Repost of Final Project: Gamification Mini-course

(re-posted so it would be on top after my late assignments were posted)

Hi, this is Ian Albers and I have created a mini-course focusing on the use of game design concepts and gamification in education.  While it is not completely necessary for these concepts to use technology in their implementation, many of the best applications of these ideas will encourage the use of different technological interfaces in order to proceed.  By the end of the course, teachers will have:

• discovered what Gamification is and why it is important.
• learned how to apply game design components in a classroom
• created a unit plan that uses the concepts of gamification in their content area

The link for the course is located here: Gamification Mini-course

Make-up: Module 3 (New Literacies of Today's Students)

Link to google doc explaining chart and literacies

Make-up: Module 8 (Quest for Quality Apps)

I've grouped my recommended apps by function to flow a little better.  I will point out that I am an Android user, but I figured I should get a good mix from both there and Apple.

Organizing

Though not directly designed for educational purposes, many apps have great functionality for students

Springpad 

A great tool for organizing, well, everything.  Create a notebook for a project and save every image, link, video, whatever you want associated with that project.  Create another for the resources you used and have everything ready to make your bibliography.

Expressing Ideas

Idea Sketch 

From this week's Bloom's Taxonomy of Apps link I found this neat little app.  There were a lot of different apps that involved brainstorming and mind-mapping.  I liked this because it is clear and looks simple to use.

MindMash 

Similar to Idea Sketch, MindMash is used for brainstorming and note-taking, but this one adds in the ability to insert pictures and drawings.  This takes the program beyond what one can do on a piece of paper and into some of the truly different abilities that digital brainstorming can bring to the table.

ShowMe 

I like the idea of using a student’s mobile device as a personal whiteboard, as that allows them the most freedom in their creations.  Being able to record voice data and upload these with the drawings online opens up a lot of room for this program as a presentation tool as well.

Classroom Tools

One type of app we can find a lot of are the ones that mimic the functionality of classical classroom tools.  These can range from calculators to flashcards, and all take advantage of the inexpensiveness and portability of app programs.

Duolingo 

The gamification of education has truly begun.  This is a free program that helps you learn different languages, and even better, compete against friends at it!

AnkiDroid Flashcards 

This app, for Android devices, allows users to create sets of flashcards to study or download sets others have created.  One thing I noticed is that it allows you to custom-rate the difficulty of particular cards in the set, which will change the frequency you see those cards (the easier, the less frequent).

Mathway

There are a lot of different graphing calculator apps.  With the most recent version's larger keyboard size, Mathway seems to be among the more popular.

My Own Content

As a physics teacher, one of the areas I am most interested in is the usage of these new technologies in the science classroom.  For that purpose, there are a number of apps that can enrich science in all sorts of ways.

Accelogger 

Accelerometer Data 

This is one I've been messing around with this summer.  Since mobile devices have accelerometers embedded in them to track screen orientation and other things, this makes them excellent tools for all sorts of science experiments.  These two apps (Accelogger for Android and Accelerometer Data for Iphones, etc) record the movements of the phone / device and can transfer that data to a computer.  With the right components, the programs will even graph that data.  I've already got a lab designed for this and there are many more I could do.

SkyMap 

This is Google's own SkyMap, which lets you basically point your phone at the sky and figure out what is there at any time of the day.  It also lets you search for different celestial objects, and even jump around in time to figure out what will be where when.  Get this on a student's phone, and they will play with it.  In the classroom it may not have as much of a direct effect, but as for getting kids minds on science, this is a tool for the proliferation of interest in science.  Note: I may be slightly biased, as I spend way more time than I should using this app myself.

Instant Heart Rate 

Do you recall those accelerometers I mentioned earlier?  They're good; they're really good.  There are a number of different heart rate monitors for both Apple and Android devices (linked one is for Android).  There are a number of different physics things I can do with this (we do labs involving human body power and work), but its use in Biology, Health, and even Physical Education classes should be clear.

My thoughts

Myself, I haven't used my own mobile device for many educational exploits (barring my explorations of the accelerometer and SkyMap apps as mentioned earlier).  Other teachers I have interacted with seem to be even farther behind the times than I in these regards, in that I've never heard any at my own school mention mobile learning in any way.   

Mobile learning seems like an incredible tool for making students masters of their own educations, since they are no longer limited by the classroom.  One barrier that I see to mobile learning is getting administrators to feel comfortable with the use of mobile devices in the classroom.  To make sure students keep to using the devices in appropriate ways, be encouraging of the usage for those ways.  Giving students reasonable boundaries that allow the use of cell phones, tablets, and other such devices is something that most will recognize as fair, as long as the tools aren’t banned outright.  I would certainly advocate using mobile learning as a part of a classroom due to simply how powerful a tool these devices are.  With current bans on student cell phone use, students are missing out on an amazing opportunity to become active in their own learning.

Final Project: Gamification Mini-course

Hi, this is Ian Albers and I have created a mini-course focusing on the use of game design concepts and gamification in education.  While it is not completely necessary for these concepts to use technology in their implementation, many of the best applications of these ideas will encourage the use of different technological interfaces in order to proceed.  By the end of the course, teachers will have:
-discovered what Gamification is and why it is important.
-learned how to apply game design components in a classroom
-created a unit plan that uses the concepts of gamification in their content area

The link for the course is located here: Gamification Mini-course

Book Talk 2: Google Apps Meets Common Core

Google Apps Meets Common Core

Book Talk 1: Reality is Broken

Reality is Broken

The New Digital Divide

I really enjoyed listening to how others structured their thoughts on this week's readings via voicethread. Though a fan of the digital age, I'm highly in favor of in-person conversations over online communication whenever engaged in a real discussion, as social cues and intentions often come from tone, which has always been the difficulty with messageboards, forums, and comment threads. I was happy to see that a majority took the same approach as I did, in that this new version of the digital divide is enlightening, but somewhat makes sense with what we see in our lives. That helped me consider and collect my reflections in a way that tackled the point that I wanted to make, rather than retreading too much of the same ground. Hearing a lot of what others said got me excited about one small part of what I was originally going to talk about: the opportunities present on "the other side" of the divide, and using the access that students do have. I've already started brainstorming stuff for my own classroom in the fall.

The Digital Learner's Perspective

One of the things that shocked me this week was in the video "A Vision of K-12 Students Today".  In it, we see the statistic of 63% of a students' teachers do not have them create content, in a modern sense.  I had suspected that technology use in the classroom was lower than it should be, but that number still surprised me.  With as much technology and initiatives for technology use I see in meetings, I had assumed that the figure given would be lower.  I wonder if it is a case of only superficial use of technology.  One can certainly use aspects of the current digital age in a classroom without giving students the opportunity to actually create things themselves.  There may be a reluctance among older teachers to the idea of giving that much freedom to students to mess around with things that they, the teachers, themselves may not be as familiar with. 

Culturally, we need to realize that the next generation is always going to be one step up on us on new technology. I think that teachers should see this as an opportunity to learn something themselves, and let the students take the lead with this.  I know that I first saw Prezi used by a student in a project, long before a presentation that another teacher gave on using it in the classroom.  I've tried adapting this "teach me!" approach in my own classroom, and it was quite scary at first.  I had my students working on a project that, if they went about it in the most direct way, would involve video editing, something that I myself knew little about at the time.  By being honest with the students ahead of time that they may, in fact, know more about this subject than their teacher, I think the students bought into the project  a little more than they otherwise would have.  This especially helped when I made clear my willingness to learn.  One student decided to tackle a particular video editing program, and we worked through it together, learning about it.  I think it helped build a great rapport and led us to a lot more skill in using the program than either of us on our own would have gathered.

My video this weeks plays with the idea of an interview between a digital learner and myself as a teacher.  I wanted to keep the focus on the student and their needs, so I had them beginning the conversation, almost as if challenging the teacher with these facts and the idea that their needs are not being met.

Digital Declarations
by: narishma1

An Introduction

This is not the first blog I have attempted to make, nor even the first about teaching. I've never gotten far into the world of blogging. I have read a fair few, and made some mediocre attempts at making some, but for someone that has prided themselves on being part of this new, online generation, I feel a little left in the role of active participation. Needing to blog as a part of this class, as I delve into the current state of technology in education, will hopefully help break through this block, as having a motivating impetus is often the first step to any new venture.

A little about myself: I am a physics teacher in an urban public high school in Indianapolis. I have recently completed my sixth year of teaching. I have long been attempting to integrate more technology into my classroom, and have had my share of triumphs and failures along the way. I have struggled with our school system's online access system to create an engaging set of tools for my students, including creating online assignments, lessons, and assessments, but have often felt hampered by the limitations of the system I feel forced to use, and lack the skills to create my own external system for the students. One of my hopes for this class is to gain a set of resources to help me improve in these areas.