22 posts tagged “convergence”

By Dr. Chris A. Heidelberg, III, Publisher & Producer

I have been so busy this month lecturing publicly, teaching, grading final exams, and getting students ready for graduation that I have not been able to blog like I usually do. However, it is summer and I have plenty to say in the next few weeks. I love the fact that the Pre is coming out this summer and that Apple is upgrading the iPhone and the iPodTouch. The government has an excellent channel on YouTube that is getting plenty of attention and rave reviews on my Facebook page.

I will be giving Social Media 101 on this site over the next few weeks. Just a few things before I get started for my executive friends and managers in the private, public and non-profit sector. First, social media cannot be controlled. Social media is a bottom-up approach to utilizing technology. This means that you will have to trust the folks that you hired to do their jobs well. Second, social media is a conversation and its social, so stop avoiding it, stop complaining about it, and stop saying that you are not going to use it or allow your employees to use it.Third, social media is all about promoting transparency. Social media

 enables a company to appear "human" and approachable. Finally, social media is an opportunity for organizations to shape the conversation about the company by providing something revolutionary: facts! Social media is just that social! People are always going to say things about your organization online. The key is how your organization responds to the comments! There are several well-documented episodes of how social media has transformed an organization by simply providing just the facts.

In the final analysis, social media is all about your state of mind as an organization. You are either going to embrace social media as the President has done to bring government agencies into the world of social media. Or you can let your company fall behind because of the fear of losing control to social media because your organization and you do not understand social media. Just think about what is going to happen if you do not take action using social media. There are so many companies and organizations that have left gift-wrapped opportunities pass get past them because they have been avoiding social media. Social media: embrace it, don't erase it!

Copyright 2009 Edutainment & Convergence 

All Rights Reserved 

By Chris A. Heidelberg III, Ph.D., Publisher & Producer & Isidra Person-Lynn

This was the fourth in a series of interviews with Professor Isidra Person-Lynn. In this interview, I discuss the importance of ease of use when constructing blogs for learning.

Professor Isidra Person-Lynn:

How hard do they say they are to set up?

Me: Actually, blogs are fairly easy to set up; however, I would recommend Vox and Blogger because of their ease of

use despite my affection for Wordpress which creates great looking blogs.

The biggest problem that I had was teaching folks how to load PowerPoints onto the blog. It was fairly simple but I would say approximately one-third of the class did not know how to do this, so I put the instructions online and demonstrated it live in class. In fact, some students figured out how to put all of the PowerPoints up as posts and it looked great.

The other thing that I had to demonstrate was how to load video from YouTube directly in the post, but this was not as big of an issue. Ironically, loading photos did not seem to create a problem.

Overall, it was pretty painless! I just had to keep reminding folks to answer the questions, and post them on the blog so that they would be ready for their final which could be posted on their blog too.

This did two things. First, it provided students with an opportunity to think about what they were writing from a visual and audio perspective and they had to basically create storyboards through video and photo images to tell a story in a more concrete and three dimensional way than basic print can ever do; and it also enabled students to create a paper from my final exam questions just by cutting and pasting legally with citations.

Yes, I tricked them into learning while having fun, but I warned them in the beginning that they would be learning despite my methods. At the end of the day, my students, to a man and a woman, loved my approach and all of them expressed this in very complimentary terms.

                                                       Copyright 2009 Edutainment & Convergence

By Chris A. Heidelberg III, Ph.D, Publisher & Managing Editor & Isidra Person-Lynn

 

I have been contacted by many so many colleagues online over the past few years to explain edutainment & convergence that I finally relented to a series of mini-interviews with Professor Isidra Person-Lynn of West Los Angeles College. Neither one of us can recall who contacted who first online, but that is the point of edutainment & convergence or E & C as Isidra likes to call my techniques and approaches to learning, marketing, communications and technology: edutainment & convergence is collaborative, interactive, intuitive and yes, social.

This is my answer to the first question from Professor Isidra.

Professor Isidra Person-Lynn: Dr. Chris, why did you start blogging?

Me: I must say that when I first introduced the twin concepts of edutainment & convergence during my research in graduate school my professors loved it but some did not totally understand all of its ramifications. However, the department chair and my dissertation chair, Dr. Howard L. Simmons and Dr. Rosemary Gillet-Karam immediately got it and encouraged me from the first day I  entered the program in fall 2003. In truth, I now realize that I was ahead of the technology as far back as 2001 when I predicted what would become the iPhone as my Master's professor reminded me when I debated him on this issue and he told that technology was way off in the future, but I digress LOL!

For me blogging is the future business model for many professors, researchers, authors, businesses, and students

 because of its interactive and immediate nature. This is why Twitter, a micro-blogging tool is so popular! Think about it, you can now tell a story quickly on your blog and take a photo with your iPhone, Blackberry Storm or other smart phone. The significance of Ashton Kutcher beating CNN to one million followers and raising money for hungry people in Africa should not be discounted. This was a shot across the bow of mainstream media during tough economic times. The age of narrow casting is here to stay and that is why professors, researchers, students and businesses need to use these social media tools because they keep you in constant communication on how to refine what you do and create a better product.

I have been using blogs for the entire year at Loyola, and I used it from 2006-2008 with students who interned with me while creating their Master's or undergraduate portfolio. It has been quite successful even with some old school professors. Why? Because one can link in a PowerPoint, photos, videos, audio, music and text with my links in one place across multiple platforms.

                         Copyright 2009 Edutainment & Convergence

By Chris A. Heidelberg III, Ph.D.

Publisher & Producer

I have heard from many of you during my extended absence to focus on running The Center For Internet Research, teaching, researching, writing my book, and producing my new Edutainment & Convergence show which should be airing online in a month. However, I have a new class Introduction To Communications at Loyola College in Maryland. My site has a green look during the semester. I will be using my other sites too! Naturally, I have added Edutainment & Convergence methods to the class. One of my students Julie is now a friend on this site. The final exam will be a combination presentation, online blog on Vox, a Facebook evaluation, and a written research paper that will be comprised of their blogs with research.

For everyone reading this post, your homework today is to review the Barack Obama address to Congress and the Republican response from Governor Bobby Jindal of Lousiana on YouTube, Facebook or any online source. I want you to review each speech and identify their three key messages, evaluate their credibility, evaluate their confidence, evaluate their body language and voice tonality, evaluate their emotional appeal. Finally, explain whether or not they were both effective or ineffective. Who was more effective as a communicator based on your evaluation and explain why? Who was credible based on the facts of what they said and explain why? Do not fear using factcheck.com or org to assist you on this point.

Feel free to Facebook friend me as Doc Chris to keep up with class for the rest of the semester.

 

The end of the fiscal year for the federal government is a really stressful time which often prevents me from writing especially when I busy educating my future edutainment and convergence too in my role as an adjunct professor as part of my post-doctoral work. The recent financial crisis that has swept the world has compelled me to thing about how edutainment and convergence has now impacted each of us on a new front: cyberwar. The recent conflict between Russia and Georgia demonstrated in plain view how potent a weapon cyberwar is in the hands of the technologically superior nation. Cyberwar enables countries to literally attack the central nervous system of a nation quickly, efficiently and below the radar to ordinary people.

There have been other examples of cyber attacks by Chinese hackers on West both in the UK and America. It is no small wonder that the official advertising mantra of the United States Air Force is now stated as air, space and cyberspace. This is why the government has really taken its years of gaming research and applied it tactically for real combat operations. In many cases organizations like ADL, Advanced Distributed Learning, have been leaders in testing games and using simulation for educational and combat purposes for federal and military training.

Here is my revolutionary thought for today: why is it that higher education and K-12 has not embraced gaming and simulation as teaching tools in the web 2.0 world of their students who are digital natives. The simulation and critical thinking skills alone will produce the thinkers and doers who will be necessary to function in the cyberwarfare environment from both a military and corporate perspective. Cyberwarfare is real! Corporations are now facing some of the same problems that nations face in guarding valued assets. The sad truth is this: if one wants to compete in a global economy the educational community will have to develop a new cadre that make a good living and combat the next virtual war by using edutainment and convergence as teaching tools for very real threats. Well my break is over and so is this post.

By Chris A. Heidelberg III, Ph.D.

As Apple CEO Steve Jobs presented the new iPhone yesterday in San Francisco, I had a "eureka moment" where the impact of the iPhone has really impacted two of my favorite things higher education and entertainment. For the purposes of being contrarian I will deliberately start with the field of entertainment.

Despite the fact that there is a real fight between Apple and NBC, the iPhone and the iPod Touch have enabled television viewers to view NBC, MSNBC, and USA Networks programming for free. NBC willingly gave up $15 million dollars in iTunes revenues from Apple because they wanted variable pricing from Apple which insisted on the old $1.99 download model (Apple, 2008; NBC, 2008). Ironically, Apple has begun offering variable pricing to the movie industry now, so maybe the two companies should mend fences for the sake of consumers. For NBC, this is really a lose-lose proposition because NBC and Fox just started the HULU network online to distribute their television and cable shows online (Apple, 2008; Hulu, 2008; Fox, 2008; NBC, 2008; Newscorp, 2008).

NBC should be following the example of Newscorp owned Fox which has been shrewd in selling downloads on iTunes, streaming content on Newscorp owned MySpace, and streaming on Hulu. Fox is not going to give up double digit millions of dollars when it has the most popular social network based on users, a popular Fox site and the HULU site.

The iPhone changed the debate in favor of Apple because even iPodTouch owners can view NBC content for free rather than downloading. NBC may have created more iPhone and iPodTouch owners who can view NBC content and save money during tough economic times. The fact that many young viewers of MSNBC's Countdown with Keith Olbermann are becoming very politically active and are tech savvy has benefited the Obama Campaign which has relied heavily on podcasts, blogs, YouTube and the Internet to campaign and to raise record campaign donations from ordinary Americans. The fact that the new iPhone will operate on AT&T's 3G network which will make the device a fully functional convergence device with less problems than its predecessor which operated on the notoriously slow EDGE network.

The iPhone and competing devices will make it possible for new entertainment content that can air on iTunes,

Amazon, YouTube, MySpace, Facebook, and the Zune Marketplace. Smaller content creators now have outlets for their program offerings, and major networks can also air programming on the third screen first and wait for programs to get popular before airing them on USA, MSNBC or NBC. The iPhone and the iPod have been critical to transforming the political process and the entertainment business from a revenue generating and a pure entertainment perspective.

However, the iPhone and the iPodTouch has already impacted the biggest entertainment business of them all: higher education. If higher education can extend the best parts of its NCAA model to the academic side, it will create a business that will rival the major networks, publishers, and music content providers. Furthermore, this organization would also be a major online player too, since most of the people from the tech world have higher edudational roots.

The iPhone has already impacted the IT departments of many universities such as Duke, Colgate, and Stanford where the voracious appetites of iPhone users have placed new pressures on their networks. Now that the iPhone is $199 and $299 and the iPodTouch works via WiFi, every university will have to brace themselves for the iPhone and iPodTouch onslaught that will be hitting universities this summer and this fall. Research indicates that iPhone users are large users of online data. Do not be surprised when many college IT departments adopt the iPhone platform and the iPhone itself now that the iPhone SDK has opened up the phone to developers who will quickly improve this device through software. This will amount to an upgraded phone every month for those who want to buy.

Finally, the most important reason that higher education will change higher education is the delivery of content. Apple delivers more digital content than anyone in the world, and the company has created a future gold mine with its free podcasts which inevitably will be branded with ads from NCAA corporate sponsors on the academic side. The day will come when Apple, Google, Microsoft and Amazon will all benefit from residuals of ads placed strategically within podcasts. Apple's new iTunesU has been extremely successful in its first full year of operation.

The fact that major schools such as Duke, Stanford, MIT, and others are distributing their content through iTunes speaks volumes of the future of higher education through time shifting. The distance learning industry will also be forced to changed now that students can carry their class in their pocket and retrieve their classes anytime, anyplace and anywhere. The fact that high profile schools like Duke have already bought iPods for their students and now many universities are looking to the same for the iPhone at a cheaper price on a better network with GPS and software updates makes the iPhone an irresistible device for higher education. Now, if I can really convince my colleagues in higher education on the importance of utilizing these tools and making their presentations more interactive we could help stabilize education costs.

Did you hear that sucking sound? That is the sound of big media publishers screaming when colleges begin to create their own digital publishing outlets that will enable professors to teach and publish online simultaneously.
Administrators are going to have problems with the whole tenure process since they love hiring adjuncts on the cheap! The real question becomes this: what will they do when the first academic rockstar professors are born! Even if they win the intellectual property war, which is not a given, many professors will simply jump ship and sign better deals with universities because of the new crop of intellectual property attorneys. Stay tuned because I hear a storm coming!

Now that's edutainment!

By Chris A. Heidelberg, III, PhD.
If you have never been to the wonderful state of Colorado, you may not understand why many people who see the greater Denver - Breckenridge area call it God's country. Viewing the Rocky Mountains for the first time up close is simply a breathtaking and awe-inspiring sight! I also had the opportunity to travel to the Continental Divide in the snow for the first time and it made me think about edutainment and convergence.

While scheduled as a speaker at any event is an honor, I was simply happy just attending the conference as a member of the board of directors of The Center for Internet Research and the Focus On Education Foundation.

The real fun was co-producing the video with Dennis Streeter and Dr. Reid Cornwell who headed the conference.

Since I am at Denver International Airport and preparing to leave for Baltimore, I cannot finish this post in my usual style. However, I would like to state for the record that Innovation 2008 was one of the finest gatherings of intellectual energy that I have ever been privileged to experience. The unique mix of academia, government and private industry in the fields of education and technology shed light on importance of technology in the field of education.

The critical message that Innovation 2008 was able to promote is the notion that educational reform is a micro-effort rather than a macro-effort that can be mandated by government. Individual professors, administrators, businessmen, government leaders and students will be crucial to the adoption of edutainment and convergence on a massive level. At the end of the day, educators, politicians and businessmen must stop blaming the students, and look in the mirror! If students are not learning it is a problem of the education system which has failed to massively update the current system to meet the needs of a digital economy.

If we are committed to really educating our students, we will need to learn about our students, their skill sets, their preferences, and their learning styles.

Fortunately, we can now collect all of this data digitally through instruments as diverse as video games, cell phones, simulators, and video games. Educators have to learn to appreciate the skills that students bring to the learning process, so that these skills can be utilized to enhance the learning experience. Just as business is customer driven, education must be a learner driven endeavor that adopts learner centered approaches advocated by researchers like Barbara McCombs (2003, 2005). When students do not learn and fail in the classroom, we as a society also fail and the consequences have economic, social, political, and psychological consequences.

Educators need to commit to becoming great communicators if we are going to become great educators, and communicators need to be open to the concerns of educators. This conference further cemented my desire to continue the discourse in this area. Professors and teachers from K-20 will be compelled to utilize, learn and include technology, especially new media, as part of the curricula, the classroom and outside of the classroom experience for learners.

Gone are the days where the professor is the star and the sage of the classroom. The future of education requires that professors become the producers and directors of the learning experience, so that the students become the stars, sages and future directors. Often teaching a given topic or subject is an excellent way to learning a subject. Finally, the fact that the Pentagon and NASA have utilized simulation and gaming for approximately forty years for learning purposes should be taken seriously by higher education and integrated into the learning environment.

One of the best things that I heard from one of the speakers was that curricula should include rigor, relationship and relevance. Educators have to connect the dots with these three r's by placing relevance first when educating learners. Once relevance has been established learners can develop a relationship with the content that  they are learning. Then and only then can learner emulate the video gaming model of increasing the rigor as the gamer, or in this case the learner, proceeds through the embedded learning within the game. If educators grasp this model we will all be able to exclaim three of my favorite words, "Now that's edutainment!"

Specific Findings

By Chris A. Heidelberg, III

    The official report of findings for my dissertation has been released today. The study was a eleven month national qualitative study of eight entertainment professionals from New York City, Hollywood, and the San Antonio/Austin, Texas, area. The study was conducted entirely through the Internet and with new media on location throughout the country. It was open-sourced research, and all eight media professionals agreed to reveal their identities and they fully collaborated with me on this study and the electronic web sites that were created as a result of this research with the guidance and support of the participants.The research obtained was utilized in the design of this site and the official research site at http://edutainmentconvergenceresearch.vox.com is the official study site.

    The participants found that edutainment and convergence can be utilized in higher education through a variety of sensory-based entertainment techniques such as the following: role playing, drama, music, art, dance, song, spoken word, poetry, rap, the Internet, iPods, iPhones, Blackberry’s, Treos, cell phones, blogs, websites, social networking sites, social bookmarking sites, online software; video sharing sites, podcasting, vlogging, and video games.

 

The literature supported this finding by participants (Apple, 2007; Blackboard, 2007; Bonk & Dennen, 2005; Bonk & Wisher, 2000; Farkas, 2006, 2007; Gates, 1995, 1998; Gee, 2003a, 2003b, 2004, 2005; Microsoft, 2007; Prensky, 2001, 2006; Tapscott & Williams, 2006; Vise & Malseed, 2005; YouTube, 2007).  They were prone to use the word, socialization in many of their conversations: the meaning of this word was face-to-face interaction.

The participants also found that the convergence technologies (such as the Internet, iPods, iPhones, iTunesU, Blackberry’s, Treos, cell phones, blogs, Blackboard, websites, social networking sites, social bookmarking sites, video sharing sites, podcasting, and video games) could be transferred to higher education.

 

The research also has supported this finding, and several elite universities such as Duke University, MIT, Stanford, and Cal-Berkeley are now utilizing iTunesU, iPods, iPhones, Blackboard, blogs, websites, podcasting, cell phones, and YouTube to distribute classes and other educational content on-demand via streaming, downloading, surfing the web, or direct viewing (Apple, 2007; Blackboard, 2007; Bonk & Dennen, 2005; Bonk & Wisher, 2000; Duke University, 2007; Farkas, 2006, 2007; Gates, 1995, 1998; Gee, 2003a, 2003b, 2004, 2005; Microsoft, 2007; MIT, 2007; Prensky, 2001, 2006; Stanford, 2007; Tapscott & Williams, 2006; University of California at Berkeley, 2007; Vise & Malseed, 2005; YouTube, 2007).

The participants focused many of their comments on the military, which has spent billions of dollars in research dollars on video gaming and simulation technology to transform military and civilian government agencies into digital entities.  They contended these technologies are effective learning and training tools that have worked on the battlefield, civilian agencies, and government and corporate classrooms.

These findings have also been supported by the literature (Bonk & Dennen, 2005; Bonk & Wisher, 2000; Duke University, 2007; Farkas, 2006, 2007; Gates, 1995, 1998; Gee, 2003a, 2003b, 2004, 2005; Microsoft, 2007; MIT, 2007; Prensky, 2001, 2006; Stanford