Group items tagged

I created this spreadsheet in order to track insights about aspects of MMO game play (example is WoW) that might be reconfigured or repurposed as classroom/school learning structures. The object here is not to necessarily use WoW in school but examine which elements of gameplay translate into new and unique learning experiences online or off. PLEASE ADD YOUR COMMENTS TO THE DOCUMENT!

For a growing group of educators, the online role-playing game World of Warcraft is a place to go to relax, network, and discover potential learning strategies-- and slay a few monsters if they get in the way.

ccLearn is a division of Creative Commons dedicated to realizing the full potential of the internet to support open learning and open educational resources.

"We've spoken with other groups of academics who band together in guilds, and they don't always progress very far or become truly embedded into WoW's player culture. Is Cog Diss actively raiding? "

The difference between seeing Twitter as a waste of time or as a powerful new community amplifier depends entirely on how you look at it - on knowing how to look at it.

A recent 93-page report on online education, conducted by SRI International for the Department of Education, has a starchy academic title, but a most intriguing conclusion: "On average, students in online learning conditions performed better than those receiving face-to-face instruction."

Interesting. Though I'm curious about what's being assessed. there's a certain social knowledge and development that occurs in visually and physically mediated spaces that is more difficult to discern online. as well, wondering how online disinhibition (actors and lurkers) factors into who "performs" well or is under serviced by online only contexts.

Little do they realize that when it comes to the news and the advertisers who make it possible, the truth is not always part of the story and nothing can be taken at face value. While learning about media consolidation and the power of money over truth, Bounce, Pema and Jagroop decide to take on the developers and the media.

"As long as media literacy education was about television, it was perceived to be fluff," she said. "But when the Internet came along, kids didn't know how to cite sources online, and they were creating publicly visible content in their own homes without their parents' knowledge...which sparked serious safety concerns."\n\nIf Thoman and her colleagues' work over the past half century can be credited with establishing media literacy as an academic subject, it's possible that the digital media revolution will catalyze this subject's introduction into the mainstream curriculum.\n\nThat reality seemed closer when, in May, my former boss Sen. John Kerry, along with Senators Rockefeller and Snowe, introduced the "21st Century Skills Incentive Fund Act" into the Senate. The bill recognizes that, in order to prepare students for the modern workforce, education must go beyond core curricula and teach "critical thinking and problem solving skills, communication skills, creativity and innovation skills, collaboration skills, contextual learning skills, and information and media literacy skills."

in high school courses, 'media' is often taught by visual artists or English teachers. Very rarely by those who have worked in media, the web or technical capacities (as production based degrees are not counted towards core curriculum areas: history, english, math, computer science, french, phys ed, etc).

So far on this blog, my posts have explored larger themes, such as Digital Natives vs Digital Immigrants and the media's treatment of stories about technological dangers. But our blog here at Digital Nation also aims to take you behind the scenes and into the process of making a documentary film for FRONTLINE. We want you to see what we're working on, read what we're thinking about, and learn how our reporting is shaping our opinions on a daily basis.

Unless a great many people learn the basics of online crap detection and begin applying their critical faculties en masse and very soon, I fear for the future of the Internet as a useful source of credible news, medical advice, financial information, educational resources, scholarly and scientific research.

"Each portfolio is personally curated by youth like Tashawna to offer an audio and visual tour of their social media productions that highlights the literacies developed through each social media project. This stands in contrast to the Digital Transcript, which is official and controlled by Global Kids."

"Games like World of Warcraft give players the means to save worlds, and incentive to learn the habits of heroes. What if we could harness this gamer power to solve real-world problems? Jane McGonigal says we can, and explains how."

Throughout the unit I'll be posting updates to this blog about what we did in class with links to videos and other resources viewed. The blog is a supplement - not a substitute - for in-class learning. You will find all of the unit documents on the Assignments tab.

Infotention is a word I came up with to describe the psycho-social-techno skill/tools we all need to find our way online today, a mind-machine combination of brain-powered attention skills with computer-powered information filters

"there are a number of great tools to teach programming to K-12 students, along with a lot of resources for computer science teachers:"

"Constance Steinkuehler, an educational researcher who organized an afterschool group for boys to play, for educational purposes, the massively multiplayer online role-playing game."

This project aims to identify and document the usage, definition, and as far as possible pedagogy of serious games. That is, games where the educational goal takes precendence in training outside of the school education system.

Through play, I have seen my students develop social, critical thinking, and problem-solving abilities in a safe, risk-free environment. Has our early childhood curriculum become so narrow that we now focus only on what is being tested and ignore all the other areas in a young child's development?

"Sit in one of these regions (like the Barrens) for 20 minutes watching the general chat. Keep a log of the topics discussed in the chat. Create categories for the topics and sort them. Create a bubble map diagram to show the relationship and possible overlap of topics. Reflect on the topics (were they helpful, interesting, offensive, etc.). What do you think motivates people to be helpful or annoying?"