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iSight: Distance Education at it's Best

Walden University has academic offices in Minnesota, financial offices in Maine, Information Technology offices in Los Angeles, and my faculty advisor lives in Colorado. There is no question that I have benefitted from the perspective and experience of faculty and fellow students from all over the county, and the world. But, I absolutely acquiesce that the face to face residencies offer much more interaction and much greater development of my ideas than most of my communication with my advisor. From time to time we have spoken by phone when it was time to really hash things out.

But, today we took things to a new level and met by video conferencing with our iSIghts. It was great, it was like were in the same room. I was holding up books for him... he showed me his new monitor, etc... things we would not have been able to do on the phone... not to mention we were shooting links back and forth via text chat as we talked. As Jason Ediger used to say, in Educational Technology, we have to first use the technology. ;)

The other good news is that I got a preliminary thumbs up on the objectives for my new KAM.

Breadth:
Synthesize a working theory of constructivist cognitive development for use in the application of digital game-based learning, with a particular focus on the tradition of J. Piaget, S. Papert, and D. H. Johnassen, and informed by the work of other related theorists such as G.W. Allport, M.L. Bigge, J. S. Bruner, J. Dewey, K. Lewin, E. C. Tolman, and L. Vygotsky.


Depth:
Critically examine theories of digital game-based learning in light of a working theory of constructivist cognitive development, with a particular focus on the works of M. Prensky, J. P. Gee, and C. Aldrich, and informed by the work of other related theorists such as J. Cassell, K. M. Iverson, H. Jenkins III, C. N. Quine, K. Squire, C. Steinkeuhler, and N. Yee.



Application:
Design a three hour hands-on professional development session to provide educators with guidance in using digital game-based learning, informed by theories of constructivist cognitive development, to facilitate student learning.

I am actually culling these down a bit, but keep an eye out here for more on these topics over the next three months. I aim to be done August 28th. ;)

Thanks for reading.

-Mark

PS. Speaking of Jason Ediger... if you haven't yet, go check out iSightEd.com. :)