kris rockwell | postdigital punk

The Rise and Fall of eLearning

Today’s post was written with fellow trouble maker Reuben Tozman. Reuben and I can’t live in the same city. Here’s why.

We are the bearers of bad news. After much discussion and consideration we have come to the conclusion that eLearning has failed and that mLearning is moving towards a similar fate. Once a field of interesting new learning concepts and technology poised to replace the misuse of video in the classroom with the promise of providing a more engaging way for students to access content has become a wasteland of glorified PowerPoint presentations, TV game shows and pseudo-science.

That’s a lot of bacon

Say what you will about this, I give the man credit. He tried very hard to beat this worthy adversary, but in the end, the bacon got him. In some way, I can’t help but think that this is his way of saying “Thank you, America”. Or something….

God Doesn’t Hate All Game Designers.

Having said that, I imagine god doesn’t like those who steal others content. Just a thought.

Gamification Summed Up

As posted over on PlayThisThing.com:

The Problem with Gamification is that it tries to solve a problem that doesn’t exist. We already have a universal points system, across all aspects of life, that represents status and is redeemable for real world prizes. It’s called “money.”

I’m not sure I could have put it any better.

Jaron Lanier at LWF2012

This video is from the Learning Without Frontiers Conference that is held annually in London. Due to a schedule conflict I was not able to attend this year, but as the video below will show you it appears that I missed a good event.

On Quadrocopters…

I love quadrocopters. They’re great little pieces of tech. A while ago I bought a Parrot.AR drone which I am completely obsessed with.

I should go away more often…

I have an amazing development team and happen to know a fantastic group of developers. Every now and then they do something that completely blows me away. This morning was one of those times.

Now the real downer of the situation is that I can’t talk about it yet. What I can say is that it’s something I have wanted for sometime now and it is the first step towards a broader goal that I am really excited about. I’ll leave it at that. I love the secret projects idea. It builds anticipation.

I Thumb Wrestled with Jane McGonigal

I played a multiplayer thumb wrestling game with Jane McGonigal and Aaron Silvers. I would have stood a better chance of winning had Aaron not cheated. Bastard.

Tomorrows Topic: “It’s More than Gamification…Considerations for the Use of Serious Games in Training”

The recent popularization of “gamification” in the training world has firmly planted the misconception that all games are effective tools for learning in training environments. What has not been so widely conveyed are the design and development concepts and challenges that are critical to the successful of these implementations.

The Future of Books

This was picked up on Twitter from the illustrious @aaronesilvers. I feel this is important because it truly captures the social and contextual possibilities that have been largely missed by current eReaders. While I think the Kindle has been taking steps to utilize some of the functions outlined in the video (social applications such as Twitter integration, shared notes and X-Ray – the latter being something I wish my Kindle Fire had…), these still aren’t quite there yet. I hope this video becomes a common reality.