Best Learning Games of 2013

Larry Ferazzo, of Edublogs, lists what he considers the best learning games of 2013. They include World Geography Games, Inca Investigation, The China Games, Plan It Green Live, Broken Picture Telephone, Jay Is Games, Earth Picker, Lifesaver, Room Escape Maker, GR8CTZ—Great Cities of the World, and LocateStreet. This is the second of the 2013 lists. The first list features Wonderground, Pursued, GeoGuessr, Depression Quest, The Republica Times, Breakaway, Quandary, and Review Game Zone. The Edublog includes links to the recommended games. You’ll also find links to the best games of previous years.

ISTE Series Features BYOD

The new ISTE series targeting online and hybrid learning features three books, which will be available in January 2014. The books help educators with design fundamentals, putting designs into action, and learning about trends and technologies.  Prices range from $73.40 for ISTE members to $104.85 for non-members. Individually, the books are $34.95. Topics covered include: aligning learning assessments to learning objectives, using practical tools with students, interpreting laws, using instructional strategies, using game-based theories of learning, managing large classes, making use of virtual worlds, and much more.

Tech and Curriculum Development

In a poll of readers of SmartBrief and EdTech, teachers were asked what types of resources they used when developing curriculum.  Over 80% of teachers responded that they used online resources for developing core subject courses. Textbooks were used about 15%, with software programs, coming in at 4%. Only about 5% of the teachers in the poll said they did not use online resources in curriculum development.

As for how teachers share what they do in curriculum development, most suggested in-person meetings over professional networks and social media.

 

BYOD—Bring Your Own Disaster

Tech&Learning, together with Intel, offers the white paper, “Don’t Let BYOD Stand for ‘Bring Your Own Disaster’.”  To initiate a BYOD program, schools need to implement plans that include teacher training, student guidance, and an infrastructure that can handle a variety of devices. Although, it may sound good and may seem the reasonable and cost-effective path to allow students to bring their own devices, you’ll need to consider how teachers will handle the program in their classrooms. Are they prepared for BYOD? What content will they use? Is your network ready for BYOD? Are your tech people ready for BYOD? Will your administrators take the lead? What rules will you need? What professional development will be offered? The white paper covers all these issues and more.

Interactive Languages: Digital Courses

eSchool News offers the white paper, “Bringing World Language Education to Everyone”. You can download the paper free, but you’ll need to sign in/sign up. The paper tells how Weybridge Elementary School in Vermont brought Spanish into its curriculum. Leaders in the school knew that early language learning was key to language learning but were worried about the expense of bringing such programs into their school in addition to the availability of teachers. Weybridge teamed with Middlebury Interactive to provide a language-learning program that could be accessed both at home and at school.

For schools interested in other languages, Middlebury Interactive offers Chinese, German, Latin, and French as well as Spanish. In a Johns Hopkins Center for Research and Reform in Education study of Middlebury Interactive programs, feedback from teachers was “overwhelmingly positive” and the courses were said to be “very successful in promoting cultural awareness and appreciation and growing language proficiency. A free demo is available.

Let The Eat MOOCs

Gianpiero Petriglieri, Associate Professor of Organisational Behaviour at INSEAD (The Business School of the World), appreciates the advantages of communicating through blogs and other technologies with his students, but he wonders what MOOCs might eventually do to our educational systems. When asked if he’d offer a MOOC, he answered, “I envisioned myself walking to a digital guillotine in tattered academic garb, whispering, ‘Let them eat MOOCs.’” He compares MOOCs to colonialism in which the culture of the powerful “extends control over weaker people or areas.” Petriglieri believes that a liberating education, not a MOOC-type education, “makes students not just recipients of knowledge and culture but also owners, critics, and makers of it.”

Although Petriglieri’s ideas are focused on high education, what is happening in colleges and universities is trickling down to pre-college education. MOOCs are there to offer free coursework to all, and that is good. But, will this movement lead away from the human element in educating students? If a teacher has a class of 70,000, the students may be getting content and the opportunity to watch and listen to a world-class teacher, but what are they missing?

3D Virtual Field Trip Simulation

Maria Harrington, an Assistant Professor at Slippery Rock University, is working on the development of 3D, high fidelity virtual experiences in which people learn by entering a virtual environment. Her company, Virtual Field Trips LLC offers “simulations for exploration, discovery, and intrinsic learning designed for the young child in all of us.”  Public schools qualify for the company’s educational license.

Harrington’s first field trip features the Trillium Trail, an area in Fox Chapel, PA. Students at the O’Hara Elementary School in Fox Chapel piloted the program. With the software, they took off on the virtual trail learning as they went while enjoying a scientifically accurate 360-degree view of their surroundings. Armed by the learning they gained on their virtual trip, the students hiked the trail in real life. According to those who have experienced “Trillium Trail”, it is like “walking into a painting” and others say it is “more real than real.”

Coursera Has 80 New Courses

The best teachers are always learning, be it on their own or through credit courses. One of the most convenient ways to learn what you want when you want at the right price (free) is through Coursera. Maybe you or your students want to jump into songwriting, explore digital signal processing, take on quantum physics, learn about comic books, or discover if plants have senses. You’ll find courses on these topics and more in the new Coursera catalog.  Check it out because you won’t believe how much is there for you and your students—cryptography, nanotechnology, Common Core, Surviving Your Rookie Year of Teaching, genetics, critical thinking, bioelectricity, Latin American Culture, Malicious Software, English Composition . . .

Storia: A Scholastic Reading Experience

Scholastic’s Storia is a place for your students to find over 2000 eBooks to read at home and at school. There are Read-to-Me books with highlighted text; Enriched eBooks that tackle topics in mathematics, science, geography, and history; reference tools and a dictionary; books with puzzles and quizzes; personal bookshelves; and tools for teachers. Many Scholastic favorites and classics are part of the Storia list, which is divided into categories according to Age (2 to 13 and up), Product Type (eBooks, Enriched eBooks, Read-to-Me Books, Reading Challenge, ePacks, eCollections), Reading Level, Grade Level (Pre-K to 8 and Teen), and Character & Series (Clifford, Harry Potter, Magic School Bus, etc.). Prices vary according to the book or pack selected. The eBooks may be used on iPad, Kindle Fire, Android devices, and Windows PCs. A Mac version will be out soon.

State and District Virtual Schools: A good idea or not?

Instead of funding state virtual schools, states are finding that students can use the variety of non-State and non-district options that are available online. The Florida Virtual School, for example, has cut one-third of its staff because its budget was cut by twenty percent. With the availability of MOOCs and other online opportunities for students, states, like Florida and Louisiana, are beginning to question the need for state virtual schools.

It sounds like a sensible idea at first glance, but who will determine the quality of courses? School officials worry about accountability when students can select courses not offered by the State or a district.  In addition, there’s the problem of per-pupil allotment, for when students take courses from a source other than the State or district in Florida, for instance, the district and the provider split the allotment. If the course is taken from the State or district virtual school, both the district and the virtual school were given the allotment.