Quote 1:
"Instruction should be learner-centered rather than technology centered. In taking a learner-centered approach, you begin with what is known about how people learn and then try to employ technology in ways that assist human learning. According to this view, technology is a learning tool that is adjusted to fit the needs of learners. In taking a technology-centered approach, you begin with a cutting edge technology and then try to make it available to students. According to this view, technology is a treasure that should be applied to instruction. The problem with the technology-centered approach is that it is more concerned with promoting educational technology than with promoting learning in students."
Reflection 1:
Whoever is creating the technology used for learning should be more concerned with the teaching methods within the software rather than the how new and flashy the technology may be. You need to know who your audience is and know what their technological literacy is. To you, as the creater, it may make perfect sense, but to the learner, it may not.
Quote 2:
"Animated pedagogical agents are cartoon-like characters that appear on the computer screen during a computer-based lesson or exercise. Through interactions with the learner they can offer suggestions, encouragement, feedback, and needed information. My colleagues and I have found that many of the research-based principles listed in foregoing answers apply to animated pedagogical agents. For example, people learn better when agents talk to them rather than when agents produce on-screen text (i.e., modality principle). Interestingly, my colleagues and I have found no evidence that the agent’s gestures affect learning, or even that having the agent’s image on the screen is necessary for learning. Thus, instead of asking whether students learn better with or without animated pedagogical agents, a more fruitful question concerns the characteristics of an agent that lead to better learning. For example, in a current set of studies my colleagues and I are examining whether people learn to use a computer-based simulation of assembly lines in a factory when an on-screen agent talks to them in a polite style or a direct style."
Reflection 2:
I personally like when a computer talks to me like their is a person in the room. When a video is step by step I tend not to pay attention, but when there is greater detail presented in a conversation style than I find it to be a more effective learning scenario.
Quote 3:
"Like most important questions in psychology, the appropriate answer is: It depends. Games can be designed and used in ways that teach or they can be designed and used in ways that do not teach. A major challenge in using games as instructional devices concerns how to encourage the learner to engage in reflection and other forms of deep cognitive processing while learning. 188 Veronikas and Shaughnessy I have two main cautions concerning using games as instructional tools. First, transfer may be quite limited. For example, in a study by Valerie Sims and I, we found that students who learned how to play the video game, Tetris, showed improvements in mental rotation of Tetris shapes but not mental rotation of other kinds of shapes and not other cognitive skills. Second, students may learn little from fast-paced games unless they engage in reflection activities (such as discussions) after playing the game. Barbara White and her colleagues have shown that students who played physics games in a microworld learned more deeply if they had to engage in discussions of the underlying principles after playing the game."
Reflection 3:
Reflection is not something I have done on games in the past. I like that thought. I would like to see if they transfer into better learning results in the classroom.