Deep Play « explore. create. share.

24Jan

Just Shoot Me

Abstract: As an introductory activity, Just Shoot Me, is specifically designed to immerse students in transformational learning, a theme that was emphasized throughout the entirety of the course. Students were introduced to these themes through an activity that emphasized the cognitive skill of deep play. The activity required students to take a photograph of themselves that demonstrated an aspect of their personality or interests, and then share it with the class as a way of introducing themselves. In order to complete the activity successfully, students had to engage in deep play by thinking about their concept of self in new and different ways.

Description: Shortly after the beginning of class, students were given an hour to go outside of the classroom and take a photograph that represented themselves in a unique way. The restrictions were that they could not take a traditional “head shot” type photograph, but one that included some context or artifiacts that were meaningful in some way.

Student Examples

07Sep

Deep Dive MAET Style 47 Hour QF

After watching the Deep Dive videos about the design group IDEO (part 1, part2, part3), two “design groups” were formed (7 students in each group) to embark on the longest QF in the history of MAET.

Assigned on Monday morning of the final week of the MAET overseas program, these groups were asked to created the following by Wednesday morning at 8:30:

- Eight Web based multimedia introductions to each of the sections developed on the companion site for our text Sparks of Genius: http://sparks.wiki.educ.msu.edu/
(that is, the introductions could be any technology that can be embedded in a Web page (video, prezi, audio, combinations, etc.))
- These eight sections related to Sparks chapters as follows: Thinking Differently (chapters 1 and 2); Perceiving (chapters 3 and 4); Patterning (chapters 6 and 7); Abstracting (chapters 5 and 8); Embodied Thinking (chapters 9 and 10); Modeling (chapters 11 and 12); Playing (chapters 13 and 14); and, Synthesizing (chapters 15 and 16).

Project specifications:

- Each individual introduction should be one minute or less

- Each set of eight videos for each group should follow the same genre, approach, style, theme, etc. (that is, team 1 was to design a cohesive set of eight videos, and team 2 their own cohesive set based on a different approach)

- Each introduction should be designed to entice, encourage, compel, or otherwise convince K-12 teachers to read that specific section (collection of two chapters) of Sparks and the companion wiki pages

- Ideas for this project were to be focus grouped with year 1 and year 2 cohort students

Team specifications:

- Each team needed to determine a “lead adult” to lean on when guidance and structure are needed

- Each team will had $25,000 to spend in developing their project. This money could be spent on consulting with course instructors, or on focus groups with year 1 or year 2 students. (Creative questions cost $1,000 per question – technical or content questions cost $500 per question. Each 15 minute focus group with year 1 or year 2 students costs $1,000).

Evaluation:

- On Wednesday morning, all sixteen videos will be shown to a panel of experts. They provided a rating for each set of videos based on the following:

1. Overall creativity of the project
2. Creative use of technology in the project
3. Content accuracy based on Sparks
4. “Quality” as defined (or not defined) by Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

- Students were told only one set of videos would be selected for integration with the wiki, and that they would be “rewarded accordingly”

Hints given to groups:

- Focus on creativity, technology, and teaching. Don’t forget about the technology piece in your project (both in use and message).

- Because eight sections will be similarly themed, the “idea” for how to present you arguments is critical. Don’t move forward until you think you have that nailed down. Use some of the strategies from Deep Dive to make sure it is a killer idea.

27Dec

Investigating new technologies

Abstract: In small groups, students develop a report on one of several Web 2.0 applications, their uses, and their potential for education. As individuals, they reflect and report on the application’s potential use they perceive personally for their teaching/work/professional website.

Description: This activity is designed to be done in two parts over a two-week period: the first with a small group during the first week, and the second part working individually during the second week. As will become clear, you could begin thinking of the individual part as you are involved in the group work.

In a different activity (“subverting presentation tools”), we explored how a pretty common software program (PowerPoint) could be used creatively. With this assignment we shall try to look at some emerging technologies. Each group will be assigned a particular technology (see below). Each of these technologies is part of the Web 2.0 phenomenon. Web 2.0 technologies refer to “a supposed second-generation of Internet-based services — such as social networking sites, wikis, communication tools, and folksonomies — that let people collaborate and share information online in previously unavailable ways” (source: Web 2.0 article on Wikipedia). Here’s a presentation specifically aimed at Web2.0 for Education.

Research and report on the technology we assign to your group by due date (…)
-Cloud Computing (Writeboard, Google Apps, Zoho etc.): Group 1
-Social Bookmarking (such as del.icio.us, Furl, or StumbleUpon): Group 2
-Social Software (such as FaceBook & MySpace) : Group 3
-Social Libraries (such as LibraryThing & citeyoulike.org): Group 4
-Social media (such as the photo annotation tools on Flickr, Video annotation on Voice Thread etc.): Group 5

-other technologies (___________________): Group 6
First: Introduction to a specific Web 2.0 technology.
Your group should do some research to find out about the assigned Web 2.0 technology. Share and discuss as much useful and reliable info as you can, and then, as a group, develop a written report about it. This report should focus on the following:

1. What is the technology? i.e. what is it about? what does it do?

2. What is it being used for? i.e. what are the most common uses? what are some of the more creative and interesting uses? what are people saying about it?

3. Provide some concrete examples of this technology in use (links to sites, examples etc.), particularly in the area of education

Remember this is the web, so don’t feel like you have to create everything from scratch. Feel free to use quotes (with appropriate citations, of course), and links in an intelligent manner.

After you’ve put together this report, post a copy of it on your website. As you are doing only one report as a group, this can be posted on any or all of your group member’s web spaces, as you choose. A draft of this should be completed by the following due date (…).
Second (if applicable): How would you use this technology in your final project (here, the big Kahuna)?

The next step in this assignment is to consider the Web2.0 technology assigned to your group and think about how you could use it in your own teaching/work/website. How would you do it? Would it even work? Then write up your plan, format it as a webpage and post it to your work-space.

Note: Just in case the technology assigned to your group does not make any sense from the point of view of your topic please feel free to choose any one from the other groups. [You do have to stick to one of those we have listed.] Of course, you can get a quick refresher course in the other technologies by visiting the websites and draft reports created by the other groups.

Final versions of the group report and the individual reports should be posted to your websites by (…).

Examples of student work:

History of the assignment:

Suggestions for grading etc.:

22Dec

55 Fiction: Writing a short short story

Abstract: Students create an original 55-word short story and reflect on their thought processes in dealing with creative constraints, then share and vote for favorites to explore the transaction between developer and consumer of creative works.

Description: Your task is to write a short story. A really short story.

There are just two constraints. First, the story must be original. Second, your story has to be just 55 words long. That’s it. 55 words, no more, no less.

We did not make up these constraints. As it turns out, 55 Fiction, as this style is called, is a serious literary form. A quick search on Google for “55 Fiction” will reveal more sites devoted to this arcane art than you can shake a stick at. In fact if you think 55 words is restrictive, be thankful we did not ask you to write a story in 6 words (yes that is a genre of fiction too). The most famous and touching of 6 word stories is by, none other than, Hemmingway who wrote the following story: For sale. Baby shoes. Never used.

There is one additional requirement: Keep track of how you went about writing this story. How did you came up with the idea? How did your thoughts develop? What problems did you face? When did you see a solution? How did one idea lead to another? What did the entire process feel like? Frustrating? Liberating? A pain in the donkey? Take some notes of how the story evolved and reached its final stage.

Once you have written this story, post the story and a short writeup about the genesis of the story to the discussion board.

Note: We must warn you that writing such stories can be quite addictive. So don’t be surprised if you churn out more than one story. Feel free to share all or some of them. However, you HAVE to designate ONE (and only one) as being your official entry.

Follow-up activity:

Have the class vote on their favorite story, along with a rationale for why they picked the one they did. Debrief the activity with a discussion on why this art form teaches us quite a bit on creativity:

It is a creative act
It is a communicative act
It is an aesthetic act
It is constrained in multiple ways
- by the medium
- by constraints of time
- by genre or the self imposed constraint of fitting everything in 55 words
The designer is being limited in what he/she can do
The reader does half the work
Meaning making/Aesthetic quality
- Is a transaction
- Between the reader and the designer
Design can both be fun and frustrating.

Examples of student work:

By Joost Guttinger:

Love and Hate
4×4 Toyota Landcruiser Jeep, 1985, perfect condition. Not for sale (yet). Love. Taking the off-roads, driving to my favorite climbing spots and virgin waterfalls. Hate. Buying new tyres, bribing African policemen, and cracking my windshield after hitting a pothole too fast and too hard. My Toyota, Love and Hate, but mostly Love.

By Lisa Siesser:

I just purchased the black boots I described in my last conversation.
A last conversation about the future that we shared.
While you were thinking about a future that was not to be.
And we all avoided thinking about the future that is.
I think that you must have known I would be wearing them.

By Nycki Cuddie:

“Agobiada,” she thought to herself. Overwhelmed. Never before had this feeling struck with such vengeance. Five seconds of panic and two deep breaths, then she knew what she had to do. She looked up, a dazzling smile on her face, and walked nonchalantly into the room and pretended to be someone else for twenty minutes.

21Dec

Video Voicemails

Abstract: By producing and publishing short video clips on the class website, teachers can create a sense of presence and highlight important class concepts and activities from a distance.

Description: Video voicemails are a great, quick way to stay in touch with students in online or hybrid courses, or when traveling in face-to-face courses, ensuring that students know the instructor is still present in the course. Such brief (roughly 2 minute long) clips are easily created using a FlipCam or the PhotoBooth on Mac to record the video, but any digital camera with video capture will work. The video voicemails help create the connection between student and instructor and are also a nice outlet to reinforce important concepts/theories, address confusion, and create a class culture.

Just remember, keep them short! Anything beyond the 2 minute mark will move it beyond “voicemail” and turn it into a “regular” lecture.

As an assignment, students can be asked to create a fun-and-informative sample video voicemail for a class of their choosing, taking into account the background of their class, the time frame in which it would be sent to students, the topic of the course at the time, and making good choices about what to include and what to highlight given the tight timeframe.

Examples of Student Work: [INSERT THE TWO LEIGH VIDEOS]

Assignment History:

Grading Suggestions:

21Dec

“Playing Tag”

Abstract: This face-to-face activity replicates online social networking without the medium – by “tagging” oneself and fellow networkers in the room using sticky notes, enabling a new perspective on what usually happens online.

Description: Analog Social Networking

Basic steps of the exercise:

Participants in the room are invited to put business cards/ID cards on their chairs
They then tag themselves with keywords on sticky notes
Going around the room, they network by discussing their tags, words in common, and
They add more sticky notes to their own tags and tag each other as well
After everyone’s met a substantial amount of people, debrief

This exercise deliberately takes the technology out of networking in order to highlight different aspects of what occurs online. The National Writing Project Annual Meeting has used this activity originally, recreating a social networking experience by actually socially networking with the people – strangers with a shared interest area – in the room. By doing so, the cognitive tasks of what occurs in online environments became visible in new ways. In online social networking, our interactions may have become so commonplace as to become invisible, whereas taking the online-networking mechanisms (here the reliance on tags) back into the face-to-face world, we become aware of them again because they are now somewhat “strange.”

Thus, going around and discussing one’s tags, participants are able to make new connections and further our own learning, both about content as well as the networking process more generally.

Debriefing can be done with the lens of game[HK1] and play theory, highlighting the risk-taking that is necessary to really integrate something new. Failing[HK2] to master something, especially something challenging, should be encouraged, because it is through failure that we learn. When we learn through trial and error, we make that learning part of ourselves, those neural pathways become set, and we have a new piece of knowledge that also has meaning. Facts and how-to’s are immediately available from a quick Google search, but to integrate that learning into our psyche: that has stickiness. We won’t forget.

Fostering play and risk-taking is important especially for adult learners. Most of us teachers were really good at school and loathe getting “Fs.” But with technology, there are no grades, only the ability to puzzle through a tricky problem and come to a solution. And so we play, we fail, and we try again.’

Examples of Student Work:

Tags picture

Assignment History: Adapted from Paul Allison, Bud Hunt, and Chris Sloan (original session at the National Writing Project Annual Meeting, 2010)

[HK1]Is there a “game and play theory” – don’t game theory and play theory make pretty different claims if taken individually?

[HK2]Does this relate to either of the theories mentioned? Clarification may help.

29Oct

Album Cover

Abstract: Using various random entries on various social media sites, students create truly unique album covers for a hypothetical band.

Description: Congratulations on your band making it BIG! Now you need to get a cover ready for your band’s debut album. For this quickfire you will be using image editing tools to create a cover for your Band’s new album.

Activities:

1 – Go to Wikipedia. Hit “random”
or click
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random The first random
Wikipedia article you get is the name of your band.
2 – Go to Quotations Page and select “random quotations”
or click
http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3
The last four or five words of the very last quote on the page is the title of your first album.
3 – Go to Flickr and click on “explore the last seven days”
or click
http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days
Third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.
4 – Use Photoshop or similar (Photoshop online, sumo paint, etc) to
put it all together. PAY ATTENTION TO DESIGN & FORM – Image size should be 600 x 600 pixels with a resolution of 72 pixels per inch (ppi)
5 – email the photo to your instructor/post on blog

Examples of Student Work:

29Oct

Haiku – Stop Motion

Abstract: A French Haiku (short poem) is to be visualized in a 30-second video using stop motion techniques.

Description: You will be placed in teams of four and given a haiku (in french) to visualize using stop motion techniques. (You may have to use Babelfish (or Jean Pierre) to translate the haiku.)

You will be given you a brief tutorial on how to make a basic stop motion video using the tools you have been exploring for your iVideo. You may choose to do it with one of the tools you are (getting) familiar with OR you can take things to the next level and choose to use one of these three tools:

http://www.kudlian.net/products/icananimate/
http://boinx.com/istopmotion/overview/
http://www.stopmotionpro.com/

This is one of those “trick” scenarios…you have to decide if adding a new technology to the mix is worth the stress – do you want to focus on the tech or the content?

The video must be :30 seconds long (+/- 1 second)

You must have 2 title screens, one with the names of your group members and one with the text of the haiku. (These do not count towards the length of your video.)

After the tutorial you will have the several hours to work solely on the Quickfire. Finished videos will be collected on a hard drive for a viewing party.

Examples of Student Work:

GROUP A

Parlant avec l’océan
coquillage contre l’oreille
- la petite fille.
-Jean-Louis Bouzou

GROUP B

La pluie a volé
le parfum des lias
lune rousse
-Clod’Aria

GROUP C

à la cloche du matin
combien de feuilles as-tu encore perdues
cerisier dans la brume
-Pierre Courtaud

GROUP D

Juste un sac
et la lune…
Et de folles branches à l’arbre
-Jean Marc Demabr

GROUP E

Fonte des neiges
Le vieil épouvantail
a les pieds dans l’eau
-Bruno Hulin

Just Shoot Me

Deep Dive MAET Style 47 Hour QF

“Playing Tag”

Album Cover

Haiku – Stop Motion

LESSON ARCHIVE

DESCRIPTIONS

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