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Interesting article about students' perceptions of the visual and the implications for teaching.

In the chapter "Civic Identities, Online Technologies: From Designing Civics Curriculum to Supporting Civic Experiences" from Marina Umaschi Bers book, Civic Life Online: Learning How Digital Media Can Engage Youth, the author claims that online games, such as Zora, help our youth engage in community and civics. Zora allows it's players to create their own individual avatar, with physical, mental, and emotional traits that the players choose. Bers argues that Zora is a great way for children to think about their identity and civic life by making choices that will show them how to acquire certain sills and attitudes to become good citizens. Like many other researchers, Bers agrees that it is easiest to learn by doing, and games like Zora are helping to improve the youths social awareness. This chapter describes engagement in society not only by voting and being political, but by forming communities and volunteering.

In "Civic Identities, Online Technologies: From Designing Civics Curriculum to Supporting Civic Experiences" by Marina Umaschi Bers, Bers discusses a scenario that is being used all across the country. Zora is a three dimensional multiuser environment that students use to think about identity and civic life. Students make avatars and are in charge of everything going on in the city or summer camp. This came to life after identity construction environments (ICEs) were found that creative things to do on the computer make children learn better. The students work mostly with different civic identities like police, Jewish people, etc. along with real life, controversial community related issues which the students try to solve. Many of the tools used in Zora can then beused in real life and the moral values can be used both on the computer and in real life. Zora is different than traditional learning because "Children are put in the role of producers, instead of consumers, of information, knowledge, and habits of mind."

Annotation: Benefits of Using Multimedia in Education, and "Kids views on technology in the classroom" On this website, Benefits of Using Multimedia in Education, it states many benefits of using technology within the classroom from the professor's point of view as well as the student's perspective. It states how educators believe that "multimedia tools provide students with opportunities to represent and express their prior knowledge" and "empower students to create and design rather than absorbing representations created by others". These observations are seen through researches that have been made on other websites and are linked right next to each statement of observation and benefit. Furthermore, it shows how multimedia tools benefit students work from "four perspectives: 1) as researchers, they must locate and select the information needed to understand the chosen topic;2) as authors, they must consider their intended audience and decide what amount of information is needed to give their readers an understanding of the topic;3) as designers, they must select the appropriate media to share the concepts selected; and 4) as writers, they must find a way to fit the information to the container including the manner of linking the information for others to retrieve(Smith,1993)".

Users share a commonality in the various ways they represent themselves on Facebook. These vary from the way people structure their privacy settings, to the way they represent themselves through their pictures, to what groups they identify with, and how they define themselves through text on their profile pages. It is something which when analyzed can be recognized as constructed in order to portray the desired image of each individual. With a Facebook page you use its different features to create yourself from nothing and in heart design yourself. The freedom that the virtual world provides allows people to construct their identity in any way they wish. With the freedom of constructing identity in multiple ways comes the freedom to socialize in multiple ways. Therefore, Facebook is a space where people may construct and share their identities, rather than being just a platform where one "'keeps in touch."

This article is mainly about a man who thought of an idea to teach kids to make video games and in that same process be educated by learning engineering, digital literacy, math, and any other knowledge that is needed to make a video game. The plan is to have kids make these video games revolving important issues affecting the world, such as nutrition, the ecosystems, and so much more.

The article, Connecting the Digital Dots: Literacy of the 21st Century, is arguing the point that the types of literacies are expanding every day, and people need to be kept up on them. The authors, Barbara Jones-Kavalier and Suzanne Flannigan, state that to be a fully functioning member of society, you must acquire and understand a new literacy; a digital one. They also state, "Today, we still seek better communication methods, only now we have myriad more choices, along with new tools and strategies and greater knowledge of effective communication". Technologies will not just be used to communicate though anymore, it is being to "create, to manipulate, to design, to self-actualize". In the New Literacy and Education paragraphs, it is stated that classrooms today are less advanced for the students who are being put in them. Almost all of these students are digitally literate, but teachers are presenting ideas in the ways they always have. Maybe, it is not just the classrooms that need remodeling, but the teachers need to attend workshops and become more accustomed to dealing with these new types of literacies. Schools who are looking to hire teachers need to look at what background the interviewees have, or require a pre-requisite for computer literacy. The authors also state that today, students are "digitally savvy". They don't believe that teachers should be re-typing overheads into PowerPoint's. There are so many different technological ways to teach things to students. It just isn't the same anymore to just use a whiteboard and an overhead projector. "As an example, now teachers can do a PowerPoint presentation with streaming video, instant Internet access, and real-time audio-video interaction, and they can do it with relative speed and ease".

Barbara Jones-Kavalier and Suzanne Flannigan in their article "Connecting the Digital Dots: Literacy of the 21st Century" state the reason the definition of literacy has gradually changed through time, will always be changed, and that the history behind why it has changed leads to the definition itself. They assert that through the technological advancements the thought processes in the humans mind have drastically changed; and in order for literacy to keep up with this rapidly changing "E-generation" Jones-Kavalier and Flannigan express that our minds need to be open to this change. They state that "vision combined with practical, recognizable goals and incentives that encourage people to embrace new digital and visual literacy skills individually and collectively" will allow there to actually be a change universally.

This article discusses how literate once meant a person's ability to read and write. Now that technology is rapidly changing, our society is learning to adjust to it. Now, literacy has a new definition. According to the authors, "Literacy includes the ability to read and interpret media (text, sound, images), to reproduce data and images through digital manipulation, and to evaluate and apply new knowledge gained from digital environments." Older generations are having a more difficult time adjusting to it than the teenage generation. Learning technology is starting to seem like learning a new language. Although, it's a priority for society to learn to acclimate to these changes in order to learn and communicate effectively.

Sara Corbett's New York Times article Learning by Playing, focuses on a New York City non-charter public school that uses an educational program called Quest to Learn. The school uses video games to help teach kids and sometimes the kids make video games. Quest to Learn was created by a game designer named Katie Salen with the intention of making schools more appealing and relevant to kids today. Classes often combine multiple subjects into quests, "where the quests blend skills from different subject areas" (Corbett). Teachers do not do as much instruction as they do guidance. The article talks about how most kids who drop out of high school simply found it too boring. Schools today do not permit the use of cell phones and internet use is only allowed to do school related work, which cuts students off from the world. According to Katie Salen, "there's been this assumption that school is the only place that learning is happening, that everything a kid is supposed to know is delivered between 8 a.m. and 3 p.m., and it happens in the confines of a building" (Corbett). Kids today do so much more interesting things outside of school.

This article is about a veteran teacher who has taught in schools for 32 years all over Manhattan. He introduces a class in technology and game design. SARA CORBETT talkes about how students would benifit if teachers stepped away from what they thought was a typical classroom and focused on different approaches to reach and educate children. According to Sara Corbett, "Quest to Learn is organized specifically around the idea that digital games are central to the lives of today's children and also increasingly, as their speed and capability grow, powerful tools for intellectual exploration".

The article "Using Instructional Technology in Transformed Learning Environments: An Evaluation of Project CHILD," by Sarah Butzin, claims that students are able to learn more and are more motivated when they are able to use technology and implement the Computers Helping Instruction and Learning Development (CHILD) project. Butzin studied the effects of technology by comparing two schools that were both technology-rich. One school implemented project CHILD and the other school implemented a more traditional design. According to the author, the CHILD method involves a cluster of three grades that are broken into smaller groups and remain with the same teachers throughout those three grades (K-2 and 3-5.) The more traditional learning style still involved the use of technology in day to day learning, but every year the students changed teachers and only worked within their grade level. The CHILD implementation makes it so that children can learn at their own pace and switch stations that include bookwork, one on one or small group time with the teacher, working with technology, and hands-on experience. Butzin claims that this style of learning showed positive outcomes for testing scores, classroom motivation, improvement in behavior, and increased parent involvement.

In the article, Digital Literacy: A Conceptual Framework for Survival Skills in the Digital Era, by Yoram Eshet-Alkalai, he states that digital literacy is more than just being able to use software and electronic devices. Using digital technology includes complex skills like cognitive, sociological, motor and emotional skills. These skills cause the learner or even scholar to have a new means of communication in designing better environments. This creates a digital framework enhances the understanding the users perform using different types of digital skills.

From the NYTimes: "Last week we asked readers to submit questions to James Paul Gee, an expert on how video games fit within an overall theory of learning and literacy, in response to The New York Times Magazine article "Learning by Playing." It featured a public middle school where every aspect of learning is designed to be game-like."

For those of you researching Facebook...interesting article

http://www.cooks.com/rec/view/0,1613,156178-252192,00.html here is a glazed donuts recipe, use a chocolate glaze and a voodoo cookie cutter, put a crazy design, fill the middle with red jam, and stick a pretzel stick through the heart!!

"A novel public school in New York City has taken the video game as its model for how to teach. Students use video games and design them as part of their classes. As Quest to Learn is wrapping up its first year, those behind the program say game-based learning is integral to 21st century literacy" The article took James Gee's idea and really wanted to make a school that bases its learning through video game. It talks about the idea and the system that they created and the article also addresses the issues of the pressure to meet the marks they want to show success.

In this TED video, it's about how engaging in video games helps reward our brains and how that helps us in the real world. Like in business, our education, the government, and engagement.

this video is about how game designer attract gamers into playing games and also 7 things from games that help you in real life.

The article talks about ways that gaming can help the brain.