Ten winners snag $1.7M total in digital competition

The MacArthur Foundation grants fund projects is an annual competition to inspire and find new ways to use digital media to support learning. This is the third year of the competition and 10 projects are selected each year sharing $1.7 million dollars. The article stated that the competition was announced in collaboration with President Obama’s “Educate to Innovate” initiative, challenging designers, inventors, entrepreneurs, and researchers to create education technology “learning labs” for the 21st century, with digital environments that promote building and tinkering in new and innovative ways.

The winners will use games, mobile phone applications, virtual worlds, and social networks to advance learning in the 21st century, the foundation said. Today’s students interact with other students around the world online, in social networks and video games and according to Connie Yowell, the foundation’s director “the competition helps them to identify and nurture the creation of learning environments that are relevant for kids today and will prepare them for a 21st-century workforce.”

Some of this year’s winners:

1. Click! The Online Spy School: Engaging girls in STEM activities, peer networking and gaming
• Combines social networking with a virtual laboratory for teen girls featuring a fictional spy school
2. ECOBUGS
• This game is for learners ages 7 to 11, that encourage their interest in the environment as they explore their surroundings to create, collect, and monitor the health of virtual “bug” species
3. Fab@School: A digital Fabrication Laboratory for the Classroom
• Introduces K-12 students to the power of mathematical analysis and modeling, digital fabrication, and engineering by encouraging imaginative and collaborative experimentation, invention, design, and creation.
4. Hole-in-the-Wall: Activity Based e-learning for Improving Elementary Education in India
• The e-learning bridges the digital divide by reaching underserved youth in the developing world by installing over 700 internet enabled public Playground Learning Stations across India, Bhutan, Cambodia and Africa. The games promote experiential learning mapped to the prescribed primary curriculum across various subjects.
5. Mobile Action Lab: Programming Apps for Collaborative Community Change
• These labs network emerging entrepreneurs, social change agents, and top technologist with Oakland-based youth participants who propose, develop, and market online and mobile apps.
6. Conservation Connection: From the West Side to the West Pacific
• This project engaged American youth from the West Side of Chicago and Fijian youth in the West Pacific in stewardship of Fijian coral reefs through direct involvement in the scientific process
7. MetroVoice: About/IN/
• Youth in Los Angeles collaborate to write and produce videos and TV screen banners that explore aspects of their families, blocks, streets, and neighborhoods. These messages are then transmitted on TV screens on LA Metro buses transforming the buses into mobile learning labs.
8. Nox No More: Connecting travel logs with simulation, gaming and environmental education
• This online gave personalizes environmental education by linking learning to a player’s personal life to illustrate the positive impact of simple, everyday choices to save the planet from carbon emissions by providing the analysis of potential fuel savings by alternative transportation choices

To access the winners of this year’s competition and the past two years please go to:
http://www.macfound.org/atf/cf/%7Bb0386ce3-8b29-4162-8098-e466fb856794%7D/INFO-DMLCOMP.PDF 

One of last year’s winners was Scratch & Share: Collaborating with Youth to Develop the Next Generation of Creative Software that won the BEST IN CLASS: Design. This winner created Scratch & Share as a way to enlist youth and teen online community members as active development partners, and allows them to share projects across mobile platforms, to integrate them into social media including Facebook and Twitter, and to remix them more seamlessly.  This school year our school system introduced Scratch to our students and I was able to watch one fourth grade class using Scratch to create interactive characters. The teacher said the students really enjoyed working with the program. I look forward to hearing from the teacher next school year as the students continue to work with Scratch creating interactive stories, games, music and art.

To read the entire article:
http://www.eschoolnews.com/2010/05/21/ten-winners-snag-1-7m-total-in-digital-competition/

To learn more about Scratch:
http://scratch.mit.edu/

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

SMART Table

Coming Soon – The Smart Table Interactive Learning Center

The table is designed for students pre-school thru sixth grade. Students can create, explore and have collaborative hands-on activities. The table is a multiuser, multitouch table that enables small group learning and collaboration. Students can move from whole class interactive activities on the whiteboard to small group activities at the table. Up to six students can touch the screen at the same time and the activities are designed to encourage collaboration. Students can select or move objects, draw and/or write on the screen simultaneously. The SMART Table uses Digital Vision Touch technology which enables the multiuser and multitouch capabilities.

Teachers can choose from a wide-variety of ready-made lesson activities or they can customize the activities to suit their lessons. Educators who are interested in developing multimedia content for the SMART Table can become a non-commercial member with free access to SMART development tools to create content for the SMART Board products. Free Membership

The table contains a customized PC and projection system that is turned on with a single button. There is a built in 27” screen that can read simultaneous input from an unlimited number of fingers or pen tools. The table measures 29” wide and 25” high and comes with a standard set of interactive learning applications, interactive lesson activities and educational games. The table will also support the SMART Notebook software through the SMART Table toolkit that runs on the teacher’s computer. Through the toolkit teachers can create and/or customize lesson activities and then load the content to the table using a USB key.

Some of the features:

• Audio Support
• Object scaling support and object rotation support
• Wide range of images and backgrounds to make activities more engaging
• Precise touch control
• No calibration – ready to use out of the box

SMART Table video on TeacherTube
The table will be available in spring 2009 (sometime January – March). The table cost $8,000 and will be available to order in December 2008. To learn more about the SMART Table go to the SMART website – SMART Table.