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The ethics of MOOC research. In writing my recent article on massive open online courses, I talked with the leaders of the Big Three in the nascent industry — Coursera, edX, and Udacity — and they all stressed the importance of large-scale data collection and analysis to their plans.

The ethics of MOOC research

By meticulously tracking the actions of students, they hope to build large behavioral data bases that can then be mined for pedagogical insights. The findings, they believe, will help improve particular classes as well as bolster our general understanding of teaching and learning. He’s Uneducated: Rethinking Our Models of Learning. This comic is several weeks old, but I keep pulling it back up again and again.

He’s Uneducated: Rethinking Our Models of Learning

In just three small panels and in about 30 words, the strip speaks a pretty clear message of how the idea of education is shifting. Essay on the changes that may most threaten traditional higher education. In a recent Wall Street Journal interview about college costs and online learning, Stanford University President John Hennessy said, "What I told my colleagues is there’s a tsunami coming.

Essay on the changes that may most threaten traditional higher education

I can’t tell you exactly how it’s going to break, but my goal is to try to surf it, not to just stand there. " Stanford and other elite institutions, such as Harvard and Carnegie Mellon Universities, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology are not sitting back and waiting for technology to disrupt higher education — they are out there experimenting with both delivery formats and cost.

And Harvard announce edX. Harvard University and MIT today announced edX, a transformational new partnership in online education.

and Harvard announce edX

Through edX, the two institutions will collaborate to enhance campus-based teaching and learning and build a global community of online learners. EdX will build on both universities’ experience in offering online instructional content. The technological platform recently established by MITx, which will serve as the foundation for the new learning system, was designed to offer online versions of MIT courses featuring video lesson segments, embedded quizzes, immediate feedback, student-ranked questions and answers, online laboratories and student-paced learning. SXSW: What Gaming Should Teach IT Leaders - Global-cio - Executive insights/interviews. Slot Machine in Javascript. Slot machine in Javascript.

Recently somebody talked to me about creating a slot machine.

Slot machine in Javascript

I looked on the web and could not find any good slot machine implementation in javascript. So I decided to write a quick one. My implementation uses jquery and a couple of jquery plugins for animation. Spritely is a wonderful jquery plugin for background animation. I also used a plugin for animating background-position since jquery does not support it natively. Lets start building the slot machine. Gamifying Homework. Net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ELI7075.pdf. HOW TO: Properly Use Badges to Engage Customers. Gabe Zichermann is the chair of the upcoming Gamification Summit NYC (9/15-16, 2011), where industry leaders will gather to share knowledge and insight.

HOW TO: Properly Use Badges to Engage Customers

Zichermann is also an author, highly rated public speaker and entrepreneur whose book, “Gamification by Design” (O’Reilly, 2011) is the first to look at the technical and architectural considerations for designing engagement using game concepts. Badges are among the most visible elements of gamification, the use of game-thinking and game mechanics to engage media audiences. A badge is one of many tools in an engagement design arsenal that also includes point systems, leaderboards, challenges, rewards, team play and achievement, among others.

Badge Research

5 Creepy Ways Video Games Are Trying to Get You Addicted. Keeping You Pressing It...

5 Creepy Ways Video Games Are Trying to Get You Addicted

Forever Now, the big difference between our Skinner box hamster and a real human is that we humans can get our pellets elsewhere. If a game really was just nothing but clicking a box for random rewards, we'd eventually drop it to play some other game. Humans need a long-term goal to keep us going, and the world of addictive gaming has got this down to a science. Techniques include... The seduction secrets of video game designers. The Psychology of Video Games. Phat Loot and Neurotransmitters in World of Warcraft « The Psychology of Video Games. How are loot-based games like World of Warcraft, Torchlight, and Borderlands related to slot machines, chemical bliss, and evolution? Read on for the answer. During my early days with World of Warcraft (WoW) I remember tromping through Westfall killing crowds of Defias bandits when I was shocked by a loot drop: a rare pair of “blue” gloves that perfectly fit my class’s needs at the time. For those of you who don’t know, killing enemies in WoW gives you a random chance at one or more pieces armor, weapons, or other items called “loot” in WoW parlance.

These are stratified according their text’s color: gray, white, green, blue, purple, and orange in order of increasing quality. For a level 20-something character to find a blue item on a random enemy was actually very rare, and I experienced a huge rush from it. Stanford Center for Professional Development. A new Professional Education interface has been introduced for a limited number of courses beginning Autumn 2009.

Stanford Center for Professional Development

What's New The new Professional Education interface offers a much larger video window as well as the ability for users to take their own notes online. The notes function offers pre-populated index points created by the course subject matter expert as well as the ability for individual users to take their own notes (which are saved to his/her profile and accessible during future viewings). PDF versions of the lecture slides are available within the interface and viewers can navigate among session videos directly from the interface. If using the Windows Media Player (WMP) based interface, variable speed playback controls are available. Setting Up Your Computer and Viewing Professional Courses Online. LevelUp for Photoshop - #Gamification of learning complex software. Let’s say you’re an amateur photographer who has just purchased a fancy new camera and now you want to be able to manipulate all the photos you’ve taken.

LevelUp for Photoshop - #Gamification of learning complex software

You download the massive Photoshop 30-day trial from the Adobe website, then run through the install process, and then finally, launch Photoshop. And what do you see? A blank white canvas, and an overwhelming assortment of menus and panels. It’s daunting, to say the least. Smart Gamification: Seven Core Concepts for Creating Compelling Experiences. Rating: 4.8/5 (5 votes cast) Games are infiltrating every aspect of daily life – and everyone’s now a gamer, in one form or another.

Smart Gamification: Seven Core Concepts for Creating Compelling Experiences

Early-on “gamification” involved adding simple game mechanics like points, badges and leaderboards to websites and apps. But that’s not what makes games truly compelling. Good games take players on a journey, giving them something to learn, master and share. How to 'Gamify' Your Class Website. [This is a guest post by Anastasia Salter, Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Baltimore in the school of Information Arts and Technologies. Her academic work focuses on storytelling in new media; she also writes the Future Fragments column for CinCity.

Follow her on Twitter at MsAnastasia. Digital educational game: pedagogical design and development. Will Grind for Grades. Let's take a moment and remove ourselves from the debate about mainstream videogames and their future or lack thereof. Just for a small while, put aside your position on limited scope or your rage about those egregious glitches that contaminate the world of and have a look at the sterling output of a different gaming world in 2011: educational videogames.

The real question, however, is not whether children want arcades in their classrooms. It's whether these programs improve learning. I'm not referring to the Windows 95-era mainstays like or either. New charter schools that run curricula fully dedicated to the idea of using videogames and digital media to teach are popping up in major cities.

50 Great Sites for Serious, Educational Games. By Rose Jensen Serious games are making the news almost every day. From teaching children about the cancer in their bodies to helping college students reinforce lessons from their business classes, these educational games take playing to a whole new level. Take a look at these 50 sites for serious and educational games you can play. CyberCIEGE Educational Video Game. An innovative video game and tool to teach computer and network security concepts CyberCIEGE enhances information assurance and cyber security education and training through the use of computer gaming techniques such as those employed in SimCity™. Grockit. Math Games - from Mangahigh.com.

Www.gamifyingeducation.org/files/Lee-Hammer-AEQ-2011.pdf. 3 Reasons NOT to Gamify Education. Extra Credits – Gamifying Education. Education Meets 'World Of Warcraft' Apple's new vision of education. Opinion January 21, 2012 06:52 AM ET. Active Learning For The College Classroom. Reflections and Concerns about Gamification (Part I)

Current Products/Examples

People of Interest. Gaming the Classroom. The Gamified Classroom. Part II: Technology’s Role in a Gamified Classroom. This is the second part of an ongoing series on the role of gamification in modern education by Andrew Proto. For the first part, visit “Part I: the Unique Obstacles Teachers Face“ Are there any examples of the gamification of school. “This Game Sucks”: How to Improve the Gamification of Education (EDUCAUSE Review.