Month: November 2014

Categories
Gaming

All Fun & Games? Understanding Learner Outcomes Through Educational Games

Teachers rely on the use of informal and formal assessment data to drive classroom instruction. However, traditional assessments can interrupt pacing and do not measure all of students’ abilities, such as their ability to collaborate with others, use of communication skills, the process of problem solving, or creativity. Kristen DiCerbo at Edutopia promotes an innovative assessment tool–educational games! The proper use of educational games can engage students in the curriculum, and yield useful data on students’ knowledge and skill abilities helping to drive teacher instruction.

posted by: Devin de Lange

Original Source

Over the past several years, there has been tremendous interest among educators in the use of digital games as serious learning. Advocates of game-based learning for K-12 students cite the value of digital games to teach and reinforce skills that prepare students for college and career, such as collaboration, problem solving, creativity, and communication.

Not as often discussed is our ability to use students’ in-game actions as evidence for the assessment of skills and knowledge, including those not easily measured by traditional multiple-choice tests.

The Potential of Games as Invisible Assessments

Traditional assessment methods often require teachers to interrupt classroom learning and administer tests. In contrast, invisible assessments make use of technology to record information about the ways students interact with learning material in a seamless manner, without interruption. Hence the term, “invisible.”

Invisible assessments such as games provide teachers, students, and parents with immediate feedback about progress, enabling them to make timely adjustments to teaching and learning approaches. They also enable educators to build models of student learning and proficiency by capturing many observations of a student over time, without the pressure of performance on a single test.

In games, educators can observe a student’s sequence of actions, time spent on tasks, multiple attempts at activities, requests for help, communication process, and so on. In other words, games allow us to examine a student’s process of problem solving, not just the final product at the end. These observations can help educators make valuable inferences regarding students’ mastery over skills, while offering new ways to assess factors not easily measured on multiple-choice tests, such as problem solving, critical thinking, collaboration, persistence, and creativity.

It is important to note that the term “invisible” does not imply that learners or teachers do not know that assessment is happening. Rather, it implies that the actual activity of assessment is not visible, or interrupting the classroom. Just as when playing a game, players get feedback and scores as a regular, expected part of play, so with all digital learning activity, we can be providing information about proficiency and suggestions for other activity.

Game or Gamification?

Educators must be careful, however, not to confuse educational games with the “gamification” of education. Gamification is generally defined as the use of game design elements in non-game contexts. A game, on the other hand, is a system where changing one element results in (often unforeseen) changes to many other parts of the system. There is little to no evidence that applying only selected game elements outside of a game will yield positive learning outcomes.

Quality educational games must balance engagement, assessment, and learning as three equally important components. Engagement relates to a game’s “fun factor.” Assessment is the ability for educators to gain key insights from a game regarding student abilities, and learning is the level to which a game effectively teaches skills and information. The key is to balance these factors so that games are both fun and educational, while providing the information educators need to assess and improve student outcomes.

A Look Toward the Future

A number of quality games exist today that successfully balance these factors and have tremendous potential as tools for both learning and assessment. However, much work is still needed to maximize their value, particularly in the area of integration. As of today, games and game data often exist in a silo. By making them a seamless part of curricula, there will be less of a burden on each individual teacher to determine when and how to integrate games into the classroom. By integrating the data with other gradebook-type information, teachers, parents, and students will get a richer picture of student knowledge, skills, and attributes.

While games do not fit into the current model of assessment for accountability, they do offer the opportunity to engage and attract learners while providing information useful for making immediate on-the-ground adjustments to teaching and learning plans. The potential of educational games will continue to grow as computers become increasingly ubiquitous in schools, and as game developers work ever more closely with education experts. If schools and teachers can collect and accumulate meaningful evidence from students’ everyday interactions with games and other digital tools, we have the potential to create new models of students’ knowledge and skills that expand our ability to both understand and influence student learning.

Categories
Gaming

How Digital Games Help Teachers Make Connections to Lessons and Students

Katrina Schwartz at MindShift provides readers with several examples of how teachers are integrating digital games or gamifying learning experiences in classrooms. Math, History, Science, Social Studies – games have the potential to produce powerful learning experiences for students.

Minecraft Screenshot
Minecraft Screenshot

posted by: Ryan Schaaf

Original Source

It’s not unusual for educators to use analog games in the classroom, but as more classrooms gain access to technology, digital games are also making a strong showing. A recent Joan Ganz Cooney Center survey of 694 K-8 teachers found that 74 percent of those surveyed use digital games in the classroom, up from 50 percent two years ago. Many of the teachers finding the most success are good at creatively connecting the game back to the curriculum, while allowing it to maintain the qualities of a good game. These teachers are often more comfortable with games themselves, playing for fun in their spare time, and are thus more likely to see valuable classroom connections. It’s one thing to have empirical evidence that digital games are growing in popularity and another to get an in-depth look at how and why teachers see them as a valuable use of precious class time.

Introducing Global History

Zack Gilbert teaches a course called “Ancient Civilizations” at a middle school in Normal, Illinois. He’s been using game simulations in his classroom since 1995, but when he started playing the commercial game “Civilization IV” for fun he immediately recognized its potential to get sixth-graders hooked on history.

“When they’re building their first city, they have to look at the terrain around them. They have to look at the resources to see if this is a good place to build,” Gilbert said. Students often make mistakes in the game, and Gilbert has to restrain himself from trying to correct them immediately, instead letting them figure out where they went wrong. Students often build their cities on flood plains and watch as their citizens get sick and die. That experience prompts them to try a different approach next time. They now understand viscerally the devastation that choice would have brought to ancient civilizations.

“It all starts connecting,” Gilbert said. “When you get into the game it all connects to the state standards.” For example, if students build monuments in the game, they’re using math skills but also thinking about the artistic relevance of such a symbol. “You as the teacher need to know what your goal is for them, and then set them up so they can succeed,” Gilbert said. “If you have a good enough game, they’re going to gain more knowledge than you expect.”

Sandbox games are Gilbert’s favorites — there are lots of ways to win or lose, and students get to show off their creativity and critical thinking. He also thinks commercial games are some of the best tools because of their rich graphics and strong game mechanics. “Civilization IV” is sometimes criticized for not being historically accurate, but Gilbert sees that flaw as a teachable moment. “You can turn the things that might not be necessarily correct into learning experiences,” he said.

Gilbert points out that the hardest part of any teacher’s job is reaching a variety of learners, all at different stages of development and academic skill. He’s noticed that while not all his students love playing video games for class, struggling learners often come out of their shells and prove they can deliver some of the most innovative solutions. Succeeding in one area of class helps them gain confidence for other tasks, like writing and group projects.

This anecdotal observation bears out in the Cooney Center research, which found that 55 percent of teachers who use digital games report they are a good tool for motivating low-performing students. Teachers see that motivation translating into academic performance. too: 78 percent of teachers using digital games saw improved performance on curricular subjects due to gameplay, and 71 percent saw improvement in extracurricular subjects.

Like many other teachers, Gilbert says it can be hard to integrate games into the curriculum when the focus is overwhelmingly on standards and state tests. “Things are becoming more regimented in the classroom,” he said. He understands that many teachers don’t have time to rework their whole curriculum to include games, especially if they themselves aren’t comfortable with digital gameplay.

“Especially for ancient civilizations, you want to make it as exciting as you can,” Gilbert said. “This is their first real taste of history for the world; most kids have no concept of what the history is in other countries.” When playing the game, students build up their own civilizations in different time periods, making choices in five categories: government, legal, labor, economy and religion.

“It gives the kids a visual,” Gilbert said. “They’re actually acting out and making decisions on things that people who lived thousands of years ago would have had to make.” He acknowledges that games like “Civilization IV” aren’t appropriate for class use all the time and he doesn’t use them exhaustively. However, getting kids excited about the high stakes that historical figures faced is a great jumping-off point for writing assignments, discussions and interactive learning.

Gamifying Class

Students in Caryn Swark’s Grade 6 class (she teaches in Alberta, Canada) come to school and immediately find themselves immersed in a fictional world where the king has been kidnapped and they must rescue him. Students have avatars and “level up” throughout the year as they master different skills. This gamified environment is part of the class DNA, so it’s no surprise that Swark is also using digital games to help students engage and connect with the material she’s teaching.

“There’s a lot of games that are basically worksheets in disguise,” Swark said. “I try to avoid those games as much as possible. They’re not really games and kids aren’t stupid.” Like Gilbert, Swark believes there are lots of educational merits to some commercial games, especially if teachers think expansively about how to build on game narratives and skills.

Swark uses Nintendo DS games like “Professor Layton and the Curious Village,” a game that is basically like reading a novel embedded with math problems and puzzles. The first time she played it, Swark was struck by how similar some of the puzzles were to things she had asked students on worksheets. When kids play the game, they are doing lots of reading and math, but they like it.

Similarly, “Prodigy,” a commercial math computer game, is built around a wizarding world where students do battle by solving math problems. Swark wishes the math were a little more integrated, but students still find the game fun and engaging.

“Instead of thinking about a checklist of curricular needs that I have to meet, I think about how this fits into what I need,” Swark said. She has found that not only are kids more interested in what they’re learning through gameplay, but they stick with tricky problems longer, work together better and are more open to trying over and over again. The stakes are lower when a student fails within the game, and she doesn’t see any of the test anxiety that has begun to plague her students.

“Framing things in terms of gameplay helps get through blocks for kids who get to Grade 6 and are already convinced that they can’t learn,” Swark said. She’s seen her weaker students gravitate toward gameplay and make significant gains. Games are one part of her yearlong goals to break students of the notion that they will fail even when they try.

As a female teacher and a “gamer,” Swark has often found bringing games into the classroom helps her connect more to her male students. And students who are alienated socially have become popular because of their abilities to help others in games like “Minecraft.”

Swark got inspired to try games in her classroom after reading Lee Sheldon’s book, The Multiplayer Classroom: Designing Coursework as a Game, and jumped in feet first. She’s built on her success and retooled her failures, just as she’s asking her students to do with their schoolwork. Parents and administrators have been more supportive than she expected — she’s even suggested parents expose their struggling readers to fan fiction to get them reading.

But not all teachers work in such supportive environments. In those cases, or when an educator is more hesitant, Swark recommends teachers check out game-rating sites like “Graphite,” run by the nonprofit Common Sense Media, to choose games that clearly align with the grade and standards they teach. She also says it’s easier to start with overtly educational games and work up to the more open-ended games. Lastly, she says there’s a lot to learn from other educators.

“There’s a lot of people online who are doing this stuff,” Swark said. “They’re making lesson plans involving games, and you can find those. And then you don’t have to spend the time playing a video game for hours.”

Categories
Gaming

Here’s How Gamer-Teachers Use Video Games in the Classroom

 

Digital games are being used more often to teach students. An impressive 74% of K-8 teachers were using digital games in their classrooms. That number is astounding! However, another interesting tidbit reported by a study conducted by Joan Ganz Cooney Center indicated over 80% of teachers play games in their free time. Jordan Shapiro, gaming author, categories four different gamer-teacher profiles and identifies their potential classroom integration habits.

posted by: Ryan Schaaf

Original Source

Games are being used much more widely in schools than they were when I first started writing about them 2 or 3 years ago. As of fall 2013, 74% of K-8 teachers were using digital games. 55% of these teachers have students playing digital games at least weekly, 9% daily. The games they are using are mostly designed to be educational, with only 5% playing commercial games, and 8% playing hybrids (commercial games adapted for education like MincraftEDU orSimCityEdu).

These insights come from Joan Ganz Cooney Center at the Sesame Workshop, who recently released a study surveying K-8 teachers in order to understand how they are implementing digital games in their classrooms.

It seems the majority of teachers (82%) play games in their own free time and that there is a relationship between personal game play and in class game use.

Here are four different gamer-teacher profiles that the study identifies.

The Dabblers (20%):

Dabblers “play digital games less often than their peers” and “report relatively low levels of comfort when using digital games with their students.” This doesn’t seem surprising. One must be well acquainted with the skills one’s trying to teach. In the Guide to Games and Learning that I wrote for MindshiftKQED, I explain how important it is for teachers to play the games they are using to teach. Just dabbling won’t lead to success.

Dabblers report facing “moderate barriers” to implementation and “moderate levels of support from parents, administrators, and fellow teachers.” But I’m curious what they mean by support. Because they also report low access to professional development resources and the best kind of support that schools can offer is training and resources. Certainly Dabblers understand this, they have 15.9 years of classroom experience on average.

Interestingly, although they don’t necessarily have high confidence in the efficacy of games, Dabblers are more likely than the others “to indicate positive or no changes” rather than “negative changes” in student behavior and classroom engagement. Perhaps they are using games so rarely that they seem innocuous, just another moment in a much busier day.

The Players (23%):

Players are “avid gamers, but teach with digital games the least often of the four profiles–just a few times a month.” At first, I assumed this group must be fanboy gamers who wanted to preserve the purity of games as entertainment–that once you add educational content it is no longer a game, but suddenly work. I was wrong.

It turns out the Players “demonstrate concerted efforts” to implement digital game based teaching methods, but they report many barriers and “the lowest level of support from parents, administrators, and fellow teachers.” Perhaps these are folks who grew up playing Mortal Kombat under the early video game stigma. Maybe they’ve internalized some level of paranoia about external authorities’ perceptions of gaming in general. I’m just guessing.

The Players are the “most likely group to say that games haven’t changed student behavior or content delivery.” And on average, they’ve spent 14.5 years teaching (the national average for K-8 teachers).

The Barrier Busters (22%):

“Digital games are a common pastime” for this group. Barrier Busters use games with their students regularly–at least weekly. They “express high levels of comfort employing them in instruction.” But these Barrier Busters “face a high number of barriers.” Still, they take advantage of more professional development opportunities than the others. They use the largest variety of games/devices, and they use them both for content delivery and assessment.

I imagine these to be the rebels, the revolutionaries. These are the new rule-breakers. Gone is the old stereotype of the hippy English teacher, standing on desks and suggesting that students choose their own grades. The new cool progressive teacher found him or herself during the Silicon Valley boom. These teachers are entrepreneurial disruptors, not tie-dyed liberal activists. The Barrier Busters are motivated by innovation and the idea of overcoming barriers while taking the initiative to seek out opportunities for self improvement.

They have been teaching, on average, for 13.6 years and are “more likely than other groups to notice changes in student conflict after introducing games–for better and for worse.” It seems likely, however, that the more one implements games, the more changes one will see.

The Naturals (34%):

Naturals play games often and teach with them often–at least weekly. This group seems to take games for granted. It is not an innovation, just another teaching tool among many. Maybe they’ve already stepped into the future and integrated games, as fully as the chalkboard, into their image of what it means to teach.

Naturals “uses games to deliver core content more often than supplemental content.” Games are not a special side activity they sometimes use, but a central part of their teaching repertoire. Naturals report “the fewest barriers and the highest levels of support from the school community,” which may speak more to their perceptions than it does to the actual school circumstances.

Not surprisingly, Naturals have been teaching less than the other groups, only 12.3 years, on average. And their perception is that games just work. More than the other groups, they see the efficacy of game-based learning “in improving student knowledge, skills, and motivation.”

The full study, with great insights about how digital games are being used in the classroom is available here.

Jordan Shapiro is author of FREEPLAY: A Video Game Guide to Maximum Euphoric Bliss, and MindShift’s Guide To Games And Learning For information on Jordan’s upcoming books and events click here.

Categories
Digital Learning

6 Scaffolding Strategies to Use With Your Students

For educators, there is that fine line between too much or too little help for your students. Teachers want their students do excel, but they also want their students to develop into independent thinkers and doers. Scaffolding strategies help provide support for students without taking responsibility away from them. Rebecca Alber at Edutopia provides for us an updated post of scaffolding strategies for students.

Source: iStock
Source: iStock

posted by: Ryan Schaaf

Original Source

What’s the opposite of scaffolding a lesson? It would be saying to students something like, “Read this nine-page science article, write a detailed essay on the topic it explores, and turn it in by Wednesday.” Yikes — no safety net, no parachute, no scaffolding — just left blowing in the wind.

Let’s start by agreeing that scaffolding a lesson and differentiating instruction are two different things. Scaffolding is breaking up the learning into chunks and then providing a tool, or structure, with each chunk. When scaffolding reading, for example, you might preview the text and discuss key vocabulary, or chunk the text and read and discuss as you go. With differentiation, you may give a child an entirely different piece of text to read, you might shorten the text or alter it, and you may modify the writing assignment that follows.

Simply put, scaffolding is what you do first with kids, then for those students who are still struggling, you may need to differentiate by modifying an assignment and/or making accommodations for a student (for example, choose more accessible text and/or assign an alternative project).

Scaffolding and differentiation do have something in common though. In order to meet students where they are and appropriately scaffold a lesson, or differentiate instruction, you have to know the individual and collective zone of proximal development (ZPD) of your learners. (As education researcher Eileen Raymond states, “[T]he ZPD is the distance between what children can do by themselves and the next learning that they can be helped to achieve with competent assistance.”)

So let’s get to some scaffolding strategies you may or may not have tried yet, or perhaps you’ve not used them in sometime and just need a gentle reminder on how awesome and helpful they can be when it comes to student learning:

1. Show and Tell

How many of us say that we learn best by seeing something rather than hearing about it? Modeling for students is a cornerstone of scaffolding in my experience. Have you ever interrupted someone with “just show me!” while they were in the middle of explaining to you how to do something? Every chance you have, show or demonstrate to students exactly what they are expected to do.

  • Try the fish bowl activity, where a small group in the center are circled by the class as the group in the middle, or fishbowl, engage in an activity, modeling how it’s done for the larger group.
  • Always show students the outcome or product before they do it. If a teacher assigns a persuasive essay or inquiry-based science project, a model should be presented side-by-side with a criteria chart or rubric. You can guide students through each step of the process, model in-hand of the finished product.
  • Use think alouds, which will allow you to model your thought process as you: read a text, solve a problem, or design a project. Remember that children’s cognitive abilities are still in development so opportunities for them to see developed, critical thinking are essential.

2. Tap into Prior Knowledge

Ask students to share their own experiences, hunches, and ideas about the content or concept of study and have them relate and connect it to their own lives. Sometimes you may have to offer hints and suggestions, leading them to the connections a bit, but once they get there, they will grasp it as their own.

Launching the learning in your classroom from the prior knowledge of your students, and using this as a framework for future lessons is not only a scaffolding technique, many would agree it’s just plain good teaching.

3. Give Time to Talk

All learners need time to process new ideas and information. They also need time to verbally make sense of and articulate their learning with the community of learners who are also engaged in the same experience and journey. As we all know, structured discussions really work best with children regardless of their level of maturation. If you aren’t weaving in think-pair-share, turn-and-talk, triad teams or some other structured talking time throughout the lesson, you should begin including this crucial strategy on a regular basis.

4. Pre-Teach Vocabulary

Sometimes referred to as frontloading vocabulary, this is a strategy that we teachers don’t use enough. Many of us, myself included, are guilty of sending students all alone down the bumpy, muddy path known as Challenging Text — a road booby trapped with difficult vocabulary. We send them ill-prepared and then we are often shocked when they: a) lose interest b) create a ruckus c) fall asleep.

Pre-teaching vocabulary doesn’t mean pulling a dozen words from the chapter and having kids look up definitions and write them out (we all know how this will go. Again, see above a, b, and c). Instead, introduce the words to kids in photos, and in context to things they know and are interested in. Use analogies, metaphors and invite students to create a symbol or drawing for each word and give time for discussion of the words (small and whole groups). Not until they’ve done all this should the dictionaries come out. And the dictionaries will be used only to compare with those definitions they’ve already discovered on their own.

With the dozen or so words “frontloaded,” students are ready, you as their guide, to tackle that challenging text.

5. Use Visual Aids

Graphic organizers, pictures, and charts can all serve as scaffolding tools. Graphic organizers are very specific in that they help kids visually represent their ideas, organize information, and grasp concepts such as sequencing and cause and effect.

A graphic organizer shouldn’t be The Product, but rather it’s a scaffolding tool that helps guide and shape the student’s thinking so that they can apply it. Some students can dive right into the discussion, or writing an essay, or synthesizing several different hypotheses without using a graphic organizer of some sort, but many of our students benefit from using them with a difficult reading or challenging new information. Think of graphic organizers as training wheels; they are temporary and meant to be removed.

6. Pause, Ask Questions, Pause, Review

This is a wonderful way to check for understanding while students read a chunk of difficult text or learn a new concept or content. Here’s how this strategy works: a new idea from discussion or the reading is shared, then pause (providing think time), then ask a strategic question, pausing again. By strategic, you need to design them ahead of time, make sure they are specific, guiding and open-ended questions. (Great questions fail without giving think time for responses so hold out during that Uncomfortable Silence.) Keep kids engaged as active listeners by calling on someone to “give the gist” of what was just discussed / discovered / questioned. If the class seems stuck by the questions, provide an opportunity for students to discuss it with a neighbor.

Trying Something New

With all the diverse learners in our classrooms, there is a strong need for teachers to learn and experiment with new scaffolding strategies. I often say to teachers I support, you have slow down in order to go quickly. Scaffolding a lesson may, in fact, take longer to teach, but the end product is of far greater quality and the experience much more rewarding for all involved.

Please share with us scaffolding strategies that work well for your students.

REBECCA ALBER’S PROFILE

 

Categories
Digital Learning

8 Engaging Ways to use Technology in the Classroom to Create Lessons That Aren’t Boring

Teachers are constantly vying for their students’ attention. A great deal of the trouble teachers face with engaging students in their classrooms is because some of the old ways of teaching no longer work with the digital generations. Kelly Walsh at Emerging EdTech shares with readers wonderful tools and strategies to use with students to boost engagement in the classroom while promoting crucial 21st century skills.

Source: iStock
Source: iStock

posted by: Ryan Schaa

Original Source

Dozens of free web tools and ideas that can pack a technology integration punch and kick those lessons up a notch

Are you tired of delivering the same old lectures on the same subjects year after year? Are you using the same lesson materials over and over and wishing you could make learning in your classroom more interactive?

While lectures and lessons can be informative and even “edutaining” when delivered with passion and good materials by knowledgeable experts, sadly many traditional lectures and lessons are boring, and even worse often ineffective. The good news is that the Web is loaded with great free tools that can enable teachers to bring a sense of fun and engagement to their lessons.

Of course, you do need devices with Internet access to give these tools a try. Even if you don’t have computers or tablets available in your classroom, the fact that an increasing number of High School and college students have smartphones is making it easier than ever to leverage technology to create engaging, active lessons students enjoy working on. For younger grades, if you don’t have access to devices with Web access, perhaps you can access a computer lab by request, or use devices in your library.

Here’s a whole bunch of ideas for leveraging technology to kick those lessons up a notch!

1. Incorporate Student Input & Gather Feedback

There are many applications that allow students to provide live feedback. A lot of them can be used from smartphones. You can also gather feedback by creating a “back channel” using Twitter.

  • Quick, easy Polling Applications: PollDaddy andPollEverywhere are two of many applications that make it quick and easy to create simple polls that can let you gather feedback from students – determine if they are struggling with a topic, if they know the correct answers to questions you ask, and so on. They can often participate in these polls using a smartphone.
  • Take it up a notch with Socrative: Socrative is a powerful free app that lets you go well beyond simple polls to more elaborate quizzes. Learn more here.
  • Plickers: This is a pretty cool lo-tech approach to collecting student responses during class that doesn’t require students to use technology. Learn more here.
  • Twitter: Twitter is a great way to gather input by creating an easy to use ‘backchannel’. This is great for students with smartphones (they will need the Twitter app and an account). Simply create a unique hashtag and have students post feedback to Twitter using that hashtag.

2. Gamify It

Leveraging gaming mechanics can make learning more fun is probably easier than you think. For example, any time you bring competition or levels of achievement to a classroom exercise, you’re gamifying your classroom. For example, in one recent assignment in my classroom, I had students search through an interactive computer history timeline for specific facts. The first student to correctly identify a fact (like “what was the first computer bug?”) that I had them seek out “won” for that question!

Here’s a variety of resources and ideas for using gaming in the classroom:

3. Let Students Create

There are so many fun free tools and apps available today that can let students create all kinds of awesome digital content. Below is diversified set of different article and resources that share different tools and ideas for students (and teachers) to create digital content – presentations, interactive digital posters, eBooks, videos, and more. In the spirit of creating in the classroom, we also included an article introducing the burgeoning Makerspace Movement in education.

4. Get Interactive

Many teachers enjoy using interactive tools with their students. Here’s a few tools and ideas to consider.

  • Online Interactive White Boards: Did you know that there are several good free interactive whiteboards available online? If you have a computer and a projector, you can make them work a lot like a “smart board”. Some of these applications even allow students to log on online and collaboratively edit content. Check out these 6 Online IWBs to explore this idea further.
  • Bounceapp (bounceapp.com): You can review, notate, and share any web page with Bounceapp. Just paste a web page address into the “app” and it turns it into an interactive screenshot where students can jot ideas.
  • Interactive apps that work with Smartphones: Many of the tools in this article work on smartphones!
  • If you happen to have a physical white board in your classroom, get more out of it with these creative ideas.
  • Explore additional tool and ideas in this popular article that we published earlier this year.

5. Have Students Collaborate

Getting students to work together as partners, in small groups, or maybe even as one large group, teaches them about team work. Collaborative work can be fun. It is even possible to collaborate with students across the world thanks to many of today’s technologies.

Here are a number of tools and techniques for classroom collaborations.

  • Share writing and encourage feedback with NewsActivist:NewsActivist is a free tool that lets teachers set up their students with a private area where they can write about selected subjects. You can enables them to share what their write with just their classmates, or with the larger audience of students from across the world using NewsActivist. Students can then provide feedback on other students’ writings. Learn more in this brief article.
  • Collaborative Document Edited with Google Drive(drive.google.com): Google Drive lets you share and collaboratively edit Google Docs with anyone else who has a Google account, for free. This is a powerful capability.
  • Collaborative Mind Mapping with MindMeister(mindmeister.com): This applications lets users easily create mind maps that can be edited collaboratively.
  • Collaborative Research: Working in pairs or small groups to find, assess, summarize, and present content in specific topic areas make for a great learning experience and assignment.

6. Project Based Learning

When students apply what they are learning to projects that they undertake, the topics they are learning about can take on a much deeper meaning. Not only does the activity and the increased sensory exposure of project work help to stimulate the mind, the extended time often required of project work, and the visible, tangible results further reinforce learning.

Here are two excellent, rich resources for further exploration of PBL from TeachThought.com:

7. Simulations

Simulations can be a powerful addition to the classroom. Since they tend to be somewhat complicated, they are typically suited towards high school, college, or post-graduate or professional studies. Here are some examples of simulations being used in education:

  • Economics: This site, Economic-Games.com, offers free online classroom games for teaching economics.
  • Marketing: Have you ever wished you could give your Marketing students the chance to practice different e-marketing skills and techniques? Check out Simbound.
  • Medical: Simulations have been a significant teaching and learning tool in the medical field for many years. Harvard Medical School has even created a web site focused on their use of Simulations.
  • Business: Business Simulation Games are a great way to bring active, applied learning into Business courses.

8. Bring in a Guest or Two

With the power of video conferencing apps like Skype, Google Hangout, Facetime, and others, our ability to connect with people all across the world has never been better or less costly. Teachers have been using Skype and similar tools to being guest lecturers, experts, students, and others into the classroom for years. Nothing breaks up the monotony of “same old thing” like an enthusiastic subject matter expert from another county or a room full of students from another continent!

Check out this great video about Skype in the Classroom. This is a perfect way to wrap up this post about leveraging tech in the classroom to make lessons captivating, fun, and exciting!

Categories
Digital Learning

5 Ways to Collect Digital Exit Tickets

Exit tickets are a quick and flexible assessment method that provides teachers with a better understanding as to if their students understand the content of a lesson. Richard Byrne at Free Technology for Teachers provides 5 wonderful digital tools for teachers to use when providing their students with an exit ticket. These digital tools help collect student responses more efficiently and provides the teacher with valuable insights into their students’ understanding of the lesson. 

Source: iStock
Source: iStock

posted by: Ryan Schaaf

Original Source

One of the strategies that I use when creating lesson plans is to reflect on the previous lesson. Part of that reflection includes feedback from students. This can be done by simply asking students to raise their hands in response to a “did you get it?” type of question, but I like to have better record of responses than just a hand count. Here are some tools that can be used for collecting exit information from students.

Google Forms
Almost as soon as my school went 1:1 with netbooks six years ago, I started using Google Forms to collect responses from students. The Form that I created and frequently re-used simply asked students to respond to “what did you learn today?” and “what questions do you have for next class?”

Padlet
I started using Padlet back when it was called WallWisher. Padlet enables me to have students not only share exit responses as text, but to also share exit responses as hyperlinks. For example, if my students have been working on research projects I will ask them to share a link to something they found that day along with an explanation of how it is relevant to their research.

Socrative
I started to use Socrative after using the Google Forms and Padlet methods. Socrative actually has an exit ticket activity pre-made for teachers to distribute to students. The exit ticket in Socrative provides two questions; “how well did you understand today’s material?” and “what did you learn in today’s class?” As the teacher you can add a third question.

Socrative allows you to collect responses from students with or without seeing their names. Students can respond to prompts through any device that has a web-browser.

Poll Everywhere
Poll Everywhere has been around for a long time and it is still a tool that many teachers love. Poll Everywhere is a service that allows you to collect responses from an audience via text messaging or through the web. The free plan for K-12 educators provides a selection of features and quantity of responses that is adequate for almost any classroom. One of the neat ways to display feedback gathered through Poll Everywhere is in word clouds. The word cloud feature integrates with Wordle, Tagxedo, and Tagul.

Plickers – For the Classroom that isn’t 1:1
If not every student in your classroom has a laptop or tablet to use, then you need to check out Plickers as a student response system. Plickers uses a teacher’s iPad or Android tablet in conjunction with a series of QR codes to create a student response system. Students are given a set of QR codes on large index cards. The codes are assigned to students. Each code card can be turned in four orientations. Each orientation provides a different answer. When the teacher is ready to collect data, he or she uses the Plickers mobile app to scan the cards to see a bar graph of responses. In your teacher account on Plickers you can view and save all of the data that you collected from scanning your students’ Plickers cards.

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Uncategorized

What Your Students Really Need to Know About Digital Citizenship

 

As educators teaching digital citizens, we must take on multiple roles to assist our students. Teachers must be facilitators, role-models, coaches, mentors, and more importantly the authority. Vicki Davis at Edutopia shares her insights on fostering digital citizenship in her classroom and instills her knowledge to teachers to help students traverse the digital landscape and promote proper netiquette while they do so.

 

 

Source: iStock
Source: iStock

posted by: Ryan Schaaf

Original Source

The greatest software invented for human safety is the human brain. It’s time that we start using those brains. We must mix head knowledge with action. In my classroom, I use two essential approaches in the digital citizenship curriculum that I teach: proactive knowledge and experiential knowledge.

Proactive Knowledge

I want my students to know the “9 Key Ps” of digital citizenship. I teach them about these aspects and how to use them. While I go into these Ps in detail in my book Reinventing Writing, here are the basics:

1. Passwords

Do students know how to create a secure password? Do they know that email and online banking should have a higher level of security and never use the same passwords as other sites? Do they have a system likeLastPass for remembering passwords, or a secure app where they store this information? (See 10 Important Password Tips Everyone Should Know.)

2. Privacy

Do students know how to protect their private information like address, email, and phone number? Private information can be used to identify you. (I recommend the Common Sense Media Curriculum on this.)

3. Personal Information

While this information (like the number of brothers and sisters you have or your favorite food) can’t be used to identify you, you need to choose who you will share it with.

4. Photographs

Are students aware that some private things may show up in photographs (license plates or street signs), and that they may not want to post those pictures? Do they know how to turn off a geotagging feature? Do they know that some facial recognition software can find them by inserting their latitude and longitude in the picture — even if they aren’t tagged? (See the Location-Based Safety Guide)

5. Property

Do students understand copyright, Creative Commons, and how to generate a license for their own work? Do they respect property rights of those who create intellectual property? Some students will search Google Images and copy anything they see, assuming they have the rights. Sometimes they’ll even cite “Google Images” as the source. We have to teach them that Google Images compiles content from a variety of sources. Students have to go to the source, see if they have permission to use the graphic, and then cite that source.

6. Permission

Do students know how to get permission for work they use, and do they know how to cite it?

7. Protection

Do students understand what viruses, malware, phishing, ransomware, and identity theft are, and how these things work? (See Experiential Knowledge below for tips on this one.)

8. Professionalism

Do students understand the professionalism of academics versus decisions about how they will interact in their social lives? Do they know about netiquette and online grammar? Are they globally competent? Can they understand cultural taboos and recognize cultural disconnects when they happen, and do they have skills for working out problems?

9. Personal Brand

Have students decided about their voice and how they want to be perceived online? Do they realize they have a “digital tattoo” that is almost impossible to erase? Are they intentional about what they share?

Experiential Knowledge

During the year, I’ll touch on each of these 9 Key Ps with lessons and class discussions, but just talking is not enough. Students need experience to become effective digital citizens. Here’s how I give them that:

Truth or Fiction

To protect us from disease, we are inoculated with dead viruses and germs. To protect students from viruses and scams, I do the same thing. Using current scams and cons from Snopes, Truth or Fiction, the Threat Encyclopedia, or the Federal Trade Commission website, I’m always looking for things that sound crazy but are true, or sound true but are false or a scam. I’ll give them to students as they enter class and ask them to be detectives. This opens up conversations of all kinds of scams and tips.

Turn Students into Teachers

Students will create tutorials or presentations exposing common scams and how to protect yourself. By dissecting cons and scams, students become more vigilant themselves. I encourage them to share how a person could detect that something was a scam or con.

Collaborative Learning Communities

For the most powerful learning experiences, students should participate in collaborative learning (like the experiences shared in Flattening Classrooms, Engaging Minds). My students will collaborate with others on projects likeGamifi-ed or the AIC Conflict Simulation (both mentioned in a recent post ongame-based learning).

Students need experience sharing and connecting online with others in a variety of environments. We have a classroom Ning where students blog together, and public blogs and a wiki for sharing our work with the world. You can talk about other countries, but when students connect, that is when they learn. You can talk about how students need to type in proper case and not use IM speak, but when their collaborative partner from Germany says they are struggling to understand what’s being typed in your classroom, then your students understand.

Digital Citizenship or Just Citizens?

There are those like expert Anne Collier who think we should drop the word “digital” because we’re really just teaching citizenship. These are the skills and knowledge that students need to navigate the world today.

We must teach these skills and guide students to experience situations where they apply knowledge. Citizenship is what we do to fulfill our role as a citizen. That role starts as soon as we click on the internet.

VICKI DAVIS @COOLCATTEACHER’S PROFILE

 

Categories
Gaming

How to Choose Learning Games That Don’t Bore Kids

 

What makes a learning game interesting and exciting for kids?  Sophia Dalal, a Common Sense Media intern, recently interviewed her 14-year-old brother about what makes a game great for learning. She also ran focus groups with more than 20 teens to understand how they evaluate learning games. Here’s what some of these savvy kids had to say.

Source: Minecraft Screenshot
Source: Minecraft Screenshot

posted by: Ryan Schaaf

Original Source

Student voices shape the way we rate and review on Graphite. Common Sense Media intern Sophia Dalal recently interviewed her 14-year-old brother, Kavi, about what makes a game great for learning. She also ran focus groups with more than 20 teens to understand how they evaluate learning games. Here’s what some of these savvy kids had to say.

Q. What makes a game great for learning?

Kavi, 9th grade: There are textbooks that try to teach you things like history or algebra just with the facts. There are some games with goals to teach you things like algebra or history the same way. That’s not very exciting. I don’t play games just to input information.

Maya, 7th grade: It’s important to have a balance between learning elements and how fun a game is. It has to have an intriguing plot that makes you want to keep playing. And there have to be objectives so you always have a challenge to work for.

Joby, 8th grade: You need to have some influence over what happens in a game. In real life, are you really going to stand back and watch everything happen around you? You need to have a say in what happens. Otherwise you might as well watch a movie instead of playing a game.

Q. What’s most engaging about games?

Kavi: What’s really engaging for me is the story. All the best games build really good worlds just like a good book creates a fantastic and believable world. There’s no other type of media where you are the first person character and you have to make real-time decisions.

Tess, 8th grade: Creativity is what I love in games because I like to make things. I think Pixton is fun because you get to create comics, and you can personalize them the way you want. You have power and more control over the whole thing.

Katherine, 8th grade: I think humor makes games really engaging. With humor, you can tell that the game maker put a lot of time and thought into it.

Q. Is it important to be challenged?

Lionel, 8th grade: Competition is important. If games have competition, kids want to play them over and over until they beat the other person. They’re motivated to learn without realizing it.

Joby: The goal of a game should change over time. In Minecraft, your very first goal is to build a place to live. After that you have to go mining to get to various levels of achievement. The goal is always moving and that makes you push even harder.

Steven, 8th grade: I like a game that’s not going in a predictable sequence. A good game needs a surprise element. You don’t know if this or that is going to happen next.

Tess: Having a goal is really important. In Sims you’re building things not just to take a screen shot and say, “Yay, I built this.” You’re building for the goal of having someone live in it and have a life there.

Q. What about the look and feel of a game?

Kavi: Beauty is really important. Ugly games are an instant turn off. I’ve played games with no dialogue and no other characters. Journey is incredibly moving because the space is so beautiful. A complex environment that feels real is also important. In my opinion that’s done best when you’re plopped into a realistic 3D world, although I’ve seen it happen other ways, like by creating sound environments. They do that in Sound Shapes — an incredible learning game.

Katherine: Colors are important. If you want people to stay on a game you have to engage them with colorful graphics. When you’re looking for games to play, you’re less likely to click on the ones that are gray and boring.

Joby: The smoothness of the interface is important. If buttons are organized it’s easier to find what you’re looking for than if they’re randomly placed.

Q. Anything else?

Kavi: It’s important to remember that games are another art form, like a book or paintings or music. And I think the most important stuff you get out of a game is the same stuff you get out of art … things like emotions or appreciating beauty.

Maya: I think that a website for teachers to find sources for learning is really helpful because then they can find resources and see if people think they’re good or not and how well they teach things. And if they don’t want to pay a lot of money before they find out what the game is about, they can find out whether they really like it or not. I think that’s really helpful.

Kids’ Ideas Will Affect Graphite

We learned so much from interviewing these teens:

  • Engaging games with style are central to learning and not just a “nice to have.”
  • Personalization features and the ability to create things or make decisions empower kids and help them learn.
  • Worlds, stories, and characters that are stylistically unique draw kids in.
  • Striving to meet a goal — especially if there’s competition — can make kids try harder.

We have a similar take on games. But to hear kids echo what we’ve been thinking about — evaluating games in their own unique way — was affirming.

Categories
Uncategorized

The Science of Storytelling Visually Explained

For generation after generation, humans have learned valuable information through storytelling. Whether around a campfire or in a classroom, storytelling is a powerful method of communication that has as much power over us today as it did centuries ago. The folks at Educational Technology and Mobile Learning share an intriguing infographic about the science behind storytelling and its importance to educating learners. 

Posted by: Ryan Schaaf

Original Source

How Storytelling Affects the Brain

1- Neutral Coupling
A story activates parts in the brain that allows the listener to turn the story in to their own ideas and experience thanks to a process called neutral coupling.
2- Mirroring
Listeners will not only experience the similar brain activity to each other, but also to the speaker.
3- Dopamine
The brain releases dopamine into the system when it experiences an emotionally-charged event, making it easier to remember and with greater accuracy.
4- Cortex activity
When processing facts, two areas of the brain are activated (Broca’s and Wernicke’s area). A well-told story can engage many additional areas, including the motor cortex, sensory cortex, and frontal cortex.

Source: onespot
Source: onespot