I need my teachers to learn.

We went over this video in our Cadre meeting for Montana this week. I just had to share.

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BP9_2010013_DiscoveringWeb20Tool3(Dizzywood)

In reading this week’s discussions on virtual worlds and how they may not be appropriate for the younger students I made it a mission to find one that was. I found several, one that is even open source. But the easiest one I found was Dizzywood. Dizzywood is specially designed for the 8-12 age group. It has earned the prestigious NAPPA Gold award.(
http://izzyneis.wordpress.com/2009/09/23/dizzywood-rocks-it/)

Dizzywood underwent a rigorous review process by independent expert judges and a team of children who selected the most entertaining, appealing, safe, educational and age-appropriate products. More information about the award can be found at http://www.parenthood.com/nappa.php.

The YMCA of San Francisco adopted Dizzywood for their technology curriculum. "Our goal at the YMCA is to provide children with educational activities that challenge them to learn new skills, develop self-confidence and to ultimately help them be successful in the world," Troy O’Leary, senior director of community programs at the YMCA of San Francisco, said in a statement. "Dizzywood’s unique virtual environment offers our kids a wonderful environment in which they can learn important lessons through activities that require thoughtful decision-making. We hope the success of this program offers a model for other youth programs to follow."(http://www.virtualworldsnews.com/2008/07/san-francisco-y.html)

Reed Union School District (Marin County, CA) used Dizzywood in an elementary school program. The workshop used virtual activities to reinforce caring, citizenship, fairness, respect, responsibility and trustworthiness. Students also learned about important issues relating to virtual worlds, such as digital citizenship and online safety. They also used Dizzywood as a complete storytelling and team-building exercise to emphasize creativity, writing and reading skills, and promote working together to achieve goals. (http://www.dizzywood.com/parents-guide.html#classroom)



In researching Dizzywood I found they had devoted an entire page on links for doing good. (http://www.dizzywood.com/doing-good.html) I was very impressed by their commitment to not only a positive digital citizenship but also to provide ways for kids to help out in their local communities.

Snow Days.....

Going through Burger King's drive thru this morning for breakfast. Good thing for 4-wheel drive.

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DomoNation.com: Using Domo for Education by mtreg


Like it? Create your own at DomoNation.com. It's free and fun!

The other thing I like about Domo is it is ADA compliant for the hearing impaired.

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BP5_2010012_Web2.0Tool2(Go!Animate)

This week I looked at Go!Animate, http://goanimate.com. It is a very simple animated story telling software you can use on the internet. Students can take a book report project and turn it into an animated story. The standards in a lesson using Go!Animate could include creativity and innovation, communication and collaboration, research, critical thinking, problem solving and decision making, and would inspire digital citizenship.

Unfortunately after investigating this product further I found many blogs stating that their schools had blocked the site due to some content being not suitable for children. Good new though, the maker of Go!Animate produced a site just for kids called Domo Animate, http://domo.goanimate.com/, where the backgrounds are preset and the characters are age appropriate. The software is easy to use and can make a boring report much more fun and interesting.

Here is an example of one project:

DomoNation.com: Pangaea Project by partlikarockstar


Like it? Create your own at DomoNation.com.

Best part it's free and fun!

BP5_2010012_FlickrLessonPlan

I found a very interesting lesson plan based on 5 card Nancy. The object of 5 Card Nancy is a game using the cut-up panes from Ernie Bushmiller’s comic strip Nancy.


Graphic courtesy of http://comics.com/nancy

More information on the game can be found here http://www.scottmccloud.com/4-inventions/nancy/index.html.

With Flickr the name was changed to Five Card Flickr http://web.nmc.org/5cardstory/index.php. The site deals (selects) five random photos from Flickr. You choose one. The site deals another five and you choose one again. You repeat this process five times, so that you end up with five images. The student then writes a story about the images. The lesson inspires creativity and the imagination. Skills used are story telling, writing, spelling/grammar, visual language, sequencing, evaluation, critical thinking and creativity. The complete lesson plan can be found at www.nz-interface.co.nz/.../INTERFACE%20Lesson%20Plan%2042%20-%20Five%20Card%20Flickr%20Story.pdf. They are a great resource for interesting lesson plans.


Photo courtesy of www.interfaceonline.co.nz.

I would love to build on this in my gaming classes. Sometime gamers can get writers block just like writers. I would take the Five Card Flickr site and have them write a game based on the photos. Included would be a story line, plot, goals and bosses. The lesson would get the creative juices flowing to start their individual game. Later as the lesson progressed they could replace the graphics with their own original design.

BP4_2010011_SettingUpGoogleReader

Google reader looks like a great tool to save me time. I have several blogs I currently try to keep up with and I have added them into the reader as follows:

http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/default.aspx
This is Scott Guthrie’s blog. He runs the development team for Microsoft for several development tools I use on a daily basis. It is a nice blog to keep up with the technology and some tips.

http://feeds.feedburner.com/SeriousGamesSourceNews
Serious Games is a source for educators to find games they can use in their curriculum. It is a great place to find out what other peers are doing.

http://channel9.msdn.com/
Channel 9 keeps you up to date with the latest developer focused video content and behind the scenes info from Microsoft on topics. It is another great resourse for developers.

http://www.ncwit.org/news.blog.php
National Center for Women & Information Technology
This whole site has some great tools to help interest girls in technology.

I also discovered a couple new one that was recommended by Google Reader. I liked the content so added them to my reader.

http://www.edutopia.org/blogs
Edutopia: What works in Public Education The George Lucas Foundation

http://feeds.educationbusinessblog.com/EducationBusinessBlog
The Education Business Blog has general information on education and political activities.

I saw many more that I would have loved to add but only have so much time to read. One could spend the whole day reading blogs and still not get through all the interesting information.

BP3_2010011_DiscoveringWeb20Tools

When researching the many Web 2.0 tools I found it interesting that games were there as well. My goal in my career is to show that gaming can be educational as well as fun. One tool that I saw right off was Farmville. I have to say I am addicted to Farmville and to find it on the list was magnificent. I am not a K-12 teacher but during my building of my farm I have often contemplated on how a Math teacher could use the game in his or her classroom. The farm starts off in a 12 by 12 square. You can put anything on your farm. But for our math exercise lets say we are learning our 4’s. Have the student put 4 squares of plowed land by 10 squares of plowed land.


When I first learned my times table it went up to 10, but teachers could be going higher now. You could do the same for all of the times table. To build on the assignment choose a simple seed to plant, such as strawberries.


Have the student learn his 10’s by planting the seed and explaining how much money he will be spending on his farm for strawberries.

The game could be used for older students studying return on investment. The object would be to have the most profitable farm at the end of a certain time frame.

This game has math, communication, cooperation, time management, and more. I love this game and can see many more educational uses for it if one uses their imagination.

BP2_2010011_Educational Uses for Blogs

After looking through the Internet and online articles it occurred to me that posting the educational uses for blogs did not have to only include formal education. Many blogs are created that are not used for formal instruction in a K-12 or Higher education environment. The blogs have posts that include material one may learn just for learning sake. One blog in particular that has information on blogging for education is Scott Leslie’s blog EdTechPost. (Leslie, 2003) He has included the below graphic to illustrate possible educational uses for blogs. You may click on it to see a larger view.


Leslie, S. (2003)

Students can be anything from a 12-year-old child, librarian, college student, to a senior citizens reading the blogs just out of curiosity.

The Teaching Learning and Technology group puts together all in one blog/website articles on how to use blogs for education (http://www.tltgroup.org).

One blog referenced is Steve’s Genealogy Blog (TLTGroup, 1994). Using a blog to research one’s past is not a new idea but now we can use it for education.


(Danko, 2010)

Not only would this be a wonderful project for any student the idea could be expanded to have students do a blog on the genealogy on a prominent person in their history. The student would not only have to learn research techniques and history but also a little about themselves.

References

Leslie, S. (2003). Matrix of some uses of blogs in education. Retrieved January 08, 2010, from the EdTechPost blog site: http://www.edtechpost.ca/wordpress/2003/10/09/Matrix-of-some-uses-of-blogs-in-education/

Leslie, S. (Artist). (2003). Some uses of blogs in education, October 2003 [Graphic]. Retrieved January 08, 2010, from http://www.edtechpost.ca/gems/matrix2.gif

Teaching Learning and Technology Corp. (1994). Exploration Guide: Educational Uses of Blogs, Wikis, RSS Feeds, etc., Retrieved January 08, 2010, from http: //http://www.tltgroup.org/resources/blogs.htm#EducUsesResources

Danko, S. (Web Designer). Retrieved January 8, 2010, from: URL (http://stephendanko.com/blog/)

BP1_2010011_iGoogleScreenShots

To be honest I never get into the home pages that the email services provide. The pages have been a nuisance to me. I have a MSN, Google, USA Digital, Entry Host, Microsoft Live and many other services that allow you to create a home page portal. It was all just too much to try to keep updated.

But now that I have set up the iGoogle portal pages I have changed my mind. I can very definitely see how it could be useful for not only me but a student as well. It does an excellent job of putting everything at your fingertips with the gadgets.

I use to have favorites set up with a daily ritual on updating. But with iGoogle no more going from page to page, now I can just go to one place. What a wonderful time saver. Many of the other providers I have used do not do such a thorough job in connecting to all the social networks and other Web 2.0 tools.

I also like the fact that this is for my eyes-only. Unlike Facebook or Twitter, I can put whatever I want and not worry about others seeing my typos, or silliness.

I am very excited about this tool. Our college is on Google mail for the student population. I am going to present it to our faculty as something that would be an asset to their curriculum and hopefully spur some interest.