Collaborative Tools

For our first project in CCA, we had to work in groups to make a google doc about collaboration. The rule was that we had to create a complete project without speaking face to face. This might have seemed like a difficult task, because we are so used to live, in-person communication within our classes. However, we did not panic. With all the collaborative tools available out there, we could be in different places and still communicate with each other at the same time! As soon as Dr. Z gave us the go-ahead, we had to close our mouths and turn on our computers.

But I'll focus on our collaborative research project in another post. For this post, I want to focus on the tools. Collaborative tools have radically changed the way we do school, business, and personal communication. Never before have we had such ease with which we may create, edit, share and publish so freely. Being a future-teacher, having a platform that makes communication and collaboration so easy is crucial to making education its best. Let me tell you about a few of my favorite collaborative tools.

First, there is the all hallowed GoogleDoc. In fact, let's throw in the entire suite of online tools that Google offers. The best part is, anyone with a gmail account can access them. With Google, you get GoogleDocs (including Google slide shows, spreadsheets, forms, drawings, tables and collections), Googlesites, GoogleCalender, Blogger, and so much more! I have just included the collaborative tools that I use, but I think Google tools are some of the best available online today. I don't use flash drives anymore, because I just save everything in a GoogleDoc. Just the other day, I was working on composing a professional email to one of my student teaching mentor teachers, and I wanted my mom's (a teacher's) opinion on whether or not my language was coming off as professional. I saved my email into a GoogleDoc, shared it with Mom, and we were able to chat and make changes/ suggestions together. I LOVE GOOGLE.

Another really nice collaborative tool is Skype. I have used Skype for a couple of years now, because we have family in England who we like to see from time to time. I was amazed at how easy it is to use, and the basic service (hosting two people live-chatting with video) is free. You can even have more than two people meet on Skype, with audio only. We used Skype for our collaborative research project, and it was a breeze. We even Skyped with Dr. Z when he was in Jordan!  In a week, my boyfriend leaves for Berlin, Germany, and we have already downloaded Skype onto his netbook, checked out the time difference between Berlin and Iowa, and made a schedule of Skype "dates." Without this technology, I wouldn't be able to keep in touch with a lot of important people!

Other collaborative tools I have used include: Prezi (we're using it for Visual Literacy right now), Just Paste It, Second Life (this is pretty collaborative, in that you can talk to people from all over the world in a digital 3-d setting, and it's fun!), Dropbox, Wikispaces (both in Z's class, Ping's class, Magda's class, and more), and Chatzy. And I know that once I secure a teaching job (fingers crossed people!), I'll be investigating even more tools to use in my classroom!

Here is a table of online collaborative tools available to users for free at Cool Tools for Schools.

And 15 more free tools for Web-based education and collaboration!

Addicted to..... Learning? Gaming in Education

Sign of the times: this is family bonding

How do the elements of gaming fit into learning?

How could gaming be designed to support learning, not just “edutainment” but actual, concrete learning? Could we start to design history, literature, math, etc games that students will become interested in, just as they would if they were playing Gears of War, or FallOut3?

I chose to play Mass Effect, a science-fiction RPG third-person shooter style game. Although this game does include a certain level of violence and some mature dialog (the game is rated M for mature), I chose to examine it because it was very well received by video game critics. My boyfriend owns the game (and it’s sequel, Mass Effect 2), and recommended the series to me when I explained the goal of this project.

Joe told me that a player’s success and experience in Mass Effect depends on a large amount of social interaction between your character, and the characters he/she meets throughout the game. Not only do you have to communicate with your ship mates and squad members, but you also have to practice diplomacy when meeting with other races and institutions within thje intergalactic council. At each opportunity of interaction and speech, your character (Commander Shephard), is given dialogue choices to either declare or respond with. There is always a clear “good” choice (geared toward peaceful interaction and a global perspective), and a clear “bad” choice (geared toward aggression, conflict, and xenophobia). There is also a “middle ground,” called “Investigate,” which offers you more choices for communication. The game has been praised for its highly developed network of social interaction.

I thought that the social interaction choices this game requires of its players could help develop moral awareness in students. Not that our schools necessarily have an agenda that includes types of moral instruction, however, I first saw the choices of social interaction as a tool that could help students learn more about the consequences (positive or negative) of their choices.

This brings me to my next point, also relating to the social interaction choices of the game. Since what you say affects the next steps your character takes, making one decision one way, might trigger events to go, say, positively. However, should you make a different choice, say you choose to respond to a conversation or proposal aggressively, the next few events you experience could go in quite a different, more negative direction. It all depends on your ability follow cause and effect. Like real life, the choices you make in this game don’t go unanswered. So you must choose wisely, lest you make a fatal mistake, lose trustworthiness, or jeopardize the galaxy!
However, as Dr. Z says, "it’s not about the games.....it’s about the gaming."

While I watched Joe play ME last night, we jotted down a few “buzz words” of gaming that we observed:

-problem solving skills
-anticipation/prediction
-resourcefulness/critical thinking
-multi-tasking
-goal-oriented
-task management
-real-time strategy
-decision making
-reflexes
-hand-eye coordination
-feedback
-social exchange/interaction
-cause/effect relationship understanding
-leveling/progress motivation
Now let’s remember the list of 8 gaming characteristics Dr. Z mentioned. How many of our “buzz words” fit into any of these characteristics? I’ll include them as I think they could be categorized, behind each of the 8:

1. Choice: decision making, anticipation/prediction, resourcefulness, critical thinking
2. Failure: cause/effect relationship understanding, real-time strategy, critical thinking
3. Progress Bars: leveling/progress motivation,
4. Multiple long and short aims: goal-oriented, task management, multi-tasking
5. Rewarding ALL successful efforts:
6. Prompt and meaningful feedback: feedback, cause/effect
7. Elements of Uncertainty/Awards: cause/effect, critical thinking
8. Socialization: social exchange/interaction, understanding cause/effect

I know that some of those may seem like a stretch, being included in a few of the categories. But you can see that the elements of the game I’m playing match up to a lot of the characteristics that can be observed in gaming as a whole. In gaming, you have to think before you execute (well, most of the time). You must use knowledge, prepare, consider,apply, anticipate, predict, construct, synthesize a plan, and then take action! You can evaluate your performance after you’re done, to see if you need to go back and perfect/re-group to perform better the next time. Don’t these terms remind you of something?

Bloom’s Taxonomy tells us that higher order thinking skills include: analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. As you can see from the image, gaming uses ALL of the taxonomy thinking skills, from knowledge to evaluation. We must recall information from the situations we encounter, understand this information so we can use knowledge in new situations. Then we must break things down, use critical thinking (hey, didn’t I mention that?) in order to prepare for executing our next move. Then comes putting things together and creative thinking, so we can finally act out our plan. After the action, we can evaluate, make a judgment. If our performance was not as we expected, we can go back and try again, using a different strategy. We must think about what didn’t go right the first time, what did, and what we can do to improve. This is such a valuable process, central to gaming, and central to education! In her TED talk, Jane McGonigal goes further than just promoting gaming in education; she explains ways in which gaming can help promote a better world, and mentality of living. 

After doing this “experiment,” I see so many ways in which gaming could incite learning and motivation in students. Not only is gaming about fun, it is about progressive understanding, preparation, discovery, and learning from doing. You learn as you go along, and the progress that you make will either help you level up, or help you understand another element of the path to your goal. The analogy of “leveling up” can be applied to knowledge and education because every piece of knowledge you gain helps build your experience and foundation to build upon, and to “level up” to the next stage. I think gaming could be a powerful instructional strategy/tool, and I hope to see where it develops in the future. In fact, I became so interested in this topic, I chose it as my focus for my final paper in Technology in Education. I also beat Mass Effect yesterday, and I've moved on to Mass Effect 2. I'll be looking forward to the release of ME3 Multiplayer in March of 2012. I'm pretty sure Joe's going to pre-order it soon! Stay tuned, and I’ll update you on what further support I find on gaming in ed. Until then, keep gaming!