Author: Mark Reed

Hello fellow learning venture students and learning facilitators. This is my eighth MET course and the end is in sight but I do not find myself in a hurry to end this experience other then the timeline as I feel this is a lifelong learning development. I continue to be optimistic that I will be able to integrate the experiences I have had in the MET program to meet and motivate the increasingly diverse learning needs of my students. My main challenge continues to be finding time to develop my skills but then again who doesn't. I live on Vancouver Island in a place called Mill Bay and I teach courses at the secondary school in Duncan. Currently they are Sci and Tech 11, First Nations 12, Planning 10 and remedial math. I look forward to working with you all through this course.

Mark Reed

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Mod12: Venture Forum Uncategorized

Implementing Digital Technologies in my School District

The term “digital divide” has been used to describe many situations that have occurred in response to the increasing use of digital technologies in education. My pitch has taken the form of a review of the District Technology Plan for the district I work in. Many people involved in this course have expressed points of view that support the way their experience in the MET program has contributed to their views on education. How do we as educators facilitate change in our classrooms, schools and district to reflect what we feel to be important developments in education based on the affordances provided through digital technologies? If you are interested in facilitating change in your environment to enable learners to utilize these new tools for learning then by reviewing existing plans and providing input regarding technology implementation your knowledge and experience can make an impact.

Please view my report here

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Mod06: Open Source

Would you support implementing FOSS/OSS in your work environment?  To me this is timely as I was taken into this debate in working through some challenges for my Assignment 1 submission.

I wanted to post this succinct and valuable summary that helped me in developing some perspective on this debate. A couple of points that have been touched on through the discussion for this module and hold for me are the advantage of having access to the code to tailor the program to an organization’s needs, as described by Cindy in her post. The other area is in terms of support I often get these message to report a problem to Microsoft but where do these go – I have never had any indication that they were received or addressed. Finally, it is interesting that I can open a Microsoft document with Open office but in my experience the opposite is not true. A subtle point that Sophia Peters makes in her analysis is the perceived idea that proprietary software is more reliable, easier to use, and better supported. From what I hear this is not true. When open source producers do not have advertising budgets they may suffer in the public relations campaigns waged by the advertising budgets of proprietary software that have everything to lose. The only area I am working on resolving as an issue with open source is the security aspects of having student groups working on these systems – are they as secure in terms of identity and published materials as the proprietary packages?

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Mod03:The Global Learning Technologies Marketplace

Moroccan potential and elearning

The open nature of this weeks discussion led me through many various searches until I found a site that included elements I was looking for: relatively recent, elearning, business and developing environment.

 http://www.medibtikar.eu/+Development-of-the-E-learning-in+.html

This article seems almost like a public relations piece but it contains a number of conditions, according the cube analysis model, indicating that the country of Morocco is a viable and sound market for the development of electronically supported learning.

Market Focus – Private and Public institutions providing e learning for students and employees. I think that areas of vocational training and higher education would provide the major focus area with public schools being targeted at a later time.

Types of Offerings – The majority of use would most likely come in the form of services or  “flexible training opportunities to individuals, businesses, and government bodies”.

Who is the buyer? – Increased government sponsorship for elearning projects and the establishment by the finance ministry of a distance learning service indicates a solid ‘lighthouse’ customer. As well, the president of Ibn Zohr University is an advocate for the establishment of a Virtual Moroccan Campus.

 Global Markets– I would infer that the infrastructure required to support the development of elearning is not in place as of yet, but Morocco seems to be stable enough and indications from the growing use of information technology favor the continued development of communication technologies including Internet.

Development of the Market– I suspect that at this time Morocco is a market that supports the import of content & infrastructure, although national policies and the need for local content would favor indigenous suppliers if they could meet the needs of the market. It would be interesting to explore why there is such a high cost for the development of training platforms and modules. Is it because these elements have to be imported from other countries or is it due to problems with local companies that have been formed?

Learning Technology Competing with Other Forms of Learning – In this aspect of the cube learning technologies are competing with existing systems. It has been deemed necessary to support the implementation of elearning with personal tutors and it should be recognized that implementations of elearning would complement conventional training already in place.

Anyone been to Morocco lately? What do you think?

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Uncategorized

Applying the cube to E-line ventures

http://www.elineventures.com E-line ventures.com is a venture dedicated to the creation of digital entertainment that engages and empowers.

According to their website E-Line is currently developing several original games and comics. The focus for these projects is to be fun, relevant and make meaningful impact in the areas of learning, health and youth empowerment.

At this time the strength of this venture is in the personnel the E-Line team features. Described as “seasoned executives who’ve helped build some of the world’s leading game and digital comic franchises as well as social entrepreneurs who are committed to harnessing popular media for impact.”
Face 1: Market Focus
- Public schools (K- 12) Although the concept of gaming is not exclusive to young people aged K-12 there seems to be a strong base for interest from this group based on the statistics quoted on the eline website (stated below but not supported by a documented source) and through personal experience of how many young people gravitate to and enjoy computer based gaming environments.
97% of kids in America play computer & video games
86 million gamers visited casual gaming sites in December, 2008
The game industry is a $30+ billion global business that experienced 20% growth in 2008, despite the down economy.
There are approximately 100 million Nintendo DS handheld game machines and 50 million Nintendo Wii consoles which offer great opportunities for family friendly gameplay.Face 2: Types of Offerings – Services/Content
 “Talkers and Doers” is one example of a game designed to empower youth who are at risk for dropping out of school and give them tools and motivation to become young entrepreneurs. This game seeks to utilize fun and relevant gameplay with the integration of real- world mentors, opportunities and resources. This company seems to be going through a morph as indicated by the soon to be released sections of their website “view all eline game projects” and “view all eline comic projects”. From my review I cannot determine if this project is open to creating games/comics for their customers or if they do market research to inform them of what gaming/comic content development would be the most marketable. I am presuming the later although they may be open to original projects if adequately compensated. Also I am presuming that the games are web based requiring adequate infrastructure and computers to run them.
Face 3: Who is the Buyer? – Learning bought Centrally – Local Guide offers to Learners My interest in gaming environments would be to provide engaging and valuable learning experiences to my students. According to the website for E-line the following list are examples of organizations or groups for whom games with real-world impact can significantly accelerate their mission and outreach:
Foundations
Non-profits
Educational institutions
Government
Documentary filmmakers
Book publishers
Corporations (CSR)
Philanthropists
Social Entrepreneurs
E- line does not give an adequate explanation for how these groups would utilize their services. They are marketing a service for building customized content but evaluation of how well a product is accomplishing the goals set out by the customer needs to be addressed.
Face 4 – Global Markets – Wired Anglophone Countries Potentially this product could be used anywhere a computer had adequate memory and processing to run the game program (assuming it is not net based) but if having adequate internet support is a requirement the market would be restricted.
Face 5 – Development of the Market – Market Only Supports Custom work or Indigenous Suppliers The market for this product seems to be extremely competitive and based on the customer’s ability to buy the product. A game simulation can be adapted for other countries and culture and may be valuable in terms of a basic model but could easily be ripped apart and rebuilt as a clone of the original product. Therefore, this company needs to work where copyright laws will protect the content of the game/comic.
Face 6 – Learning Technology Competing with Other Forms of Learning A key element for this learning technology is the appeal that games and comics hold for young students. Currently both forms of learning are elements of popular culture. Why Nintendo would not start to develop this type of product should it become lucrative enough seems to be answered in that different potential customers may require unique elements and circumstances to be included in their learning product (game or comic) to maximize it’s effectiveness. This could be accomplished but there is not a clear formula as to what the costs would be. Also programs such as comic life allow students to create their own comics, which is a more extensive learning process then taking in a comic that has already been prepared.

Your Choice Ingenia or Recombo?

In my comparison of Recombo 2005 and Ingenia both CEO’s appear to be driven, qualified and charismatic in their pitches but as a result of David Vogt’s scaffolding post I will attempt to describe why the representation of Recombo by Brad Mcfee seems to be a more salient company for my investment over Ramona’s pitch for Ingenia.

Both companies do not describe their management team in an effective manner but I feel this is appropriate given the succinct element of a pitch. The Business model outlined by Recombo markets a specific technology tool (content integration router) which in my mind is a positive quality because as Brad Mcfee states retains the element of “focus, focus, focus” and as Byron Kask states in his weblog entry maintains an element of  “not being too diversified”. Another strong point is the notion of incorporating incentives into their contracts, which will encourage other customers to use their product. This seems like a clearer picture then the one pitched by Ramona where the main features of this plan are based on indicators of “lots of potential money”. She does a good job of clearly presenting and outlining why Vietnam is a good potential market. As well, the provision of a plan for addressing the economic security of the Ingenia venture through links to Asian Development Bank, an Australian private university and Japanese investment are sound points but to me the prospect of working in the Vietnamese market is somewhat more of a risk although potentially more lucrative in a quicker timeframe.

Overall, the market readiness may be more broad scale for Ingenia but as Ana Cecilia Tagliapietra explained in her weblog the challenges of the Vietnam market and the non-exclusive nature of their product are significant challenges. In contrast the exclusive nature of Recombo’s technology, their clientele, and commitment to customer satisfaction/success before expansion sounds like a better approach. Ingenia’s diversified approach of targeting solid customers in a be there first strategy as opposed to Recombo’s focused and steady approach is as much a choice in investment philosophy as it is a choice which CEO presents the best pitch for the best business opportunity. But for my investment I would go with the Recombo technology.

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Questions & Answers

A Bit lost

Hello

I think the idea of looking ahead is important with these assignment dates quickly emerging.

1. I am not able to find an outline for the upcoming assignments 1 and 2 on the blog site.

2. I have the names of the group members but do not see the email addresses for beginning our group collaboration.

Thank you

Mark

Categories
Mod01: Introductions

Hello everyone – looking forward to our learning ventures

Hello fellow learning venture students and learning facilitators. This is my eighth MET course and the end is in sight but I do not find myself in a hurry to end this experience other then the timeline as I feel this is a lifelong learning development. I continue to be optimistic that I will be able to integrate the experiences I have had in the MET program to meet and motivate the increasingly diverse learning needs of my students. My main challenge continues to be finding time to develop my skills but then again who doesn’t. I live on Vancouver Island in a place called Mill Bay and I teach courses at the secondary school in Duncan. Currently they are Sci and Tech 11, First Nations 12, Planning 10 and remedial math. I look forward to working with you all through this course. Mark Reed

I really had to  try and add some text to my post as I was a bit tire last night and was having some trouble trying to understand why the text was  not appearing. These technical learning curves seems to be the theme of my MET experience as my pictue moves across the screen and I am not sure what I am typing thank goodness for spell check. Anyway I did not want to  portray myself as too much of a minimalist although as our professors have pointed out succinct is great. I added some details to my profile but I am not sure where others would access this. I have enjoyed reading everyone’s introductions and am impressed with the caliber of of the experience members in this learning community have. Well on to next week thanks for your patience.Photo 628

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