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Today is World Math Day. Unite with students and schools from around the world to set a new world record! This year’s challenge – to correctly answer more than 182,445,169 questions in 48 hours. Please participate and be part of the new world record.
Creating game-based learning environments or experiences using commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) games is becoming an increasingly tenable, valuable, and popular instructional method. COTS games are computer or video games created for entertainment purposes. A few popular examples are SimCity, Age of Empires, ZooTycoon, and Railroad Tycoon.
My good friend Dennis Charsky invited me to co-author Integrating Commercial off-the-Shelf Video Games into School Curriculum. Ten suggestions to help educators effectively integrate COTS games are shared in this research article. Below is an overview along with a few notes from this publication.
Hat tip to Miguel for bringing this to my attention.
Brenda McCombs, Drew Polly, Clif Mims and ALBHS Science Department
2009 Midsouth Technology Conference
We’ll be sharing information about the Impacting Kannapolis Program today at the MidSouth Technology Conference (MSTC). This program is in its 2nd year of funding through the IMPACT Technology Grant sponsored by the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction. My involvement with this program consists of providing several weeks of professional development in instructional design and technology integration each summer.
This presentation will describe the approaches to designing and implementing district-wide professional development in a high-need, Title I school district. The workshop will share approaches to supporting teacher learning and teacher leaders, and also highlight technologies and projects that have been used in schools.
NOTE: Visit the collaborative wiki page for this presentation at Learning Telecollaboratively for additional information and resources. Photos from this presentation are available at Lifestreaming from My iPhone (my Posterous).
View more presentations from Clif Mims.
Conference Tag: #mstc09
Educators, what are some strategies for connecting the classroom with the outside world?
NOTE: I’d like to share responses in an upcoming workshop/presentation and on my blog and wiki. You can submit your ideas using the form below, share your text/audio/video reply in the Comments section of this post or respond via Twitter, Plurk or on your blog using the tag #thruwalls. You can also view the compiled database of suggested strategies on my wiki, Learning Telecollaboratively.
Share this post using http://tr.im/104.
Conversation tag: #thruwalls
These are the slides from my first Tennessee Educational Technology Conference presentation. Unfortunately the animations and effects were lost when uploaded to SlideShare. I’ve shared my notes and resources from this presentation over on my wiki, Learning Telecollaboratively. I hope to create a Vidcast or SlideCast of this presentation once I return home and things settle down.
I demonstrated that with freely available digital technologies students can demonstrate their understanding of course content in multiple ways (images, audio, video, presentations, artwork, and more). Each student’s end product (learning artifact) allows them to personally self-express their understanding of the content/mastery of the skills. Although teachers may not be comfortable using all of today’s technology it is important to consider allowing students to use it to communicate their understanding as they are often more naturally able to more fully express themselves with digital media.
View more presentations from Clif Mims.
Conference Tag: #tetc
The Teacher Education Division (TED) of the Association for Educational Communications and Technology (AECT) has a webinar coming up that I think many of you will find interesting.
“Dr. Judy Duffield of Lehigh University and her Education students will present on a series of Web 2.0 tools they have been exploring for use in the K-12 classroom. Come participate in a brown-bag-type Webinar where you can learn creative ways to use Web 2.0 tools to improve your own classroom experience.” (Source)
The webinar is Friday, December 11, 2009, at 2:00 EST. Full details are available here.
“The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation [yesterday] announced that it will invest $335 million to support effective teaching as a means to ensure all students receive the education they need to succeed in high school and beyond. [The] announcement includes $290 million in grants to support four Intensive Partnership for Effective Teaching sites that have developed groundbreaking plans to improve teacher effectiveness. Another $45 million will go toward the Measures of Effective Teaching project, a research initiative that seeks to define effective teaching and identify fairer and more reliable evaluative measures.” (Source)
I’ve been developing workshops for the BILD Institute for the past couple of months and I’ve discovered/rediscovered many quality resources about educational reform, instructional design, technology integration, and innovation as well as many new web tools and services. I hope to share much of this with you here on this blog (You can also go ahead and access it on the BILD Institute site.). The first resource I’d like to share is this recently updated version of the Did You Know/Shift Happens video (See previous versions here, here and here.). “This is another official update to the original Shift Happens video. This completely new Fall 2009 version includes facts and stats focusing on the changing media landscape, including convergence and technology, and was developed in partnership with The Economist.” (Source)
Lowe’s will donate $5 million to public schools and public school parent teacher groups – at more than 1,000 different public schools per school year…Lowe’s Charitable and Educational Foundation (LCEF) knows how hard you work for your kids and your community and we’re dedicated to helping your parent-teacher group achieve even more for your school. Apply for our Toolbox for Education Grant now and build on your already impressive parent group success with Lowe’s…The deadline for submitting applications for this grant cycle is October 16, 2009. (Source)
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