The trinity

Reaction grid, jibe + unity3d are the trinity I’ve been waiting for. Jibe hosted can cost as little as $200 setup + $75/month for 20 concurrent users.

Image from http://nordicworlds.net/PPublic/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/

2012 Adobe awards open

The 2012 Adobe awards are now open with the first round entries closing late January. If needed, students can download trial versions of all the Adobe software.

Image credit: http://media.dexigner.com/article/22024/

Effective IWB usage

Today’s post continues the theme of professional development tools that may be useful for teachers formulating their goals for 2012. In 2008, Sweeney devised measures including Technical Indicators and Pedagogical Indicators as part of an Interactive Whiteboard Developmental Framework for teachers from the lowest stage of usage (using the IWB as a projection device) through to the highest stage (as a synergistic, spontaneous user). Shown below is Vincent & Jones’ (2008) framework for teacher use of interactive whiteboard use. Frameworks such as these could be very useful in helping teachers integrate whiteboards effectively as they review their professional development goals for the new school year.

Stage	Characteristic
Substitutional	Teacher only; presentation takes precedence over student interaction.
Experimental	Students use the board under teacher direction: mainly dragging. Mainly whole class teaching of lesson topic
Interactional	Frequent student use of teacher materials needing manipulation. Student choices built in.
Synergistic	Both teachers and students able to construct meaning, and control direction and step lengths of lessons. Development encouraged of socially constructed products.

TPACK

TPACK is a tool to consider for the new year when every 21st century educator should be reviewing their professional goals. The surveys on the Mishra & Koehler (2006) site can help staff to measure their strengths and weaknesses. The most important part of successful technology integration occurs at the centre of the interplay between technological knowledge (TK), pedagogical knowledge (PK) and content knowledge (CK) – which also blend to form technological pedagogical knowledge (TPK), technological content knowledge (TCK) and pedagogical content knowledge (PCK).

Digital educational revolution action project

Next year our school is planning to create a cross-curricular technology-enhanced assessment task across year 9 geography, science and mathematics. Students will go on a fortnightly field excursion to a local pond and measure and record elements of the local environment. In groups of approximately four, students will present geographical information about the local environment using a range of written, oral and graphic forms. More specifically, students will collect data from the ponds in the Rockdale wetlands (e.g. Bicentennial Park in President Ave Kogarah) and create a hypothesis regarding why the ponds are covered in algae (or similar open-ended question). Students will research how the wetlands are used by the community and create a case study analysis which may comprise photographs, statistics/graphs and an animation of algae formation. In the collection of data, students may measure:

populations of pond life organisms e.g. birds/tadpoles/microscopic
oxygen levels
ph and temperature levels
turbidity levels
size of the pond etc

The students will use measuring apparatuses and data-loggers from school as well as a measuring kit from streamwatch. They will also gather information (perhaps through a guest speaker) from the Rockdale Wetlands Preservation Society. Students will formulate their own questions in relation to the pond area, such as whether the algae formed due to human intervention or a more open-ended question, approved by the teachers. We are considering use of a blog as well. Should be a really great project!!!

Image from http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_YGN3l86nWKw/TI1x-hSQ9WI/AAAAAAAAFmg/RoT–SIi5as/s1600/Rockdale+ponds+2.JPG

Community of Practice: Game Design club

I am amazed by the gains that my school-based game design club has made over the past term. Originally it was meant to be a once-a-week lunchtime activity – however the group of year 8 boys has been coming to the computer lab every day. I see this group as a perfect example of a community of practice where expertise is shared and each student learns their role to play in the game design project. The boys have been creating models and maps in Sketchup then importing them into Unity. The students have assumed roles such as project manager, modeler, coder, marketer etc and they seem to be intent by having a prototype game finished by the end of the school holidays – I can’t wait to see it! In any learning environment, there are different levels of expertise amongst the participants, which means that “newcomers” on the periphery of a learning group might be able to learn from more experienced, central “oldtimers” (Lave & Wenger, 1991). In my mind, learning is inseparable from the social environment in which it takes place. Lave (1991) proposed that learning results naturally when students become participating members of a community of practice, so I would posit that high levels of student engagement, nurtured in the right environment, would result in a high levels of learning transfer. Game design has earned its place in higher education courses and I am happy to teach game design principles to my high school club. I am also very interested in the importance of identity formation in project-based learning. According to Lave (1992) learning “is a process of coming to be, of, forging identities of activity in the world” (p3) – and I would like to explore this idea further.

Google and Your Memory

Research and Design by: Online Colleges Site

Off the backburner

Intel Showing Evidence Tool is a wonderful mindtool I used a couple of years ago and I’ve just rediscovered it again. It really is a great way for students to arrange their points and evidence for a debate topic. It’s easy to add evidence and the source, before adding it to the green “for” section or the red “against” section. It’s also quite easy to set up student logins and assign them to groups. Another mindtool offered by Intel is the Visual ranking tool, which allows students to rank the importance of factors for any topic, and add notes for their reasoning behind the ranking. Thank you Intel Education!

I ♥ Kodu!

Kudos to Microsoft for releasing Kodu v1.2, which is an amazingly fun, easy-to-use game design environment and best of all, completely free! Budding game designers can load a world, add objects and program the objects to move/shoot/eat apples/play soccer – the options are limitless. There’s even a community where designers can share their games. Wow I really can’t believe that this is all completely free*!
*If my research is correct, it is free apart from a $5 charge to play on XBox
Image from http://images.wikia.com/kodu/images/f/f5/Kodu_big.png

20 years of Electronic Frontier Foundation

How cute is this poster? It came out last year to celebrate EFF‘s 20 years.
Image from http://www.flickr.com/photos/hughelectronic/4325854994/