Gamifying Education: Do We Know How to Gamify the Classroom? Gamification in many parts of education is a sham. Listening to the researchers and experts in this area has convinced me of that. If you’re interested in making your classroom more intriguing and powerful, read on. Who Is Shaping The Gamifying Education Conversation? In this week’s conversation with Australian Gamer and researcher Lauren Ferro we all went on a bit of a rant about the ridiculous state of badges in education.Teacher Alice Keeler uses games all the time (and doesn’t give grades).Sixth grade teacher Michael Matera reinvented his whole sixth grade classroom as a Games Based classroom and shares how he did it.A Higher Ed Panel had a powerful conversation for why we need games in highered. All of these are YouTube videos that have been recorded over the past week and a half as part of the Open Online Community (called an OOC) focusing on games in education. I have 3 take aways from the learning so far: #1: The Way We’re Doing Many Badges In Education Is A Joke
untitled Create interactive flash tools Q. Who are you anyway? A. Classtools.net is the work of Russel Tarr, Head of History at the International School of Toulouse, France and author of the established website www.activehistory.co.uk. Q. Are these resources free of charge? A. Q. A. Q. A. Q. A. Q. Generally speaking, only if you create a link to the resource from your own website / wiki / blog etc. Q. A. Q. A. Q. A. Games in Education: Teacher Takeaways This August I attended the Games in Education Symposium, a free, two-day event held in upstate New York. Co-presented by 1st Playable Productions, it focused on practical implementations of game-based learning for K-12 teaching. Much of what I learned there has made its way into my lesson planning for this current school year. Game design professor and Multiplayer Classroom author Lee Sheldon gave the first day's keynote address. He spoke about what teachers should look for in learning games. To a teacher, the marketplace can be bewildering. Paul Darvasi gave the second day's keynote about alternate reality games (ARGs). Students as Designers There were several workshops about teaching game design. I learned more about the basics of paper prototyping, the paper-and-pencil testing of game mechanics prior to being digitally rendered. Have a low barrier to adoption (no technology needed!) Scott Nicholson, a professor from Syracuse University, presented the Tabletop Game Jam.
Literature and Latte - Scapple for Mac OS X and Windows Rough It Out Scapple doesn’t force you to make connections, and it doesn’t expect you to start out with one central idea off of which everything else is branched. There’s no built-in hierarchy at all, in fact—in Scapple, every note is equal, so you can connect them however you like. The idea behind Scapple is simple: when you are roughing out ideas, you need complete freedom to experiment with how those ideas best fit together. It’s Scapple Simple Creating notes is as easy as double-clicking anywhere on the canvas and then typing; making connections between ideas is as painless as dragging and dropping one note onto another. What is Scapple? Scapple is an easy-to-use tool for getting ideas down as quickly as possible and making connections between them. Scapple’s nonlinear approach to the process of creative thinking is similar to what Gabriele Rico calls “clustering” in her popular book, Writing the Natural Way. *Local taxes may apply. Features Write notes anywhere on the virtual paper
Video Games in the Brain: Study Shows How Gaming Impacts Brain Function to Inspire Healthy Behavior “Identifying a direct connection between the stimulation of neural circuits and game play is a key step in unlocking the potential for game-based tools to inspire positive behavior and improve health,” said Brian Knutson, Ph.D., Stanford University. Redwood City, CA (PRWEB) March 19, 2012 In news that could shift how game developers and healthcare professionals harness the power of videogames to do good, HopeLab and Stanford University researchers today announced new data showing that Re-Mission™, a video game about killing cancer in the body, strongly activates brain circuits involved in positive motivation (1). This reward-related activation is associated with a shift in attitudes and emotions that has helped boost players’ adherence to prescribed chemotherapy and antibiotic treatments in a previous study (2). A growing body of data shows that digital games can positively alter players’ attitudes and behavior. Sponsored by the nonprofit organization HopeLab and conducted by Steven W.
The MindShift Guide to Digital Games and Learning MindShift Guide to Digital Games and Learning How can games unlock a rich world of learning? This is the big question at the heart of the growing games and learning movement that’s gaining momentum in education. The MindShift Guide to Digital Games and Learning started as a series of blog posts written by Jordan Shapiro with support from the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop and the Games and Learning Publishing Council. Here's a preview of the table of contents: Introduction: Getting in the Game (Page 4) An overview of games in the classroom from Katie Salen Tekinbaş, executive director of the Institute of Play. What the Research Says About Gaming and Screen Time (Page 6) Much of the research around digital games and screen time is evolving. How to Start Using Digital Games for Learning (Page 14) Since each learning environment is unique, here are some steps to assessing your resources before committing to a particular game or platform.
Manufacturing the Illusion of Democracy – Chris Hedges “We’ve bought into the idea that education is about training and “success,” defined monetarily, rather than learning to think critically and to challenge. We should not forget that the true purpose of education is to make minds, not careers. The words consent of the governed have become an empty phrase. This elite, in the name of patriotism and democracy, in the name of all the values that were once part of the American system and defined the Protestant work ethic, has systematically destroyed our manufacturing sector, looted the treasury, corrupted our democracy, and trashed the financial system. During this plundering we remained passive, mesmerized by the enticing shadows on the wall, assured our tickets to success, prosperity, and happiness were waiting around the corner. Sadism dominates the culture. Washington has become our Versailles. We are captivated by the hollow stagecraft of political theater as we are ruthlessly stripped of power. ~Chris Hedges~ Source of Quotes Like this:
How Teachers Can Motivate Students of Any Age | MindShift Barry Schwartz laughs as he describes the little girl next door who suddenly dove into reading after a substitute teacher took over her elementary school classroom. For every book they read, recalls the Swarthmore College psychology professor, students received a point, which they later cashed in for prizes. The girl then started to read a book an hour. The only catch was that she picked her books based on the number of pages and type size, and “she couldn’t tell you anything about any of them,” he says. Schwartz shared this story about the binge-reading neighbor during a conference call with Yale University associate professor Amy Wrzesniewski explaining their research on motivation. They assumed that some combination of internal and external motives would lead to the most success, as measured by the officers’ willingness to stay beyond the five-year commitment to the Army and to graduate and become commissioned officers. In Elementary School In Middle School and Beyond Linda Flanagan
Generalization & Game-Based Learning: What Parents & Educators Need to Know - LearningWorks for Kids One of the most common themes I hear about in my clinical practice is inconsistent learning. “Jacob knew all of his spelling words when we studied them at home last night, but received a 60 on his spelling test’” or “Emma knows where every American Girl doll is in her room, but can’t find her homework in her backpack.” While some of the inconsistencies we see in children can be attributed to motivation and memory, much of it is directly related to difficulties with generalization. Psychologists define generalization as the transfer of an action learned in one setting to a different setting, so that individuals are fully able to utilize the skills they have learned in one environment in various settings, with other people, and with different materials. Parents use the concept of generalization on a daily basis to help their kids learn skills across various settings. Help your children to identify the thinking skills they use in their video-game and digital-media use.
The Harvard Classics: Download All 51 Volumes as Free eBooks Every revolutionary age produces its own kind of nostalgia. Faced with the enormous social and economic upheavals at the nineteenth century’s end, learned Victorians like Walter Pater, John Ruskin, and Matthew Arnold looked to High Church models and played the bishops of Western culture, with a monkish devotion to preserving and transmitting old texts and traditions and turning back to simpler ways of life. It was in 1909, the nadir of this milieu, before the advent of modernism and world war, that The Harvard Classics took shape. Compiled by Harvard’s president Charles W. Eliot and called at first Dr. Eliot’s Five Foot Shelf, the compendium of literature, philosophy, and the sciences, writes Adam Kirsch in Harvard Magazine, served as a “monument from a more humane and confident time” (or so its upper classes believed), and a “time capsule…. What does the massive collection preserve? Collier asked Eliot to “pick the titles” and they would publish them as a series. Related Content: W.H.