Derek E. Baird, M.Ed.

Humanizing User Experience Design Strategies with New Technologies: AR, VR, MR, and AI to Support Student Engagement and Retention in Higher Education

Today, I'm pleased to announce the book chapter I co-authored with Mercedes Fisher, Ph.D. for "International Perspectives on the Role of Technology in Humanizing Higher Education" is now available on both the Emerald Publishing website and Amazon!

Our chapter is focused on using new technologies like AR, VR, Zoom, and AI to support student engagement in higher education.

'The internet is all around us': How children come to understand the Internet

While children are living more of their lives online, little is known about what they understand about the implications of their online participation.

In this report, the Tiana Murray & Rachel Buchanan report on the Best Footprint Forward project conducted at the University of Newcastle (UON), which explored how children come to understand the internet.

Thirty-three children (ranging in age from 10 to 12 years old) from three primary schools in regional Australia participated in focus groups and created a work sample depicting the internet.

Analysis of the focus group transcripts and work samples revealed that while the children’s understanding of the internet was not technical, their knowledge was developed through the social activities that they engaged in online, and influenced by the interactions they have in their ‘real life’ with parents, teachers, and friends.

The children in the study demonstrated ambivalence about the internet; they regularly went online for a variety of purposes but these positive experiences were tempered by concerns and fears. This research presents a nuanced perspective of children’s knowledge of the internet; by rejecting the notion that children are naïve, passive consumers of digital culture, analysis of their understanding reveals it to be balanced and sophisticated.

You can read the full study below. 

Gen Z : The Next Generation of Learners [RESEARCH]

Results of new research conducted in August 2018 by The Harris Poll for Pearson Education.

The report explores the education, learning and media consumption habits and preferences of Generation Z. 

One surprising finding in this report is that Gen Z students still like to have teachers give them printed handouts and paper-based learning resources. So while they're mobile natives, looks like they still enjoy being analog.

This is an interesting and worthwhile report for anyone who works in education technology and is looking to create learning experiences that resonate with Gen Z.

 

 

  

LinkedIn For Good: Youth Development and Social Impact Programs

A recent study conducted by the U.S. Health and Human Services shows that youth aging out of foster care have very low levels of employment and earnings. As a result, many of these foster program youth will end up being homeless. It is estimated that there are currently 1 million homeless and displaced youth in America. Research conducted by the Boston University of Public Health found that a majority of homeless youth still have access to social media and technology.

One vital step we can take towards reducing the impact of aging out of foster care is to help them develop job skills, career resources and, most importantly, the mentoring required to assist them to find employment before they age out of the system. Doing so will greatly improve their both their employment and economic opportunity outcomes.

Ideally, this would be accomplished through 1:1 mentoring, but there are also lots of fantastic youth development resources available online, including on LinkedIn. While primarily designed for the wider youth demographic, these resources are especially relevant for youth currently in the foster care system.

LinkedIn for Students from LinkedIn for Good

LinkedIn has put together an impressive set of resources for youth--both in and out of the foster system--who are preparing to enter the workforce. Created as part of the LinkedIn for Good initiative, this set of social impact resources offers everything from tips on how to create a professional profile, to job seeker tips, best practices on how to network, finding a mentor, along with a huge catalog of online courses to learn new skills.

In 2017, LinkedIn for Good programs reached 1 million underserved youth, veterans, refugees, employees and nonprofits as part of their mission to unlock greater opportunity for all.

Infographic: What Parents & Teachers Need to Know About Virtual Reality

Related

• Student Perspectives on Virtual Reality in the Classroom 
• How Irish Students use Oculus Rift
• The Social Life of Virtual Reality Learning Environments
• Oculus VR for Good
• Top Educational VR Google Cardboard Apps

Trend Watch: Augmented Reality Apps for Education

Last summer, millions of kids discovered the power of Augmented Reality (AR) while using apps like PokemonGo, Snapchat and Instagram.

In light of these socio-cultural changes, educators need to “keep abreast of change” and embrace curriculum design which integrates the authentic ways that students use AR in their “out of school” experiences as a tool that connects them with peers and content as a means to achieve, both short and long term, learning goals.

Like other technologies, AR has the potential to be a powerful tool that support the personalized learning goals of students by bringing scannable content to life in an engaging and cost effective manner.

For a generation that’s been raised on interactive technologies, bringing AR into the classroom and curriculum can also help encourage active engagement and contribute to student retention.

Read the entire post on VR Pop on Medium.

AMAZE.org: Sex Ed YouTube Videos for Teens, Parents and Teachers.

You know that talking with your kids about sex and growing up is important, but it’s tempting to put it off. The reality is that these conversations can’t wait. AMAZE.org takes the awkward out of sex ed. Real info in fun, animated videos that give you all the answers teens actually want to know about sex, your body and relationships.

Fun, Factual & Less Weird Sex Ed

AMAZE.org  is creating fun, factual and age appropriate online sex education videos for young adolescents. AMAZE has collaborated with a group of incredible young animators who are enthusiastic about their mission to create edgy, innovative and compelling videos to help young people learn about reproductive health.

The series of sex ed videos are being produced in conjunction with youth health organizations Advocates for Youth, Answer, and Youth Tech Health and animation studio, The Moving Company, to help break the ice and start these critical conversations so that kids get the accurate information they need. 

Accurate & Non Judgmental Sex Education

In a time where "fake news" fills our kids social feeds, AMAZE.or provides provides kids, parents and teachers a happy medium between accessible, engaging sex ed materials that don't deviate from the purpose of sex ed in the first place: To provide accurate, non-judgmental answers to curious questions.

I was fortunate to work with the AMAZE.org team as a youth and social media analyst during the early phases of this project and I was was really impressed with all the different stakeholders and educators involved to bring AMAZE.org to life.

AMAZE is providing a critical resource for parents and teens and these videos will really help make talking about sex ed, sexual orientation and puberty much less weird and help shift these discussions into a more open, healthy and normalized.

Be sure to check out all the videos on YouTube!

Welcome to Mars: Virtual Reality in the Classroom

There’s some very cool stuff happening out there with virtual reality in education! I've covered some of these classroom VR experiences in other posts, but Welcome to Mars---a new VR program for schools, created by Lockheed Martin, is among the coolest!

“The first people who will visit Mars are sitting in a school today. In fact, the first astronauts will arrive before today’s kindergartners graduate college. To help inspire these students, Lockheed Martin created a one-of-a-kind virtual reality experience.

The Mars Experience Bus is the first immersive VR vehicle ever built and it replicates the Martian landscape. Riders experience a virtual drive along the surface of the Red Planet.”

 

 

Related:

• The Social Life of Virtual Reality Learning Environments
• Oculus VR for Good
• Top Educational VR Google Cardboard Apps

 

Using Virtual Reality as a Pathway to Learning

Virtual Reality as a Pathway to Learning

“Sharing knowledge is a lovely thing.” –Jamie Oliver, The Naked Chef

In my previous blog post, I outlined how technologies like virtual reality, especially for Gen Z students, provides avenues that allow them to engage in a social, collaborative, and active learning environment.

The theory of constructivist-based learning is even more powerful when placed in a social and immersive and spatial context like that provided by virtual reality.

Under this new “digital pedagogy” learners tend to construct knowledge via self-directed and collaborative project based learning (PBL) activities, forming social learning communities, and technologies such as Oculus Rift headsets and virtual reality platforms like MissionV and Google Expeditions.

 

As students go through process of choosing, utilizing, and integrating technology into their projects, it provides opportunities for them to be actively engaged, as well as acquire, share, and make use of community knowledge and showcase their skill sets and contributions.

“What it [VR] offers as a tool for creating worlds and experimenting with some of the ideas underpinning logic and programming that make it exciting — together with the incredible community of users and their creations.” -Tom Chatfield

In addition, collaborative and interactive projects undertaken in a community structure allow students to interact with other members of the class, identify who has a particular skill or expertise they want to acquire, and provides opportunities for them to model and scaffold this knowledge with their peers.

Constructing the Future of Virtual Reality Learning

“The world of reality has its limits; the world of imagination is boundless.” --Jean-Jacques Rousseau

In an evaluation report on the MissionV Schools Pilot Programme in Ireland,  Dr. Conor Galvin, a professor at University College School of Education, found that the use of virtual reality technology in the classroom showed real benefit in tackling students’ social issues.

For example, Galvin points out that the students struggling to being included in their classroom, were able to become accepted by their peers because of their technology skills. Integrating the virtual reality project into the curriculum allowed for shy students ‘come out of their shells’ and boost confidence in students who were previously lacking in confidence in their maths skills.

One thing is clear, as Gen Z move from the classroom to the workforce, it will be increasingly important to deepen our understanding of these burgeoning digital learning styles and prepare educational and training programs (online and off) to meet their learning styles.

If the future for education is going to involve virtual reality, how exactly can virtual reality technology make an impact on the learning process? While in many ways we are just getting started using VR in the classroom, the future is here and it will be exciting to see where it takes us!

The Social Life of Virtual Reality Learning Environments

The Social Life of Virtual Learning

“Perhaps our generation focused on information, but these kids focus on meaning -- how does information take on meaning?" - John Seeley Brown

Early in their seminal work on knowledge management and social learning--The Social Life of Information, John Seeley Brown and Paul Duguid, point out that, “learning requires more than just information, but also the ability to engage in the practice.”

Brown/Duguid further illustrate the active nature of learning by outlining the (action-oriented) steps required for a “newbie” to effectively utilize, integrate, and understand a knowledge base existent within a Community of Practice (CoP) or learning community:

• Become a member of a community
  
• Engage in its practice
• Acquire and make use of its knowledge

When learners fail to be actively “engaged in the practice” they will, in turn, be excluded from the “local topography” of the practice, as well as the opportunity to “understand the CoP from the inside out”—both of which are crucial in the transformation of information into meaning.

Actively Constructing Knowledge in Virtual Reality Learning Environments
“Shifts in students’ learning style will prompt a shift to active construction of knowledge through mediated immersion.”-Chris Dede

Constructivist-based learning, according to Dr. Seymour Papert, “is grounded in the idea that people learn by actively constructing new knowledge, rather than having information 'poured' into their heads.”

Moreover, constructionism asserts that people learn with particular effectiveness when they are engaged in constructing personally meaningful artifacts (such as computer programs, animations, 3D modeling, virtual reality or robots)."

Technologies like virtual reality, especially for Gen Z students', provides avenues that allow them to engage in a social, collaborative, and active learning environment. The theory of constructivist-based learning is even more powerful when placed in a social and immersive context like that provided by virtual reality.

Virtual reality, especially when combined with storytelling, allows the student to participate in the story, develop empathy to experiences outside their current realm of understanding and allows them to be fully immersed in their own exploration and learning.

"The experience of participating in a story, as teller or audience, is typically that of being caught up in it while it is being told...Stories convey meaning about the social context and identity of the teller and audience. However, stories also have an effect on that identity and context." --John McLeod

 

How Irish Students Use VR in the Classroom
“...students are eager and excited about the project, queuing outside the classroom door in the morning.” -St. Kieran Principal Esther Lambe

Students at St. Kieran’s, a school in the Irish town of Broughal, recently went on a field trip to Clonmacnoise, a nearby site with historic ruins. Nothing unusual or exceptional about that, right? This sort of thing happens in schools around the world, right? But wait--there’s more!

What makes this school field trip unusual is what the students did when they came back to the classroom. The students, part of a virtual reality pilot program in Irish schools, used the MissionV platform to create a virtual model of the Clonmacnoise in OpenSim and then viewed it using Oculus Rift headsets.

 

A key element of course design that is often overlooked: designing opportunities (both digital and analog) for students to create social bonds (through interaction) is equally as important as the course content or technology used in a project based learning activity.

In this virtual Clonmacnoise example, these 10-12 year old students utilized both technology (maths, scripting, 3D modeling, programming), creative (archaeology, history, design) and social skills (project management, collaboration, face-to-face interaction) in a constructivist-based project to create a virtual reality experience.

“What it [VR] offers as a tool for creating worlds and experimenting with some of the ideas underpinning logic and programming that make it exciting — together with the incredible community of users and their creations.” -Tom Chatfield

In short, all learning is rooted in relationships. Not technology. Social interaction will continue to be at the heart of any effective constructivist-based or virtual learning environment. I'll explain more about how to use virtual reality as a pathway to learning in my next blog post.

 Related: Top Educational Virtual Reality Apps for Education (via medium.com/@derekeb)

MakerEDU: How To Nurture Creative Mindsets [VIDEO]

Creativity is one of the most important competencies of the 21st Century. Yet, the puzzling question is how to nurture it? Children are creative from the day they are born and the film describes how to support creativity across cultures.

The content is based on the report, Cultures of Creativity, published by the LEGO Foundation.

 

Here's the full report by David Gauntlett and Bo Stjerne Thomsen and 20 leading international experts on play, learning and creativity.

 

Cultures of Creativity LEGO Fonden 2013

Snapchat Social Safety Guide for Parents and Educators [PRIVACY]

Few things strike fear in parents and educators as much as Snapchat. It wasn't too long ago that social technologies like MySpace, Facebook, SMS and camerphones had the power to elicit such a negative response.

But slowly, as parents and educators began to learn more about these new tools and social technologies, they not only embraced them, but many educators began integrating them into their teaching practice.

The Snapchat team has put together a wonderful guide to help parents and educators learn more about the app and help demystify some of the rumors. It's a good starting point to learn more about the app, which is becoming more and more mainstream every day.

The guide also talks about the SnapKidz--the totally private and secure version of Snapchat designed for kids under the age of 13. Snapkidz is a fun way for tweens to privately share photos of camp, that trip to Disneyland or family vaycay with their friends, cousins and even grandma! 

For educators, this guide is a great opportunity to have a discussion with your colleagues in a professional development setting to learn more about Snapchat and how students in your school are using this tool. Who knows, you might even find yourself using the "Our Story" feature to document that field trip!

Happy Snapchatting!


Snapchat Social Safety Guide for Parents & Educators

Gaming to Re-engage Boys in Learning [VIDEO]

In her talk, Ali Carr-Chellman pinpoints three reasons boys are tuning out of school in droves, and lays out her bold plan to re-engage them: bringing their culture into the classroom, with new rules that let boys be boys, and video games that teach as well as entertain. 

 

Introducing finderyU

Findery, and the world, is your classroom!

While it may seem like you just wrapped up finals, packed up the classroom and headed for a well-deserved summer break, the (sad) truth is a new semester is right around the corner!

As you sit on that beach, you may be wondering how can you incorporate more project-based learning activities into your course syllabus and grab the attention of your students who, let’s be honest, have the attention span of a gnat.

Even if you’re not currently enrolled in college, Findery is a powerful informal learning platform where you can tap into the collective knowledge hidden in Findery Notes and learn (or share!)  more about Australia, space travel, candy, San Francisco architecture or anything else that matters to you!

Introducing Findery University

Today I am happy to share the launch of Findery University!

Findery, is a geo-location based website where anyone can share local knowledge, hidden secrets, stories and information about the world around you. Using Findery, your students (or you!) can annotate places in the real world, leave media rich (YouTube videos, SoundCloud audio, Instagram and your own images) notes tagged to a specific geographic location.

You can even embed Findery notes into your class blog or website or share them via Twitter or on your classroom Facebook or Google+ page.

Findery for Students

Findery is a great way to create a multimedia project for just about any class. Demonstrate your learning by adding notes infused with video, images and text along the paths of your explorations. Ask your classmates to contribute their reflections, narrative feedback and resources on your Findery project through the comments.

Be sure to follow @Campus on Findery to discover and contribute notes about student life and campus history. Your notes could capture memories with your friends or pay it forward by joining the Findery Campus Challenge and leaving tips for your current and future classmates!

Findery University for Educators

Here are a few examples of how you can use Findery University to support formal and informal learning:

• Are you a professor of film studies? Why not leave notes on the Findery map about the making of Giant? Or other famous movie locations?

• Studying community supported agriculture?  Investigate and map local food in your area, then leave notes for food sources with commentary on sustainability.

• Have writer’s block?  Explore the notes in a particular region and build a story around the local knowledge of that place.

• If you teach American Literature, create a Set that has Notes with facts, images or videos for books or authors included on your course reading list.

• Encourage observation through illustrating places.  Go on a sketching excursion and post a note with the picture of your sketch.  Tag your notes with #sketchproject to contribute to urban sketching fans on Findery.

• Use Findery as a way to create a living history map. Share a picture of your ancestors at the docks in Liverpool with an excerpt from their diary talking about how they feel about leaving England for America. 

  Share a note with a video clip  about the hazards of transatlantic boat travel in the 1800s and include a passage from their diary about the challenges they faced during the journey. Bring your family history to life!

Enroll in finderyU

1. Go to findery.com

2. Click "Sign Up!" and follow the prompts. Don't be afraid of the FAQs

3. Update your settings, jump in and create your first note, or just start exploring

4. Download the free Findery University handout, or check out more lesson plan ideas at www.findery.com/university

It will be exciting to see how educators use Findery in the classroom, student projects or for your amazing passion projects!

Findery wants to share your Notes and lesson plans with our educator community. Send a tweet @finderyU or share the link on the Findery Facebook page, so they can share your FinderyU contributions!

And, oh--you can find me on Findery, here. 

Facebook for Education: Instagram in the Classroom

 

Here's a new Facebook for Educators handout that covers the basics of using Instagram, part of Facebook, in the classroom.

Feel free to share this, and our other (free!) Facebook Education handouts, with your colleagues, parents, youth pastor, coach or anyone who works with youth.

Related: Learn more about privacy on Instagram or get help with FAQs.

Instagram in the Classroom by Facebook for Educators

 
Click HERE to download the handout! It's free! 

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