What's In Gadgets, Games and Gizmos for Learning?

Here is a quick overview of the exciting content in Gadgets, Games and Gizmos for Learning in case you were wondering whether or not it would make a great Holiday gift for that certain someone.

See the entire informercial and see if Gadgets, Games and Gizmos for Learning is right for you.

If you liked the overview, you can order the book below:



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Gadgets, Games and Gizmos: The Future of E-Learning

I think the future of e-learning revolves, in a large way, around the use of 3D worlds and avatars...I'm not the only one, IBM believes this as well...

Employees of tomorrow will inhabit virtual worlds like Second Life to hold live weekly meetings with co-workers, catch up over lunch with financial advisers, and join friends on virtual shopping excursions after work.

Meet me in my avatar's office explains some of the vision of IBM.

However, I am not sure the actual vehicle will be Second Life. Recently, I was given the opportunity to play with a product created by a company called ProtonMedia.

The product is called the ProtoSphere. This interactive 3D environment was built for learning with Voice Over the Internet (VoIP), application sharing, whiteboards, and virtual meeting spaces. It speaks the SCORM language and looks a lot like Second Life only with a cleaner interface.

This summer I am going to put the product through its paces as I use it for my class "Learning in 3D." I will provide feedback and information on this blog so stay tuned for more information on ProtoSphere: Second Life for Learning
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Gadgets, Games and Gizmos: The Book

Here is a sneak peak of the cover for my new book, Gadgets, Games and Gizmos for Learning (haven't gotten permission to make public but I couldn't wait any longer). I am very excited about its impending release in April of this year.

I have also just received some reviews from the publisher, the comments are below. I would like to thank these people took time from their busy schedules to read and comment on the book...it is much appreciated.

The big contribution of Gadgets, Games and Gizmos for Learning to the field is that it provides direct linkages between the brain drain of the on-rushing boomer retirement and the range of technologies, tools and methodologies required to combat it.
-Mark Oehlert
Learning Strategy Architect
Booz Allen Hamilton

As few others can, Kapp takes us on a delightful and amusing journey into the exciting future of learning and knowledge transfer – a future shaped by the power of digital games and electronic gadgets.
-Donald A. Deiesco, Ph.d., President and CEO, EduNeering, Inc

Kapp does an excellent job describing the neo-millennial student and ways new and emerging web-tools, video games, simulations and electronic gadgets need to be used in our modern "classrooms" to convey knowledge to our techno-savvy students.
-Gordon Snyder, Jr.
Executive Director of the National Center for Telecommunications Technologies and Professor of Telecommunications at Springfield Technical Community College

Do you need to recruit, train or retain the next generation of workers? Karl Kapp’s new book, Gadgets, Games and Gizmos for Learning, is a must read strategy guide for working with the upcoming generation of gamers.
-Founder, e-LearningGuru.com
President, AXIOM Professional Health Learning

Kapp's book provides insights into an employee population that is not as well understood as the baby boomer generation. This is an essential read if you support, train or manage the gamer generation. I will definitely share it with my team.
-Steve Sitek
Director, Learning and Organizational Development
Bristol-Myers Squib
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Gadgets, Games and Gizmos: Dad, Can I Download the Teletubbies Ring Tone

A while back I posted a definition of a gamer. Someone who has grown up with video games and gadgets. In fact, I frequently write about this generation and think of myself as fairly knowledgeable and aware of what they are doing, heck, I've written a bookon how tech-savvy and connected this generation is as compared to the boomer generation and Gen Xers (me). I even coined Gamer 4.0s to explain their use of technology and games for learning and interacting with each other.

Their use of technology shouldn't phase me...well I apparently have a lot to learn...I was SHOCKED when I saw the release of a recent study by the NPD Group (a consumer and retail market research firm.)

Here is the statistic that floored me:

• About 15% of 2- to 5-year-olds use cell phones

(that's no typo...two to five year olds using cell phones)

Immediately, my wife asks, "who are they calling?"

I say, "I didn't even realize they could talk at age 2."

Wow, what type of impact is that generation...ubertechs going to have on learning and society...if we are not beginning to embrace technology now for learning and knowledge sharing, we will watch the bus speed away..because we are going to miss it.

Here are some more statistics from the InformationWeek article titled Attack Of The Tech-Savvy Toddlers

Children as young as 2 years old are downloading content to cell phones, computers, and portable digital music players.

More than one in 10 children download content by the time they are 7 years old, 22% download by age 10, and 50% download at 14, according to the report.

Seventy-five percent of children with an Internet connection use it, and nearly half browse the Web without help and one-third do so with their parents or someone else, according to the study.

Downloading games is the most prevalent activity, while 25% of children watch downloaded movies, television, music videos, or streaming video content, the study found.

Children spend an average of 44 minutes per session playing on video game systems and the same amount of time listening to music on portable digital music players, according to NPD.

This really makes a case for m-learning and for focusing our efforts on figuring out appropriate instructional design strategies for these ubertechs.

Imagine how tech-savvy a 22 year old is going to be when she started downloading content to her cell phone when she was three.

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Gadgets, Games and Gizmos: MMORPG in ICT Education

During my recent conference in San Francisco (shown above), Gordon Snyder, Jr. the Executive Director and Principal Investigator of the National Center for Telecommunication Technologies (NCTT) gave a great presentation on MMORPGS and how they can be used in community colleges and training programs.


He mentioned a number of uses of Second Life and how it can be used to help teach math and science concepts. During the subseqent discussion, someone mentioned that she did not like avatars or see the point of learning in an environment of avatars.

In some ways, I agree.(yes, frequent readers might be shocked but read on).

Having a bunch of people virtually sitting in a classroom is not the best use of Second Life or any other metaverse. The real power of the metaverse concept is when we use the platform to do things we could not otherwise do in a classroom.

Here are some examples of the power of a metaverse.:

• Shrink down and walk through the human body
• Fly above a cityscape to see patterns or green space
• Become another gender or race
• Manipulate financial markets and observe the outcome.

These are innovative uses for a metaverse. As educators, we can't simply reproduce the classroom virtually (like many e-learning courses attempted to do), we need to construct educational environments that reach beyond our current classrooms into the student's or trainee's imaginations. We need to reach beyond our current paradigms into new educational frontiers.

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Gadgets, Games and Gizmos: Hidden Agenda Games

Most of the time a Hidden Agenda is a bad thing. In this case, however, it is a good thing.

Enter Hidden Agenda Games. This is an organization that encourages, through contests, the creation of games to help middle school kids (like my oldest son) learn difficult subjects that might not always "stick."

The Liemandts and Reimanns (two families) sponsor contests in which college students create games to help middle school students and then the entries are posted at the Hidden Agenda Games web site.

Here are examples from an Algebra game called AlgebrArcade and one called Waste of Space which teaches concepts like velocity and acceleration...reminds me of the old game Asteroids.




You have to register to play the games but I highly recommend you check them out. Clever, inventive and educational...who could ask for more?
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Gadgets, Games and Gizmos: Virtual Real Estate for Sale

Traveling to Calypso is similar to traveling to any foreign country. You exchange your currency for the currency of Calypso and, when you return home, you can exchange left over Calypso currency back to your currency. The only difference? Calypso is not a physical place—not a Caribbean island. It is a virtual world—a metaverse (short for “Metaphysical Universe” aka “online world.”)

In the Calypso metaverse, you exchange real money for virtual money and then, exchange it back. Calypso has its own virtual economy which works almost seamlessly with physical economies. The enviornment, once called Project Entropia (now called Entropia Universe), is free to download and has no monthly fees unlike most MMORPGs. Instead the universe works on a cash basis. You are required to have cash to purchase items like a laser rifle, a house or a vehicle. Cash is King. The Project Entropia Dollar (PED) has a fixed exchange rate linked to the US Dollar currently 10 PED = 1US$.

Once inside the game, you create items to barter with other players, get a job and even find hidden treasures throughout the virtual world. You can mine items of value like gold or ore, manufacture goods or even set up a store or mall and rent out space. Trade on the virtual stock exchange. You constantly exchange PEDs for goods. To date, the largest transaction was for a virtual astroid that sold for $100,000.

Well, the ante has just been raised. After 10 days of bidding for three digital malls the virtual buyers have ponied up a total of $179,668. This is all for "virtual real estate." Places that physically don't even exist.

You can read the article 'Project Entropia' real estate sale fetches $179,000

What does this mean for trainers and instructional designers? It means we really need to understand these 3D online worlds because it is not just Second Life, many online worlds exist and if we let this technology pass us, then we will be playing catchup. Arguing about whether or not these platforms are "learning platforms" is less relevant than figuring out how to provide learning experiences within these worlds...teachable moments.

The educational philosophy of Constructivism is a good place to start in terms of thinking about how learners can create meaning. What if there was an environment where a learner, learning about history or learning about making a sales call could experiement in a relatively safe world with total access to any information he or she needs in 3-dimensions (just like where we really live). The dimensions and the immersiveness of the experience add to the learning.

We are incredibly effective learners (humans that is) we can learn from books, each other, observation or even from a good story...however, as instructional designers our job is to make that process more efficient and effective. If people could simply learn from others in an effective way...then instructional designers would not be needed but every expert is not a good facilitator, teacher or mentor, every person is not able to learn from a journey to many blogs and then reaching their own conclusion (mostly because of time constraints) so, we as workplace learning professionals must be on the forefront to understand how these technologies will impact the future workplace and what we can do to facilitate learning.

We might not like these environment, we might think they are silly or even a passing fad, of course the same was said for television, computers and the Internet.
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Gadgets, Games and Gizmos: Avatars for Learning

A great deal of research is being undertaken in the area of avatars...you know, the lifelike animated people that inhabit Second Life and other online worlds.

One person doing work in this area is Amy L. Baylor at Floridia State University. She is the founder of The Center for Research of Innovative Technologies for Learning (RITL) which is creating these virtual trainers has found that learners tend to choose virtual trainer types that were similar in ethnicity to the learner. She has also found that female avatars seem to be better at motivating learners than male versions.

The customizability of these avatars means a learner can choose to learn from a wise old mentor or a hip young "dude" or "dudet". Gamers, who are used to building their own players in video games, can now construct their own online trainers, tutors or mentors. These trainers can then assist them to learn new information or be available from time-to-time when they detect that the learner is in trouble.

Sounds like an interesting way to have Einstein be your mentor. To learn even more, check out this article titled Attractive Virtual Professors Draw Student Attention. Research is begining to show that avatars can be an effective tool for online learning. If done correctly, the same "teacher" could appear as different avatars to different students. Regardless of who was teaching the class, you could have the look of the instructior you wanted.

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