Back in October we entered a Best Buy contest. We were awarded $500 for our 2 minute stop-motion video. Kids want to buy a couple of Nintendo Wii’s. Sounds good to me.
Now, I need to know the best educational game out there for the Wii that could involve groups!
Geek Caster is a digital repository for all things geek, an online resource that I (*they*) hope like minded individuals will find interesting and engaging. Topics discussed include:
* Geek Culture
* Alternative Music
* Technology
* Books
* Creative Arts
* Software
* Film
* Magazines
* Science
* E-Learning
* Politics
Visit: http://blog.geekcaster.com/
twiducate.com is a twitter like environment for classrooms. As a teacher you sign up, add students and post messages.
Student accounts are linked with a classroom code you create and a random password. Students never enter personal details or email addresses.
But the value of private social media is limited??
Well, many school firewalls (and parents) won’t allow social networking sites through. Twiducate.com does not contain ads (as of right now) and nobody can view your classroom posts but your class itself. I like this
concept.
Uses for twiducate.com
.
twiducate.com is only limited by your use of the service. How you use the service determines its value in your classroom.
I have mentioned Scratch before. It is a programming platform used to create screen savers, animations, video games etc.
Today I had an “AH HA” moment when modeling procedural writing. We were looking at exemplars from the OWA book.
The level 2 exemplar discussed Dodgeball. More specifically how to be out or get someone out. One of the steps said to throw the ball at an opponent. Following this step was a mention that if the catcher catches the ball the thrower is out. If it is fumbled, the catcher is out.
Many hands went up in my classroom. Many connections were made to Scratch and computer programming. On a teachable moment whim I asked for an oral algorithm for this step. This was one student’s response.
If (catcher catches) thrower is out;
Else (catcher fumbles) catcher is out;
Talk about worldly connections with procedural writing. I then prompted for other worldly examples.
Monopoly:
If (rolls doubles) Go Again;
Else next players turn;
Wow, I am impressed.
We went one step further and looked at a piece of writing about playing Hide and Seek. Step 5 from this example says the first person tagged is “it” and the game starts over. Again, many raised hands - “THATS A LOOP!”
Wow, I am impressed.
So now I see a clearer link between procedural writing and computer programming, specifically Scratch for this age group (grades 7 and 8). Cut and dry procedures are easy to write. Make a sandwich. Ask for money, etc. Procedures with conditions are more difficult.
The next time you ask your students to write a procedure to make a sandwich, have them pause and consider the case of frozen bread.
On a side note, Scratch allowed for a mini lesson in boolean logic today. I now have a student in grade 7 using OR and AND operators and understanding the differences between them.
Thanks again, MIT!
Michael Kaechele raises an interesting question. While he does not have Facebook, he did realize a student was following him on twitter and even sending @ messages.
Now, these are direct Twitter messages sent in a public medium for all followers to see. Is this appropriate? Can he, as a teacher, respond to his student on Twitter.
What about seeing a student on the weekend and having a private conversation in a public place with no one around? Why is this OK? Or is it….
Well said Michael, “Technology creates new questions of appropriateness”.
See original post here: http://concretekax.blogspot.com/2009/12/what-do-you-do-when-your-students.html
I have 5 Google Wave invitations lefts and I would like to invite fellow teachers to explore this new service. Just post a comment or email me (contact@mraspinall.com) with a collaborative idea.
I teach a grade 8 homeroom and rotary science to 7’s and 8’s. If you have a similar assignment that is a bonus.
Yesterday I had the opportunity to show some Scratch projects my students have been working on to our area enrichment person. This person is someone I highly respect and actually sort of owe my job to. A few years back I supply taught in her room and she passed my name around. Not before long I was assigned an LTO contract in her school.
Now I have since changed schools and she is no longer in the classroom but our relationship is much the same; very techie, geeky, and for the most part - online.
My students loved bragging about their homemade video games and the response was positive. Scratch will now be used at the final core enrichment workshop in March. It is very high order thinking and very much procedural writing.
On a side note, and interesting idea was suggested that I brushed off until my drive home yesterday. Why CAT test when the DRA is a focus for instruction. I was left thinking about this one…..
Pro or con: Most interested students are boys for my computer club Scratch project.
Is this a good thing if we are targeting them in writing?
A few details from my current Scratch project at school.
- Very “social” students are choosing to work on it during the breaks instead of going outside - almost like its a hobby because there is no official deadline.
- Many members of my computer club and working on their projects at home on a daily basis. They are always saving their latest work to a flash drive to transport back and forth.
- They are so excited that most of my mornings are spent previewing what the student did the night before.
- Students who didn’t understand the Cartesian Plan get it now.
- Students who didn’t understand 360 degrees in a rotation get it now.
- Maybe its a retro trend but most students are re creating Atari games - PONG!
- Students now understand that procedural writing could have conditions (IF bread is thawed -> make a sandwich. Else -> thaw bread). Board games (IF roll a 6 -> some event)
- Many of my hands on learners are flying.
- Many of my less confident students are now the “goto” people for debugging issues.
- My students understand the difference between a syntax error and a logical error.
- Everyone one of them has downloaded SCRATCH at home and some even share their projects with the online Scracth community. Huge collaborative piece. They download and learn someone elses program and in term share their own back. Future students may do collaborative SCRATCH projects with neighbouring schools. Something for me to ponder.
- Kids are programming cheat codes to manipulate variables in their games. Certain key combinations are triggering specific events that only the author knows…
Many of you have asked about Scratch. Download it and poke around. Younger grades can bounce balls and create “Screen Savers” before moving on to video games. Remember it is a process. Junior grades have expressed frustrations because they were exposed to heavy video games initially. Baby steps on this one. Start with a simple animation and move on to keyboard control of objects. Don’t “wow” your students with a Mario game that you have downloaded. Many of those projects are created by adults and senior programmers. The kids will eventually see these games as they continue the learning process and begin to explore the online Scatch community.
Scratch.mit.edu
