#ties2009 Bernie Dodge on Engagement

One of the people I was most excited to meet and see speak at this year's TIES conference was Bernie Dodge. He presented two sessions at the conference, WebQuesting with GPS and Engagement: What Is It and Where Can I Get Some? Bernie Dodge was one of the advisers for the capstone I did for my MAed two years ago on Virtual World WebQuests but I had not met him in person yet, only via email and Skype.

I lament that I was only able to catch the end of his GPS session. However, most of the information from that session is on his website. Basically he posed a challenge to educators. Evidently there is an extreme shortage of WebQuests involving GPS technologies or geotools. He suggested eight different possible topics he would like to see developed:

1. Small World
2. Walking Tour
3. DIY Lit Trips
4. Critter Count
5. Latitudology
6. X from the Air
7. Travel Chronicles
   
8. Site Selection

He posed this as a contest and the winner wins a three year subscription to QuestGarden.

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How do we attain this level of engagement with our students?

I was able to attend his session on Engagement in its entirety. The overall message of this session was an important one to hear at an education technology conference. Basically he reminds us to focus on the learning and not fall into the "Tijuana Syndrome" with technology where when we are in the tech environment things look good that might not look so good when we bring them home to our students. The following are some tweets from his session:

Virtual Words WebQuests - Free Download

A couple weeks ago I uploaded my capstone from the MA Ed program I just completed to Lulu.com to make it available for others who are interested. Problem is, to have the book printed is a bit expensive. I decided it might be a good idea to make it available as a free download for the next 7 days (or first 100 downloads) using Yousendit.com. If you are interested in a free copy of my paper you can download it by clicking the download button below. As a courtesy, I would appreciate it if you left me a comment on this post if you do download a copy. Please explain what interests you in this topic and/or your experience with virtual worlds.

Hot Off The Press

Full Color Version:

Virtual World WebQuests: Principle elements of research supported learning experiences within virtual learning environments by Carl Anderson (Book) in Education & Language via kwout

Black and White Version:

Virtual World WebQuests: Principle elements of research supported learning experiences within virtual learning environments by Carl Anderson (Book) in Education & Language via kwout

I just published for the first time using Lulu.com. For those who don't know about Lulu, it is a service that lets you independently publish books for on-demand publication. That means, if you have 3 people who want the book they print 3 copies, if you ahve 300,000 people wanting the book they print 300,000 copies. Pretty cool.

Anyway, this book is my masters capstone. It is a detailed description of how virtual worlds can be utilized to effectively create cost effective 3d immersive WebQuests. Building on research done in the fields of game based learning, virtual worlds, constructivism, and intrinsic vs. extrinsic motivation I built an art curriculum that utilizes the pedagogical structure of a WebQuest but utilize a virtual world to house it. A platform evaluation is also present. I have to note that this platform evaluation was performed in the fall of 2007. Since then there have been more platforms that have surfaced. The results of this evaluation is not meant to be an end all be all off virtual world assessment for education but rather a suggested guide for educators to apply in search of the correct tool to fit their own needs.