SMALLab stands for Situated Multimedia Arts Learning Lab and it was founded by an interdisciplinary team at Arizona State University led by the CEO, David Birchfield. Birchfield has a Doctorate in Music and a background in digital media and performance. He and his team do research on games, K-12 education, assessment, digital media programming, […]
Continue reading SMALLab Posted in: Week 04: Entrepreneur BootcampTagged: K-12 RSS Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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ddubien
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troos
A Review of the NMC Horizon K-12 Report
The NMC Horizon Report is a publication from cooperation between the New Media Consortium (NMC), Consortium for School Networking and the International Society for Technology in Education. The authors indicate the report “identifies and describes emerging technologies likely to have a large impact on teaching, learning, research, or creative expression within education around the globe” […]
Continue reading A Review of the NMC Horizon K-12 Report Posted in: Uncategorized-
gregcamp
Great post,
Sounds like there is lots of useful information in this report that a technology company or entrepreneur would find useful to stay current with trends and to keep their product or service appealing to the market. The problem with technology is that it is a 1 time purchase for the most part and constantly needs upgraded. This is especially true from a public education standpoint where budgets don’t exist that allow technology to be upgraded and maintained properly. If a venture can come up with a low cost solution to this problem or atleast put lots of thought into it as they develop their product or service their chance at success will increase substantially.
Regards,
Greg Campbell
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Deborah S
A really informative summary! As Greg pointed out, it appears the report has a great deal of information that would be useful to educators. I think it’s very helpful that they explained how the items were chosen (a shortcoming of the report I reviewed). Including a prediction about the timeline for general implementation would allow educators to remain close to any new developments with the emerging technology.
Deborah
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janetb
Thanks for the review. I had looked briefly at the Higher Education Edition and it looked promising. I also had noticed the timeline and thought it would be helpful as a rough outline for planning ahead.
I appreciated your comment about the bias in the report. Big business, funding and politics certainly all play their role in educational technology.
Janet
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HJDeW
Tim, when looking at the short list for the NMC K-12 2012 report (http://k12.wiki.nmc.org/file/view/2012-Horizon.K12-Shortlist.pdf), there are significant differences between items identified for K-12 educators and those found in the Horizon Higher Ed report. I found that an interesting anomaly but think that it a reasonable response to varying technological needs and issues at each level of education.
Helen-
Denise
HI Helen,
I too looked at the NMC reports and noticed the difference. I actually thought it was less an anomaly and maybe more of a recognition that K-12 is different to higher education? Just reflecting on the UBC cube – K-12 is a different market focus, has different buyers, and maybe different market status and competition.I thought that there were 3 different NMC reports (including museum education) was a strength of the reports.
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sheza 10:28 pm on June 2, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
I hadn’t heard of SMALLab before you posted this profile, and I think it is fantastic! When Smart Boards came into the classroom it changed the way teachers taught and I think that SMALLabs has the potential to do the same. I liked the introductory video on their main website and I was happy to hear of the the developers say that it is not meant to replace teachers, but enhance teaching methods. I am also happy to read that it has been developed by highly qualified researchers in the subject field related to the game developed. This is definitely something I can see more schools buying into within the next 5 years. I think it will explode into the public education system just like Smart Boards did and CEO David Birchfield will be a very happy man then 🙂
mariefrancehetu 5:02 am on June 3, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Hi Sheza,
I totally agree with you . . . in my own mind any and all technology should not replace the teacher, but enhance teaching and learning methods. I feel SMALLab has great potential to do both. I would absolutely love to have access to these tools for teaching second languages to adults – what a great way it would be to present grammar concepts intreactively – or help students discover how the brain works when translating a word or understand the physicality of pronunciation (how the palate, tongue and lips work together when pronouncing)! I feel using this form of technology to increase embodied learning experiences has endless possibilities.
Marie-France
mariefrancehetu 4:53 am on June 3, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Hello,
I think SMALLLab is an extraordinary learning venture and has tremendous potential to transform the school classroom. My vision and understanding of embodied learning so far has been ‘hands on’ experiences where students actually manipulate material, using their sense of smell, touch, vision, hearing and thus ‘feeling’ the learning experience in a holistic way. It is possible to handle physical objects for many subjects taught, but many principles remain abstract or untangible and this type of ‘virtual’ embodied experience, I believe, could help students experience embodied learning when exposed to these concepts. Out of all the ventures presented here, this is the one I find the most impressive and the one with the most potential. Not only would I certainly invest in this venture, but I feel excited at the thought that this embodied virtual lab could some day become part of all classrooms.
I also thought that David Birchfield’s presentation was excellent. As a speaker he reached out to the audience with confidence, portrayed himself as a regular guy with an extraordinary idea and concept to share. His use of a PPT was well used to support his presentation.
I don’t teach K-12 anymore, but ventures like this one almost make me want to become a primary or high school teacher again . . .
I think it is high time we change the set up of classrooms – the traditional way being student desks on one side of the room (usually in rows) and the teacher at one end. Classrooms need to be more dynamic, they need to become a learning lab and the ‘SMALLab’ concept explores that idea.
Thank you for sharing this learning venture!
Marie-France