Ed Latham Offers Adult Educators Free Series of Google Hangouts beginning July 6th, 7pm ET

Technology and Learning CoP member, Ed Latham, posted the bulletin below to the Nonformal Education Micro-group. I thought it might be of interest to T & L CoP members, too.

David J. Rosen

Moderator, Technology and Learning CoP

djrosen123@gmail.com

 

Good day everyone. As promised earlier, I have created a webpage with information about a weekly hangout for all educators titiled "Hanging with Ed(ucation". Think of it as a informal, digital gathering where we can all share thoughts, ideas, practice and questions with each other. The right column of the website has a suggestion form and everyone is encouraged to add topics you wish to explore with others in this weekly forum. 

Sessions are only an hour and all participants can contribute text input. For those that wish to have an active mic in the conversation, you are encouraged to email me to share some ideas of what you would like to contribute in the week's topic. There is a limit of having only 10 voice activated panelist in each session. 

The link to this week's event is here: https://plus.google.com/events/catfs51gmjoiqvuns7n6gmo29eo

Please share this event with anyone in education you think would like to be part of short, weekly support and discussion for educators at all levels and all subjects. If you have any questions of me, please email me or you can post questions here as well. I look forward to Hanging out with the great educators we have here in in the LINCS Forums. 

Comments

Jim and others, the Hanging with Ed(ucation) events are all live events that are recorded on YouTube Live services. A few minutes before the event (7pm est) I start the stream and get my settings on my end established. If you click on the live stream link a little before 7 you should see me fiddling around. At 7 sharp I start the session (and later I cut out all the fluff setting up stuff). 

During the session you can type in the chat if you want to offer perspective, experiences or have questions. To see the screen best, people have found that you should maximize that video window. 

If you are not able to attend a session, the youtube channel has all the recordings. 

If you would like the links to resources referenced in the session, the Hanging with Ed(ucation) site has all the previous session materials available as well as a form that can be used to offer suggestions. 

Last week we explored Zapitalism and saw the many features of this free simulation. This week we step up the complexity a good bit to a much more detailed and complete business simulation. We may need two sessions to really explore this week's offering. Stop by and check out an example of playful learning that gets to very complicated issues. 

Link to live stream session that starts on Wednesday 12/7/16 at 7pm EST

Due to some technical difficulties (I think bandwidth) I was not able to run the session tonight with any kind of quality. 

I would love to have educators visit this site and explore what this deep simulation might be good for when engaging learners.

Link to Virtonomics simulation
Link to Tutorial pdf
Link to Game Manual pdf

The game suggests you start off by choosing one of the three business sectors and if you do you will get a number of company subdivisions (Office, factory, research plant, store ...) Although this may be nice in terms of getting your empire off the ground, I found it intimidating to have so many choices and so many things to learn about. 

In contrast, the Game Manual suggests just starting with one store and maybe an office and get those running well. Then maybe you create a factory that makes stuff for your store and then you can maybe create some raw material plant that makes resources for your factory. There are so many ways one can start to explore this simulation! 

I am hopeful people can find time to explore and share what they find out. I can share people's reactions in the hangout next week. Happy Playing and thank you for the people that tried to join tonight. I am sorry the technology was not there to support us tonight. 

Last week, I encountered some technical difficulties and those have not been resolved yet this week. I feel that with the holiday excitement and energy abundant in the next 2-3 weeks, it may be best to park Hanging with Ed(ucation) for 2016 with the hope of starting up again after the new year. 

I would like to thank the many people that have publicly and privately shared their appreciation for our Wednesday sessions this year. Starting something up always takes time and participants have been so gracious with their patience and so positive with their feedback. I wish you all a wonderful end of the year and look forward to figuring out ways to offer more interactive and engaging experiences next year!