Video Games in Teaching - Lessons Learned

Check out this great blog with tips on how to effectively integrate video games into the classroom.  I have personally used some of them in my own classroom and really enjoyed them.  Many of them are for ancient civilizations found around BBC Primary History.

Video Games in Teaching - Lessons Learned

Hello Web 2.0! Nice to meet you.

The Web 2.0 environment has opened the door to many new free Web-based collaborative tools. Below are some of the tools that I use in my classroom or have explored for use in the classroom setting.

Tumblr makes it effortless to share anything you find or create. Post text, photos, quotes, links, dialogues, audio, video, slideshows, and more. You can create private posts or entire private blogs, and then invite friends, family, or co-workers to view or contribute. Tumblr even allows your audience to submit posts for your approval!

Glogster EDU Premium is a collaborative online learning platform for teachers and students to express their creativity, knowledge, ideas and skills in the classroom. A Glog is created using a very easy to understand, drag and drop interface that is relevant, enjoyable, and scalable for students of all ages and learning styles. A Glog is an interactive visual platform in which users create a “poster or web page” containing multimedia elements including: text, audio, video, images, graphics, drawings, and data.

Jing gives your students the information they need, when they need it. Use Jing to record your feedback as you grade papers, or take a snapshot to share with your class. Your students can even use it to collaborate, or ask questions!

Edmodo promotes anytime, anyplace learning. Functionally, it allows teachers to post messages, discuss classroom topics, assign and grade classwork, share content and materials, and network and exchange ideas with their peers - but in reality, it is so much more. Take a peek at some of the unique ways teachers are using Edmodo to make their classroom a community.

VoiceThread allows for group conversations to be collected and shared in one place from anywhere in the world. All with no software to install. A VoiceThread is a collaborative, multimedia slide show that holds images, documents, and videos and allows people to navigate slides and leave comments in 5 ways - using voice (with a mic or telephone), text, audio file, or video (via a webcam). Share a VoiceThread with friends, students, and colleagues for them to record comments too.

At first I was unsure about how some of these tools would be used in the elementary classroom, but then I explored some more and saw the wealth of affordances they offer. All of these Web 2.0 tools provide you with an education version or the ability to make material private to protect children. All of the tool environments are very easy to navigate and manipulate. The interfaces are set up in a logical order that is kid friendly and similar to interfaces they use in their free time and provide help for the users along the way to enrich their material they are presenting. Due to this ease of use, I can spend all my time on the objective and not spend an entire class period teaching the tool. What I love best about these Web 2.0 tools are they they give a voice to every student in the classroom, not just those who will raise their hand because they are comfortable in front of the group.

I look forward to finding more ways to integrate these Web 2.o collaborative tools into my instruction. Do you have any ideas on how to best integrate them?

Wed-Based Learning

Today classrooms are not just located between the 4 walls of your room or even your school. Last summer I became fully aware of what Web 1.0 referes to which, according to Berners-Lee, could be considered the "read-only web." In other words, the early web allowed us to search for information and read it. There was very little in the way of user interaction or content contribution. I planned the Dig It! You be the Archeologist web based project to use this type of Web 1.0 atmosphere.

For this project a teacher, before the project start date, would create their own archeological dig site with organic and inorganic “artifacts” either in a storage bin exposed to the elements or in an area of at least one square foot grid of their schoolyard or other location populated with “artifacts”. Schools will also post their items for others to discover electronically after they are left for the school year. Students would post a sketch or pictures of the items they uncovered and allow others to predict what they are and what they could tell about our civilization. Once a written guess with reasoning for what the item is and what it tells about our civilization is submitted the web master will post the real answer of what the “artifact” is. The Webmaster will also post a sample set of “artifacts” for classes to practice with before they begin the project. This is similar to PBS's Arctic Journey.

Now that I have more tools in my designer tool belt I can see various ways that this project could be better implemented using a Web 2.0, or "read-write" web, platform. The project could be based in a wiki to allow for various ideas and reasoning for artifacts to be shared and built upon. You could also have a discussion board where you can post your idea and then allow registered users to comment on whether they agree of disagree.

Benefits of a Web 2.0 platform- Provides ongoing conversations about the artifacts. this would allow for deeper thinking in the ways of challenging or justifying ideas and reasoning.

Challenges of a Web 2.0 platform- The website creator loses control over the content.

Pod what? Podcasts!

What are they?

Wikipedia defines Podcastas "a type of digital media consisting of an episodic series of files (either audio or video) subscribed to and downloaded through web syndication or streamed online to a computer or mobile device. The word is a neologism derived from "broadcast" and "pod" from the success of the iPod, as podcasts are often listened to on portable media players." Most Podcasts are short and tend to be episodic in nature with a familiar layout with a focus to the same audience, intro and closing.

Do I Podcast?

My first podcast experience was from Monument Moments and while it was fun to do it did not seem to have enough bag for the buck. When creating the Podcast we had to be ever mindful for copyright and search for free source material or create our own through Garage Band. This was both fun and frustrating at times. Planning and breaking te segment into separate audio clips were key factors to the "success" of the Podcast. It was a great activity to help synthesize the information I learned about the George Mason Memorial, I feel it was not as successful for me as I am more of a visual learner.

Should you Podcast?

Podcasts teaches students and teachers to become "Content Creators". They requires students to internalize and synthesize information and requires students to become critical and analytical thinkers. Podcasts promote communication using various resources and can really engage students in a skill that they can call their own. There are 4 basic steps to follow when you create a Podcast.

1. Plan - topic and format
2. Produce
3. Publish
4. Promote

As I learned, it is important that you and your students take the time to plan, plan, plan, and then plan some more before you press record. It might also be beneficial to create a common sound, feel, and style for all class Podcasts to create comfort for the same audience each broadcast.

Wiki What? Do you Wiki? Should Students?

In full disclosure, I am going to admit that beside know about Wikipedia and looking at a few education wikis I had no clue what a wiki was. I am now kicking myself for not being aware of this amazing and versatile tool.

Wiki What?

A wiki is an online environment used to quickly develop collaborative works by a community of users. Any one can gain the meaning of the pedia portion of wikipedia, but the term "wiki" come from the Hawaiian "wiki-wiki" which means quick. In my opinion, there should be a hyphen in the name for collaboration because this is the quintessential tool for just that. A wiki affords a collaborative construction of knowledge and truth that the new, interactive Web facilitates for all participants.

Do you Wiki?

No? Well neither did I but you should! I was very suspect of wikis because throughout my education as a student and teacher I have always seen Wikipedia at the top of most information searches but I also heard in the back of my mind, "Wikipedia is not a source!" How wrong that is. Wikipedia is a collection of all human knowledge on various topics and is check almost instantly for accuracy. It should not be the only resource but a guide to find more information and resources for a research project or a quick place to inform you on a topic.

So how do/could you use this in your classroom? Almost any time you want your students to collaborate to generate, review, or synthesize information. Now that I know about wikis, the ideas for use not by me but by students in the classroom are flowing. Any wiki takes teacher set up and monitoring but the payoff is worth it.

Should Your Students?

YES! Wikis allow your students to take ownership and become the authors of their own projects, the learning, and much more in a powerful and collaborative way. Students can create a wiki;

• at the beginning of the year to introduce themselves to each other, and then add to it throughout the year as they grow as a learner and an individual.
• to create their own wikipedia page for a research topic. For example, my grade is the desert biome and at the beginning of the year students do research on the American desert, a plant, and animal. They could create a wiki on this information which will also stress the importance of citing sources which will carry over throughout the year and beyond.
• for ongoing literature resources and ideas. For example, book reviews they create giving advice for book selections used for individual response reading, or as a resource to log character or plot elements of various books like The Westing Game.
• as on ongoing resource to have students post content material for core subjects like math and science in their own words to be used to review before the lovely state standards exams like Virginia's SOLs
• as a part of social studies curriculum for the ancient world to track the 7 characteristics of civilization and achievements for each group studied.

These are just a few ideas of wikis I have started or plan on using in my classroom this year and in future years. What idea do you have for incorporating wiki's in yours?

Changing Eduction Paradigms

This is an amazing RSA Animate to the powerful words of Sir Ken Robinson on the need to change the current paradigms od today's education. This message relates to most aspects of my current pursuit of a Masters of Education: Integration in Schools from George Mason University. He says many powerful things that I feel the affordances of correctly integrating various aspects, tools, and design structors of technology which I will discuss in this blog can address, correct, and change. Successfully doing this will help our students to be prepared for the world into which they will be a part of.

Watch the video and tell me how you think technology can help educators make the change needed in their own classroom and schooling as a whole.

asd

What's Your Story? Do you Blog? Should Your Students?

What's Your Story?

Blogs afford you to opportunity to easily create and easily update a web site that allows an author or authors to publish instantly to the Internet. Blogs are normally personal journals of the author's life with analysis, synthesis, connections to various content. A blog serves as a collection of reflections and conversations that are updated frequently and are normally all about me. A great way to get going in blogs is to look around and follow others that are currently blogging about the same things you are interested in and then get going on your own.

Do You Blog?

As I have mentioned before, I have tried and failed to blog numerous times. My first blog was created as a part of this program and if I am being honest, I did not do a very good job. I think part of the reason was I did not have an honest passion for blogging about the material and I did not have an audience outside of my cohort peers. In short, I was not invested in the process. I have created, but never posted on a blog I created called "One Girls's Dolce Vita". It was my attempt to create a space to post recipes, ideas, and stories related to a sweet life. My brick wall for this blog has been my slight addiction to Pinterest which allows a one button approach to organizes and bookmarking anything you find online that interests you in organized boards. I would like to go back to this blog idea at some point, but right now it is not in the cards. No matter how I personally stand on the blogging front, a major notion you or I must remember if/when we blog is to keep it not too long and make it something that people will read and then be excited to read more. I know I would also benefit from promising to make a post at least every week on a certain day. It would be a great way to keep me honest.

Should Your Students?

Until my reading from Richardson on Blogs, I had a difficult time seeing blogs in the classroom other than a way to post homework or capture a "yearbook" of activities. I know see the affordances of blogs to be easily accessible and facilitate the 7 characteristics of meaningful learning: active, collaborative, custructivist, commenting, intentional (real world context), authentic, and cooperative. While I see the benefits, I still worry about the ability of my 5th graders to successfully use them. Before I blog with my students I will first apply the method using Blackboard's discussion board option to help them understand how to be good users of the tool. I know that Blogs in classrooms normally fail because the purpose or goal is not clear or important. I am my own obstacle when it comes to blogging because I can not develop a meaningful purpose for my classroom.

I am still not sure if I will incorporate this tool into my instruction. However, if I use blogs in my classroom for my students I think I would most likely use edublogs because they are designed for students and allow for a more secure experience.

How are you going to enculturate students in the world of blogs in your own classroom?

Welcome!

I have tried and failed a few time to follow blogs and to be a blooger myself. I am currently pursuing my Masters Degree in Integration of Technology in Schools and maintaining a blog is an ongoing assignment in my final semester. So here I go again, hopefully for the long tern:

The purpose of this blog is to serve as a reflection of and resource for my teaching, designing, and learning experiences. It will also hopefully also serve you as a resource and starting off point for you to reflect on your own practices and beliefs.

I feel that I am still embarking on my journey as an educator and student. This blog is a tool to help me reflect on my growth as an educator and learner. I feel that I am embarking on a journey with many different paths and opportunities at my feet. I am a classroom teacher with a wealth of ideas to implement into my instruction to engage, motivate, challenge, and inspire the students I interact with. I am a designer with principles and strategies to implement to enrich curriculum and help prepare students to learn what they live and live what they learn. I am beginning to design opportunities to prepare students to be able to enter their world with the tools and skills they need to be successful. I am a leader with innovative ideas for delivering instruction with the motivational tools to inspire fellow and new educators to change their practice. I am a student with a desire to know more and know my journey is just beginning. The purpose of blog is to generate a resource to serve as a support and reference for whichever path I take both now and in the future. Please don't hesitate to jump in and join the conversation. Whether positive or constructive it will help our instructional practice and further our profession as a whole.