Video Games Take Bigger Role in Education

Children today grow up playing lots of video games. To get students interested in world cultures, molecular biology and space, educators are partnering with game developers and scientist to create interactive games for students.

The Federation of American Scientist (FAS) and Escape Hatch Entertainment created “Immune Attack” for 7th – 12th grade students to explore the microscopic world of immune system proteins and cells. According to the game developer students need to save a patient suffering from a bacterial infection as they learn about cellular biology and molecular science. Tad Raudman, a science instructor at University Preparatory School, thinks that if the games are designed to be engaging, exciting and competitive then the games can be tailored for educational purposes.

The (FAS), UCLA's Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative and the Walters Art Museum created “Discover Babylon” for 8 to 12 year olds to explore Mesopotamia in world culture using library and museum objects.

January 18, 2010, is the release date for “MoonBase Alpha” from ARA/Virtual Heroes, a downloadable prototype game that was developed with NASA engineers and astronauts to teach STEM (Science, Technology Engineer and Math) to students. “MoonBase Alpha” is a predecessor to a new multiplayer online game called, "Astronaut: Moon, Mars & Beyond," that will be released later this year. The goal of “Astronaut: Moon, Mars & Beyond,” is to provide an immersive platform that will have multiple curriculum modules for teachers to incorporate gaming into science, technology, engineering and math for school and to home according to Jan Heneghan, founder and CEO of ARA/Virtual Heroes.

Why such interest in educational gaming? Currently there are approximately 55.7 million children between the ages of two and seventeen that are gamers. That’s 82% of the children in the United States. The goal is to create educational, interactive experiences to more actively engage students in the learning process. According to Tad Raudman, only “10 percent of lifetime learning happens in the formal educational setting” so if students are playing games several hours a week think about the overall learning outcomes and benefits to students who are playing educational games.

To read the entire article go to:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20091210/lf_nm_life/us_videogames_education
Image from:
http://www.ubergizmo.com/15/archives/2007/09/decent_grades_gets_you_games.html

It’s Time to Get Serious about Creativity in the Classroom

Freedom within a structure – what does that mean to you? How about making an assignment clear and focused, while allowing students the freedom to decide how to accomplish the task. That’s how an art teacher describes art as a creative place to develop creative minds.

When we ask students to learn long division the students are taught to follow certain steps that will help them understand how to arrive at the correct answer. That’s replication. When students are shown how to weave paper to make designs many students will replicate exactly what was shown. Students need some traditional learning to build valuable foundation skills and students need to develop creative minds.

According to the article one way to nurture and develop real creativity is to ask students to use their new skills to accomplish an assigned, more complex task and to allow students to be creative in the application of the new skills. Find ways that will allow all diverse learners to be successful. Structure assignments to allow students the freedom to be innovative and creative then watch what students will produce.

How can you develop creative minds in your class? What technology could your students use to think outside the box to complete more complex tasks and apply new skills?

To read the entire article please go to Edutopia:
http://www.edutopia.org/freedom-structure-balance-classroom

The UN's World Digital Library

Four years ago James Billlington, U.S. Librarian of Congress wanted to share cultural and educational data from the Library of Congress with anyone who had access to the Internet. On April 21, 2009, UNESCO (United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization) and the Library of Congress unveiled the World Digital Library, a collection of 1,200 high-resolution digitized files that allows users to zoom in on ancient documents and archival photographs.

Resources may be searched by keywords, time period, place, type of item and the institution that contributed the data. Descriptions are given for the materials in seven languages while the documents are shown in their original languages. Currently there are books, journals, documents, photographs, audio and videos. There are currently 457 maps in the World Digital Library and I hope there are plans to continue adding cultural and educational data to this digital library.

Students and teachers can find interesting items like the first printed edition of a 16th-century Japanese novel called The Tale of Genji; a journal by Ferdinand Magellan kept from his voyage around the world; a panoramic view of Constantinople; to an early recording of Marseillaise, the national anthem of France.

To check out the new World Digital Library please click here or go to: http://www.wdl.org/en/

There are many ways that teachers and students could utilize this information to make learning more engaging and real world.

Article from Time Magazine April 22, 2009
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1892916,00.html

Image from the World Digital Library

http://www.wdl.org/en/item/105/

Online School for Girls Launches This Fall

This will be the first ever online school in secondary education for girls. The online school was developed by a consortium of independent all-girls’ schools.

The four private schools that will offer the pilot courses next school year are: Harpeth Hall School located in Nashville, Tennessee, a 5th – 12th grade college preparatory school; Holton-Arms School located in Bethesda, Maryland, a 3rd – 12th grade college preparatory school; Laurel School located in Cleveland, Ohio, a K – 12th grade college preparatory school; and Westover School located in Middlebury, Connecticut, a selective boarding school for 9th – 12 grade girls.

Currently 44 states have some type of virtual secondary schools but none of these virtual schools specifically address the educational needs of girls. Ann Pollins, President of the National Coalition of Girls’ Schools stated, “We believe that girls inhabit online spaces differently than boys and that this initiative can combine a powerful, transformative online learning environment for girls with a high-quality, twenty-first century academic experience.”

The Online School will offer two pilot courses this fall with four additional courses being offered spring semester of 2009-2010 school year. The Online School will focus on several key principles based on current research on how girls learn best: emphasizing connections among participants; incorporating collaboration into the learning experience; inspiring and rewarding creativity; and engaging in real-world problems and applications.

In the future the Online School will provide an online education that is flexible, affordable and accessible to a diverse, worldwide student base including students who need a flexible school schedule, students who are home schooled, or students who need opportunities for challenging and/or unique coursework.

To read the complete article from Harpeth Hall School:
https://www.harpethhall.org/podium/default.aspx?t=204&nid=538755

To read the complete article from Nashville Business Journal
http://www.bizjournals.com/nashville/stories/2009/06/22/daily10.html

Image from Microsoft Clip Art

Online Games for Learning

Online games have been described as casual games, serious games and advergames but to teachers and parents what do these labels mean?

Casual Games
Casual Games are designed for entertainment. Some casual games are preloaded on computers such as Solitaire while other casual games are downloaded. Learning can occur but mostly casual games are for fun.

Serious Games
Serious games are designed for learning. Simulations, military training, corporate education, health care are just a few ways games are designed for learning. It’s easy to find educational games on the internet from pre-school to university level. Serious games are categorized by genre, complexity, and platforms building maturity and learning.

Serious games focus on specific learning outcomes that can be measured. But do these serious games really promote learning? When the game design is focused on learning outcomes, then learning is possible. According to Mary Jo Dondlinger a game that motivates players to spend time on tasks mastering the skills of the game, is time spent stimulating learning outcomes. Even some casual games like EVE Online can produce real learning outcomes. One player from EVE Online stated that once he had managed a virtual corporation that spanned a universe he could easily manage a real corporation.

Computer games with 3D graphics are being used in the workplace, for recruitment, to improve communication and train employees at all levels. The military trains soldiers using “virtually real” environments where soldiers build teams and prepare personnel for specific missions. One of the most popular games online today is America’s Army.

Advergames
Advergames are a combination of casual and serious games and have been used as a form of marketing for movies and television shows. Advergames are sometimes the most visited section of brand websites promoting repeated traffic and reinforcing the brand.

But what does this mean for education in public schools?
A virtual learning environment needs to encourage content exploration, be learner-centered and individualized. Our digital native students prefer to:

• Receive information quickly
• Multitask
• View pictures and videos
• Interact and network with others
• Receive instant gratification and rewards
• Learn information that is relevant, useful and fun

Digital learners today need online learning that is stimulating and develops critical skills. Once successful program is DiDA Delivered, a diploma program in IT skills for secondary students in the UK. To check out the site please click here: http://www.dida-delivered.org/
The curriculum for this program includes 4,000 learning objects and 300 serious games and teachers can develop their own content to add to the learning environment. DiDA looks similar to Second Life and Active Worlds.

Considering that children ages 8-18 spend at least 50 minutes per day playing video games education needs to provide stimulating, learning environments where students acquire 21st century skills necessary for today’s workforce. To do this learning designers and game designers need to work together to provide a more engaging and effective learning environment for all students incorporating social networking, and other Web 2.0 technologies.

To learn more about online games for learning please read the entire article Serious Games: Online Games for Learning at: http://www.adobe.com/products/director/pdfs/serious_games_wp_1107.pdf

A Foundational Structure for Learning

David Warlick spoke about the “Native Information Experience” for digital learners at the NCTIES conference last week in Raleigh, NC. He spoke about how school leaders and teachers are finding ways to implement learning 2.0 with their students.

David spoke about the eight characteristics of networked and digital information experiences that teachers need to bring to their classrooms from observing the outside-the-classroom informational experiences that defines the unique networked, digital, information culture of today’s students.

These eight “Native Information Experiences:

1. Are responsive – authentic, personal experiences of sending out and receiving responses from others. Receiving responses from others being the payback for the students.
2. Measures Accomplishments – by the audience and comments from their friends.
3. Values Safely Make Mistakes – students learn by failing; they will keep doing something until its right.
4. Demands Personal Investment – students invest a lot of cumulative time in their informational experiences.
5. Values Personal Experience and Identity – students need to be part of a social group, sharing and learning from others.
6. Rewards with Audience and Attention – audiences have to be earned. Rewards for the students come from having other see what they are doing. One site was mentioned concerning rewards and audiences – Fan Fiction where students write and add chapters to an online story. http://www.fanfiction.net/
7. Provokes Communication – through technology students carry their friends with them all the time always communicating.
8. Are Fueled by Questions – many students are not afraid to ask questions
   

Understanding the informational experiences of our students will help schools and teachers achieve learning 2.0 in their classrooms – having students create, communicate, collaborate, problem-solve, and be engaged learners will cultivate new learning experiences. Teachers need to use the many web 2.0 tools that are available – wikis, blogs, Flickr, ePals, RSS feeds, social bookmarks, social networks, VoiceThread, Audacity, PhotoStory 3, Movie Maker, Animoto and others to enrich the learning experiences of all students.