Group items tagged

"The Puzzle Maker (also known as Puzzle Creator or Editor) is an in-game puzzle editor that allows the creation, testing, and publishing (to Steam Workshop) of custom single-player and co-op test chambers. The Editor also adds new lines from Cave Johnson which, altogether, adds a story to downloaded test chambers. The DLC introduces the player to "The Multiverse" which contains an infinite number of Earths, an infinite number of Apertures, and therefore, an infinite number of test chambers. Puzzle Maker is not intended as a replacement of Hammer, which while more powerful and generalized in nature, is significantly more difficult and time consuming to use. It is possible to export a VMF from Puzzle Maker and open it in Hammer; many mappers do this to add polish or features that are not currently possible using the Puzzle Maker. Some mappers use the Puzzle Maker to quickly iterate through (and test) puzzle designs before building a chamber from scratch with Hammer. It is not possible to load a Hammer VMF file in Puzzle Maker."

"You're a teacher at Park Lake Valley P-12 College, an ICT school of excellence. It is an old school with some amazing new buildings. The leafy suburb of Park Lake is located in one of Melbourne's major growth corridors. The school is in the midst of a process of reinvention, embracing change and facing the future." Sound familiar? Jump into this online game and enjoy!

"There are numerous sites that are now offering Tutorials and how-to guides for creating ebooks in iBook Author. As teachers are now comfortable with the idea of creating their own e-textbooks more and more people are looking for resources to learn how to build touch enabled books that take full advantage of the iPad capabilities. Inserting video and high resolution photographs is one thing but how about inserting 3D manipulatives and models that are touch sensitive.". This post offers is a list of some of the resources online.

As the post-PC era moves from interesting theory to cold, hard reality, one of the most pressing questions is: How can we use tablets, and especially the iPad, to help people learn? Most of the focus has been on ebooks replacing textbooks, a trend fueled by Apple's recent updates to iBooks. Specifically, the company released iBooks Author, a tool for creating immersive ebooks on the desktop. Plus, the new iPad is now the first tablet with a retina screen, making reading and watching multimedia on the device even more enjoyable. But technology is only as good as the system it's applied to. Much like a fresh coat of paint will not improve the fuel efficiency of a '69 Mustang, the application of technology to a broken system masks deeper problems with short-term gains.

Part of the benefit of jumping forward with a 1:1 iPad deployment like we have tried is that we get the opportunity to impart knowledge to other districts looking to do a similar initiative. While that might not seem like a benefit, it actually also means we can make some mistakes because there is not a long history of this type of deployment in the world. Many districts have had 1:1 Laptop projects, which we have benefited from and could easily be applied to this list I'm about to share. However, for the sake of our specific district, and the questions I get from other districts on a daily basis, I'm going to break down the ten things you should NOT do when implementing a 1:1 iPad program.

The popularity of blogging and the incredible flood of content that came with it led to a new need, with services such as Twitter allowing people to filter information and share links that might not be so easily discoverable with search engines. In the past couple of years we have seen the rise of the 'curator' and an increase in the popularity of tools that allow people to collate links.

Another PEW report, this time into gamification "Tech stakeholders and analysts generally believe the use of game mechanics, feedback loops, and rewards will become more embedded in daily life by 2020, but they are split about how widely the trend will extend. Some say the move to implement more game elements in networked communications will be mostly positive, aiding education, health, business, and training. Some warn it can take the form of invisible, insidious behavioral manipulation. "The development of 'Serious Games' applied productively to a wide scope of human activities will accelerate simply because playing is more fun than working," observed Mike Liebhold, senior researcher and distinguished fellow at The Institute for the Future."

In the age of touchscreens and smartphones, typing drills on a traditional QWERTY keyboard may not be the best use of anybody's time. Instead, new technologies are helping overcome the vexing issues of speed, accuracy, and screen space that are the consequence of importing standard typing techniques to mobile technologies.

"Julia Gardiner is taking photos of what appear to be the most mundane objects - sugar bowls and random wall shots - in the cafe where we meet for a chat. But she's an Instagrammer, one of a growing number of people using their smartphones to take pictures of the world around them and then uploading them for the world to see."

When it comes to mobile learning myths and misconceptions abound. The mlearning domain is still new to many, so this confusion is to be expected. These myths are holding back widespread adoption of mobile learning in the workplace. Here is a list of the more common ones I come across. Also contrast with a list of myths we posted on this blog a couple of years ago.

"CHILDREN who use 'text speak' when sending messages on their mobile phones do not have a poor grasp of grammar, a study has shown. Researcher assessed the spelling, grammar, understanding of English and IQ of primary and secondary schoolchildren and compared those skills with a sample of their text messages."

Gabe Zichermann is an entrepreneur, author, highly rated public speaker and gamification thought leader. He is the chair of the Gamification Summit and Workshops, and is co-author of the book "Game-Based Marketing, where he makes a compelling case for the use of games and game mechanics in everyday life, the web and business. Gabe is also a board member of StartOut.org and facilitator for the NYC chapter of the Founder Institute. For more information visit: http://www.tedxkids.be

SNApps4Kids is a volunteer community of parents, therapists, doctors, and teachers who share information on how we are using the iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch and Android devices with children who have special needs. We have found these mobile devices to provide accessibility for children who may have been previously disengaged from the world because of challenging language, motor, or other developmental delays. Given the rising number of apps on the market and the diverse skills of children with special needs, parents have found each other to be one of the best resources for choosing apps to enhance everyday life for our children. While our group is primarily parent-driven, our efforts are naturally collaborative with the people who help our children develop particular skills - therapists and educators.

Spotzi shows you the world in a unique and astonishing way. It not only shows you street maps and high detail areal maps. That's just a starter. Spotzi goes beyond any political border and zooms in to any aspect of our planet. This has been made possible by the extent data resources at NASA, the World Bank and our own data warehouse. By clicking the themes at the left you can start browsing for almost any theme you might be interested in. Locations of animals, temperatures on earth and the grand tectonic plates are just some examples of the thousands of themes available. It is all map based. Why? A map tells you more than a thousand words. Each theme has its own map and will be activated by clicking on the theme of your interest.

Google Maps is an obvious fit in social studies lessons. But it's not always an obvious fit in science lessons. Last week during one of the New Hampshire Google Apps Bootcamps Alice Barr shared a good collection of Google Maps uses in science. KQED Quest has a collection of six examples of science based Google Maps. The collection includes examples of use in environmental science and geology lessons.

The invention of the tablet PC has created a new medium for book publishing. Interactive books are everywhere, and have revolutionized the way people consume the printed word. With the recent software available to allow easy creation of interactive books and with the race to bring these products to market, there seems to be a more and more dilution of quality and a loss for the meaning of interactivity. When publishers create new eBook titles or convert a traditional printed book to a digital interactive eBook, they often miss the added value this new medium can provide.

"While most web-sites provide downloads of current versions, OldApps.com caters to a different market of interest by providing older versions of the same useful programs. Often newer versions are more complicated to use and we understand that it is hard to find older, more user-friendly versions of popular software. Many software providers do not include older versions of their software on their sites, therefore, OldApps.com has found its market niche and provides a vital intermediary function for our users' software needs."

"The digital age has presented many and diverse challenges for copyright law. The rapid uptake of digital, networked technologies led to widespread online distribution of content, as well as the emergence of new practices and technologies that enabled digital content to be shared, reused and remixed on an unprecedented scale. But while technology provided the capacity for sharing and reuse of content to occur on a vast scale, legal restrictions on the use of copyright material hampered its negotiability in the digital environment."

"If you go by the headlines, the iPhone 5S and Google Glass were the big technology stories of 2013, and Twitter's IPO was the event of the year. The coverage of Glass focused mostly on its privacy implications - not its ability to change the world. And iPhone and Twitter were just more of the same. So we could end the year really disappointed because nothing dramatic seems to have happened on the technology front. But look again, at the stories we missed. So much happened, in fact, that I believe we have set the stage for the transformation of entire industries"

"Would any of my students turn down a 1:1 MacBook Pro? Of course not. Still, I believe there is great value in the limitations of resources. When we engage in Device Wars on twitter and the blogosphere, we all seem to exercise significant bias in equating the best classroom tool with the one that we find most productive in our personal or professional lives (I touched upon that in disagreeing with folks who contend that the iPad is not a creation tool). Do I have a vision of what technology I'd like in my class in the perfect scenario? Sure I do. Do my students and I really need that state of shiny utopia, especially when it is (in my view) impossible to achieve in an equitable fashion? I don't think so."