HGSET545

Gee comments on video games and project-based learning.

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..

An article about what we can learn from the Finish education reform - we need to raise the standards for entry into the teaching profession, and future teachers should have intensive professional and academic preparation. Finnish teachers are driven by a sense of intrinsic motivation, not by the hope of a bonus or the fear of being fired. Intrinsic motivation is also what they seek to instill in their students.

San Jose, CA (PRWEB) March 26, 2012 Henley-Putnam University's next free webinar takes an in-depth look at best practices for completing online courses. Key fundamentals of learning, including communication, self- motivation, time management, and prioritization will be discussed in depth (https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/930185490).

Very good segment about Khan Academy

Thanks for posting this, Marium! I've been reading and enjoying his book What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy (http://amzn.to/H0Eqi8); I look forward to watching this now as well.

The expansion of virtual education puts companies that provide e-learning services under the microscope As researchers, politicians, and the general public have begun to question the results of fully online virtual schooling, private providers-particularly for-profit companies-that supply curriculum, content, and sometimes instruction and school management for online education are facing the most scrutiny.

Students at the Center Project Explores How Students Learn Best--Reports on Enhancing Literacy and on Math Instruction for Minorities also Released New educational technologies offer exciting ways to help teachers adapt classrooms to the interests, needs, and strengths of individual students, but they cannot replace the crucial creative and emotional work of teachers, according to a new research paper from the ambitious interdisciplinary project, Students at the Center: Teaching and Learning in the Era of the Common Core.

This article examines how to best create flow experiences in video games. The author argues for 1) including a variety of gameplay activities, 2) allowing players to play at their own paces, and 3) letting players make choices.

A very interesting profile of a candidate for a Superintendent position.

This ~3min video is a description of how a school integrates the use of games (eg. guitar hero) into their curriculum. It utilizes this game as a starting point for multiple explorations in music. I am very unsure of the value of incorporating the game. Any thoughts ?

I'm not sure how I feel about the commercial aspect of this... it feels a bit like a marketing tool for Guitar Hero. But, I do think that it sounds like they're doing interesting things with the surrounding curriculum. When I was in grade school I remember participating in a special unit on the Oregon Trail where we did related activities in every subject: managing our money and supplies in math class, learning about atmospheric conditions/obstacles in science class, and negotiating through historically-situated group decisions in social studies. I found this particular unit so much more engaging than everyday coursework, as I was able to both employ my imagination and see real-world application for skills that I was building. The Microsoft program stuck me as a 21st century adaptation of this (albeit grounded in a commercial product), where students were building various skill sets across subjects that were all tied together by a common narrative.

For the data analysts among us... This article mentions the Stanford University online course where every mouse click of 20,000 students is tracked in real time. "If 5,000 people had the same wrong answer, it's obvious a concept is not getting through, and you have a clear path that shows where students went wrong."

Caspian Learning built an immersive 3D serious game for Great Ormond Street Hospital Charity in the UK to increase operator engagement in training to use medical hoists.

I was intrigued by this rather strange name for a game and looked up the web site. There is also a short video on youtube.

Looking at the future of voice recognition technology.

Here is a succinct treatment of cognitive flow and its relevance for game design.

This longer gamasutra article talks about Macro Flow and Micro Flow, complete with Csikszentmihalyi's flow diagrams. "Macro flow is the constant rise in difficulty to compete with the player's increasing skill level, maintaining the balance between boredom and anxiety. Macro flow refers to the entire gameplay experience from the beginning of the game until the end, and having a good macro flow will likely result in constant interest and intrinsic motivation on the part of the player throughout the course of the game." "Micro flow is short intense periods of flow that happen frequently, as well as the constant adaptation of the game's challenges to the player's increase in skill level. It is perpetuated by repeated successes in rapid succession, which provides positive emotional and tangible feedback encouraging the player to continue in the micro flow; this is known as a virtuous cycle."

Thanks for posting, Stephanie. I wonder if these instances of "micro flow' interfere with a gamer's chances of experiencing macro flow. I'm imagining instances of micro flow to be like interesting pit stops along a road trip, while macro flow would be equivalent to the exhilaration of cruising down an open road without any interruption. Not sure if that's the right way to think about it though...

Is computational thinking a fundamental skill that should be added to every student's analytical ability?

As I read this article, I thought about how many friends I have that are in non-technical professions, but who have been asked to take on technical tasks as part of their roles (managing databases, building organization websites, etc.) They've all been able to figure out how to do these things, but have found it very challenging to do so on their own and without any prior experience/contextual knowledge. So while I'm not sure that it's an absolute necessity, I do think that an increasingly broad range of vocations expect some level of technological fluency that could be built upon a computational thinking foundation. (There was a nice quote from a librarian in a NY Times article posted by Tom Keffer that illustrates this as well - the librarian says that all librarians rely upon software now, and that it's up to them to become technically empowered if there is something IT-related that their library needs.)

Clark Aldrich's "The Complete Guide to Simulations and Serious Games" is a good complement to Prensky's books on the subject. We require both in our "eLearning Games" course at UB. The instructor of that course directed my to these two resources.

...and, here is the link to Alrich's website.