Link to Matthew Ventura's Presentation "Games Are Good for You!"

Here is the video link for Matthew Ventura's seminar presentation, Games are Good for You!.
 
http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/12152905

Enjoy!

Big Event Date: February 17th

"The Big Event" date will be February 17th at 6pm. Please join ISSA, the faculty, and students for this event on fostering a sense of community in an academic program. Drs. Driscoll, Reiser, and Becker will be speaking at the event. This event is not one to miss!


Everyone will get more details of the event at a later time.

Save the date: Seminar Speaker: Brent Hewlett (February 25th)

Please save the date for seminar speaker Brent Hewlett on Friday, February 25th. Brent will be discussing independent consulting as a career path and working in larger organizations such as IBM and UPS. More details to come...

Meet our new ISSA President!

Although it is the middle of the school year, 2011 brings a new face of leadership to the Instructional Systems Student Association at FSU. Lingyao Wang (Ling) is a first year Masters student from a coastal city China. Ling told me that Qingdao is similar to Tallahassee but not as hot in the summer.

Qingdao is famous for it’s seafood. Although Ling enjoys Tallahassee, she misses the food from her hometown as much as she misses her mom! In fact food seemed to come up no matter what we discussed!

 “Because of the difference of culture and habits among different provinces, there are many different kinds of food especially local flavors in China. Being a masterchef was one of my those fantastic dreams in my childhood.”

When I asked Ling her favorite thing about Florida she mentioned Disney World and of course the food (especially lobster)!  

“I love Disney world. I heard about it when I was just a little girl. I was amazed by the imagination of the artists and felt respectful to Walt Disney who created this magical world. It makes me believe that there is a kid living in everyone's deep heart.”

At home, Ling enjoys gathering with her friends, playing cards and Chinese chess. Elsewhere she enjoys traveling with her friends and family and finding all of the hotspots for the best food. So far here in Florida, her favorite thing to do is enjoy the sunshine on the beach. Since starting school, she finds a relaxing weekend on the beach as a wonderful way to unwind from the busy week. 

Ling chose to study abroad and attend FSU for a number of reasons and of course our world-renowned reputation and amazing Mary Kate were two of those reasons!

           

“There is no doubt that our department has the strongest faculty background and best support for students. And of course there is a story. It was almost the deadline when I was applying for FSU in 2009 and at that time I got a lot of help from Mary Kate. She always answered my questions timely and with patience. I believe that an individual is affected by the culture she is involved in. And at that moment I thought that FSU was definitely a right place for me.”

I asked Ling why she chose to study Instructional Design for her masters and like so many of us that choose this field, she wanted to help learners and improve training.

“I first noticed this field when I was volunteering on a website to help the English learners several years ago. As time passed I was thinking that a better and effective way to help learners would be to improve the trainers' abilities. Then I found this field. I see myself as a happy little bee. I could take a rest but I could not stop working without a potential date with a new challenge…I am not a ‘sitting’ person. I am a ‘walking’ person. I found that my personality fit into this field since I could always be inspired by different problems in a learning or instructional system. I could always try to find a new way to solve the problem and help others. I would like to live a life filled with learning.

To conclude our post, Ling had a welcome message to all of our students, faculty, staff, and alumni.

Hi everyone,

This is Lingyao Wang but you can call me Ling.:D I am so happy to be elected as the President of ISSA!  I come from China, and this is my second semester in IS master program. I love what I have experienced in our program so far since everyday I find myself learning something new! There is nothing better in the world than growing up everyday!:)

I appreciate everyone's efforts for our program. I would be excited to receive any feedback and suggestions as to how we can improve our program so please contact ISSA with feedback and suggestions.

Hope everyone's enthusiasm in our program could make this cold winter a warmer one!:)

Best wishes to all,
Ling

Spring Seminar Speaker: Dr. Matthew Ventura

Our first IS Spring Seminar speaker is Dr. Matthew Ventura. His seminar presentation will be this Friday, January 21st from 12:00-1:00pm in STB 3303.

His talk is entitled: What makes a game good? (/or/ What makes a good game?)

Matthew is currently a visiting professor in the Instructional Systems program at FSU.  Before coming to FSU he was the principle research director of the ETS Personal Potential Index (PPI).  The PPI is designed to be the first personal attribute assessment to play a role in high stakes admission decisions in graduate school.   Briefly, the PPI is a rating form for mentors (e.g., faculty or employers) to rate students on various personality attributes. Before working at ETS Matthew studied and worked at the Institute for Intelligent Systems (IIS) in Memphis, TN. The IIS conducts extensive analyses in artificial intelligence primarily focused on conversational agents for computer tutoring.  At the IIS Matthew headed work on various education technology projects including AutoTutor, a conversational physics tutoring system. His dissertation focused on a dynamic natural language processing tool for scoring human constructed responses.  

Call for Papers: The Internet and Higher Education Special Issue: Social Media in Higher Education

From their website:
 
The Internet and Higher Education (click here for their website)
Call for papers
Special Issue: Social Media in Higher Education

Guest editors
Stefan Hrastinski, Assistant Professor, KTH Royal Institute of Technology
Vanessa Dennen, Associate Professor, Florida State University

The social media hype has created a lot of speculation among educators on how these media can be used to support learning. In this special issue, we would like to explore how social media can be taken advantage of in higher education to support informal and formal learning. It is well agreed upon that most learning takes place outside school in our everyday lives. On campuses, there are common spaces such as hallways, lounges, libraries, and cafés, which support informal learning better than classrooms or lecture-halls. Social media have potential to support learning in both informal and formal settings, as well as creating an entirely new setting in which learning may take place. We can learn a lot from how students are already using such media to support learning in each of these areas.
Although most would agree that emerging social media support learning in new ways, we still know little about how students currently use social media to support learning. Prensky put forth the dichotomy of “digital natives” and “digital immigrants” when arguing that technology has dramatically changed the way students of higher education live and learn. Similar arguments have labeled today’s students the net generation, millenials, homo zappiens, generation M and generation Y – labels intended to differentiate their relationship to and use of technology from that of previous generations of learners.  However, a growing body of literature questions whether there is really a sharp and fundamental break between today’s young people and previous generations in terms of their adeptness with technology and how they learn. Although we see today’s youth using many social media tools, some tools are more frequently used by older people. Similarly, some are readily adopted by students for personal use, whereas other social media tools have been relegated to as-required or as-assigned use and have been met with resistance. Thus, there are many perceptions of the role social media plays in education, some of which are myths and other are realities. We believe it is time to go beyond the simple dichotomies of the digital natives debate in order to understand how emerging social media can support students’ informal and formal learning. We need to move forward from saying that “students learn in new ways” towards conducting rigorous research that can help us understand the role of social media in higher education.

In this issue, we seek articles that present the outcome of rigorous studies of social media use in higher education as well as articles that help provide strong theoretical guidance for the directions future research might take.

Authors are requested to submit manuscripts via the Elsevier Editorial System (EES) no later than March 15, 2011. You need to select “Social Media in Higher Ed” when you reach the “Article Type” step in the submission process.

Contact the Special Issue Editors if additional information is required:

Dr. Stefan Hrastinski
Assistant Professor
KTH Royal Institute of Technology
stefanhr@kth.se

Dr. Vanessa Dennen
Associate Professor
Florida State University
vdennen@fsu.edu

Important dates
Deadline for paper submission: March 15, 2011
Notification of acceptance: May 15, 2011
Camera-ready version of accepted papers: July 15, 2011
Publication date: End of 2011

Conferences!

SITE (Society for Information Technology and Teacher Education - AACE) 2011 Final call January 10th. The dates for this conference are  March 7-10th.

Global Time (AACE)  Final call January 14th. The dates for this ONLINE conference are February 22-24th.

ICALT (IEEE International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies) Final Call January 17th. The dates for this conference are July 6-8th.

Web-based Communities and Social Media. Due date for proposals is January 24th. The conference dates are July 22-24th.

e-Society. Due date for proposals is January 28th. The conference dates are March 10-13th.

Call for proposals: TCC (Technology, Colleges, and Community). Due date for proposals is January 28th. The dates for this ONLINE conference are April 12-14th.

 AECT (Association for Educational Communications and Technology). Due date for proposals is February 15th. Conference dates are November 9-12th.

Association of Internet Researchers/Internet Resarch 12. Due date for proposals is March 1st. The dates for the conference are October 10-13th.