2 posts tagged “edutainment”
Here I am above explaining to the seated committee members and the public audience that attended. The presentation of the research findings lasted 45 minutes and was following by another hour of questions and answers, before a brief 10 minute or less deliberation before I was officially welcomed into the club by my wonderful committee of noted author and former college president Dr. Rosemary Gillet-Karam, the chairperson; former college president and researcher Dr. Sylvester McKay, and Morgan Mile founder and noted researcher, Dr. Jason DeSousa. As I prepare for the final publishing formatting, editing and revisions for the manuscript, I would love to thank the committee for their support and guidance and I would like to thank the guests who attended and all of my friends and family members who supported me for the past 4 and one half years during this worthwhile endeavor. I have enclosed a brief re-cap with photos to tell the story. I look forward to providing you with the video in the near future.
Highlights Of The Dissertation Defense Presentation
The highlights of the presentation were numerous, but the following questions did get answered by me in the presentation!
Can education and convergence be utilized in higher education?
Yes, edutainment and convergence can be utilized in higher education.
Grand Tour Question
How can entertainment techniques and technology be utilized in higher education?
Edutainment and convergence can be utilized through traditional storytelling, role playing, drama, dance, music, art, spoken word, poetry, rap, dance, video, audio, podcasting, blogging, handheld devices, the Internet, computers, flat screen media, software, photography, digital filmmaking and more according to the participants and the literature (Farkas, 2006, 2007; Gee, 2004, 2005; Jenkins, 2006; Prensky, 2006).
Can entertainment techniques and convergence technology be transferred to higher education?
Yes, entertainment techniques and convergence technology be transferred to higher education through handheld gadgets, and online software and Internet sites like iTunesU, iTunes, Amazon, Google search, Google scholar, YouTube, Blackboard, Facebook, Plaxo, MySpace, Microsoft products, and gaming platforms like the Wii, Playstation 3 and Xbox.
Why have government agencies embraced edutainment and convergence and spent billions of dollars on Defense Department and NASA space exploration?
The government has spent billions of dollars in Defense Department research and NASA exploration research because the digital technology, simulation and gaming has been an effective educational and training tool according to the participants and the literature (Bonk & Wisher, 2000; Farkas, 2006,2007; Gee, 2004, 2005; Jenkins, 2006; Robert Wisher, personal communication, August 20, 2007).
Conclusions
Edutainment and convergence is the future of higher education and offers economic opportunities for universities and faculty through digital publishing, digital classes through multiple portals, electronic classrooms, and tailored learning that is student centered through the use convergence technologies. The embedding of entertainment and the fun factor into education enables education to become fun, collaborative and democratic. Edutainment and convergence also can enable higher education to narrow-cast its offerings to low-income, non-traditional, and minority students through handheld devices like the iPhone, cell phones, the Kindle book reader from Amazon and the iPod and Zune multi-media devices.
By Chris A. Heidelberg III, Publisher & Principal Researcher
The purpose of this electronic publication is to publish my research findings, scholarly articles, and the research findings, scholarly articles, and the implications of edutainment and convergence technology for the following: academia, government, business, privacy, learning and society as a whole.
As I continued to expand to my research based on the contributions of the participants of my study, I began to realize that the Edutainment & Convergence Today, Edutainment Today, and Edutainment and Convergence electronic publications had begun to take on their own individual identities. For example, Edutainment & Convergence Today began as the official scholarly voice of edutainment and convergence, and it featured the original qualitative research interview results. However, Edutainment & Convergence Today has now become a daily collection of news stories on technology, entertainment, education and entertainment with occasional in-depth commentary and research based articles.
Edutainment & Convergence has evolved into the research commentary voice of my research work, and it will begin to feature commentary and peer-reviewed articles from both practitioners and academics in multiple disciplines that discussed edutainment and convergence. It also featured the frequent use of video, picture and music as part of its design based on the research elicited from original participants.
Edutainment
Today evolved into the purely visual version of Edutainment and
Convergence that utilized pictures and video primarily to tell the
story of edutainment and convergence. This publication will endeavor to
utilize pictures, video and written summaries of the findings obtained
from participants. Its sister publications will mimic Edutainment &
Convergence as a commentary piece that provides more detailed findings
and also provides examples and suggestions based on the findings.
Edutainment and Convergence Today will also be utilized as the organ to
release the findings of the study Edutainment and Convergence: How can
entertainment techniques be utilized in higher education from the
perspective of entertainment professionals. A purely research version
of this site will also be created to report the news of other research
and technologies that both support and question the findings of this
study.
At the end of the day, I was compelled to create these purely
research based versions of the site so that readers could quickly
locate the findings, PowerPoints, and other content in one area other
than the original sites which are now voluminous. Therefore, the
creation of a new ExtenderNet for the purposes of publishing the
findings seemed appropriate for this research that actually began in
2001 when I began studying convergence in 2001. I may even post some of
my old work here. To be sure, these publications will utilize peer
reviewed and non-peer reviewed articles. The goal of this research to find out how can entertainment techniques be utilized in higher education from the perspective of entertainment professionals while utilizing convergence technology to collect data and synthesize it. Stay tuned!
