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Last week saw the Game Based Learning Conference, we didn’t go, but that didn’t stop us from talking about using games for learning and using gaming devices to enhance and enrich the learning process.
The Game Based Learning Conference is one of the largest events of its kind dealing with all aspects of games in learning. Building on the success of Handheld Learning and provided more depth by creating stimulating, challenging and provocative dialogue spaces at the intersection between the education, gaming, social media and consumer electronics sectors. There, policy makers, thought leaders, innovators and key practitioners met and exchanged ideas, knowledge and experiences as part of a unique ongoing conversation.
Using computer games to support learning – The Mobile Learning Network (MoLeNET) has released a new report exploring the ways in which computer games, digital games and digital learning games can be used to enhance and support teaching and learning.
The PlayStation Portable PSP is a portable gaming system that uses the GO! Camto take photographs and video. The PSP GO! doesn’t have a camera and can’t use the GO! Cam.
If you need cases for your PSPs, then Gloucestershire College have been pleased with the cases from Connected.
If you do have a PSP then you might want to consider an AV cable to connect it to a TV or a projector to show images and video.
If you don’t like the PSP then you may want to look at the DSi or the new DSi XL (the one with the bigger screen).
Pictochat on the DSi is certainly a useful communication tool, in some ways the there are advantages it is a closed system.
A website created by Learning and Teaching Scotland to explore the latest games technology. Find out more about the background to learning with digital games and watch the case studies to see computer games successfully used within the classroom.
This is the thirty first e-Learning Stuff Podcast,Store it, Tag it, Share it.
James, David, Ron and Lilian discuss various web tools that can be used to store your stuff; like documents, notes, files. Tools that allow you to tag your stuff and share your stuff. They talk about the tools they use with their stuff and they talk about how these tools can be used for learning.
Use Evernote to save your ideas, things you see, and things you like. Then find them all on any computer or device you use.
Dropbox is a way to store, sync, and, share files online.
Etherpad – When multiple people edit the same document simultaneously, any changes are instantly reflected on everyone’s screen. The result is a new and productive way to collaborate on text documents, useful for meeting notes, drafting sessions, education, team programming, and more.
Now that Etherpad is open source, other versions of the service are now available such as iEtherpad
TinyGrab is a simple yet extremely powerful utility for Mac OS X and Windows. Harnessing the power of pre-existing and new OS screenshot taking capabilities, TinyGrab instantly uploads and allows you to share with a small URL— all in under thirty-seconds.
Skitch is a Mac application for making screen grabs and then annotating them, before uploading them to a web service.
Screenr – Instant screencasts for Twitter. Now you can create screencasts for your followers as easily as you tweet. Just click the record button and you’ll have your ready-to-tweet screencast in seconds.
James, Lilian, Lisa and Ron discuss the recent publicity over Susan Greenfield’s comments in the Daily Mail on the “dangers” of social networking and young people’s brains. Does using social networking sites lead to loneliness and isolation? Do users of Facebook and Twitter feel excluded from society. In this podcast we discuss the furore and the issues.
This is the fifteenth e-Learning Stuff Podcast, Social networking rots your brains.
Dr Ben Goldacre also linked to some useful academic papers which dispute the “connection” between social networking and loneliness.
Caplan SE published a paper in 2007 entitled: “Relations among loneliness, social anxiety, and problematic Internet use.” Dr Sigman did not quote this paper in his article. Why not? “The results support the hypothesis that the relationship between loneliness and preference for online social interaction is spurious.”
Sum et al published a paper in 2008 with the title: “Internet use and loneliness in older adults“. Dr Sigman chose not to quote this paper. Why not? I don’t know, although it does contain the line “greater use of the Internet as a communication tool was associated with a lower level of social loneliness.”
Subrahmanyam et al published a paper in 2007 called “Adolescents on the net: Internet use and well-being.” It features the line “loneliness was not related to the total time spent online, nor to the time spent on e-mail”. Dr Sigman ignored it.
Finally the photo above of zombies meeting in the real world was organised on Facebook. So you could argue that Facebook has turned them into zombies, however I don’t think these kinds of social gatherings was what Susan Greenfield meant.
Geoff Minshull runs DirectLearn and uses WebEx for running online conferences. At the last JISC Conference they also used Elluminate for live presentations.