The nonprofit group called TED, known for streaming 18-minute video lectures about big ideas, today opened a new YouTube channel designed for teachers and professors, with videos that are even shorter. The new channel, called TED-Ed, was announced a year ago, but its leaders are only now unveiling the project's first videos.
On a study break, I rediscovered this quite addictive, simple game that I think captures the ideas of flow quite nicely. I think the simple design, exponential scoring, soothing music, great art, and realistic physics make it quite immersive (for better or for worse!)
The music, the challenge of hitting the bells, the fact that the bells actually add some 'harmony' to the music, the high score at the end of the game. Simply brilliant. Thanks for sharing it!
Nothing is hotter in the education world right now than the massive open online course, or MOOC. MOOCs make an elite education available to anyone, typically for free but without course credit. But how completely can online courses reproduce the college experience? Lexington writer and entrepreneur Jonathan Haber wanted to find out.
Hear MIT GAMBIT Lab experts talk about engagement in practical terms--and get some hands-on experience designing a board or video game. The three-hour workshops are part of the Cambridge Science Festival; this event takes place on April 28 and requires a $5 preregistration. Though I'm sure EMF will be touched on one way or another in all of the workshops, I thought the Serious Games for Social Change workshop might be of particular interest to you all:
"In this workshop, best practice examples of serious games for social change will be played, discussed and analyzed. Furthermore ideas and sketches for proto-types will be developed and ways of realizing them will be discussed! The workshop gives the participants hands-on experiences and insights into the potential and limits of video games designed for social change. No pre-experiences are needed!"
This article explores the educational game Minecraft and provides ideas for lessons and projects. The interdisciplinary game has the potential to enhance math skills, social studies/history learning, and reading comprehension.
Interesting idea: engaging parents to help motivate their kids in school. It includes several of sources of "intrinsic motivation": curiosity, challenge, context, and motivation. I would be interested in seeing a more independent assessment on how successful this system is.
This is probably the definitive online source on learning objects. I recommend you download each chapter, as it hasn't been updated in a while (a sign that it may go away). An extremely dry read, but if you take it in small doses you'll be well grounded in the concept. Key ideas are embedded in SCORM..
this article reminded me how unengaged I was/am by the idea of diagramming sentences in spite of some people I know who thrill in the memories. It seems to me that the ipad offers some ap capability to reinvent this idea and make it even more visual.
I am posting two articles: 1) Apple's recent announcement about getting into digital textbooks (article/link below) and 2) the criticism (this link) by Hack Education blogger Audrey Watters. Education needs to rethink the need for textbooks altogether. Digitizing them is not the answer. She states, "You can disassemble, reassemble, unbundle, disrupt, destroy the textbook. It is truly an irrelevant format."
I thought it was interesting to read Watters's criticism of Apple's textbook plans, although I also thought it felt pretty one-sided. I do have reservations about how Apple is going about this (expecting everyone to own an iPad, requiring textbook authors to surrender rights, etc.) - but I don't think that the overall idea is so unbearable. Digitized textbooks offer many affordances compared to what we're stuck with currently (textbooks that are outdated, heavy, expensive, and limited by static content). Of course, theoretically we could do without textbooks, as Watters suggests in her criticism... but I'm not yet convinced of this in a practical, realistic sense. I suspect that the resources required to realize textbook-free classrooms are beyond what most schools and teachers have access to. (I also realize that iPads are not cheap! But if digitized textbooks were to become popular across a range of platforms, perhaps they would be more accessible to a broader demographic... and it's not as if physical textbooks are cheap either.)
Hi Emily - thanks for your thoughts! Bloggers (especially those who use the name Hack in their title) are going to be provocative (one-sided) in their writing... but it helps raise questions about standard practices. I too agree that eTextbooks or iBooks are going to be tremendously more engaging and up-to-date than the ones that weigh down kids bookbags. But now take a look at the other article I posted: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/01/flow-digital-textbooks that suggests how publishers are not open to new and niche ideas that might be incredibly beneficial to education. The publishing market has a hold on education. Is it possible that the textbooks will not be available across a range of platforms, but only on a few that the publishers agree to work with? Maybe it is time we push for a more open source model... that could also work towards digitizing textbooks... or would innovate other ways for students to access "textbook"" knowledge.
Thanks for the nudge to read the other article that you posted as well! It was a nice counterpoint to Watters and the FLOW platform seems like a promising stab at digital textbooks from an open-source standpoint.
“It suddenly occurred to me that every idea I had memorized or learned or thought I understood in a textbook was actually the result of scientific investigation,
“What was missing that it took me so long?”
She thinks science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields aren’t taught the right way in the United States
“the U.S. tends to have a curriculum that repeats the same topics over and over
Data show that American students actually do well in math and science in the early years (http://nces.ed.gov/timss/results07_math07.asp). By 12th grade, however, their performance has plummeted (http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/seind04/c1/fig01-08.htm).
Thanks for sharing this, Chris. It's both interesting and relevant to my project for this course. A comment at the bottom suggested that really the companies need to change their unrealistic minimum criteria for job candidates. I've heard that argument before, and sometimes I do wonder when I see complaints from companies looking only for people with 5+ years of STEM work experience railing on the state of STEM education. What do you think?
Thanks for sharing Chris! I can totally relate to this. I remember having to sit through those "weed out" intro biology and chemistry courses in undergrad. They were the antithesis of motivating but I pushed through because I knew without them I couldn't do the "cool science" I wanted to. I remember at the time thinking these courses were weeding out people who were entertaining the idea of a STEM career but just didn't want to put up with the cut throat nature of these courses. It seemed to me the classes were more concerned about weeding out people than by providing an environment that really fostered learning.
I'm still not sure if I agree with David Foster Wallace, but his quote did made me wonder: Does the idea of being "smart" tap into some essential human need? Might we add "smartness" to Ryan & Deci's list of intrinsic needs?
Here is an overview of several theories of motivation, with some tables and simple animations and games illustrating concepts. It addresses a mix of articles and ideas that have come up in class and ones we haven't touched on yet.
After Second Life took the world by storm in 2005 and 2006, introducing many to a 3D environment in which they could create nearly anything they wanted, there hasn't been a major next step forward.
One could argue that virtual worlds have even taken a technological step backward, as most of the energy in the space these days is being put into building 2D Flash worlds for kids, or Facebook games played by the masses. It's big business, but hardly cutting edge.
The biggest danger at the moment for those who want to see rich, 3D virtual worlds take off right away is the massive popularity of social networks like Facebook and Twitter.
Maybe it is a guy thing, but I think I would enjoy building a crack team of mercenaries to battle other 'gangs'.
The VOIP functionality and real-time skirmishes sound like a lot of fun.
I just had a great idea for a MUVE game...
Rookie, a MUVE that requores the formation of a constant cohort of users that must work together to graduate a Police Academy (politics, alliance building, skills, civic quandries, etc). They rise through the ranks together culminating in SWAT team training and/or criminal justice track (courts).
I thought those of you who were wondering about other cultures using SIMS would like to see this site. The YouTube video is no longer there, but the description gives somewhat of an idea of how another culture has adapted SIMS. While most of them seem to be saris and salwars (Indian Clothing), I wonder what Aishwarya's "outfit" is. My guess is western since in most Bollywood movies you see a lot of western (and rather skanky) clothes.