is to find tools we can “bring into” our existing activities, and hope they will do something new.
The result is that we usually end up with tools that just let us continuing doing what we’ve always done, just with a few new gadgets involved. While this is “ok”, it is a long way from exploring the true potential of technology for enhancing learning and training.
Honestly, one of the things I would like to change in this course is the approach of asking students to find technologies that “fit” into the various levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy. The appearance is that those technologies are limited in their scope, and their potential is defined. I just don’t accept this approach.
In the last unit we were asked to focus on tools for assessment, and most all examples were tools that were clearly created to continue the traditional approaches to assessment; just with new tools. My preference would be to ask you to take a technology tool that seems to have absolutely no connection to assessment, and come up with a new way to allow your learners to demonstrate their level of mastery of the objectives. This means that it is not going to look or smell like a “traditional” assessment, and based on the research, is more likely to provide more authentic measurement of the learner’s actually level of mastery.
So my challenge to you is to be polite enough to read and review the things you are presented about mind-mapping, quizzing and survey tools, and all of the other pre-defined approaches to using technology. But then invest the brain cells to take the next step and see how you might use technology to create something totally new and unique for your learners; something that might be so much more meaningful for them. From my personal perspective, that step is what is going to give you the edge, and give you the mindset that is going to set you apart and make the changes that need to be made.
Ok, that’s it…I’m done there. We have two more weeks in the course and they look to be busy ones. If you have questions about projects or anything else, please let me know and we’ll see what answers we can come up with.
Thanks for your hard work,
John
For the folks who would love to create games but can’t afford the full-blown game development software, there is something new on the horizon, or actually in public testing! Check out Freedom Engine, a new “cloud-based coding solution” for game creation.
As the little catch-phrase says, the system is built for those who know how to code, or who are willing to learn how to type code. Actually, it appears that the basic form of coding used is based on the App Game Kit (AGK) from The Game Creators, a well established provider of game dev software of all kinds. These are the folks I mentioned earlier who have the big ‘package deals’ available on their software (which are still available as I post this).
The Freedom Engine lets you create your games, and then automatically publish them to Android, iPhone, Windows, Mac and HTML5. The games you create are yours, and can be sold of used as you wish. The Freedom Engine is currently free to use, and includes up to 10 MB of storage for your games and resources. An additional 250 MB of storage is available for $5 a month.
The Freedom Engine opened for public testing in September of 2012, and based on the forums is being actively used and improved upon. The forum also provides many tips and tutorials, so while even in testing, the Freedom Engine might be a great way to start getting your coding skills in order so you can create that next best-selling mobile game and get all rich and famous…or at least just have a good time and learn a lot!
http://freedom-engine.com
http://www.thegamecreators.com
http://www.appgamekit.com/
For the game developer inside each of us…the folks at The Game Creators have a couple of outstanding holiday specials running on some of their game development software packages!
Their AWESOME Game Maker Xmas Pack 2012 includes their entry level 3d Gamemaker program, their more advanced and powerful Dark Basic Studio, and their in-between FPS Creator program with a large collection of add-ons for it. The whole Pack is just $39.99. The pieces bought individually would come to about $260.
A second deal, the Dark Game Studio Bonanza, includes the DarkBASIC Professional and a huge selection of add-on packs and other goodies that would cost you about $470, but the package costs $49.99.
The DarkBASIC programs are a very powerful 3d game development package, using a form of BASIC scripting that is not tough to learn, is robust and lets you do most anything you would want to do in a game. The games you create are yours to share or sell, and the purchase is a one-time deal, with no ongoing licensing costs.
The FPS Creator and 3d Game Maker programs are more drag n’ drop, which makes it much, much easier to create games, though the trade-off is that there are more limitations in what you can create. Easiest of the bunch is the 3d Game Maker, which you could go from “installation” to “hey look at my game” in about 10 minutes.
I’m not sure how long the holiday deals last, but while they last you’ll find them at The Game Creators, at: http://www.thegamecreators.com
My best learning experiences have come from those instances where the content I was learning made real sense in my own world, and I was able to relate it to the rest of my life. As I design learning activities now, my goal is to design experiences that create that type of connection with each learner in the activity. With that in mind, I have set a goal for myself to create a collection of learning activities from multiple subject areas, including math, physics, chemistry, geography, geology, political science, history, social studies, sociology, literature, journalism, media, language studies and several others. And all of these cross-curricular activities are going to be tied together with real-world current events so they make some sense in the minds of the learners. And to create all this, yep, I’m going to play a game. More importantly, if you are interested, you are welcome to join me in the adventure.
For this activity, my game of choice is the Microsoft Flight Simulator X program, and my goal is to begin here in Springfield, Illinois and travel in hops around the world to end up back in Springfield. The one primary rule is that the trip must be as “real” as possible, and that’s where the great learning opportunities come in. I’m not only going to have to plan the flight paths based on things like distance, altitude and fuel, but I’m going to have to factor in and understand the changing weather conditions along the way. I’m going to have to consider the political issues to know which countries I can fly over or land in, and what critical social issues I may need to be aware of there. Let me break down some of the details to give you a better idea of just where my thinking is going.
The hub of the activity is the flight simulator software which in my case is Microsoft Flight Simulator X. FSX is no longer published, but is still available for about $20.00 at Amazon. If possible, I recommend the Deluxe Edition DVD simply because of some great features included though any earlier version of the program should work too. Actually, any flight simulator program should work as long as it lets you travel the entire globe. Microsoft does offer a free program called Microsoft Flight, but while it is cool, it only lets you fly in Hawaii and Alaska so it doesn’t fit our purposes here. Another usable flight simulator programs that is still in production is X Plane which is available for Windows, Mac and Linux. For those looking for something even more sophisticated and yet very affordable for academic use, take a look at PrePar3d from Lockheed Martin. For the best fit, and easiest use with our activity, I’m looking for a simulator that lets me fly anywhere in the world, incorporate real-time weather conditions, use GPS technology for flight planning and mapping, compress flight times, and fiddle with settings on the planes to figure things like fuel needs. And yet, my choice of program should be very forgiving so I don’t give up in frustration as I try to actually fly the plane! These are all standard features of Flight Sim X, so that’s what I’ll be using.
I’ll begin by selecting a plane that will give me a good mix of speed and distance, and that will let me fly high enough to climb mountains yet fly low enough to visually check out key locations as I travel. At this point I’m considering the built-in Beechcraft Baron I have parked at Gate 2. I can take the time to figure my time and fuel needs, or let the software do that. When it is time to actually fly, I’ll use the “time compression” feature to turn that 8 hour flight into something shorter, or just jump from takeoff to landing if there’s not much to look at.
But before each takeoff, I’ll be using several other items to make the most of the activity. For current events, I need to know if something may interrupt my planned flight, so I’ll read online international newspapers on sites like refdesk.com and onlinenewspapers.com. I’ll also watch for travel warnings for any of my locations using sites such as Travel.State.Gov, WorldTravelWatch.com and this site from England. Just before takeoff, I’ll do a scan for any last minute issues using sites like breakingnews.com. I’ll do my research to make sure I can actually fly across some of the countries I plan to cross, or make sure there are no unexpected volcanic ash plumes in my path, and make adjustments when necessary. And, of course, I’ll do my homework to learn a bit about the customs of the places I’ll be visiting, to be sure I am prepared for what I find when I land and make the most of my visit.
I could spice things up a bit and give myself a budget for fuel so I have to do some bookkeeping along the way, or could challenge myself to finding the shortest path and ramp-up my navigating and geometry skills. But overall, this little activity is going to call on me to use my math & physics skills to plan and prepare for my flight paths, learn enough geography to make sure I find my way over the oceans and through the mountains, learn enough political science to know where I really do NOT want to be flying in a little airplane “target”, learn enough current events and news to make sure I don’t end up someplace I don’t want to be, learn enough sociology so I don’t violate any cultural norms during a visit, learn enough about weather so I don’t get grounded for four months in Iceland because of that blizzard, learning enough about journalism to post an informative journal about my trip on my website, and a rather long list of other things. And in the process I even get to learn a lot about flying an airplane!
So there’s my plan. Takeoff is planned for early 2013, and I’ll keep my journal up to date on my ImagLearning.net so you can see just how the learning is going. Or, drop me a note and join me in this little experience. We can share some flight plans and encouragement, and might engage the multiplayer feature of FSX and turn this into something even bigger! Either way, go out and create some exciting learning experiences!
We are always looking for new resources to spark new directions in thinking…that is what TranceFormational Learning(r) is all about. As we pull those resources into our projects, they help create new directions that lead to the ability to create new connections for the participants of the things we create.
One of the resources that has our neuron’s firing right now is one of Google’s new workshop developments called Google Stars. Fire up the URL below using your latest version of Google Chrome, sit back, and give your imagination an opportunity to see what it can create.
Here is a little activity designed to spark some new thinking about whatever you might be working on right now. The goal of the activity is to expand our thinking about our topic by forcing connections in directions that would not normally be explored. It’s easy, and can have some pretty fascinating results. Here’s how it goes:
1. Get your topic clearly in mind. It should be focused and clear; one specific thought. Sometimes it helps if you can phrase the topic in the form of a question, since our minds are prone to focusing on questions and problem-solving. Some examples might include:
- Where might I find a new revenue stream for my business?
- How could I make this math lesson more interesting for my students?
- What might I do to get my 3 year old to stop arguing with me so much?
2. With your question in mind, open the following URL in your web browser: http://www.whatsmyip.org/random-website-machine/
3. Use the “Random Link” button on the page to visit a random website. Spend at least a full minute on that site, thinking about what that site has to do with your question, and how it might help you answer it. If there appears to be no connection whatsoever, consider that your “first opinion”, but do not stop with that. Make it a point to not leave the site until you have at least one thought about a connection with your question, no matter how silly or meaningless it might be.
4. After you have at least one connection, click the “New Random Website” button at the top of the screen to visit a second random site. This time, do not leave until you find a connection with your question, and with the first random site.
5. After visiting at least two sites and finding those connections, you may stop the process. Make notes of any other thoughts or connections that might come to mind and then go do something else, totally unrelated. Do not feel that you need to make a conclusion now. If possible, wait until the next day to return to the question and give your mind a chance to do what it does best and use sleep to make the new neural connections.
6. Return to your question and explore the new options that have come to mind.
We would love to hear about how it goes…so please drop us an email and let us know.
-John