Animation and Learning

Let me start by base lining my perceptions:  I take graphics to mean visual presentations; they may be animated (in motion), or static. Animation: a motion oriented representation of a process or other interaction. Simulation: allows a participant to interact with that process or interaction.  That is not to say that animations can’t be interactive.  Mouse roll overs can reveal addition nuances and layers to the presentation.  I point this out as technologies can cross over former “boundaries” and it can become very confusing as to just what you are discussing.  I found Richard Mayer’s work on Instructive Animation to be very illuminating. Dr. Brady made the point last week that humans are visually oriented, so visual materials – such as videos – are very effective in teaching.

Mayer takes that a step further – he found that a combination of visual and audio media allowed for the greatest transfer of information and highest retention level.  Theories that support this include “dual coding”: “humans possess distinct information- processing systems:  one that represents information verbally and one that represents information visually”.  Discussion includes the fact that working memory is limited to five or seven items.  If a learning module capitalizes solely on visual activation, as with graphics and written text, you overload that processing system. On the other hand, by splitting the media between visual approaches and audio (spoken words as opposed to written), you activate both channels and reduce overload.  I like the fact that much of Mayer’s work is grounded in cognitive psychology.  It is all too easy to assume social learning or social constructivist experiences encompass the needs of the learner.  We must remember that we are beings with specific processes and limitations. It does little good to design collaborative learning experiences enhanced by social presence if the message – the lesson itself – cannot be properly encoded and added to the individual’s knowledge base.

I find Mayer’s 7 Principles of Multimedia for Learning very helpful while designing a learning experience. The above principle of words and pictures is called the Multimedia Principle; students construct both verbal and pictorial mental models.  Spatial Contiguity suggests that corresponding words be placed in proximity to avoid using cognitive resources to search a page or screen for relationships.  Temporal Contiguity informs us to show visual/audio words simultaneously with pictures so that mental representations of both can be held in working memory at the same time.  This makes the most use of the dual coding.  Again, it should be stressed that audio words be used over text in conjunction with graphics for the best understanding and retention – this leads to the principle of Modality.  Too much a good thing can also hinder cognitive processing; the use of written text, audio, and pictures will not improve learning, but actually hinder it as again the visual channel becomes overloaded. Finally, Mayer offers the Personalization Principle; you need to know your audiences before you prepare your materials.  Recall Gagne’s 9 events of instruction; one is to activate prior knowledge.  If your audience is made up of low-level learners (learners with little prior knowledge), your materials will need to be more detailed and focused.  If your audience is made up of high-level learners, “their prior knowledge will compensate for lack of guidance in the presentation”.  Without knowing your audience, you run the risk of over simplifying – and boring the high knowledge learners, or not providing enough detail and losing the low-level learners.

Mayer’s work seems to explain the effectiveness of so many You Tube videos: there is visual activity as well as audio commentary, appealing to the dual coding.  So, if You Tube is such a good fit, why do we want to bother with animation, the “rapid display of a sequence of images to create an illusion of movement” (Wikipedia).  As Dr. Brady pointed out in his podcast, the answer is simplification.  Would a video of the heart pumping be as clearly seen and understood as the blood flow illustrated by Hemo The Magnificent?  As a student in grade school when I first saw this video I can attest to how effective it was.  The cartoon nature made it entertaining.  Overly accurate representations can be intimidating, and can assume knowledge not in evidence.  Many of Disney’s animations were brilliant in their visual and audio appeal, with simplicity and clarity of message.

Animation is a fascinating field.  I explored You Tube a bit and found a thoroughly impressive and entertaining set of videos called the Animator Vs Animation:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HyHrlHRs7Sw

The animator successfully animates all things familiar to us on our windows desktops: the e from “Explorer”, the Word assistant (little paper clip guy), the firefox animal, solitaire cards….this is a brilliant piece of work, and immediately fueled my desire to learn to do animation.  There is something about taking depersonalized elements and icons and giving them personalities.  It smacks of Frankenstein – brou haaa haaaa haaaa.

I have never used animation to teach something, but I do see the possibilities!!  I searched and found an introduction to some of the available open source 3D design programs to assist in designing animation objects:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yJgDTcuaOo

You can find download links at http://tjfree.com/best-free-3d-modeli…

Here are some of the best, free 3D design programs available:

Blender – 3D Art Creation and Animation, similar to 3DS or Maya
Sweet Home 3D – Home layout and interior design tool
BRL CAD – CAD and solid modeling program, 2D/3D
Free CAD – Simple CAD prgram, 2D/3D
SketchUp – 3D solid modeling, easy to use

As well as 2D:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJVQ5owmInA

You can find download links at http://tjfree.com/best-free-2d-animat…

Here are some of the best free 2D animation programs available:

Inkscape – 2D Illistration program similar to Adobe Illistrator
Pencil – Simple 2D frame by frame animation creator
Tupi – More Advanced 2D frame by frame animation creator
Scratch – Simple and fun animation and game creator
Synfig Studio – Very advanced 2D animation creator

Thanks to this week’s exploration, I look forward to learning how to develop my own animations and using them to teach in the future!

You Tube and Personal Psychology

Dr. Brady mentioned the use of three social media sharing areas:  photos, music, and video.  I recall Picture Trail, a site where, for something like $17.00 a year, you could post albums. It was a venue for me to market costume jewelry, as well as show off my artistic talents in some of the projects I had completed.  I never did get involved with digital music. Of course, over the years I have progressed from vinyl to 8 tracks to cassettes to CDs…but I still tend to buy compilations rather than create my own. Not to say that I won’t get it to it someday.  I remember a coworker who was all excited over Napster.com.  He went on and on about free music downloads and how his music library had grown. I absent mindedly nodded as he spoke, not really paying attention, because I really wasn’t that interested.  Of course, we all know what happened to Napster.  I was shocked as I went through the class assignment materials over spring break to discover that twitter has been alive and well since 2006.  Again, it was something that just didn’t capture my interest.

Videos.  That is something separate, and apart.  Dr. Brady noted that humans are visually oriented. So yes, I have been an infrequent visitor to You Tube, although I must admit, I have used You Tube pretty much for entertainment purposes, not for learning.   I can count my You Tube searches on fewer than my ten fingers.  I saw the Beach Boys Farewell Tour last year, and promptly searched You Tube for videos of them back in their hey-day.  Brian Wilson’s life story has always resonated with me.  That such a genius should crack and break from the pressures of father, industry, and personal perfectionism illustrates the fragility of talent.  Yes, there were drugs, but escapism is what has haunted many of our most significantly creative and expressive individuals, whether literature with Edgar Allen Poe and Ernest Hemingway or art with Vincent Van Gogh.  By watching the old videos when Brian was a young man and the Beach Boys were just coming into popularity, I gain a vicarious insight into the reality that was his, but not his alone.

I came into my majority with Timothy O’Leary, Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin headlining the news. I saw both the beautiful and the ugly.  As this was the same time that I was forming my own persona, my own mission of “who do you want to be when you grow up?”, these dramatic entrances and exits from the world had a decidedly sobering effect.  My own childhood was not the best, and that is what probably leads me to resonate so much with Brian’s experience.  I, too, worked hard to destroy my memories and move on using recreational drugs.  But I also knew that I was the “good child”, and the oldest, so I was the “dependable child”.  I rebelled, but I also kept limits. I knew how far I could go, based on what was expected of me. A tightrope, I admit.

Have I ever used You Tube to learn how to do something?  The straight answer is no – until this class. I did view several videos on how to write html and css, and found them to be enormously helpful.  I also looked at a couple that went into detail on how to create your own podcast, and who should host it.  Yes, I think there is probably a You Tube How To video on pretty much any subject you can come up with.  What impressed me as I sampled videos here and there was the innate teaching talent of so many of the video creators.  I found advance organizers, verbal descriptions of each step accompanied by physical demonstration; I found tacit knowledge that was openly shared.

This video on how to create a double ninja star is a perfect example:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4VD1OrdP-fA

If we discuss the future of universities and learning in general, it is obvious that You Tube is a vast resource that offers quality exchanges. Yes, you need to filter through and find the appropriate content, but doesn’t any professor do that in the first place when assembling materials for class?  I stumbled across this video on augmented reality, and the potential for learning is enormous:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RuZY1NfJ3k

So it is not just the videos themselves, but the videos as portals and introductions to yet even more technologies that capture attention and interest.  Yes, Dr. Brady, a picture IS worth a thousand words.

For the purposes of this week’s tour of web 2.0 technologies, I searched a few capricious subjects in You Tube, the ninja star above being one of them.  Did you know that there is a video (actually, several score of them), that teach you how to walk in high heels?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-NsqfS1wU7M

I am totally amazed that I was able to walk in those elevator shoes and high wedges when I was in my teens and twenties without expert help.  We just went out and learned the hard way. No, you cannot put weight on your heels in grass. Duh!

Finally, let us turn to my rant for the day: Facebook and security on the internet.  I was not and had no desire to be on Facebook. However, due to another class assignment, I had to create an account. So I created one under an assumed name.  Temporary account, temporary identity.  I just don’t like putting my dirty laundry, or even my clean laundry for that matter, out so that the whole planet can check it out.  She buys what where??? She knows who??  She has how many friends???   I guess that I do not rely on social feedback to inform me as to my value as an individual. But I am concerned about the generations that follow mine.  What about their values? What about their perspectives? Their strengths, their weaknesses? Do they perceive themselves as individuals – do they even have an opportunity to be individualistic? Or do they grow up as part of the larger technological social reality? Remember the Borg: you WILL be assimilated.

My final You Tube contribution concerns Facebook.  It is a how to on how to hack a Facebook account.  No, I will not use the knowledge I gained. But the knowledge is out there – for anyone who chooses to apply it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EO0uBkZoBD0

Website: http://www.fbrecovery.net/

“Thanks for watching my Hack Any Facebook Account video. Facebook Hacker is the best way to Hack Any Facebook Account with ease and is 100% working. As you can see in my video it’s pretty easy to Hack Any Facebook and it’s absolutely free. All that you need to do to know how to Hack Any Facebook Account is to visit the website above. This Facebook Hacker works on Windows 7 – Windows XP – Windows Vista and Macintosh. After you use it and you’re done, comment and let me know it works, thanks.”

The Wonderful Wide World of Web 2.0

Much of the content up for review this week has been fodder for complex reflection.  While I am aware of social media (who cannot be, when so many sites ask you to “like them” on Facebook, send a tweet, chat now, or “follow”), I am not an active participant or user of many of these avenues for connecting.  Yes, I am fond of email, and prefer that over the telephone at home and at the office.  I find this means of communication to be more direct and focused; the most efficient means of communicating, while I still retain control over when I choose to view or respond to – or delete – my messages.

I never blogged until I became a student of the Contemporary Technologies class.  I think that blogging is an art form that serves the development of intelligence by permitting reflective and thoughtful discourse on any particular subject. Of course, it is helpful to have developed a sense of writing style and command of the English (in my case) language and syntax.  Blogging requires a much more sophisticated communication style than the 140 character twitter posts…but then again, does it? In their article on Web 2.0 storytelling, Alexander and Levine write of “micro-chunking” and reconstructing content to fit in with new approaches to storytelling. They mention projects such as Hamlet reprised on Facebook, and Joyce’s Ulysses converted to one line twitter feeds.  It would seem to take an uncanny ability to shrink the proportions of literary style, voice, and emotion and repackage it in a means totally foreign to the original work.  In the changing of the telling, does the message get changed as well? In reconstruction, do we lose something of value that characterized the original? To answer my own question, I would compare a Cliff notes version to the full text of some literary effort.  Yes, you get the “meat” of the topic. But you miss out on the seasoning and the side dishes.  To truly hear the voice that is relating the story becomes part of the experience.

I found Tim O’Reilly’s article on Web 2.0 Design Patterns to be very enlightening.  Prior to reading the article, I understood that web 2.0 was an improvement over passive viewing of content by the user with the development of social media and software that enabled collaboration and user contribution. But I had no concept of what made certain design patterns so successful.  O’Reilly discusses the “long tail”, and I wrote a question in the margin as I was not familiar with this term.  According to Wikipedia, “in statistics, the long tail is the large number of occurrences far from the “head” or central part of a distribution of popularities, probabilities or such.^[1] A probability distribution is said to have a long tail if a larger share of population rests within its tail than would under a normal distribution. “

O’Reilly goes on to clarify that those design patterns that seek to cater to publishing (web 1.0) and not participation, that empower advertisers over consumers, are seeking only to engage those within the head or central distribution of popularity.  As anyone who knows statistics can tell you, a very small percent of the data points fall dead center, with the total number of points expanding as you go to the right and left.  O’Reilly makes the point that Overture and Google found their success by understanding “the collective power of the small sites that make up the bulk of the web’s content”.  So the Web 2.0 approach is an example of “disruptive technology” that we discussed a few weeks back. It required a reframing of what the product was, who the customer was, and how to achieve efficient connections between the two.  By catering to those at the edge and the end of the long tail, you capture a much greater market and possibilities than if you focus only on the head.

There are enough interesting points in this article to fuel another five blog entries.  For the sake of brevity, allow me to mention only a couple of others.   First, build your shields low enough to permit users to hack into your software so that they can improve it. Aside from the dangerous aspects of such hacking, leveraging the intelligence of your consumers to improve your product for you is just plain brilliant. And illustrates the underpinnings of a web 2.0 approach – collaboration and user contribution.  Second, it’s all about the data.  O’Reilly notes that “for competitive edge, sites need to seek to own a unique, hard to create source of data”.  This then becomes their ultimate “product”, and money maker.  And it is this point that provides a segue to my final topic of discussion, Facebook.

I am not a user of Facebook.  My familiarity includes watching the commercial where a daughter remarked on her parent’s proud claim to eight “friends”, rolling her eyes because she has 1,600 “friends”.  I know that you can “unfriend” people at will, and we have all heard about social bullying on Facebook.  Interestingly, when I thought to attend my (blank) high school reunion back in Maine last summer, I went to my high school website and the alumni section.  I could find nothing to indicate when or even if a reunion was being held. I learned much later on that the reunion had been publicized on Facebook.  Think about this.  The assumption is that EVERYONE belongs to FB and would look there first for vital information.  The fact that no mention was made at the institutional site devoted to alumni interaction just blows me away.  So in the end, I missed the reunion.  Or perhaps I should say that my FB “friends” from high school missed me.

Professor Brady asked us to consider how FB makes money.  What is their real product?  I again turned to Wikipedia (if it’s on the internet, it must be true!).   Data mining instantly comes to mind.  FB has often asserted a claim of policies that protect user’s privacy, yet has had to “settle US Federal Trade Commission charges that it deceived consumers by failing to keep privacy promises”, and 2010 claims by Wall Street Journal that “FB apps were transmitting identifying information to dozens of advertising and Internet tracking companies”.  Of course, FB took immediate action to correct this violation of their policies – but I think, to use a trite saying, where there is smoke, there is fire.  In light of O’Reilly’s observations, a company such as FB cannot afford to not take advantage of its unique source of data.  The other product that FB offers is access to its members.  Corporations pay well to place tailored advertising before the eyes of specific member groups that they might not otherwise reach.  In this manner FB isn’t releasing its data or hindering member privacy, but it is selling access to key markets created as a result of its hosting services.

So dear readers, I conclude this week’s blog. I’m off to a date with a French model.  I met him on the internet. Bon Jour!

Emergent Technologies

I think that tablet computing, along with the availability of hundreds of low cost APPs, will have a huge impact on education and training. No longer tied to a desk top, tablets permit mobility and access which will have the capability of making challenge based and active learning immediate and interactive.  Imagine going on a field trip and using the tablet to identify plant life.  Or interviewing people on the street and recording their responses on the spot. Or listening to a recorded symphony while you read about Beethoven.  The learning environment no longer consists of four walls and a desk, nor is it confined to single source information (the old text book!).

Communicating digitally has resulted in education turning heavily to more collaboration and multiple perspectives.  This is a direct result of people being involved in the digital world and social media. Blogs and wikis become living, breathing information.  Everyone becomes a student and everyone a teacher.  Second, the move to challenge-based and active learning makes the educational experience one that goes beyond theory and into actual problem solving and application. Tell me, show me, let me allows the student the satisfaction of actually moving from cognitive to real time application.  The usability and functionality of devices like the tablet allow the support of learning virtually anywhere, any time.

Also significant, especially for K-12, the WWW provides access to tools and applications never before available to the general student.  In John Seeley Brown and Richard Adler’s article “Minds on Fire”, they describe science projects that allow students to participate, such as the Faulkes Telescope Project.  Students can access high powered robotic telescopes remotely, and carry out their own scientific investigations.  Not only does this permit students the opportunity to actively engage in scientific inquiry, it allows them to explore possible career fields.  This is equally a boon to those public schools that simply don’t have the funding to obtain expensive equipment to support classroom learning.

The development of online communities of practice also opens the door to informal mentoring and social learning.  Similar to Aladdin’s lamp, all one needs to do is make a wish; a brief search will yield a multitude of opportunities to learn more about any subject that comes to mind. The mature surfer eventually learns what to absorb and what to discard, but cannot fail to enjoy that journey.

The computer – in whatever form, whether desktop, laptop, tablet, or even in the form of a smart phone – will be a permanent part of learning in the future.  Instantaneous access to information supports keeping abreast of new developments.  The variety of presentations available will please every type of learner: visual, audio or kinesthetic.  For the cost of equipment necessary to access the web, the user avoids the cost of textbooks, travel to libraries or even to class.  This approach to education also supports the green environment, minimizing our physical footprint by expanding and reusing digital assets.

I am also interested in the developing field of learning analytics.  If unobtrusive software can capture student patterns and then provide alternatives that support that student’s learning style and approach, education will be more effective for all students. We know learning is taking place, but how do we measure whether it is occurring effectively, or if we are using the best platforms or strategies to achieve it?  The rapidity with which technology is growing and the availability of new ways to access and apply new approaches often leaves evaluation in the dust.  Appropriate analytics would help to give real time feedback on educational endeavors.

The field with the most potential appears to me to be that of learning analytics.  We know learning is taking place, but how do we measure whether it is occurring effectively, or if we are using the best platforms or strategies to achieve it?  The rapidity with which technology is growing and the availability of new ways to access and apply new approaches often leaves evaluation in the dust.  Appropriate analytics would help to give real time feedback on educational endeavors.

What technology would I like to use?  I’m looking forward to gesture based technology, and interfaces that “react to touch, movement, voice, and facial expressions allow more freedom in how we interact with our devices” as mentioned in the Horizon report.  The potential for simulations – virtual experience – is unlimited. These approaches will level the playing field for the disabled and handicapped, and create new possibilities for those of us who were bound by the limitations of space and time.  For now, I’ll probably settle on a few APPS.  I always wanted to play the piano, and I think there are a couple of digital approaches for that!!