Richard Carey points to an outstanding article by Shane Snow on using game mechanics to power your business over at Mashable.
This rings true in my personal use of social media (see here re Foursquare) as well as in a lot of the thinking that has gone into what will happen to learning materials as they migrate from print to digital.
The one thing missing from the article that I think is a critical element is narrative thread. Here are some comments of on how that applies to education.
Guest blogger Mike Baum of Sophia Consulting shares his insights on ISTE 2010.
By Mike Baum
In the old Road Runner cartoons, there’s always a point where the slavering coyote, relentlessly and enthusiastically pursuing his dinner, runs off a cliff. But he hangs in mid-air momentarily, falling only when he realizes there’s no longer anything supporting his feet. Walking the floor of ISTE (nee NECC) last week, I thought I heard “beep beep” from time to time.
On-line bullying has been a concern as long as the web has been around. Yet only now, with the proliferation of social networks, is it really getting its due. Today’s New York Times has an outstanding article on cyberbullying and the confusing and inconsistent ways that schools are being asked to respond. I highly recommend this well written piece.
The central conundrum is that cyberbullying almost never takes place on school sponsored networks and equipment. Yet the bullying clearly has a direct impact on students, their interactions in the building, and their academic performance.
In old fashioned bullying physical presence was required. Because kids spent most of their day at school a great deal of it happened in the building. That gave schools a clear and well defined role in intervening and managing bullying – even if many didn’t do a great job of it. At least the law and the expectations were clear.
That’s Mr. Mayor to you. For those of you who are not familiar this is foursquare.
From their site:
Foursquare on your phone gives you & your friends new ways of exploring
My take away from the first day of the Association of Education Publisher’s Content in Context Conference (#ciccon): educators have always needed Education Publishers, but they have never particularly wanted them.
What are you doing at your company to remain necessary in the digital age?
It’s been four weeks and my iPad still has that new computer smell. Now that I’ve been using it in my workflow I wanted to post some additional comments on it’s utility in an educational setting.
In general I think my original take holds up well – this is fantastic tool for consuming content, is extremely useful as an outboard content manager, and passable in a pinch as a creation tool (this whole post was written on it).
On a meta level it is truly amazing how natural the “point and do” nature of the touch interface feels. Once you understand the grammar of the device it all just flows. A mouse now feels clunky for most operations other than image processing or massive spreadsheets.
Kid’s virtual world Club Penguin has fallen short of the high-flying projections made when Disney purchased them 3 years ago.
Read this New York Times piece from today for the details.
I can’t say I’m surprised by the result. CP always seemed thin on the engagement side – dress your penguin and run around and “speak” pre-approved phrases. More dot.com than user driven media. The tip off should have been when old model Disney snapped them up – the model made sense to them.
An iPad has been floating around the PCI office for the past week (thanks to Randy Pennington‘s ed-tech jones). Will it be a game changer for education? Can it redefine how we deliver instructional content?
I’ve tried to refrain from commenting on the iPad until I could see and multi-touch it. Having worked at Apple for 7 years (back in the Pleistocene era) I’m wary of 1.0 releases.
It appears that my skepticism was misplaced in this case. My iPad 3G is now on order (yay!).
Seth Godin makes a critical point for instructional materials.
The platforms are changing all around us. Mobile phones, iPad, Kindle, Android, white boards, Moodle, etc.
Are you paying attention?
The Education Business Blog