AERA: Saturday 2

NSF Update - www.cra.orgFederal (John Chirenesky)
• Cyber Infrastructure: 600 Teraflop conglomeration of connected super-computing centers 10Gb per second connection.
• National Virtual Observatory: data-mining applicatio for K-12 to use to search through various images of the Universe through assorted wavelengths.
• CyberCorp -- like americorp, but after school, students spend two years protecting America's networks.
takeaway: cybercorp is a really dumb sci-fi name.

Roy D. Pea
• (he's a quiet speaker)
Carol. R. Beal (USC Viterbi School of Engineering -- only ed person in engineering there)
• undergoing a species-wide change in learning from oral and physical manipulation to books and text and now through digital experiences.
(Are we being short-sighted in leaving the others -- oral, print, physical -- behind?)
• Need to study this before we lose the control group (as TV researchers did 50 years ago)
• As long as content is controlled, the means of distribution is less important (traditionally), but in games and other hyper-real experiences, this may not be true. There's something different there. we can take ouut the boring parts and crystallize the parts theat we think are more important for them to learn.
• www.wayangoutpost.net
• 80-90% of learners say they're visual learners (not experiential learning? Do they know that there are other learning types? Are they preferencing, equating, or conflating visual to mean visual?)
• Baler looks at the use of Agents in learning
• www.Tacticallanguage.com military game on learning Arabic
• Virtual Role-models -- (AI makes them personal and digitzation makes them perfect)
• Digital learning environments demand self-regulated learners -- but self-regulated Learners are rare (because we're social learners)
• Digital environments can link formal and informal learning, but it's not that easy (good example: www.immex.ucla.edu)
• We want to support effort-based learning -- not just "fun" learning (they're not mutually exclusive, methinks)
• Individualization of instruction means expensive development for content that many students never see.
• Graphics are expensive!
• Gamehype laboratory at USC
• Do a Need assessment first: technology sometimes looks for a home...and schools are not always the right place for it (laptops to the beach with kids)
• Is technology necessary for the learning opbjective?, and is there a less costly way to accomplish the goals?
• There is value in learning from real life experiences.
takeaway: ARGH is a good option because it's physical, visual, experimental, cheap (no graphics), individual/social (small group)

William (UCLA)
• Summary of Workshop I: Simulation and Gaming Technologies Applied to Education
• STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics)
• Can technologies that we already have enhance the learning and learning environments that we already know? Cyber Infrastructure should pull these all together.
• There are claims about the benefits of gaming, but there hasn't been a systematic analysis to confirm it.
takeaway: ARGH at FML is good because it enhances (does not replace) the learning environment that is already there!

Mimi Recker summarizes Workshop 3
• Life-long Learning Chronicles: capture the learning that one undergoes over a lifetime -- what do we do with this data?
takeaway: give it to Homeland security?

Ann
• "cyber-learning"

Marcia (summary of workshop 4: The Interplay between Communities of Learning or Practice and Cyberinfrastucture)
• Should we broaden our ideas of learning communities to include informal ones?
• How do yuou capture information that is not in a digital form in order to inform cyber learning
takeaway: Here's the question that is at the heart of Standardized tests: "How do you capture the learning that is not in a quantitative form?"

Summary
• Keep the learner in the center of the discussion
• Learner was not just our best, but "K to Gray"
• Focus on individual learner, but acknowledgemnt to learning as a social process
takeaway: I like the "K-Gray" phrase

Ed Atkins is the NSF head of cyberinfrastrcture
Advanced Learning Technologies area of NSF is the big money area (learners at center)