HGSET545

Here's a fun infographic that overviews gamified learning and provides a timeline that features some games we've studied for this course.

A familiar voice on Khan, digital learning, literacy, and opportunities and challenges in education.

This Kickstarter project aims to fund a standards-aligned history board game that engages students. The free companion web application will track students' progress, allowing for differentiated instruction while making the game "fun to play again and again: as players answer question cards, they earn badges and can unlock new careers and powers. The game becomes a story, a competition, and a World History simulation with limitless possibilities."

Imagine this...

Johnny Mnuemonic is right around the corner! :-) Seriously, I would have a hard time with electronic equipment that close to my head all the time. The warmth from my cell phone bothers me so this product would have to compensate for discomfort with warmth and close viewing. Regardless, it's coming anyway. Interesting how they don't show how it makes work easier, just free time.

I did not give my opinion initially, but the bottom line is: I would go nuts! John Stewart had a great take-off on this based on what "dogs" actually see!

TED Talks Chip Kidd doesn't judge books by their cover, he creates covers that embody the book -- and he does it with a wicked sense of humor. In one of the funniest talks from TED2012, he shows the art and deep thought of his cover designs. This video is entertaining and picks up the content at 8:30. Kidd is an expert at grabbing someone's attention in a glance. Intriguing applications.

EIM (Excellence In Motivation) announces the addition of two new modules to its recognition and incentive suite of solutions. EIM's Learn 'N' Earn and Interactive Incentive Games will be unveiled to the public at the World at Work Total Rewards Conference in Orlando, FL, May 21-23, 2012.

This is a really new way to incentivize or gamify some mundane processes in corporations. I can see this having an impact. .

The most difficult aspect to analyzing Big Data or even programming software to analyze Big Data is to resist the temptation to take our current understanding of data analysis and push it into a new platform. WHAT is the information we need and HOW can we present it in order help educators make decisions that truly impact student achievement? Holy Grail!

Kids today just love to play computer games, and the West Virginia Department of Education is tapping into that love through a website called Learn21.

I think I just found a host for my EMF rubric! Thanks Gozie!

Motivation in education getting press in Nigeria.

Tax exemption, better loans, and interesting training options would certainly be motivating for me. However, are National Teacher Awards motivating for anyone?

If computers can score writing, of course the first use will be for assessment. No surprise there. But how might we use this more creatively?

I tried to bring an scoring software program into my school. Nobody liked it except for myself. I thought the objective measure would be more motivating to students. But the other teachers thought that the students should have more practice with rubrics themselves. My school focused heavily on peer editing and scoring. Also, when teachers see such a large number of average scores they tend to disbelieve the results. For example, when I score the essays, there may be a lot of 'B's but I've sees the difference in between Betty's 'B' and Joe's 'B'. The grade is more of a reminder of my experience scoring Betty's writing. When the software scores it, I haven't necessarily seen the essay therefore the score doesn't mean as much. Of course the scoring makes much more sense for official assessments. Open Ended Responses are a much better measure of a student's understanding than multiple choice, if the software is able to distinguish the nuance of language. Some programs are scoring grammatical patterns, sentence length, and paragraph length; therefore, a student can be totally off topic and get a high score. I'm curious if this latest software corrected for this.

A less pricey competitor for ipad.

Article and video on Singapore's new 'one-stop centre' for teachers to collaborate on projects using infocomm technology. Another way to diffuse innovations?

Describes how Singapore publishers are pushing into the e-book market for education, including the development of e-assessment apps.

VR goggles used to give RC model airplane enthusiasts a view from the cockpit.

Here's an interesting venture!

Hits on a lot of our topics-

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!"

Shares 28 case studies of innovative tech-based education initiatives supported by EETT.

Mobile Learning conference available on Shakespeare's Birthday (not necessarily related).

A review of what this writer thinks constitutes a good math app, and where many apps/educational games go wrong.