4 posts tagged “edutainment techniques”
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
http://www.yeswecansong.com
Here are the lyrics.
It was a creed written into the founding documents that declared the destiny of a nation. Yes we can.
It was whispered by slaves and abolitionists as they blazed a trail toward freedom. Yes we can.
It
was sung by immigrants as they struck out from distant shores and
pioneers who pushed westward against an unforgiving wilderness. Yes we
can.
It was the call of workers who organized; women who reached for
the ballot; a President who chose the moon as our new frontier; and a
King who took us to the mountain-top and pointed the way to the
Promised Land.
Yes we can to justice and equality. (yes we can) Yes
we can to opportunity and prosperity. Yes we can to opportunity and
prosperity. Yes we can to opportunity and prosperity. Yes we can heal
this nation. Yes we can repair this world. Yes we can. Si Se Puede.
We
know the battle ahead will be long, but always remember that no matter
what obstacles stand in our way, nothing can stand in the way of the
power of millions of voices calling for change.
We want change!
We
have been told we cannot do this by a chorus of cynics who will only
grow louder and more dissonant. We've been asked to pause for a reality
check. We've been warned against offering the people of this nation
false hope.
But in the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope.
We want change! I want Change.
The
hopes of the little girl who goes to a crumbling school in Dillon are
the same as the dreams of the boy who learns on the streets of LA; we
will remember that there is something happening in America; that we are
not as divided as our politics suggests; that we are one people; we are
one nation; and together, we will begin the next great chapter in
America's story with three words that will ring from coast to coast;
from sea to shining sea - Yes. We. Can.
Always be careful when you hear someone, regardless of their race, say that Dr. King stood for judging people by the "content of their character." One cannot begin to speak about the content of an individual's character when individuals are still being judged by the color of their skin. For that matter, one cannot talk about the content of one's character when one is judging an individual by their gender, their race, their religion or their ethnicity. One of the things that the mainstream media does not discuss enough is the use of code words that on their face seem innocent, but the group being slighted always correctly diagnosis that you are talking about them. We see this in Israel as Arabs and Jews trade remarks and violence. We see it in Iraq where differing sects of Islam disagree with words and deeds too. We have seen it Ireland where Protestants and Catholics, both Christians, resorted to angry words and violence for years. This is part of what Dr. KIng always emphasized in his rousing and dramatic finish where he encouraged all of God's children to come together in a spirit of unity and love.
Finally, we can look at the current racially charged election where there are prominent African Americans like billionaire BET Founder Robert Johnson and Congressman Charles Rangel making very inflammatory statements as surrogates for the Hillary Clinton Campaign. There is also the controversial words by former President Bill Clinton as he justifiably supports his wife. President Clinton has been so angry that many in his own Democratic Party are seeing him as a divider and conducting himself in an unbecoming fashion for a former President.
Part of the reason that I write this blog is to make sure that we educate through entertainment with technology. I believe that we must hold our elected and appointed officials, as well as our public figures and role models, accountable for engaging in the politics of division. On this special holiday, I think that it is important that we remember that King's first action was one of service in Birmingham to his church, and it was a peaceful. His leadership during the famous bus boycott was all about economics, justice and decency. Once he came out again the war in Vietnam, and supported Muhammad Ali's draft resistance; he became very unpopular with the White House and many of his supporters both black and white. This speech below provides an excellent example of an issue that is just as relevant today in 2008 as it was back in 1968: he spoke out against an unpopular war in Vietnam just as many speak out about an unpopular war in Iraq today.
It is for this reason that I posted his last speech because he was supporting bottom-up change, economic justice, and peaceful demonstration for the garbage workers.The one thing that the tools of edutainment and convergence enable us is to see what people, where they say it, the context in which they say it, and often why they say. Tools like You Tube enable us to see speeches like Dr. King's final speech on demand, so that we do not have to rely on the corporate spin and the mainstream media to tell us how to think! Change is rarely something that takes from the top up; change is often forced upon the society from the bottom up out of necessity. This is what Dr. King was all about; he was willing to go to jail for it; he was willing to be criticized about it; he was willing to lose friends for it; and he was willing to die for it. My question is this: is there something that you feel strong enough about that you are willing to do die for it? Dr. King raised this rhetorical question, can you answer it affirmatively?
This AP story reveals the famous Egyptian boy Pharoah King Tut for the first time in a special enclosed environment in his tomb inside of his pyramid in famed the Valley of the Kings in Luxor, Egypt. The use of special edutainment and convergence techniques from artists, computer animators, scientists, historians, and forensic experts actually produced an image of what King Tut actually looked like while alive. I had an opportunity to see the King Tut collection this summer as part of my research to a museum that utlized edutainment and convergence after interviewing one of my study's participants who is a marketing director for a large academic museum in the University of Texas System. It was amazing what I saw at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia. There was a full multi-media audio tour that one could take while viewing the King Tut exhibit with full descriptions for each part of the tour. It actually cost a little extra, but most meaning about 80% of the visitors paid the extra price and it was a wonderful experience that had voice recording mixed with dramatic music and the exhibit provided the visuals along with a short presentation. We learned so much about Tut that we stayed in the museum and started learning and participating in scientific and interactive exhibits that required us to pull things, do things and move things to demonstrate various scientific principles. On the train ride back to the D.C. area everyone was discussing how much fun the interactive museum was and how much we had learned because of the use of edutainment and convergence. I believe that all museums in the future will be interactive and digital with virtual tours to get you ready before you come. In fact, several museums provide downloadable iPod tours as well as streamed tours of exhibits. In fact, I was able to utilize the Vatican Library and the Library of Congress online to obtain research data when I worked on my dissertation. This is the future of learning and an expansion of entertainment that largely began with the Walt Disney World and Disneyland approach of utilizing edutainment and convergence tools. One can even see that the gaming industry has been quick to utilize edutainment techniques and convergence themes to entice visitors to Las Vegas and how to play games. Two of the most famous examples of historical edutainment is the Luxor Hotel with an Egyptian pyramid and sphinx and Caesar's Palace with a full Roman approach. The obvious question is this: if it can be used to entertainment why can't we use it to educate while entertaining? The answer is that we can! We have the technology to create learners better than they have ever been before in the history of civilization: better, smarter and definitely faster learners with convergence technology!
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