HGSET545

- background info on Summer 2012 launch of Scratch Jr. - to promote social interaction in learning the designers want to build a digital playground. "A good playground will have swing sets and slides for the kids, as well as benches and tables and chairs for the parents. The designers of Scratch Jr are figuring out how to embed the digital equivalent of those tables and chairs. "

This author advocates for using pop quizzes to motivate studying. I disagree with his method, but it's still good to see his side of the argument.

Here is more on self-efficacy theory, particularly how it was applied in the author's game "Air Medic Sky 1."

Nice post, Stepahnie. I have already borrowed a couple of ideas from this for my project, such as some training modules within the game to provide mastery experiences.

A free tool to create and visualize your own tag clouds. Useful to analyze group themes in student writing. Sharing this data and the corpus of students texts, either synchronously or asynchronously, seems to be the key to upping the level of engagement.

Related to the Pew Foundation Study on Tagging we read earlier in the course... Topic models provide a simple way to analyze large volumes of unlabeled text. A "topic" consists of a cluster of words that frequently occur together. Using contextual clues, topic models can connect words with similar meanings and distinguish between uses of words with multiple meanings. Coupling the use of such tools with blogging allows students (plural) to spot trends in their collective writing. The key is to "share-out" their pieces in weekly class review sessions. This "ups" the level of engagement.

An interesting article with examples of schools that are "closing the loop"--successfully connecting students, teachers, and technologists to advance the use of technology within the classroom). Also contains a nice visual.

This is an interesting piece by Ben Shneiderman, the reigning authority on graphical user-interface design, and Greg Kearsley, an authority on distance education.

"This new device actually has more memory and higher screen resolution than an Xbox 360 or Playstation 3," said Mike Capps, CEO of Epic Games. "So, these guys [Apple] are redefining mobile gaming again."

This is a great tool for doing mock-ups of engaging user interfaces. The free version is more than adequate. We use it in a course on graphical user interface design at my university.

Jerry, Thanks for sharing this resource. Coincidentally, my partner and I used this tool for generating a wireframe for a project in another course just two days back. I was not able to find a 'free' version on the website. There is a 7 day evaluation desktop version and a subscription based web version. I have a PC laptop. Is the free version available for Mac?

Digital tools are helping students with learning and sensory disabilities gain academic confidence and motivation.

An interesting article on game play in the classroom...students take on the role of a video game character and act the part during game performances!

If you look at it as 'play' instead of 'game' I think it opens a whole range of possibilities. Which is not surprising. As young children, we learned through play, often elaborate role-play.

Hi Jackie - this just reminded me to post a link below re: the CUNY (City University of New York) group that reflects on and develops all types of games in teaching. http://games.commons.gc.cuny.edu/

The City University of New York connects educators from every campus and discipline at CUNY who are interested in games, simulations, and other forms of interactive teaching. They hope to facilitate the pedagogical uses of both digital and non-digital games, improve student success, and encourage research and scholarship in the developing field of games-based learning.

For those who enjoy sport analogies, I received this from a coaching organization. Do you think they break 'motivation' down accurately?

EducationUSA just released a virtual simulation on their Facebook page. They state that it is the "World's first game-based adventure for international students to learn about opportunities in the United States of America." A short YouTube video is linked below. I would love to get your thoughts on this application. Can creating an avatar effectively teach (and prepare) international students for the U.S. college experience? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Fj01uSj4L4&feature=youtu.be

A valiant effort to make the best use of a 'bare bones' classroom.

Emotion-sensing computer software that responds to students' cognitive and emotional states, including frustration and boredom. This tool seems to address all the issues we've been talking about in T545! Could this be the tool that replaces teachers?!

Scientists recorded readers' eye movements when they were reading to monitor when they were 'spacing' out. Perhaps this could be used as a diagnostic tool for teachers?

This article discusses 20 tips to enhance one's collaboration and blended learning experience.

"Gene Munster, an analyst at Piper Jaffray, estimated that Mr. Cook's prediction would come true in 2017, but others contend tablets will be on top sooner than that. For example, in a blog post on Friday, Horace Dediu, an analyst with Asymco in Finland, made a detailed argument that tablet sales would pass traditional PC sales in the fall of 2013.

Developers of electronic textbooks and educational games would do well to focus on the tablet platform, which is predicted to become dominant in the next 2 to 3 years. This means that we would need to be fully prepared to leverage the affordances of the tablet technology in delivering our products. .

The growing badge-based-learning movement, which provides students with digital credentials that challenge traditional measures of achievement like college degrees, got a boost yesterday. Winners of the Badges for Lifelong Learning Competition, which began in September, were announced at the Digital Media and Learning Conference, in San Francisco.