= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
AdeleneDawner comments on Open Thread: January 2010 - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (725)
First: I'm having a very bad brain week; my attempts to form proper-sounding sentences have generally been failing, muddling the communicative content, or both. I want to catch this open thread, though, with this question, so I'll be posting in what is to me an easier way of stringing words together. Please don't take it as anything but that; I'm not trying to be difficult or to display any particular 'tone of voice'. (Do feel free to ask about this; I don't mind talking about it. It's not entirely unusual for me, and is one of the reasons that I'm fairly sure I'm autistic. Just don't ignore the actual question in favor of picking my brain, please.)
The company that I work for has been hired to create a virtual campus (3d, in opensim, with some traditional web-2.0 parts) for this school. They appear to be fairly new to virtual worlds and online education (more so than the web page suggests: I'm not sure that they have any students following the shown program yet), and we're in a position to guide them toward or away from certain technologies and ways of doing things. We're already, for example, suggesting that they consider minimizing the use of realtime lectures, and use recorded presentations followed (not necessarily immediately) by both realtime and non-realtime discussions instead. We're pushing for them to incorporate options that allow and encourage students to learn (and learn to learn) in whatever way is best for them, rather than enforcing one-size-fits-all methods, and we're intentionally trying to include 'covert learning' as well (simple example: purposefully using more formal avatar animations in more formal areas, to let the students literally see how to carry themselves in such situations). The first group of students to be using our virtual campus will be in grades 4-8, and I don't believe we'll be able to influence their actual curriculum at all (though if someone wants to offer to mentor some kids in one topic or another, they might be interested).
Those who have made a formal effort to learn via online resources: What advice do you have to offer? What kinds of technologies, or uses of technologies, have worked for you, and what kinds of tech do you wish you had access to?
For me personally, I would prefer transcripts and written summaries of any audio or video content. I find it very difficult to listen to and learn from hearing audio when sitting at a computer, and having text or a transcript to read from instead helps a lot. It allows me to read at my own pace and go back and forth when I need to.
I'd also like any audio and video content to be easily and separately downloadable, so I could listen to it at my own convenience. And I'd want any slides or demonstrations to be easily printable, so I could see it on paper and write notes on it. (As you can probably tell, I'm more of a verbal and visual learner.)
By the way, your comment seemed totally normal to me, and I didn't notice any unusual tone, but I'm curious what you were referring to.
Seconded the need for transcriptions. This is also a matter of disability access, which is frequently neglected in website design - better to have it there from the beginning than wait for someone to sue.
We're already keeping disability access in mind. SecondLife and OpenSim are generally very good with accessibility for everyone but visually impaired folks, for whom they're unfortunately very hard to make accessible.
Having the disclaimer seems to help me write more coherently, for whatever reason; compare the above post to this one for an example. There are still noticeable (to me) differences, though - my vocabulary is odd in a way that only anger or this kind of problem evokes (more unusual or overly specific words, fewer generalizations or 'fuzzy' ways of putting things), and I'm having trouble adding sub-points into the flow (hence the unusual number of parentheticals) and connecting main points together in the normal way. I know there's a more correct way of putting that 'grades 4-8' point in there than just tacking it on at the end.
That's interesting. I distinctly remember reading your comment, leaving the computer, going about my business, and thinking that the idea that a deficiency could being selected for was an interesting point.
(But yes, while I understood your comment just fine, I do notice some awkwardness, for example, in the second sentence, easily fixed by just deleting the phrase "it's acting on".)
I definitely stand by the point; my ability to think logically is only mildly impaired, if at all. I generally expect myself to be able to communicate such things in a way that gets a less annoyed response than I did, though, or at least to be able to predict when I'm going to get such a response.
Grades 4-8 is an interesting category, and I wouldn't know to what extent a successful model for online learning has already been implemented for this age group.
For a somewhat younger age group, I would suggest starfall.com as an online learning site that seems to have a number of very effective elements. One element that I found remarkable is that frequently after a "learning lesson", the lesson solicits feedback. (For example, see the end of this lesson). The feedback is extremely easy to provide -- for example, the child just picks a happy face or an unhappy face indicating whether they enjoyed the lesson. (For older kids, it might instead be a choice between a puzzled expression and an "I understand!" expression.)
In any case, I think the value of building in feedback and learning assessment mechanisms would be an important thing to consider in the planning stages.
I find myself in an analogous situation: some guidance is needed in the development of on-line learning technology (for adults), and the responsibility to some extent falls on me since I am more 'pro-technology' than my coworkers. I'll be interested in the results of this thread.