Group items tagged

We talk a lot about student engagement. Does being accountable and respected raise the engagement level (and hopefully performance) of the teacher?

Here is an ethnographer's in-depth look into World of Warcraft. From this site you can read the full book online, read an interview with the author, or listen to a podcast. The author "introduces us to her research strategy and the history, structure, and culture of Warcraft; argues for applying activity theory and theories of aesthetic experience to the study of gaming and play; and educates us on issues of gender, culture, and addiction as part of the play experience."

"Quest supports a dynamic curriculum that uses the underlying design principles of games to create academically challenging, immersive, game-like learning experiences for students. Games and other forms of digital media also model the complexity and promise of "systems." Understanding and accounting for this complexity is a fundamental literacy of the 21st century."

An excellent account of fostering engagement in students.

Turning buses into mobile hotspots. What happens when you 'connect' erstwhile unconnected parts of the day? This article doesn't really ask that question, although it touches on it in its last sentences. Also, presumably most of the kids had data capable phones and could text etc; what is different about access via laptops?

What about the social elements they are missing out on? The difference about access via laptops is the speed and ability to be more efficient compared to a phone. The capabilities of a laptop provide more opportunities for students to be productive/non-productive. This doesn't require them to be connected, however, I wonder what would happen if teachers start to hold students accountable (unintentionally) for using their connected time more wisely?

The Obama administration is proposing a sweeping overhaul of President Bush's signature education law, No Child Left Behind, and will call for broad changes in how schools are judged to be succeeding or failing, as well as for the elimination of the law's 2014 deadline for bringing every American child to academic proficiency. Educators who have been briefed by administration officials said the proposals for changes in the main law governing the federal role in public schools would eliminate or rework many of the provisions that teachers' unions, associations of principals, school boards and other groups have found most objectionable. Yet the administration is not planning to abandon the law's commitments to closing the achievement gap between minority and white students and to encouraging teacher quality.

Although this study is just correlative, it still poses some interesting questions about video games and academic achievement.