Join us during February through April in our special Cowboys vs. Aliens! virtual world experience. We have a jam-packed schedule of events that is sure to please everyone from the newbie to experienced avatar. This build was sponsored by friends at SITE, ARVELSIG, and VWBPE, and is hosted on EdTech Island in Second Life. Check out our website, schedule of events, and directions for getting started if you are new to Second Life.
http://sitecitylimits.wordpress.com/
Facebook filed Wednesday to raise $5 billion in an initial public offering. Mark Zuckerberg wrote a letter to investors in which he described a work culture and ethic of “The Hacker Way.” I found many similarities between what he describes and the work that some of us engage in as educational technologists. I’m curious on your thoughts about The Hacker Way, and whether it has a place in public schools and universities.
******************
The Hacker Way
As part of building a strong company, we work hard at making Facebook the best place for great people to have a big impact on the world and learn from other great people. We have cultivated a unique culture and management approach that we call the Hacker Way.
The word “hacker” has an unfairly negative connotation from being portrayed in the media as people who break into computers. In reality, hacking just means building something quickly or testing the boundaries of what can be done. Like most things, it can be used for good or bad, but the vast majority of hackers I’ve met tend to be idealistic people who want to have a positive impact on the world.
The Hacker Way is an approach to building that involves continuous improvement and iteration. Hackers believe that something can always be better, and that nothing is ever complete. They just have to go fix it — often in the face of people who say it’s impossible or are content with the status quo.
Hackers try to build the best services over the long term by quickly releasing and learning from smaller iterations rather than trying to get everything right all at once. To support this, we have built a testing framework that at any given time can try out thousands of versions of Facebook. We have the words “Done is better than perfect” painted on our walls to remind ourselves to always keep shipping.
Hacking is also an inherently hands-on and active discipline. Instead of debating for days whether a new idea is possible or what the best way to build something is, hackers would rather just prototype something and see what works. There’s a hacker mantra that you’ll hear a lot around Facebook offices: “Code wins arguments.”
Hacker culture is also extremely open and meritocratic. Hackers believe that the best idea and implementation should always win — not the person who is best at lobbying for an idea or the person who manages the most people.
To encourage this approach, every few months we have a hackathon, where everyone builds prototypes for new ideas they have. At the end, the whole team gets together and looks at everything that has been built. Many of our most successful products came out of hackathons, including Timeline, chat, video, our mobile development framework and some of our most important infrastructure like the HipHop compiler.
To make sure all our engineers share this approach, we require all new engineers — even managers whose primary job will not be to write code — to go through a program called Bootcamp where they learn our codebase, our tools and our approach. There are a lot of folks in the industry who manage engineers and don’t want to code themselves, but the type of hands-on people we’re looking for are willing and able to go through Bootcamp.
The examples above all relate to engineering, but we have distilled these principles into five core values for how we run Facebook:
Focus on Impact
If we want to have the biggest impact, the best way to do this is to make sure we always focus on solving the most important problems. It sounds simple, but we think most companies do this poorly and waste a lot of time. We expect everyone at Facebook to be good at finding the biggest problems to work on.
Move Fast
Moving fast enables us to build more things and learn faster. However, as most companies grow, they slow down too much because they’re more afraid of making mistakes than they are of losing opportunities by moving too slowly. We have a saying: “Move fast and break things.” The idea is that if you never break anything, you’re probably not moving fast enough.
Be Bold
Building great things means taking risks. This can be scary and prevents most companies from doing the bold things they should. However, in a world that’s changing so quickly, you’re guaranteed to fail if you don’t take any risks. We have another saying: “The riskiest thing is to take no risks.” We encourage everyone to make bold decisions, even if that means being wrong some of the time.
Be Open
We believe that a more open world is a better world because people with more information can make better decisions and have a greater impact. That goes for running our company as well. We work hard to make sure everyone at Facebook has access to as much information as possible about every part of the company so they can make the best decisions and have the greatest impact.
Build Social Value
Once again, Facebook exists to make the world more open and connected, and not just to build a company. We expect everyone at Facebook to focus every day on how to build real value for the world in everything they do.
Thanks for taking the time to read this letter. We believe that we have an opportunity to have an important impact on the world and build a lasting company in the process. I look forward to building something great together.
Chris and I just can’t get enough! 3D GameLab has been in closed beta just over four months, and we’re now starting to prepare our next spring teacher camp, fully online, of course! March 26th-April 15th.
Last August, we opened 3D GameLab to the public with our first summer teacher camp. Camp lasts over a three week period. Teachers, instructional designers, and other educators interested in the experience and design of quest-based learning joined us in quests, synchronous events, games, virtual worlds, Skype, desktop video conferencing, and more. Our summer campers have now started bringing in their own students, and our players are using the platform in very creative ways.
Check out how these teachers are using 3D GameLab:
Stay tuned for more GameLab stories and news!
I had the opportunity to work with several schools in Australia last week, leading teacher training on blended learning. 
I found it very interesting to kick-off our time using a KWL activity to help customize the training for each group of teachers. I used Google Docs as a whole group writing activity, where everyone is working in one document simultaneously, and the results are then used for further discussion. I’ve done this in strategic planning sessions, as well. Here’s how it works:
2. To kick off a KWL Activity, type the following three questions in the document in bold.
3. Create a bit.ly (a shortened URL) of the Google doc to share with group to pull up on their own mobiles. http://bit.ly
4. Give the group several minutes to respond to the questions in text. Encourage the group to not hit the “back” button, or it will refresh the page for the entire group.
5. At the end of the time period, go back, review the responses as a group for each question. Summarize the findings, and develop the plan together to move forward in the training or study of a subject.
Here’s a sample of a group-constructed KWL:
A lot of exciting things and real learning happened for me on Day 2 of 3D GameLab online teacher summer camp. Allow me to share some highlights:
I had an interesting chat in Second Life with Leigh Writer, or Dr. Z., as he’s known on his blog. He had worked through many quests on day 2, and said he hadn’t yet received any feedback and was trying to figure out what to do to earn a gold star. Now the gold star is interesting, because it is a manual reward granted by the teacher, at the teacher’s discretion! I was intrigued that this highly intelligent, cutting edge professor was motivated by the reward from the teacher. We spoke about how he enjoyed the automated badges and achievements, but still wanted the personal connection with feedback and/or awards like stars, an acknowledgement from the teacher that he was on the right track. We talked about the balance between awarding too many stars, and trying to make them scarce to give them more value and meaning.
After our chat, I went back to gamelab and had 20 quests to approve. I made sure to leave comments on each one, even a short sentence was better than no sentence. I find I’m saving my stars for truly deep thought, an extra effort, or someone trying to help the community. I am rewarding the behavior and culture we are trying to cultivate in the community, a purposeful rewarding.
Dr. Z also turned me on to Audioboo, an audio recording website where you can record feedback for students and embed it in their feedback, instead of written text. He said his students LOVED getting and giving audio comments. My goal is to test it tomorrow, and see the response. I’ve been looking for a tool like this for awhile, very excited to find a web-based platform for it. I’ll need to be sensitive to hearing impaired students to ensure I’m not limiting their experience, as well.
Just for fun, here’s a voicethread I started today in the opening of the Virtual World Builders group. Love the comments and variety of people, interests and experience reflected in it!
http://voicethread.com/book.swf?b=2169454
I did anticipate a little chaos in launching a new technology. I had no idea on the number of emails I would receive with questions about logins, registrations, email and passwords not working, and not being able to sign up for events. Tech support on a new technology product is something that should be planned and I missed the boat on this one entirely (which is funny considering I ran a department and hired tech support in various forms for years–you’d think I’d know better!) As a result of the hundreds of emails I’ve sent out over the last two days and countless Skype and Vent chats, I have a much stronger appreciation for people who work at Help Desks, and I promise to always be calm and nice in the future! 
I’ve been enjoying reading students’ quests and leaving feedback in “bits.” I can sit down, do a few quests, go wash dishes, come back and do a few more, go to a Skype call, come back, etc. I have the ability to do more realistic just-in-time feedback compared to my regular online classes where I may let the “weekly” assignment pile up until the weekend when I sit down to grade a big batch of projects. This process is mirroring the mobile lifestyle that I find myself living more and more, and I think is more helpful to learners, as they’re not sitting around waiting for me to grade their work. The number of items I have has increased, but they are quick “bits,” easy to run through in short periods of time. While I have always been thrilled to get engaged with my students’ work, the idea of “grading” projects was laborious to me. Have I finally found a solution??
How was your day in 3D GameLab?
What an amazing opening day in 3D GameLab online teacher summer camp, and the launch of our closed beta quest-based learning platform!! Players logged in at midnight, and ran strong all day long. On our first day, 150 players logged in and completed over 750 total quests. The feedback has been fantastic. Chris Haskell (my co-inventor) and I were busy throughout the day meeting new players, participating in the mobile learning Skype chat event, hanging out in Ventrilo and chatting, leaving feedback and approving quests, reading blog and Facebook entries, sharing resources, answering LOTS of questions, and a little (haha) bit of tech support! Whew.
What the Players Have to Say
I have so much to say, but I think Chris’s closing video sums it up for both of us. More reporting on day 2.
WOW, I’m blown away! I originally bought a Jawbone Jambox to support wireless conference calling on-the-go. Little did I know that this little, portable, seemingly indestructible beauty would open up a world of music to me that I had never considered available before. 
I love music, all kinds of music, but I’m lazy. I don’t want to pay for iTunes, I don’t like to catalog and collect music, the whole syncing thing drives me nuts (I own too many devices and none of them seem to sync to the right computer at the right time). The radio is annoying because of commercials and talk.
Along comes my bluetooth-connected Jambox. After purchasing, I start experimenting by placing calls. It’s pretty cool. Jambox will talk to you, let you know the know the number of who’s calling you, and if you answer, you can conference call using the speaker unit. It goes anywhere in the house. So if I’m on a call, I can leave my phone, take the speaker with me, do dishes, etc. But wait…it gets better…
Imagine having the Pandora app on your phone, streaming your favorite style of music for free (which is streams for you based on your own listening preferences) straight to the Jambox. It doesn’t replace a true stereo speaker system, but man, this little box is a powerful speaker! I love turning on Pandora, and listening to music on the Jambox. Then, if someone is calling, it is smart enough to stop playing music, announce the caller ID, and wait while I determine whether or not I’ll accept the call. When I’m done talking, it automatically starts playing music again.
Jambox is small, it fits in my hand, it travels in my purse, it’s a party-on-the go combined with conference capability, so I can transition from conversation to listening enjoyment very seamlessly. What seemed to be a handy tool for work has turned into a fantastic new addition to my lifestyle. Love it, love it!
Many thanks go out to Al Beyers, Flavio Mendez, Dayna Anderson and the great folks at NSTA (National Science Teachers Association) for hosting the Immersive Environments for Science Education strand at ISTE in Philadelphia last week! I particularly enjoyed the ability to dialogue with Al, Chris Dede and Greg Jones using an optimist/pessimist approach in our panel, Immersive Environments for Science Education: Hyper-learning or Over Hyped Learning. If you know me, I tend to wear the optimist hat a lot–I’m always pushing for the vision of what could be!
In my session on Quest Based Learning Across Immersive Learning Environments, it was fun to explore the design of an open-learning environment that provides student choice and access using 3D GameLab, our new quest-based learning platform that aligns informal and formal learning activities, including the use of immersive worlds, games, and sims, to science standards.
If you have an interest in cutting-edge science education, be sure to check out the NSTAs Learning Center, a professional development site with thousands of resources, many of them available at no cost, as well as a social learning community for connecting with other innovative science educators.
Tom, thank you for sharing this article. It’s been a long time coming. I like the idea of an assessment ecosystem, it’s a step in the right direction. I do think we should be cautious of replacing paper and pencil multiple choice assessments with online multiple choice assessments, and calling that innovation, however.
The best assessments are those that are reflective of what the student can do with knowledge, how they can apply, reuse, remix, create, and innovate with their knowledge. I am most supportive of assessment that allows learners to understand their own learning, assessment that captures examples of real-life work, such as writing a story or in blogs, providing community service, creating simulations or models, completing complex tasks, performing to an audience, inventing something that didn’t exist before, etc. In our 3D GameLab project, we are seeking to map genuine, active learning and performance that learners authentically engage in across the meta-verse to common core standards, and then provide the learner a scorecard showing evidence of those achievements.
To create a nation of innovators, we must give our students the freedom and opportunity to innovate. Assessment must be for the individual’s own learning, not a check-off in the process of compliance. Online systems are smart enough to capture this evidence. We must refocus our thinking about assessment in the best interest of the learner, and not for the system that drives educational policy. The data we need as policymakers can be extracted. Design for the learner…not the system.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
Tomorrow I have the wonderful opportunity to give several talks about the importance of educational games, sims, virtual worlds, and my current favorite topic, quest-based learning. For those of you looking for copies of my talks, you can find them here.
Skype: lisadawley
Twitter: lisadawley
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/lisadawley
ARVEL SIG blog
Recent Comments