How Gamification Can Make News Sites More Engaging Gamification, the use of gameplay mechanics for non-game applications, is transforming online news into an engaging, social and fun activity. It’s quickly becoming the next frontier in web and mobile technology. But what makes gamification successful? At Mashable, we’ve incorporated gamification into Mashable Follow, our social layer and content curation tool. Activity is the core of Follow. Rewarding readers for taking these actions was an important component of Follow. Of course Follow badges are just one example of game mechanics on a news site — and here's why they work. Fostering Community As a result of the hunger for badges, readers develop a more personal and valuable community on our site. Andrew David Baron, an avid Follow user, can attest to the badges encouraging Mashable readers to comment more. Bob Aycock, another frequent Follow user agrees. “Once Mashable launched Follow it made me start leaving comments and replying to other folks' comments,” he said. Creating Competition
12 — When it comes to technology, you definitely “act your age”. Let’s start with full disclosure: I’m a baby boomer. Ok, I’ve gotten that out of the way. I do have two millenial children (now young adults), and most of the people I work with are Gen Xers. How did people get together before cell phones? Generational definitions — I’ve done some of my own exploratory research on generational differences in the last few years. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. What do you think? Did you find this post interesting? Dean Shareski: How To Make Better Teachers Want to create better teachers? I know how. One word. Now before you roll your eyes or accuse me of oversimplifying the very complex issue of teacher evaluation and monitoring, hear me out. I began teaching in 1988. When I discovered blogs almost five years ago, I soon figured out what that term meant. Dan Meyer, a Mathematics teacher in California writes: ... blogging was the cheapest, most risk-free investment I could have made of my personal time into my job. Thousands of other blogging educators could echo similar words. There's a natural transparency that emerges. Teachers have for years had to fill in a plethora of reports and forms which in essence are accountability papers. So here's my plan. Try that. PS.
Bold Stroke: New Font Helps Dyslexics Read [Slide Show] After years of fumbling while reading the written word, Christian Boer, a graphic designer from the Netherlands, has developed a way to help tackle his dyslexia. The 30-year-old created a font called Dyslexie that has proved to decrease the number of errors made by dyslexics while reading. The font works by tweaking the appearance of certain letters of the alphabet that dyslexics commonly misconstrue, such as "d" and "b," to make them more recognizable. This month Boer released the font in English for U.S. users to purchase online. Boer began designing the font in 2008 while studying at the University of Twente in the Netherlands. View this article in the Dyslexie font. Boer's research could likewise have a big impact on English speakers, given the prevalence of dyslexia when reading that language, as compared with Italian, whose words are pronounced more closely to how they are spelled. View a slide show of different Dyslexie characters compared with other fonts.
Why Are We Still Consuming News Like It’s 1899? | benhuh!com We’ve witness a torrent of nature- and man-made news in 2011. And if I were a betting man, the range and impact of the events to come will make news even more essential to all of us. But reading all this news started to bother me, not only because of what was happening in the world, but because the experience of consuming news sucks. For the past new months, I’ve been thinking about this problem (unconnected to Cheezburger). As my friend Dan Sinker said: “We’re still delivering the news in the same way since the Civil War.” News Sites Are Limiting Themselves Currently, news sites have many problems. The traditional methods of news-writing, such as the reverse pyramid, the various “editions” of news pose big limitation on how news is reported and consumed. The Problem With News I’ll take on just three of the major issues I see with the way news is presented today: 2) News, Not Front Pages The front-page of a newspaper is an iconic symbol. The web can do much than this. Unsure But Curious?
17 Tips to Improve Your Online Presence Looking for ways to make yourself stand out amidst the millions of online profiles and portfolios in the information world? Here are a few tips to amp up your profiles and suggestions for how to make stellar status updates: Profile Tips Here are some quick recommendations to improve your profiles on social networking sites. Cross-Link Profiles: Make it easy for people to find you everywhere by linking to all your other profiles on each new social network you join. Link to all your social profiles as well as your blog, your website, etc.Highlight Your Job: You’ll want to list your current and past positions so that others in your field can identify you. Status Update Tips Need some ideas for what to post about on your professional social profiles?
The Social Media Assessment If you’re a member of the team, or perhaps the person who handles your organization’s social media profiles, I’d bet that your morning looks a little something like so: Check in with all the social platforms, scan through comments, @’s, retweets, likes, etc. and begin the task of crafting on-point, brand related responses. In doing so, you’re most probably also evaluating the previous day’s/week’s postings, shares, tweets, retweets, and overall spread and reach of your message. “How many RT’s did ‘bla bla bla’ receive?”, “That photo of the new office dog is off the charts!”, etc. These mini-assessments are without a doubt important and necessary, but in doing so, are you focusing on the micro and failing to see the macro? Manager or employee, we’ve all been through the annual and quarterly review process. Before you even get started reviewing your performance, it’s important to gather the appropriate data. What do you want to get out of each channel? What’s performing well?
Technology, or Lack Thereof, at the Podium I do a lot of public speaking. My usual format is to speak off the cuff, without notes or script, and use a Keynote or PowerPoint slide show to guide me. (No, not bullet points — ugh! — but videos, funny visuals or other scenic elements.) I like to have the laptop on the podium with me, for two reasons. The Times’s technology columnist, David Pogue, keeps you on top of the industry in his free, weekly e-mail newsletter.Sign up | See Sample Second, it means that I can see notes and cues that my audience can’t see. When I’m giving a talk I give often, I can get away without those notes and slide previews; I’ve had enough practice. At every auditorium, I show up early for the technical setup. It’s hilarious, at this point, to see the look of panic on their faces when I pull out the MacBook laptop I use for these presentations. At the really big expensive fancy hotels and theaters, these guys have every dongle in stock. Anyway, every now and then, though, this system goes off the tracks.
Can We Teach Creative and Critical Thinking? - Education When a teacher gives a test, he or she is trying to measure students' ability to recall and apply information learned over a particular period of time. The exams make it relatively straightforward: Did the student get an answer right or wrong? Was mastery of skills demonstrated? But how is creative or critical thought defined and taught? And by what assessment can we measure it, if at all? Critical thinking is, among many things, the ability to understand and apply the abstract, the ability to infer and to meaningfully investigate. Teaching critical and creative thought, however, is challenging: First, critical thinking may mean different things to different instructors, principals, and/or districts. There are ways to navigate through these obstacles: Cultivating critical thinking may be accomplished with modeling. So, if it is possible to teach this type of thinking, how then can we measure if students are developing these skills? Illustration by Will Etling