Personally, I believe the ontology of relativism(Guba and Lincoln, 2005) where knowledge constructed depends on the person constructing it. This is evident from my experience of teaching and marking my students work where the same lesson understanding is constructed differently by the same group of students that attended my lesson. Realities perceived by the game players are thus local and specific construction and co-constructed realities(with facilitators). Interactions in video game playing will thus lead to different construction of learning for autistic children. The epistemological view is thus transactional and subjectivist where the constructed knowledge also depends on the background experiences of the autistic child and the subjective interpretation of the transactions. Crotty(1988) has identified the work of Karl Mannheim(1893-1947) and from Berger and Luckmann’s The Social Construction of Reality(1967) to be the key scholars in social constructionism.
My study will thus embrace the theoretical framework of social constructionism. I believe the reasons are self-evident if one is honest in reviewing how one and others learn from the same observed situation in the same context but ended with different perceptions and understanding of the same observed phenomenon. The ontology is evidently relativism.
My voice on what's real in learing: ontology, epistemology and theoretical framework!
Norman
Thursday, April 9, 2009
Analytic Post
Hi,
Today I would like to comment on MSNBC article "Virtual world teaches real-world skills. Game helps people with Asperger's practice socializing" posted by columnist Tom Loftus on 25 Feb 2005(URL : http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7012645// ). Although it is commendable that virtual world such as "Second life" creates an evironment that allows the teaching of social skill, it however does not teach real-world skills. Tom Loftus apparently subscribes to dualism perspective of constructivism(Packer and Goicoechea, 2000) where learning soicial skills among avatars in a virtual world is equated with learning in real-world. I do agree that learning can take place but the learning is only applicable when in virtual world. My stand as expounded by Packer and Goicoechea(2000) belongs to the nondualist social-cultural perspective of learning where the learning of social skills is constructed within the Asperger person through practical multiple social transactions(ontology of relativism) with real people in the real environment of rich context. Many social skills taught to autistic people in ideal conditions of therapy using Applied Behavioral Analysis techniques were found not to be transferable in other context of the real world and needs to be taught again in the actual real rich context. I have also personal real experience of this observation with my autistic children to substantiate this claim.
Moreover, Bennet(2004) in "Testing Theories and Explaining Cases" of National Science Foundation publication "Workshop on Scientific Foundations of Qualitative Research" has explained that a case study such as the one reported by Tom Loftus may be relevant only to an improved historial explanation of that case with particular configuration of variables, of which case is a member(Bennet, 2004, p.50). A case in point, is that the variables of the facial expressions, body languages, temperature, wind, humidity, subtle lighting as well vocal intonations during social transactions are not reproduced in the virtual world. The generalisation by Tom Loftus that "Virtual world teaches real-world skills" is thus without validity.
Thus for real-world skills to be taught it needs to be experienced and socially constructed by the Asperger in the real world with real people of which there are of various personalities from different cultures, different languages and different gender. In any case the claim stills needs to be qualified to certain constructed context only.
My Thoughts!
Norman
Today I would like to comment on MSNBC article "Virtual world teaches real-world skills. Game helps people with Asperger's practice socializing" posted by columnist Tom Loftus on 25 Feb 2005(URL : http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7012645// ). Although it is commendable that virtual world such as "Second life" creates an evironment that allows the teaching of social skill, it however does not teach real-world skills. Tom Loftus apparently subscribes to dualism perspective of constructivism(Packer and Goicoechea, 2000) where learning soicial skills among avatars in a virtual world is equated with learning in real-world. I do agree that learning can take place but the learning is only applicable when in virtual world. My stand as expounded by Packer and Goicoechea(2000) belongs to the nondualist social-cultural perspective of learning where the learning of social skills is constructed within the Asperger person through practical multiple social transactions(ontology of relativism) with real people in the real environment of rich context. Many social skills taught to autistic people in ideal conditions of therapy using Applied Behavioral Analysis techniques were found not to be transferable in other context of the real world and needs to be taught again in the actual real rich context. I have also personal real experience of this observation with my autistic children to substantiate this claim.
Moreover, Bennet(2004) in "Testing Theories and Explaining Cases" of National Science Foundation publication "Workshop on Scientific Foundations of Qualitative Research" has explained that a case study such as the one reported by Tom Loftus may be relevant only to an improved historial explanation of that case with particular configuration of variables, of which case is a member(Bennet, 2004, p.50). A case in point, is that the variables of the facial expressions, body languages, temperature, wind, humidity, subtle lighting as well vocal intonations during social transactions are not reproduced in the virtual world. The generalisation by Tom Loftus that "Virtual world teaches real-world skills" is thus without validity.
Thus for real-world skills to be taught it needs to be experienced and socially constructed by the Asperger in the real world with real people of which there are of various personalities from different cultures, different languages and different gender. In any case the claim stills needs to be qualified to certain constructed context only.
My Thoughts!
Norman
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
Connected Writing
Hi,
Today, I would like to share an insight I have gained from two links and a reading from my Ph.D course.
The first link shared by Dr. Zuiker to help me in my research is
http://www.firehosegames.com/2009/03/gdc-slides-available/eitanglinertgdc09talkfinal2/.
In this link, Mr Eitan M. Glinert, a MIT masters graduate shared his findings on "The Human Controller : Usability and Accessiblity in Video Game Interfaces" in GDC2009 Serious Game Summmit. Essentially, the take away is that if both usability and accessibility are considered from the onset, it would not only allow disabled and abled people to play but also become a best seller. The rationale is that usability and accessibility are related. Taking care of accessibility will take into account usability also. Moreover, usability and audience are strongly correlated as wide audience prefer simplicity as exemplified by Nintendo WII simple and intuitive interface whose consoles sold like "hot cakes".
This brings to mind, the first two class reading of the SE810 course based on Crotty(1988) and Guba & Lincoln(2005) of the research process and competing paradigms. Glinert has pointed out by implication that people are inherently constructivist in that they would like to have simplicity in usability and thus accessibility of games and would pay for it. My research also concurs with the ontology of relativism where constructed realities depend on person constructing the knowledge and epistemology of interactionism where constructing of knowledge is via interaction with the environment. Autistic people would thus find the Nintendo WII interface highly usable and accessible and thus intuitive to learn to use as they promote the theoretical framework of social constructivism.
The second link is Dr Chee's website http://yamsanchee.myplace.nie.edu.sg/, where in my opinion, embodies his life work as an academician, computer scientist, and advocator of futuristic social constructivist education in teaching and technological artifact applications. From this website, I have been inspired on the possibility of pursing a social constructivist theoretical framework for the learning of my adolescent autistic children where existing formal education would exclude them. Essentially, the existing Nintendo Wii and Nintendo games that I have selected based on my personal evaluation do meet Dr. Chee's recommendation of using Dr. Roger Shank's(2002) F(Failure expectation),R(Reasoning), E(Emotionality),E(Exploration),D(Doing), O(Observation) and M(Motivation) criteria of effective e-Learning course.
Dr. Chee's life work of research findings in my opinion also supports the theoretical framework of social constructivism as expounded by Crotty(1988) and Guba & Lincoln(2005) of the research process and competing paradigms. The angle is more of the possibility in terms of education and technological application in education.
My understanding of both links and the highlighted papers, shapes my understanding and belief of the promise of authentic and meaningful education, that is interesting, engaging with situated cognition development for autistic people, who are misfits for existing archaic formalised form of education.
My view, Norman
Today, I would like to share an insight I have gained from two links and a reading from my Ph.D course.
The first link shared by Dr. Zuiker to help me in my research is
http://www.firehosegames.com/2009/03/gdc-slides-available/eitanglinertgdc09talkfinal2/.
In this link, Mr Eitan M. Glinert, a MIT masters graduate shared his findings on "The Human Controller : Usability and Accessiblity in Video Game Interfaces" in GDC2009 Serious Game Summmit. Essentially, the take away is that if both usability and accessibility are considered from the onset, it would not only allow disabled and abled people to play but also become a best seller. The rationale is that usability and accessibility are related. Taking care of accessibility will take into account usability also. Moreover, usability and audience are strongly correlated as wide audience prefer simplicity as exemplified by Nintendo WII simple and intuitive interface whose consoles sold like "hot cakes".
This brings to mind, the first two class reading of the SE810 course based on Crotty(1988) and Guba & Lincoln(2005) of the research process and competing paradigms. Glinert has pointed out by implication that people are inherently constructivist in that they would like to have simplicity in usability and thus accessibility of games and would pay for it. My research also concurs with the ontology of relativism where constructed realities depend on person constructing the knowledge and epistemology of interactionism where constructing of knowledge is via interaction with the environment. Autistic people would thus find the Nintendo WII interface highly usable and accessible and thus intuitive to learn to use as they promote the theoretical framework of social constructivism.
The second link is Dr Chee's website http://yamsanchee.myplace.nie.edu.sg/, where in my opinion, embodies his life work as an academician, computer scientist, and advocator of futuristic social constructivist education in teaching and technological artifact applications. From this website, I have been inspired on the possibility of pursing a social constructivist theoretical framework for the learning of my adolescent autistic children where existing formal education would exclude them. Essentially, the existing Nintendo Wii and Nintendo games that I have selected based on my personal evaluation do meet Dr. Chee's recommendation of using Dr. Roger Shank's(2002) F(Failure expectation),R(Reasoning), E(Emotionality),E(Exploration),D(Doing), O(Observation) and M(Motivation) criteria of effective e-Learning course.
Dr. Chee's life work of research findings in my opinion also supports the theoretical framework of social constructivism as expounded by Crotty(1988) and Guba & Lincoln(2005) of the research process and competing paradigms. The angle is more of the possibility in terms of education and technological application in education.
My understanding of both links and the highlighted papers, shapes my understanding and belief of the promise of authentic and meaningful education, that is interesting, engaging with situated cognition development for autistic people, who are misfits for existing archaic formalised form of education.
My view, Norman
Annotated Link Posts
Hi,
Found a website http://sandradodd.com/special/videogames.html on Video Games and Autism which documents a mum, Susan, rebuttal of another mum(anonymous) who wrote very negatively about her experience of her autistic son obsession when playing video games resulting in failure to take care of his basic sanitary urges. Susan, has rightly pointed out that with appropriate supervisions and scaffolding, the effect of video games on her two autistic sons were positive rather than negative. This information was posted by Sandra owner of the website.
I have similar experiences with Susan. The Nintendo video games bought by me have defintely being screened for content suitable for all users that are free from gore and human violence. Playing of video games from the onset have been limited to certain times of the day and week where rules and routines for proper behaviour have been taught and enforced by my wife and myself. I have found that I have more opportunities to bond with my children by playing together or in parallel(e.g. multiplayer games through network or console). The game content becomes opportunity for teaching moments of expressive language to explicate the happenings of the game where they are interested to learn so that they can express themselves to let me know their winning moments. Moreover, I have also witnessed their systematizing ability to make sense of the interface and construct their understanding of the rules, scenario and affordances to win some levels of the game. I have experienced watching their construction of knowledge of the video game logic as they intuitively, not only navigate through the complexity of the video game gamescape but also exhibit competence in overcoming the game challenges. This observation reveals to me the rich positive potential of video games for learning.
If you are parents of autistic children who plays video games with supervision, do you also have similar experiences? Hope to hear from you when you can spare the time. Thanks.
Norman
Found a website http://sandradodd.com/special/videogames.html on Video Games and Autism which documents a mum, Susan, rebuttal of another mum(anonymous) who wrote very negatively about her experience of her autistic son obsession when playing video games resulting in failure to take care of his basic sanitary urges. Susan, has rightly pointed out that with appropriate supervisions and scaffolding, the effect of video games on her two autistic sons were positive rather than negative. This information was posted by Sandra owner of the website.
I have similar experiences with Susan. The Nintendo video games bought by me have defintely being screened for content suitable for all users that are free from gore and human violence. Playing of video games from the onset have been limited to certain times of the day and week where rules and routines for proper behaviour have been taught and enforced by my wife and myself. I have found that I have more opportunities to bond with my children by playing together or in parallel(e.g. multiplayer games through network or console). The game content becomes opportunity for teaching moments of expressive language to explicate the happenings of the game where they are interested to learn so that they can express themselves to let me know their winning moments. Moreover, I have also witnessed their systematizing ability to make sense of the interface and construct their understanding of the rules, scenario and affordances to win some levels of the game. I have experienced watching their construction of knowledge of the video game logic as they intuitively, not only navigate through the complexity of the video game gamescape but also exhibit competence in overcoming the game challenges. This observation reveals to me the rich positive potential of video games for learning.
If you are parents of autistic children who plays video games with supervision, do you also have similar experiences? Hope to hear from you when you can spare the time. Thanks.
Norman
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Autism and Video Games
Hi,
I am a father and educator with three adolescent sons who have autism to different degrees. I have a website for parents who have recently discovered their child to have autism(http://www.keefamily.org) The purpose of starting the blog is to share with parents, teachers and educators, who wants to try using video games to help adolescent autistic children to learn. Most of the interventions and curriculum that I am aware of focuses mainly on early childhood and may not be suitable to motivate and interest them to learn for life.
My rationale stems from the observation I have of my three sons who are able to play and achieve some level of success with Nintendo DS and WII games without the need to first read the game manual or refer to game hint books, which I will normally need to before I play. Their interest and perseverance in some games of interest have lead them intuitively not only to discover the properties, rules and procedures that must be mastered in order to become a “player”(Rosas, R., et al, 2003) but also to win the games.
I am excited about this observation and would like to explore how to determine suitable existing Nintendo games for adolescent autistic children that may have the potential to bring about development of desired cognitive processes(e.g. meaning, self-regulation, incidental learning, conceptualization, motivation and higher-order processing) and whether it is possible to extend the learning to learning of suitable curriculum (e.g. expressive language, mathematical concepts, music) for adolescent autistic children.
How has it been addressed in the literature?
Many people with autism are highly interested and motivated by computers and computer-assisted learning can focus on numerous academic and support areas of need such as emotion recognition, social interaction, and communication (Goodwin, 2008; Passerino & Santarosa, 2008). Educational computer games can be dispensed with great success for the right tasks but have clear limitations and require qualified teachers that can serve as facilitators of learning (Egenfeld-nielsen, 2007). However, video games are clearly a preferred game for children who reach game-playing age as they dominate much of the toy industry and have become a cultural and social force that shape children and adolescents’ lifestyle(Provenzo, 1992 cited in Rosas, R. et al., 2003, Rebetez C. & Betrancourt, M., 2007). This probably stems from the ease to use, portable hardware with instructional and entertaining software(Garret & Ezzo, 1996 cited in Rosas, R. et al., 2003). The features that make video games effective such as clear goal, high speed, independence from physical laws and holding power (Rosas, R. et al., 2003) are likely to make it attractive to autistic children too. Baron-Cohen(1997, cited in Wakabayashi, et al.,2007) revealed that autistic people do not have impairment in their understanding of physical causality, and may even be superior relative to mental-age matched controls.
I am a father and educator with three adolescent sons who have autism to different degrees. I have a website for parents who have recently discovered their child to have autism(http://www.keefamily.org) The purpose of starting the blog is to share with parents, teachers and educators, who wants to try using video games to help adolescent autistic children to learn. Most of the interventions and curriculum that I am aware of focuses mainly on early childhood and may not be suitable to motivate and interest them to learn for life.
My rationale stems from the observation I have of my three sons who are able to play and achieve some level of success with Nintendo DS and WII games without the need to first read the game manual or refer to game hint books, which I will normally need to before I play. Their interest and perseverance in some games of interest have lead them intuitively not only to discover the properties, rules and procedures that must be mastered in order to become a “player”(Rosas, R., et al, 2003) but also to win the games.
I am excited about this observation and would like to explore how to determine suitable existing Nintendo games for adolescent autistic children that may have the potential to bring about development of desired cognitive processes(e.g. meaning, self-regulation, incidental learning, conceptualization, motivation and higher-order processing) and whether it is possible to extend the learning to learning of suitable curriculum (e.g. expressive language, mathematical concepts, music) for adolescent autistic children.
How has it been addressed in the literature?
Many people with autism are highly interested and motivated by computers and computer-assisted learning can focus on numerous academic and support areas of need such as emotion recognition, social interaction, and communication (Goodwin, 2008; Passerino & Santarosa, 2008). Educational computer games can be dispensed with great success for the right tasks but have clear limitations and require qualified teachers that can serve as facilitators of learning (Egenfeld-nielsen, 2007). However, video games are clearly a preferred game for children who reach game-playing age as they dominate much of the toy industry and have become a cultural and social force that shape children and adolescents’ lifestyle(Provenzo, 1992 cited in Rosas, R. et al., 2003, Rebetez C. & Betrancourt, M., 2007). This probably stems from the ease to use, portable hardware with instructional and entertaining software(Garret & Ezzo, 1996 cited in Rosas, R. et al., 2003). The features that make video games effective such as clear goal, high speed, independence from physical laws and holding power (Rosas, R. et al., 2003) are likely to make it attractive to autistic children too. Baron-Cohen(1997, cited in Wakabayashi, et al.,2007) revealed that autistic people do not have impairment in their understanding of physical causality, and may even be superior relative to mental-age matched controls.
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