Archive for April, 2012
Play and Learn Weekly Apr.28,2012
What’s happening in the convergence of play and learn … News Wellington game developer launches world’s first cloud-based game creator Gamefroot enables users to create any kind of 2D interactive game they can imagine. Characters, backgrounds, soundtracks can be uploaded, manipulated and created on hand-held devices as well as home computers. The software also offers… Read More ›
Badges Going Beyond What You Thought
The interest about badges in education area is on recently, but it’s actually an old old trick although a new term “gamification of education” was created. Everyone had ever received stickers from elementary school teachers. That’s the very basic concept of it. Boy/girl scouts knew badges. Military soldiers knew badges. Video gamers knew badges. Instead of punishing… Read More ›
Are You Ready to Gamify Your Classrooms?
Games can put context into why people do something, in the same way it can engage learners. Maybe you are interested to use the power of play to ignite the learning passion in classrooms. You definitely want to take a closer examination on why and how it works. We try to collect some helpful works that… Read More ›
Learning History by Making History
When we learn Math and Science, we can “play” with it to see how stuffs work. Especially with modern technologies, even it’s not playing appealing learning games, students can do simulations, manipulate factors, observe animations or execute experiments to figure out the patterns and rules. But when learning history, except reading written texts about facts… Read More ›
Why Play Games When You Can Build Ones
In UK, Volunteers have kicked off a project to set up nationwide after-school clubs that wants to make programming cool and fun and inspire kids to learn coding. Called Code Clubs, it will aim to teach the basics of computer programming into children aged 10-11. The clubs will facilitate hands-on tasks that will let children making… Read More ›
Top 10 Resources about iPad Pilot Programs Shared by Educators(K12)
In the past two year, iPad pilot programs have been gaining momentum in schools worldwide. You might be wondering “Do iPads really improve learning?” It’s great that many pioneers are sharing their experiences and advices on websites or on iBook. They have been posting valuable insights, recommended apps for elementary and secondary students, “How-to” and… Read More ›
What Video Games Have to Teach Us about Learning
Game-based learning has gained considerable traction since 2003, when James Gee began to describe the impact of game play on cognitive development. In the book, What Video Games Have to Teach Us about Learning and Literacy, James Paul Gee derives a set of learning principles(The 36 Learning Principles, open-licensed, listed as here) from his study of the complex, self-directed learning… Read More ›
It’s About The Game Design and The Learning
My children love to play some board games, some computer games, and they love “choose your own path” stories a lot. What makes a game playful and enjoyable? Does it have to be with modern technologies? Is it from gaining badges or leveling up in the game? I think the fun mainly comes from the… Read More ›
Mobile Learning from App Creation Rocks!
2012 Mobile Learning Conference is undergoing in Phoenix, Arizona, the official conference session description was: “This workshop will offer a hands-on opportunity for teachers with no prior programming experience to learn how to develop a working mobile app for the iPhone/iPod touch that is suitable for publishing to the iTunes App Store. Participants will also learn about a… Read More ›
Quest To Learn – Good Gamers Are Good Learners
“Quest To Learn“, a middle school with the curriculum based on video games, is the brainchild of a professional game designer named Katie Salen. Salen, like many people interested in education, has spent a lot of time thinking about making learning more relevant to students and more connected to the world beyond school. And the… Read More ›
Infographic: About the Gamification of Education
A great game player has all the good characters that schools desire to see from their students. What elements of gaming can we harness for educational purposes? This is an excellent infographic putting together key information about gamifying learning. You will find a short history of gamified learning. The summary from MIT’s paper “Moving Learning… Read More ›
The Ultimate Hack – Re-coding Textbooks
Rob Reynolds just started his next book: “The Ultimate Hack: Re-coding Textbooks and Other Learning Content“. He will be posting drafts of all the chapters on his site, both the drafts and final product will be open and free. What’s the hacker culture to do with re-engineering textbooks that will work for the future? The digital containers to… Read More ›
Video Games in Teaching – Lesson Learned
As we are looking for quality references about “gaming the classrooms”, we found this article from Marjee Chmiel gave noteworthy highlights and resource lists (including the SIIA’s report on best practices in integrating games in education), it stands out from so many articles talking around this topic. ***** Over the years, I’ve worked with a lot of teachers… Read More ›
Digital Textbooks from Educators
We’ve talked about “Why don’t Teachers Publish Their Own Textbooks ? (K12)“ with lots of examples of teachers building curricula, and “Growing Your Textbooks by Thinking Outside The Box“ is a broader view about the relationship of learning content and learners. We always appreciate the insights from educators, like this post from Learning and Teaching with iPad. Educators becoming creators has… Read More ›
A Teacher’s Reflection: What Can We Learn from Gaming?
This is a post from “Philly Teacher” by Mary Beth Hertz is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. ***** What Can We Learn from Gaming? I have been thinking a lot recently about video gaming and what we can learn from it as educators. This is not a new concept or a new… Read More ›
