It's Tuesday at 2:30 am and I can't go to sleep. Why? Last Friday night, I took up my wife's challenge and started a farm on Farmville.com. She's been doing it for a couple of months now, and is at level 37. In less than 72 hours, I have risen from level 1 to level 17. I have increased the size of my farm twice and am just waiting until I have enough coins to buy the next larger farm. I have a tractor, a seeder and a harvester. I have only four decorations: a New Year's Eve Ball, a holiday tree with which to receive presents from the Facebook feed, a toy soldier gate to front my 15 clumsy reindeer, and an evergreen tree, which I may sell. I also have a dozen or so flowers of a few different kinds that have no intrinsic value, along with an outhouse, a rest tent, a picnic table, a well, a butter churn, and a water trough. Everything else is utilitarian. I describe this because many of the farms I have seen online are significantly decorated, which takes up space but brings no recurring return, as the animals and cultivated land do.
What makes this so unique, and why I am posting this information here, is the relevance it has to instructional design. The thing that hooked me right away was the abundance of immediate small rewards. However, that would grow old and boring if it were not for the additional ability to bank small rewards for larger ones. It's a pyramid scheme in the ultimate degree. And it is just as addicting as crack cocaine. I'm told that with crack, the first hit is addictive, and each subsequent hit is an attempt to achieve that initial high. So it is with this. I thought I would just dabble in it for a little bit, but it has become all consuming. Hence, I am still awake at this hour, my mind racing with ideas of how I can upgrade my system to be more efficient and handle the extreme flash orientation of the graphics. Everything is constantly in animation, and whether or not you run the sound, it is still there in the background, consuming assets.
I am obsessed with getting up in a few hours (if I ever get to sleep) in order to harvest my pumpkins, which I planted last night for that reason, since they have an 8-hour maturation cycle. The system is ingenious: some crops, like cotton, have a much longer cycle (4 days) but the yield is much greater in the gross. However, for yield percentage, other crops are much better, like poinsettias, which have a 1 day maturation cycle but a three-fold yield to cost, compared to a 2.5-to-1 yield for cotton. Planning becomes ubiquitous: after I harvest my pumpkins this morning, I intend to sow rice, which has a 10-hour cycle, so that I can harvest when I get home from my real job (!). Then, I plan to sow poinsettias, because they are only available for three more days. That will give me somewhat of a break in the mornings.
In the midst of all this furious planting and harvesting, I am trying to study two facets: the nature of the game (that's what it really is) and the nature of my response to it. Through the interface, I am developing virtual friendships with people here in my own town and others across the globe. For a true nerd like myself, this is the essence of our malady. We are inveterate loners, yet have an excruciating need to belong. The conflict is almost unbearable, yet this venue meets both needs in us. Of course, I am learning. Right now I am learning to play the game. Yet, I also see in the game paradigm couched in agriculture, numerous applications to life. However, the game lacks a few things that life does not, such as bugs, diseases, and drought. Maybe that's down the road a way. We'll see. In the meantime, I had to do something to burn off some mental energy in the hopes that I can get some sleep before I have to go harvest, er, go to work.
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
Sunday, November 8, 2009
Flash traffic!
I just realized minutes ago that I have a copy of Adobe DreamWeaver CS3 that I bought for one of my Colloquium sessions. I can build prototypes of pages for review in a portfolio. Now all I need to do is find some free webspace where I can store them and view them. The big trick, however, is going to be time management and prioritizing--my dissertation comes first. This is just fun stuff!
Saturday, November 7, 2009
Here we go now!
I'm ready to start work on this virtual Christian school. It's perhaps the most exciting vision I've had since our physical school at the Dream Center. I see a potential for parents, churches, and currently practicing private schools to give children the curriculum they need in a nurturing, safe environment. The mastery paradigm coupled with the programmed environment are already found in several hard copy curricula. Some have even moved into the electronic arena, albeit a bit slowly for my taste. However, they may be working with constraints of which I am not aware.
At the Dream Center, we initially set a tuition cost to the parents of $25.00 per month. We did so because most of our students came from low income families who could not afford normal private school tuition. In Texas, the small town economy that my first private Christian school operated under allowed for tuition costs of $250-300.00 in the early 1990's. In the late 1990's, my experience in Los Angeles was more between $400 and $1000.00 per month. In 2001-2002 in New Jersey, our tuition was more on the order of that in Los Angeles. In order to accomplish our lower tuition level at Dream Center Academy, we had to secure private philanthropic support. By the end of our 5th year, we had increased our tuition to $40.00 per month with incremental discounts for sibling students.
What I am considering here is a system of Software as a Service (SaaS) which would require considerable outlay of finances, time, equipment, and personnel in the initial stages of development, but after deployment conceivably could be scaled back to a maintenance mode of operation. I envision minimal tuition costs, like we used at Dream Center Academy, with some additional fees for record keeping purposes.
These are the main issues that I see at this time:
At the Dream Center, we initially set a tuition cost to the parents of $25.00 per month. We did so because most of our students came from low income families who could not afford normal private school tuition. In Texas, the small town economy that my first private Christian school operated under allowed for tuition costs of $250-300.00 in the early 1990's. In the late 1990's, my experience in Los Angeles was more between $400 and $1000.00 per month. In 2001-2002 in New Jersey, our tuition was more on the order of that in Los Angeles. In order to accomplish our lower tuition level at Dream Center Academy, we had to secure private philanthropic support. By the end of our 5th year, we had increased our tuition to $40.00 per month with incremental discounts for sibling students.
What I am considering here is a system of Software as a Service (SaaS) which would require considerable outlay of finances, time, equipment, and personnel in the initial stages of development, but after deployment conceivably could be scaled back to a maintenance mode of operation. I envision minimal tuition costs, like we used at Dream Center Academy, with some additional fees for record keeping purposes.
These are the main issues that I see at this time:
- Curriculum: is there a curriculum available that could easily be converted to online format? I know of two, but they are proprietary and cost could be prohibitive for what I have in mind.
- Subject Matter Experts: initially, HR needs will be greater for development. Networking with the necessary people could prove daunting. However, use of the technology on which the project will eventually be disseminated (e.g., instant messaging, video conferencing, document sharing, cloud computing, etc.) can alleviate distance development applied to distance learning.
- Control: one of the key factors in a programmed environment is the control of the student's learning process through clearly defined and rigidly enforced procedures. I have seen many physical schools fail through lack of follow-through on procedures. However, since Instructional Design is my expertise, it appears to be one of those puzzles I so much enjoy working on.
- Support: Of course, this begins with financial support. This has the potential to change the lives of many young people, literally around the world. One individual financial backer may not be enough. It may require a consortium of individuals and groups with the wisdom to see how this can positively impact not only their own need for quality employees but also for the enhancement of culture and society world-wide. Logistical support will be second in line. This will entail a unique infrastructure for Christian education, but one that is becoming increasingly ubiquitous in the business world of e-commerce. The third support requirement is administrative. Planning and organization are critical to success; if we fail to plan, we plan to fail. Keeping track of the development of an entire online grade-school curriculum will be difficult but essential.
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Virtual Christian School
Here's an idea: a virtual Christian school. It's my primary passion, Christian education that is, and I've had three "brick and mortar" schools. But the economics of Christian education are difficult at best and downright debilitating at worst. Without outside support, it is almost impossible to operate a viable educational institution with all the bells and whistles necessary to prepare students for life in the 21st century.
When I started my school in Los Angeles at the Dream Center, we had two classrooms, one activity room, and an office. As we transformed the office into a computer lab, we were given four more small rooms in another area that served as the school office, my office, a workroom and storage. At one point we turned the activity room into a third classroom, which provided us with space for a total of 42 students, grades 2 through 12. We used an isolated parking lot behind the building that also had a patio for recess and physical education. While the third classroom was in operation, we used the small auditorium in the building for chapel services and music classes. We operated on a shoestring budget with outside support, but for five years we provided parents with a safe environment to educate their children in a God-honoring curriculum that also resulted in phenomenal increase in learning, as evidenced by standardized test scores. When we started, we charged $25 per student per month, an outrageously small amount. When we closed, we had increased to $40 per student per month, still only 10-15% of what most other schools charge. What parent can afford that and still live in the inner city of Los Angeles?
As you can see, infrastructure can be a major hurdle to establishing a viable alternative to the government (not public) schools that generally do such a poor job of educating our nation's children. I won't go through the litany here, but we all have heard and read the data. Well, enter the virtual Christian school.
This could be done either as a home school environment or as a co-op where students could gather in a central location where resources could be pooled. Based upon a mastery paradigm in a programmed environment, this could begin to provide what is needed on a much larger scale than is currently available. Thanks to the ubiquitous proliferation of technology along with almost universal access to the internet, this could literally be promulgated world-wide.
Right now, this is just a germ of an idea. I hope to get the full-blown disease, and soon.
When I started my school in Los Angeles at the Dream Center, we had two classrooms, one activity room, and an office. As we transformed the office into a computer lab, we were given four more small rooms in another area that served as the school office, my office, a workroom and storage. At one point we turned the activity room into a third classroom, which provided us with space for a total of 42 students, grades 2 through 12. We used an isolated parking lot behind the building that also had a patio for recess and physical education. While the third classroom was in operation, we used the small auditorium in the building for chapel services and music classes. We operated on a shoestring budget with outside support, but for five years we provided parents with a safe environment to educate their children in a God-honoring curriculum that also resulted in phenomenal increase in learning, as evidenced by standardized test scores. When we started, we charged $25 per student per month, an outrageously small amount. When we closed, we had increased to $40 per student per month, still only 10-15% of what most other schools charge. What parent can afford that and still live in the inner city of Los Angeles?
As you can see, infrastructure can be a major hurdle to establishing a viable alternative to the government (not public) schools that generally do such a poor job of educating our nation's children. I won't go through the litany here, but we all have heard and read the data. Well, enter the virtual Christian school.
This could be done either as a home school environment or as a co-op where students could gather in a central location where resources could be pooled. Based upon a mastery paradigm in a programmed environment, this could begin to provide what is needed on a much larger scale than is currently available. Thanks to the ubiquitous proliferation of technology along with almost universal access to the internet, this could literally be promulgated world-wide.
Right now, this is just a germ of an idea. I hope to get the full-blown disease, and soon.
First Post
Hey, everyone!
Here's my new blog on blogspot related to Instructional Design. It popped out of my head this morning as I was thinking about stuff for my other blog, "Milton's Musings" at miltonbulian.com. I'm going to use this more as an outlet for occasional thoughts on the subject of ID, since that is my specialization in my doctoral studies. I may use it as a brainstorming venue as I begin work on my dissertation. Nothing like stirring the old juices, huh? And if I can get some existential feedback from some of my colleagues, maybe we'll both learn. Sound good to you? Sounds good to me!
Here's my new blog on blogspot related to Instructional Design. It popped out of my head this morning as I was thinking about stuff for my other blog, "Milton's Musings" at miltonbulian.com. I'm going to use this more as an outlet for occasional thoughts on the subject of ID, since that is my specialization in my doctoral studies. I may use it as a brainstorming venue as I begin work on my dissertation. Nothing like stirring the old juices, huh? And if I can get some existential feedback from some of my colleagues, maybe we'll both learn. Sound good to you? Sounds good to me!
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