eSports in schools

I am not a gamer although I have tried. At first, the notion of school to school competitive gaming seemed strange. Things have certainly changed. But, I understand there are schools that fish for bass as a competitive activity, and of course there are chess, robotics, debate, and music competitions. North Dakota (the western part) had rodeo competitions.

The question about any school-related activity is what purpose does it serve. What purpose is there for football given all of the injuries that can result? Whatever reason comes to your mind, you can make the same argument for eSports. You learn life-long skills such as the value of teamwork, commitment, and winning or losing gracefully. Students find a way to connect with the school culture they may not find in the classroom or in traditional sports or art. Professional opportunities, scholarships, and career opportunities are there for the very best. Gaming can be a life-long recreational activity. The arguments used to justify any school activity seem to apply. I played the tuba probably because I am not pitch-perfect limiting my future as a trombonist and the band needed someone who would. This was not glamorous and there are featured notes rather than solos, but you are a necessary part of the group.

So, while not a participant, I am trying to understand new initiatives of this type. I recommend the eSports Playbook as a resource for any educator, school board member, or parent trying to understand the role eSports can play. The book does a nice job of addressing misconceptions about gaming (gaming leads to violence, screen time), identifying the skill set developed by gaming and the multiple roles students can take on related to an eSports team, coaching techniques, and sources for organizations promoting and supporting eSports. The one section of the book I admit I find pushing things a bit far promotes gaming across the curriculum. I see eSports as a meaningful extracurricular activity. You can probably take many academic or traditional extracurricular activities and expand the activity as the focus for broad topics of instruction, but that seems more a magnet school concept (e.g., schools for the arts, science) and not a practical direction for most schools.

If, like me, you are not involved as a gamer and you think eSports is some strange anomaly here is a little exercise I propose. Do a search for a past college you attended or maybe even a K12 school and see if they have an eSports program. I worked at the University of North Dakota and I retired only a few years ago. I had no idea there was an esports program.

University of North Dakota esports

Iowa State University

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WordPress for design

I started blogging in 2002 using an early version of Blogger that I hosted on a server I ran myself. You may know that Blogger was purchased by Google and is still available as an outlet for the content creation of individuals. 

You are reading this on a WordPress blog. I switched to WordPress because I again could host it on a server I controlled. I switched to use a hosting option provided by BlueHost when I determined that I wanted to add Google ads to my blog and that I should probably not be doing this on a site I could control through the university where I worked. Just to be clear I have always paid far more for leasing part of a server than I ever generated in ad revenue. Running ads is kind of an experiment and a matter of principle. I believe content creators should be compensated for their efforts. Originally, I had to install and update WordPress myself, but BlueHost now offers a way to have the software installed and updated for you.

WordPress emerged in 2003 and has become more and more powerful since. There is still a simplified version of WordPress available at no cost and a more powerful version for $4 a month. If you have no other purpose for paying for space on a server you can use for multiple purposes and want a blog with more options, the $4 level is a good choice.

Blogging platforms have gradually become more and more powerful and can be used in other ways than offering the list of serial content posts familiar to all blog readers. The platforms allow both this familiar format (posts) and also pages that can be interlinked in much the same way as many web sites you may visit. The page approach starts from a home page and the connection among pages is changed by the effort of the content creator and not automatically by the addition of new material. 

A blog platform may be your most efficient approach to creating a web site. The flexible page-based blogger sites are also improving providing those wanting to offer content as a web site greater and greater control over appearance and function. The sites generated do not have to resemble cookie-cutter simplistic offerings based on a common theme. WordPress has moved to an approach based on what are called blocks. For old folks like me who remember Hypercard, the multimedia construction kit, you might use Hypercard as a reference. Hypercard allowed the creation of a stack (which might be considered pages) and the addition of elements some of which were preprogrammed. So there were arrows that could take a user to the next card, the previous card, and the first card in the stack, You would add images and text to the surface of the card. You could also make use of the hypertalk coding language to add your own actions to elements (cards, buttons,, etc.). 

The block approach in blog platforms is beginning to approach the flexibility of hypercard in the online world, You can use preprogrammed blocks and for those who want the flexibility program your own blocks. Blocks can now be used to shape the appearance of the site in addition to controlling the content added to a page or post. 

Just to be clear. I don’t spend a lot of time on design. I consider myself mostly a writer.

Blogging platforms have evolved to meet the requirements of a “low floor and high ceiling” environments encouraged by edtech visionaries. The platforms can serve as a basic outlet for student writing or a creative environment for students interested in multimedia design options. There is now little need for expensive computer-based multimedia design software. Allow students who want to do more than write to become proficient with the advanced features of modern blogging (web design) platforms. 

This post was motivated by a State of the Word online presentation from Matt Mullenweg the founder of WordPress. The presentation has been archived on YouTube and offers an extended description of the present version of WordPress.

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Time-lapse video with iMotion

I am considering this to be the third contribution to my series on Classroom Gardens. It is related to the other two posts which concern indoor hydroponic gardening only in that time-lapse video is an interesting way to demonstrate plant growth and variations of such a project would be easy to implement

This is my setup for capturing the video of plant growth. The equipment toward the back of the image is the hydroponic garden and you can also see some young plants. Positioned in front and to the right of this garden is an iPad.

Time-lapse video requires a fixed location for the camera and steady control of the focus of the camera. This device (I wish I knew the name) holds an iPad. The video I provide was taken over a couple of weeks so you need to consider how you will create an environment allowing careful positioning of the camera. As long as no one bumps the iPad, this holder does the trick. A traditional tripod serves a similar purpose when time-lapse video is taken with a camera. It is also necessary to plug the iPad into a power source as the iPad remains active during this entire process so it would have run down the battery without being plugged in.

The app used for this process was iMotion for Schools. In the video tutorial that follows I incorrectly claim iMotion for Schools is the same price as iMotion Pro. I find different prices. I paid $3.99, but the iMotion for Schools page says $5.99

iMotion for Schools Tutorial

Here is the video created with iMotion.

The video you see here has been altered. The original video contained segments of black frames generated during the night when the lights for the hydroponic garden were off. One thing I do not explain in the tutorial which was already getting a little long was the opportunity to edit the video with the app (see tools when the completed video is open). There are tools for adding and removing individual frames. I used the delete frame tool to remove the blank frames. In the video, you see phases of smooth growth and then jumps. The jumps are caused by the growth that occurred during the night when the darkness prevented the recording of these changes.

One hint – you have to do this on the fly so I slowed during the frame rate to 1 frame per second to delete frames and speeded it back up to 16 frames per second before exporting the video. I don’t have an explanation for the flickering you see in the first section of the video. Because the growing lettuce fills the screen toward the end of the video and the flickering is no longer present, I assume the flickering was caused by the exposed lighting.

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Class Gardens – 2

As I explained in my first post in this series, I first became interested in hydroponics more than fifty years ago. A high school acquaintance and I generated a science fair project based on some recipes I had discovered for growing plants without certain key nutrients and we grew corn (I grew up in Iowa) comparing a control group and three treatment groups each without a key nutrient. 

My next experience with school gardens came many years later when I was a young professor interested in how schools might use technology to encourage student interest in science. My undergrad training had focused on biology and high school teaching, but my education also included research experiences focused on learning and eventually this combination led to a career as an educational psychologist. My interests led to some unusual activities for an academic. At one point, I became acquainted with a couple of individuals who were responsible for the educational outreach efforts of North Dakota Game and Fish. They had a program that interested me and I thought I could make a contribution to the program through the use of technology. The program was called OWLS (outdoor wildlife learning sites) and it involved the Game and Fish Department offering small grants to schools to start gardens originally intended to focus on native plants and animals.  Most of these projects were small, but in some rural areas where more land might be available could involve several acres. My idea was to create a website participant schools could use to share their experiences in developing these sites. Game and Fish bought me a server and with the dedicated IP the University provided to my office, I started serving web content. I went on to offer other content from Game and Fish online that had potential educational value (e.g., the NDWild clipart collection – https://learningaloud.com/clipart/), but it is the OWLS sites that are relevant here. 

I learned a lot from the OWLS project and not all of the experiences were positive. For example, gardens seem like a great idea, but a good part of the growing season does not overlap with the time students are in school and this poses some issues. Too many of the OWLS turned into weed patches (most were botanical learning gardens and not vegetable gardens) over the summers. 

As a thought I tried the Wayback Machine to see if anything from this effort had been saved and I did find some content from 1997. It is unfortunate that the photos of the various gardens are no longer available, but some of the text information still remains. 

I have written about school gardens on other occasions. In this post from 2013 I question why gardens are so seldom mentioned in the trendy focus on other STEM topics. 

School gardens are not necessarily hydroponic. I used classroom gardens purposefully to bring attention to this unique approach. This approach to production allows a year-round opportunity which means students will have better access during the school year. Hydroponic agriculture has some unique advantages to traditional agriculture 

School/Community Connections

Students who live in urban areas may have little understanding of where their food comes from or how it is produced. This lack of understanding is even greater in poor, minority communities. Access to good food can also be a justice issue as markets with fresh food move to affluent areas leaving those with low incomes less able to purchase healthy food. Protests after George Floyd’s death closed the only full-service grocery store for a 3-mile radius of North Minneapolis. This challenge is sometimes described as a food desert. Community gardens and school gardens offer a response to this need. 

School garden lesson plans

Climate change education

Science fair projects

  Project ideas

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Classroom Gardens

This is the first of a three-post series focused on the potential of classroom gardens. I have had a long-standing interest in school gardens as a category of maker space with potential for learning outcomes across the curriculum. This interest has been rekindled because of a recent purchase intended to get me through the Minnesota winter.

Since retirement, we have been spending the worst part of midwest winters in a warmer climate. You may have viewed some of my pictures from Kauai or the Big Island on my travel blog. Because of the pandemic, we will not be spending time on the road this winter. Maybe next year.

Looking for interesting things to do while spending lots of time indoors, Cindy game me an indoor hydroponic garden as a present (birthday, Christmas, extra money set aside for Hawaii, etc.). As I got it set up, I started to connect the experience with my long term interest in school gardens.

This is the AeroGarden Farm.

This is a pretty fancy setup with sensors, wifi connection, timers, pumps, etc. There are less expensive versions and related products from other companies. The iPad is there because I am doing a time-lapse of plant growth which I will write about in a later post.

The system uses hydroponics which is the growing of plants without soil. The two tubs at the base of the garden contain water and nutrients with a motor to circulate the solution. You add water and fertilizer every couple of weeks and prune plants to keep them within whatever space you are willing to allocate. The first group consists of several varieties of lettuce, cherry tomatoes, and several different herbs. I may have too much going on for my first attempt, but this is about learning.

My experiences with hydroponics go way back – more than 50 years back. Members of my family get tired of hearing this story, but I will offer a short version because it is new to you. When I was a freshman in high school, a classmate and I placed third in a regional science fair with an experiment growing corn hydroponically. I had found some “recipes” for hydroponic solutions that provided plants a nutrient source weak in one of the three major macronutrients of fertilizer (nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium). We grew corn in four mason jars with a control group and a group deficient in one of the macronutrients. We charted growth and displayed the actual plants as part of our booth for the competitions. I had no idea of the chemistry involved, but the visual display was impressive and we were only 9th graders. I have an old black and white photo of the display but I could not find it for this post.

I have come across hydroponics on other occasions. Some of you have probably seen the hydroponics display at EPCOT. You ride past in on one of those boat rides. We have visited a couple of times and paid the fee to get the behind the scenes tour. Here is a post with some pictures from our visit in 2014. I see I was thinking about the potential for school gardens in reaction to this visit. My present experience offers a more practical approach.

So, I see opportunities for having a unit such as this in classrooms. More on school gardens in my next post.

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Expanding social media options

I have blogged since 2002 and since I have started I have written thousands of posts now organized into three blogs (Learning Aloud, Blurts, and Curmudgeon Speaks). The first two blogs are focused on educational topics and technology tutorials and the final on a range of topics unrelated to my professional interests. I have a sense that the personal blog is becoming less popular. Blogs and podcasts have come to be dominated by commercial backers. There is only so much reading/listening time and it is becoming difficult to keep an audience. Blogs also require more work (relative to social media services) and fewer and fewer folks seem to learn how to use an RSS reader to make the following of multiple blogs easy and efficient. Much of the traffic I get now comes from Twitter (all posts generate a tweet that provides a link), but if I am right about this method of alerting potential readers, the maximum possible readers would be limited to the size of my list of Twitter friends who are interested in education. 

I am not going to abandon blogging mostly because I value having a place where the content I have generated is curated. I wrote regularly on Facebook during the Trump era, but there was always a sense that any effort directed at that outlet was “here today and gone tomorrow”. A service with such characteristics does not seem the place to store content such as tutorials intended to have some long term value.

Sites to which multiple individuals post and comment have obvious advantages for engagement even though the content submitted there eventually fades into the mists of time. Blogs do allow commenting, but the interaction on Facebook or Twitter is obviously far greater and more vigorous. This can be both good and bad, but ignoring the deserved negative attention of recent times, the opportunity to engage a group around a topic on such platforms offers clear advantages if the goal is interaction among participants.

I hope to increase the time I spend in such interaction now that I feel free from the hours I spend engaged in Political arguments on Facebook. I spent this time because I felt it important to the way I wanted to think about the future of this country. I have always been interested in argumentation and I certainly had the opportunity to explore both the positive and negative elements of argumentation in discussing my liberal political views. It is this interactivity I hope to experience around other topics.

I have several reasons to abandon Facebook despite the popularity of this platform. First, I just think the dominance of Facebook is not a good thing. Most folks don’t care, but I have what I consider a professional interest in the long view of online learning and I just don’t think it is a good thing when there is not healthy competition offering alternatives and driving innovation. Second, I disagree with some of Facebook’s methods. I understand the ad revenue model (see the comments that follow), but Facebook uses information collected from users to personalize ads (a useful thing in some circumstances) to tell users what they want to know and to prioritize emotion-provoking content. Being told what you want to hear is not the same as the best information available and encourages confirmation bias. Both promoting this bias and emotion-provoking content increase attention leading to the opportunity to sell more ads leading to the opportunity to collect more information, etc., etc.

Follow the money

I think it fair to argue that the big players in this space must generate a revenue stream to pay for their infrastructure and pay their employees. Of course, there is also the opportunity to make a great deal of money.

If one ignores open-source software which certainly exists and maybe fun to explore, the services that will be able to actually compete seem to fall into three categories (I offer an example for each). 

Ads – Facebook 

General contribution – WT:Social

Focused contribution – rent space – MeWe

With time to spend, I want to explore options to Facebook.

So, Facebook clearly dominates this space and relies on ad revenue which might be interpreted by users as free. If one does not mind viewing ads and we all certainly view ads all of the time, Facebook may seem free. What we are really spending is information about ourselves. Facebook collects this information which is valuable to companies wanting to target ads as effectively as possible. 

We could pay for a social service and receive access without the collection of personal data or the need to view ads. I see two options here. In the first option, one pays a fee to gain access to the service. WT:Social is an example of this approach. You can use WT:Social for free, but the service wants you to subscribe. The second option would like you to rent space as a contributor. MeWe is my example of this approach. You can post a certain amount of content at no cost, but at some point you are expected to pay for additional storage and other services. 

I am exploring both WT:Social and MeWe. Both offer opportunities to create or join groups and the feed you encounter then depends on those you friend or the groups you join. So, the experience in both cases resembles Facebook with a greater emphasis on groups and without the ads. Both services face challenges overcoming what is known as the network effect. 

I have created groups on both platforms attempting to attract participants to a sharing of content associated with a theme of K12 use of technology. The links to these efforts are – https://wt.social/wt/k12-edtech, https://www.mewe.com/join/educationaltechnology-k12. The wt.social group has been active for the longest, but I would not regard this effort as successful. My observation of the wt.social content related to technology has mostly been that there are efforts with many posts by a single individual, but few group members (my example) or groups with many members and only a few posts. I have had far less time invested in MeWe, but I started a group on this site because there were no other groups under the education heading focused on general technology integration. What I can offer based on my experience to this point is that it is very difficult to organically create a group around a specific topic. Clearly, these groups are far smaller than Facebook, but the services argue they are growing. I worry that there is a perception that an individual attempting to create a group intends to use that group as a personal outlet very much in the tradition of a blog. This is not my intention and it is not consistent with the capabilities of social media groups. I will give my efforts a year or so and see what I think at that point.

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Free isn’t forever

On Wednesday (Nov. 11), I noticed an email from Google. It was a description of the changes to my Google Photos account. At present Google allows you to store as many “high quality” photos as you want for free. I am not certain what high quality is, but it is a compressed version of the original quality of a decent camera. High quality is still great quality. After June 1 of next year, free goes away. Any Google user has 15 gigabytes of storage (mail and drive). Photos added after June will count toward this limit. If you want more space you must pay for a Google One account.

I knew I paid a couple of dollars a month to Google for space and it turns out I already have a Google One account.

I purchased Google One because I was concerned about what I had stored in Google Drive. I was approaching 15 GB of Drive content. I must have the smallest account (100 gb), but I have lots of content stored.

Some thoughts on paying for stuff. In general, I think digital users should pay. The present ad supported model has resulted in problems concerning the collection and sharing of personal data and efforts by tech companies to attract more screen time from users. The mechanisms to increase screen time have manipulated our understanding of the world with the prioritization of attention grabbing mechanisms such as the prioritization of content suited to our personal interests and content more likely to generate an emotional response. Paying for a less manipulative service would probably be a good thing and the tech companies do need to way to generate revenue. The Google price model is reasonable.

From the other perspective, Google has employed typical big company tactics. Very much like Amazon, Google has undercut the price of competitors driving them out of business. I have no idea whether this was the long term intention, but it has worked out this way. Undercut competitors to close them down or buy them out and then raise prices. This is the type of thing the Commerce Department must address if we want to maintain the competition necessary for continued innovation.

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