HGSET545

This article details how a charter school ("Rocketship education") is using computer games based on drill to improve test scores. Assessment procedures in place is obviously a very important driver for such initiatives.

By reading your linked article I came across this post about Carol Dweck's Brainology work and what it says about praise in schools: http://mindshift.kqed.org/2012/02/discovering-how-to-learn-smarter/#more-18821. Thanks, Pradeep!

Thanks for the link to the brainology article, Stephanie! So, instead of saying "You are so smart", can we point out to the students how they are getting 'smarter'? That way they will get the notion of growth.

Apple's pitch for its engaging platform has merit but I agree with this writer that it's buyer beware.

top educational wikis of 2011

Data from Project Tomorrow's Speak Up Survey outlining what kids really want when it comes to technology and digital learning

Venture capitalists are taking an unprecedented interest in the K-12 education marketplace, largely due to an increased interest in education technology.

Suggests classrooms of the future will be "open, mobile, and flexible enough to reach individual students-while free online tools will challenge the authority of traditional institutions." Nothing new to T545ers, but a good summary of trends.

Virtual Cultural Exchange!

Zuckerberg's letter accompanies Facebook's IPO. While there is no explicit mention of education, I think the letter is a must-read as we think about the function and possibilities of social media.

Another article on digital textbooks. The author describes how students in Joplin, MO, went digital after the tornado destroyed their schools. Mixed results.

With the Secretary calling for digital books, how does he envision teacher training programs to be transformed?

Learn about the gamification of the university experience at RIT's School of Interactive Games & Media. I learned about this at a MIT talk on Civic Games, which was written up here: http://civic.mit.edu/blog/mstem/event-writeup-civic-games. They only really touched on motivation, autonomy, and rewards, but the transcript is also worth checking out for the names of people, books, and sites mentioned.

I forgot to point out the interesting use of RFID in Just Press Play.

Seems like a good EMF design.

"Digital Learning Day is a nationwide celebration of innovative teaching and learning through digital media and technology that engages students and provides them with a rich, personalized educational experience."

The EcoMOBILE project was featured in the first hour of this webcast. Lots of interesting success stories.

Great! Shari showed us parts of the video in her intro to EcoMOBILE... good to see it all the way through. Kudos to other projects too.

Greenlight for Girls uses various 2.0 tools to engage girls in informal learning to promote girls toward STEM careers. They compliment online work with on the ground, face-to-face conferences so that the online conversation has correlation with face-to-face experiences and interactions, making the online engagement more visceral.

An interesting post on games in education that links to many examples for learning to code and mentions some other online educational environments that use gamification.

Hi Stephanie - This article also seems to highlight the extrinsic rewards of points and badges -- calling it "gamification." And given our last conversation in class, I wonder if all the points and badges will kill the intrinsic desire to play the games. Interestingly, there was a comment with a link to another article http://www.hideandseek.net/2010/10/06/cant-play-wont-play/ where the writer notes that some games just use "pointification," and that the best games are the ones that have rich cognitive, emotional and social aspects, with choice and skill... but not dependent on points/badges. In light of our "motivation" conversations, it will be interesting to watch how gaming in the classroom plays out if they are largely point/badges driven.

Big state investment in online (old school) testing- new ways to test old models.

Students learn how to make educational web games. Globaloria is sponsoring some of the events for the Digital Learning Day (posted below) and are "opening their Globaloria game design classes to parents, friends, educators, administrators, policy makers and media. Visitors will get to experience first-hand the innovative, hands-on "game design studio" that these classes engage in daily. They will see students developing original STEM learning games, collaborating with peers and their teacher, using a digital curriculum, and receiving support through an online learning network."

This article talks about how play has become more structured / commercialized and that imagination is one of the components lost.They further state that this leads to diminishing executive function stated to be responsible for decreasing self control.Like the Marshmallow experiment, perhaps there is a need for more evidence ?

The Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop studied almost 200 education apps for Apple's app store. Good insight into what's in the market right now and what the current trends are.

Thanks Chris! I am looking forward to reading this thoroughly. It covers so many important topics/questions from: creating standards for apps marketed as educational (right now the developers just need to say it is "educational") to a call to academia to dive into research and help design effective, high quality material for digital age learning.