It would be cool to have QR codes in a job environment. Like, in a manufacturing facility, small QR stickers could be placed on machines, so workers could scan a code to access online job aids or other e-learning resources for that equipment.
As one who has been excluded from almost all of this thread, I disagree. I think it would not be "cool" except in the "I've got this cool new gadget that no one else has" junior high school meaning of cool.
Education, business, and technology are already riddled with acronyms, jargon, and narrowly defined vocabulary that content creators apparently assume the viewer will know, but which, I believe, primarily serve to discourage people, by not very subtly telling them that they are stupid, uneducable, and/or so woefully ignorant that they need not bother to try to understand what their betters are saying.
Now we're talking about adding another barrier to entry to the "cool kids" table... an expensive piece of hardware and the even more expensive data subscription by which it operates.
The question appears to me to be analogous to asking whether it is wise to build roads on which only those driving a Lamborhini Gallardo or a BMW Z-Series can travel. To which I say no, until the day comes, which it never will, when virtually everyone has a Gallardo or a Z.
Are you saying, for example, we should abandon Serious Gaming and Second Life because not everyone has internet access, and the required bandwidth/processing power?
WHAT! - Not convince by my Lamborhini Gallardo or BMW Z-Series road analogy?
"Expensive" because, to me, at somewhere around $70 a month, having a smart phone (which I understand is what is required to read QR codes) seems VERY expensive (so I don't have one) and for a fair number of our students it would be impossibly so. "Excluded" because if you cannot afford the equipment and services required to participate you ARE excluded.
Let me clarify my comments by declaring myself... 1) These comments are directed specifically to eLearning and are not comments on the broader society. 2) I work in public higher education and the issues of access and cost are always central concerns. 3) "Prior notice" is also an important factor. If a student is told in advance that they must have a smart phone and adequate web services and chooses to enroll knowing of the requirement, then OK that's fine. But if after they are enrolled and on their way this burden is added... nope that's dirty pool.
I am unfamiliar with Serious Gaming, but despite the many assertions and demonstrations by lecturers at eLearning conferences, I have yet to discover how or that Second Life is educationally useful in the context in which I work. Some of our lecturers and professors use Second Life, but the (admittedly limited) number of comments I have heard from students taking those courses causes me to tentatively conclude that students find Second Life to be fun, but laborious, time consuming, and less effective than the more direct "educational" approaches of their other instructors. One or two (including my daughter) rather resent having to bear the costs of a smart phone and a high-bandwidth connection, which forces them to choose between going deeper into debt or doing less for their children, in order to satisfy what they consider to be an instructor's whim.
I repeat - Within the context of public education access and cost are always very big factors.
I'm a highly educated, thoroughly working class guy working in higher education. As I wrote in my earlier post, at the interface with society, Education, Business, and Technology are riddled with acronyms, jargon, and narrowly defined vocabulary that content experts assume the viewer knows, but which the viewer often does not. This in combination with what I observe to be a general tendancity to decline to define terms discourages and humiliates people, by treating them as if they are stupid, uneducable, and/or so woefully ignorant that they need not bother to try to understand what their betters are saying.
This is not a assumption. I have often observed this happening on our campus and on other campuses. Instructors often, but not always, completely oblivous to the fact that they are belittling students (and occassionally other staff) with their, usually, unconscious superiority. For the institution itself to also coerce them to spend money they do not have, would simply compound the quite genuine insult. For many of our students this additional financial burden would essentially force them to drop out of college.
This is not to say that in contexts other than public education QRs could not be very useful and even fun. Certainly where participation in an activity is essentially optional and completely voluntary technological and financial requirements may be without limit.
That's a very valued opinion, and one you obviously hold to be strong.
My attention was really only drawn to Serious Gaming and QR codes because of a pilot course I am taking called "Approaches to e-Learning and Developing a Pedagogically sound e-Learning Course". It is being run by, a company who is specifically set up to promote eLearning across European Learning establishments - as part of the European "iEducate" programme, exactly the market you seem to say cannot make of these technologies.
I willl not try and speak for them, however, it might be useful to hook up with these guys, because they certainly seem to find opportunities within Higher Education for all of these.
Maybe there is an issue of cultural acceptance here?
Let me know by PM if you would like me to hook you up with them, it might be beneficial?
Hadn't realized you are in England, where "public" school has an entirely different meaning. I suspect in English parlance I work at a state school and it is not "Cal" (University of California, Berkeley) or UCLA. Perhaps "comprehensive" school or teacher's college is a useful description.
I understand completely the "public school" vs. "public school" positioning, in fact , I had never considered it as a factor until you mentioned it. Add "private school" into the mix and it really gets complicated!
State school, comprehensive school, whatever - unfortuanately there will always be "have's" and "have not's" in this world. If we take education technology down to the minimal, we would not have eLearning, would we - as not everyone has access to bandwidth, internet and a PC.
"Excluded" is a very emotive term. Do I feel "excluded" because I diid not go to Eton? Do I feel "excluded" because I did not end up graduating from Oxford or Cambridge? Perhaps I should feel "excluded" because I run my own business, and am not cossetted by a lifelong job in the British civil-service with a nice guaranteed pension at the end?
Nope.
Them's the breaks I'm afraid. A mixture of circumstance, luck, hard work (often mistaken for luck...) and tenacity is mixed together and out pops a person. I'm not sure that an understanding of the Higgs-Bosum or "God Particle" is central to my life at the moment,, but I'm not about to suggest that the good folks at CERN stop pushing the limits of theoretical particle physics just because I'm "excluded" on the basis of my degree and educational level.
If I drive past our local comprehensive school at closing time, you see a stream of teenagers all staring at the pavement because they have a phone glued to their ear - so perhaps there's also an issue of technology penetration by social group between our two great countries, I do not know the statistics.
Accepted, we should always try and document requirements etc. and take account of this before someone starts a course, however, would you object to, for example, having QR codes next to every picture in a public art gallery, (offering interactive videos of how a painting was restored for example.), just because a % of people do not have the technology?
Mobile phones/ smartphones are becoming more and more pervasive as "tools" in our society, not just as communication devices. We all have to decide what to spend money on, and I am not exactly a socialist in this debate or by nature!
That said, there's no way I am going to stop trying out technology in courses, so long as I try and make it "optional", or a "for those of you to have..." element.
"Serious Gaming" would, for example, be training soldiers in combat techniques through the use of simulations, or teaching social-skills to psychiatric patients in a "safe" online "social" arena where screwing up an interaction badly does not result in a punch in the face.
32 Replies
My fear is that misguided teens will read these backwards and do what the hidden messages tell them to do.
As one who has been excluded from almost all of this thread, I disagree.
I think it would not be "cool" except in the "I've got this cool new gadget that no one else has" junior high school meaning of cool.
Education, business, and technology are already riddled with acronyms, jargon, and narrowly defined vocabulary that content creators apparently assume the viewer will know, but which, I believe, primarily serve to discourage people, by not very subtly telling them that they are stupid, uneducable, and/or so woefully ignorant that they need not bother to try to understand what their betters are saying.
Now we're talking about adding another barrier to entry to the "cool kids" table... an expensive piece of hardware and the even more expensive data subscription by which it operates.
The question appears to me to be analogous to asking whether it is wise to build roads on which only those driving a Lamborhini Gallardo or a BMW Z-Series can travel. To which I say no, until the day comes, which it never will, when virtually everyone has a Gallardo or a Z.
Jeff,
Why "expensive", and "excluded"?
http://www.touchupsoft.com/xrenqrcode/ - for example.
Are you saying, for example, we should abandon Serious Gaming and Second Life because not everyone has internet access, and the required bandwidth/processing power?
Bruce
WHAT! - Not convince by my Lamborhini Gallardo or BMW Z-Series road analogy?
"Expensive" because, to me, at somewhere around $70 a month, having a smart phone (which I understand is what is required to read QR codes) seems VERY expensive (so I don't have one) and for a fair number of our students it would be impossibly so.
"Excluded" because if you cannot afford the equipment and services required to participate you ARE excluded.
Let me clarify my comments by declaring myself...
1) These comments are directed specifically to eLearning and are not comments on the broader society.
2) I work in public higher education and the issues of access and cost are always central concerns.
3) "Prior notice" is also an important factor. If a student is told in advance that they must have a smart phone and adequate web services and chooses to enroll knowing of the requirement, then OK that's fine. But if after they are enrolled and on their way this burden is added... nope that's dirty pool.
I am unfamiliar with Serious Gaming, but despite the many assertions and demonstrations by lecturers at eLearning conferences, I have yet to discover how or that Second Life is educationally useful in the context in which I work. Some of our lecturers and professors use Second Life, but the (admittedly limited) number of comments I have heard from students taking those courses causes me to tentatively conclude that students find Second Life to be fun, but laborious, time consuming, and less effective than the more direct "educational" approaches of their other instructors. One or two (including my daughter) rather resent having to bear the costs of a smart phone and a high-bandwidth connection, which forces them to choose between going deeper into debt or doing less for their children, in order to satisfy what they consider to be an instructor's whim.
I repeat - Within the context of public education access and cost are always very big factors.
I'm a highly educated, thoroughly working class guy working in higher education. As I wrote in my earlier post, at the interface with society, Education, Business, and Technology are riddled with acronyms, jargon, and narrowly defined vocabulary that content experts assume the viewer knows, but which the viewer often does not. This in combination with what I observe to be a general tendancity to decline to define terms discourages and humiliates people, by treating them as if they are stupid, uneducable, and/or so woefully ignorant that they need not bother to try to understand what their betters are saying.
This is not a assumption. I have often observed this happening on our campus and on other campuses. Instructors often, but not always, completely oblivous to the fact that they are belittling students (and occassionally other staff) with their, usually, unconscious superiority. For the institution itself to also coerce them to spend money they do not have, would simply compound the quite genuine insult. For many of our students this additional financial burden would essentially force them to drop out of college.
This is not to say that in contexts other than public education QRs could not be very useful and even fun. Certainly where participation in an activity is essentially optional and completely voluntary technological and financial requirements may be without limit.
Well,
That's a very valued opinion, and one you obviously hold to be strong.
My attention was really only drawn to Serious Gaming and QR codes because of a pilot course I am taking called "Approaches to e-Learning and Developing a Pedagogically sound e-Learning Course". It is being run by, a company who is specifically set up to promote eLearning across European Learning establishments - as part of the European "iEducate" programme, exactly the market you seem to say cannot make of these technologies.
I willl not try and speak for them, however, it might be useful to hook up with these guys, because they certainly seem to find opportunities within Higher Education for all of these.
Maybe there is an issue of cultural acceptance here?
Let me know by PM if you would like me to hook you up with them, it might be beneficial?
Bruce
Mr. Graham:
Hadn't realized you are in England, where "public" school has an entirely different meaning. I suspect in English parlance I work at a state school and it is not "Cal" (University of California, Berkeley) or UCLA. Perhaps "comprehensive" school or teacher's college is a useful description.
JP
JP,
I understand completely the "public school" vs. "public school" positioning, in fact , I had never considered it as a factor until you mentioned it. Add "private school" into the mix and it really gets complicated!
State school, comprehensive school, whatever - unfortuanately there will always be "have's" and "have not's" in this world. If we take education technology down to the minimal, we would not have eLearning, would we - as not everyone has access to bandwidth, internet and a PC.
"Excluded" is a very emotive term. Do I feel "excluded" because I diid not go to Eton? Do I feel "excluded" because I did not end up graduating from Oxford or Cambridge? Perhaps I should feel "excluded" because I run my own business, and am not cossetted by a lifelong job in the British civil-service with a nice guaranteed pension at the end?
Nope.
Them's the breaks I'm afraid. A mixture of circumstance, luck, hard work (often mistaken for luck...) and tenacity is mixed together and out pops a person. I'm not sure that an understanding of the Higgs-Bosum or "God Particle" is central to my life at the moment,, but I'm not about to suggest that the good folks at CERN stop pushing the limits of theoretical particle physics just because I'm "excluded" on the basis of my degree and educational level.
If I drive past our local comprehensive school at closing time, you see a stream of teenagers all staring at the pavement because they have a phone glued to their ear - so perhaps there's also an issue of technology penetration by social group between our two great countries, I do not know the statistics.
Accepted, we should always try and document requirements etc. and take account of this before someone starts a course, however, would you object to, for example, having QR codes next to every picture in a public art gallery, (offering interactive videos of how a painting was restored for example.), just because a % of people do not have the technology?
Mobile phones/ smartphones are becoming more and more pervasive as "tools" in our society, not just as communication devices. We all have to decide what to spend money on, and I am not exactly a socialist in this debate or by nature!
That said, there's no way I am going to stop trying out technology in courses, so long as I try and make it "optional", or a "for those of you to have..." element.
"Serious Gaming" would, for example, be training soldiers in combat techniques through the use of simulations, or teaching social-skills to psychiatric patients in a "safe" online "social" arena where screwing up an interaction badly does not result in a punch in the face.
Bruce
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