ELECTRICCHALK

Image - Adi Setiawan on Flickr

Had an interesting day out on Monday at Nottingham Uni. Nick Mount and Gary Priestnall in the school of geography were hosting a workshop on the uses of immersive technologies in education. It was all a bit out of my remit as we don’t do higher ed in CLC’s but a fascinating day nonetheless.

It was all done under the auspices of the DELVE project (if you want a good example of creative acronym wrangling (CAW) check out how they got to DELVE!) which links Nottingham Uni and the OU.

In a nutshell it was a showcase of some examples of how they have been using immersive technologies (3D sims, Google Earth, Second Life) in teaching their courses. By immersive technologies (and there was considerable debate about the meaning of the term) they mean apps and hardware that allows a learner to become drawn into a virtual or augmented environment which supposedly leads to a deeper form of engagement with the task. There were also presentations from Claire Jarvis at Leicester about her work modelling GPS in a virtual environment.

The majority of the stuff being demo’s was beyond most schools’ capabilities but it was interesting to see what’s going on in other parts of the eductaional world.

Here are some of the mail things I took away from the event…

Google Earth - there was a fascinating demo of an activity to create a 3d wind farm in the Lake District in GE and then assess it’s visual impact from certain key point sround the National Park. Really made me want to investigate GE as a creative tool along with Sketchup rather than just a viewing tool.

Maptube - Brilliant. An excellent resoure for making map mashups. OK, maybe it’s only geographers like me that get excited about that sort of thing but it makes for a really groovy activity for KS4. I’ve just had a go at comparing the distribution of knife crime stats in 2006/7 with post office distribution and mashing up a map of it. Why? BECAUSE I COULD!! (Not strictly immersive technology but I’m not complaining).

Second Life - Nick was showing how they used SL as a discussion tool for a wind farm project. They had created an island in SL and mapped a mini version of the Lake District on it and users were encouraged to place turbines in certainlocations then the students’ avatars could meet and discuss different options. I’m still not convinced that SL is something we could usefully get involved with here. I have too many worries about using it in schools mainly from the e-safety point of view and I’m not sure that the pedagogic benefits are worth pursuing before schools have grasped more basic web2.0 tools.

Does anyone have any experience of using Second Life in schools? Am I missing the point?

3D Screen Technology – This was the first time I’d seen 3d used outside of BETT. They used it as a way of visualizing a wind farm (notice a theme?) in the Lake District. It was veryimpressive (and hugely expensive) but I was left with the same feeling that I had after BETT, namely that the education benefits of immersion are not proven to the extent that schools would want to invest tens of thousands in the necessary resources.

On the whole, this idea of immersion and it’s relation to engagement was fascinating and I never went just because I was trying to pick up new ideas for the classroom. Mind expanding stuff.

A wee shout out to Claire Chambers who was particularly helpful and to Claire Jarvis for possibly having the solution to all our GPS problems!