If you play video games, know someone who plays video games or have students who play video games… (wait a second, isn’t that pretty well everybody?) then this is a fun and very simple way to acknowledge their strengths. Wildly popular video games like World of Warcraft or Runescape or even classics like Dungeons and Dragons include a system of ongoing improvement.
For example in World of Warcraft, if you gather the necessary materials to sew together a nice Spellweave Robe, you’ll probably gain +1 onto your tailoring profession and then +96 Stamina, +89 Intellect and +52 Spirit if you decide to wear your new fancy robe. This is a system and vocabulary that is common to anyone who has ever played a role playing game.
Of course, I would love to give +10 motivation to my teenaged kids every once in awhile or could use +50 patience in my classroom at times. Somehow, even though gamers know + 1′s are virtual, the feeling of accomplishment and motivation to gain more +1′s is real. I wonder how +1′s could be used in a classroom environment to stimulate the same type of motivation and sense of accomplishment and confidence students gain while gaming. How about +1 Problem Solving or +1 Including New Friends or +1 Laughing?
Plus One Me lets you send a +1 along with an explanation with a simple email to a deserving friend or student. So far, Plus One attributes fall into three general categories, mental, social and physical and include +1 humor, +1 backbone and +1 inspiring among many others.
By the way, I learned about this great site from Jane McGonigal’s new book “Reality is Broken.”
A new major online safety report has just been released by the US. If you wade through the 148 pages, you’ll find lots of common sense advice on topics such as social networking, cyberbullying and texting all supported by research. The report also includes an extensive list of online safety websites and descriptions.
Filled with ideas to help you make the most of your break from the bell schedule. Whether it’s reading a good book or going on an adventure, this resource-packed guide highlights 10 cool ways to spend your well-deserved free time this summer.
Take the time you deserve to learn about how to “Grow Your Network” or “Curate Classroom Artifacts,” and, most importantly, relax and enjoy your summer!
Terry Freedman is a tech integration guru who lives in England and today he released this free, 121 page book called The Amazing Web 2.0 Projects Book and it is in fact truly amazing. It’s loaded with practical ideas about the kinds of things you can do with Web 2.0 technology in your classroom. All the projects and their descriptions were provided by teachers themselves, are organized by subject and includes projects applicable to all age ranges.
I really liked reading the comments and student reactions that are included with each project. “The blog is like work but more fun!”
On page 12 of the booklet there’s an interesting graph where teachers selected the benefits of using Web 2.0 technologies with their classes as well as a list of challenges which is worth a look. The list of links is itself an excellent resource. The book is free to share.
Here’s an innovative way to enhance your curriculum with standards based songs about elementary and high school topics http://iamlodge.com/beans/. The person who runs the site is Dr. Lodge McCammon who is a specialist in Curriculum and Contemporary Media at the Friday Institute for Educational Innovation. This site includes worksheets, activities and the songs themselves that can be played directly from your browser.
Topics and songs include Atoms and Elements, Order of Operations and Songs about the Outsiders by S.E. Hinton.
I continue to be interested in the motivating aspects of online multiplayer gaming and how I might exercise elements of effective game design in my teaching to motivate students. With echoes of Vygotsky and social cognitive theory, it appears the “multiplayer” part holds particular promise.
59% of gamers play games with other gamers in person (up from 51% in 2006)
24% of teens only play games alone, and the remaining three-quarters play games with others at least some of the time
47% of teens play online games with people they know in their offline lives; 27% of teens play online games with people they first met online; 23% of teens play with both
65% of game playing teens play with other people who are in the room with them; 27% play games with people who they connect with through the Internet; 82% play games alone
Related to this, PBS has just released another series of programs as a sequel to their very popular Growing Up Online series from 2008 called Digital Nation – Life on the Virtual Frontier. This series, released in February, 2010, explores what it means to be human in a 21st century digital world and considers topics such as learning, the future of education, literacy and the impact of video games.
This is one short interview from the Digital Nation series where IBM Vice President of Innovation Francoise LeGoues suggests that Warcraft gamers are definitely developing business skills that companies like hers want.
Kathy Schrock is recognized internationally as a tech integration guru and has been for a long time. Kathy continues to maintain the “Kathy Schrock’s Guide for Educators on Discovery Education” with lists of excellent online resources that support teachers in their classrooms. This list includes an extensive list of assessment ideas for everything web 2.0 including subject specific rubrics, web page rubrics, multimedia rubrics, rubric builders and of course web 2.0 rubrics.
Here’s how Kathy describes this list: Now that we are using the Internet in the classroom to support instruction, it is important the area of assessment be addressed. One usable method for teachers is to provide a rubric for student use and for both formative and summative assessment purposes. Another is to provide some type of graphic organizer. Below you will find a collection of assessment rubrics and graphic organizers that may be helpful to you as you design your own.
NBC Learn, the educational arm of NBC News, has teamed up with the National Science Foundation (NSF) to produce Science of the Olympic Winter Games, a 16-part video series that explores the science behind individual Olympic events, including Downhill and Aerial Skiing, Speed Skating and Figure Skating, Curling and Hockey, and Ski Jumping, Bobsledding and Snowboarding.
This project between the NSF and NBC Learn uses the global spotlight of the Olympics to make science more accessible and more interesting to students by showing how science helps athletes fulfill the Olympic motto: Citius, Altius, Fortius—Swifter, Higher, Stronger.
TED is a small nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from three worlds: Technology, Entertainment, Design. The annual conferences in Long Beach and Oxford bring together the world’s most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives (in 18 minutes).
TED.com, makes the best talks and performances from TED and partners available to the world, for free. More than 500 TEDTalks are now available, with more added each week.
The TED 2010 conference in Palm Springs and Long Beach California starts today. Here’s a link to the TED page that includes one of my favorite presentations by Sir Ken Robinson on how schools kill creativity. The side menu on this page includes other related presentations on “How We Learn.”
The speakers list for this round of TED talks includes Mike Feinberg and Dave Levin, the founders of KIPP a highly successful school program dedicated to supporting underserved communities, Bill Gates, Benoit Mandelbrot and Ken Robinson among many other world leading thinkers. I can’t wait to watch their presentations.
Students can view images used for planning the Apollo missions and see virtual artifacts left on the moon from past and current missions. Students can also watch relevant videos linked to specific spots on the moon. Google Earth is a must have application for any SmartBoard. Download Google Earth Here.
If you play video games, know someone who plays video games or have students who play video games… (wait a second, isn’t that pretty well everybody?) then this is a fun and very simple way to acknowledge their strengths. Wildly popular video games like World of Warcraft or Runescape or even classics like Dungeons and Dragons include a system of ongoing improvement.
