Happy Super Tuesday!

I introduced Scratch to a new group of 8th graders today. I got a little carried away with the example I gave them showing how they could take an existing game on the Scratch website and modify it to make it your own. Since today is Super Tuesday I thought it would be appropriate to make a MOD of Angry Birds using the candidates heads and throw in a bunch of the ridiculous things they've said on the campaign trail. Enjoy!

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Weekly Tech Tips - The Elephant in the Room: Learning Theories & Technology Integration

Weekly Tech Tip:

The Elephant in the Room: Learning Theories & Technology Integration


Related links:

• Seymour Papert 1983
• Scratch
• Computer Aided Instruction as a Vehicle for Problem Solving: Scratch Programming Environment in the Middle Years Classroom
• Constructionism vs. Instructionism by Seymour Papert
  
• Game Maker 7
• Constructivism
• Behaviorism

Link Stew

• Secretary Gates and Admiral Mullen on Social Networking
• Alan November: "Who should own the learning?"
• 
  
• Alan November - Who Owns the Websites Your Kids Access?
• Wikis in University Teaching and Learning - Richard Buckland UNSW
• Web 2.0 Expo SF 2010: Ge Wang, "Breaking Barriers with Sound"
• Net Neutrality - Save the Internet
• The Death of The Internet
• Stephen Downes: Presentation addressing what teachers need to do in order to learn from the internet.
• Simon Sinek: How great leaders inspire action
• 
  
• Bill Gates speaks at Science Leadership Academy
• 
  
• How Teens are Using their Mobile Phones
• No Grading, More Learning
• Free eBook - Beyond Fun: Serious Games and Media
• ZooBurst - Augmented Reality Free 3d Popup Book Creator
• Second Life Users File Class Action Lawsuit Over Virtual Land
• 50 Ways to Use Wikis for a More Collaborative and Interactive Classroom
• MapAList - Google Spreadsheets & Google Maps Mashup
• Udemy - Academy of You | Find and Create Online Courses - Teach and Learn Online
• Share Lists of Twitter Users | TweepML
• TubeMogul.com | In-Depth Tracking, Analytics for Online Video | Web Video Syndication
• Packrati.us = Twitter + Delicious-Great tool for bookmarking links in your Twitter feed. But, be careful. If you share your Delicious feed with Twitter adding this tool will cause a loop and flood both your Twitter account and Delicious account with duplicate links & Tweets.

Blog Carnival:

• A Fairy Tale? by Larry Cuban on Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice
• Can We Use Personal Learning Networks to Create Real Reform? (#edchat summary by Betty Ray on Edutopia
• Reflection on filters, social media & school by Anne Collier on NetFamilyNews.org
• The Unwelcome Silent Curriculum by Jerrid Kruse on Teaching as a dynamic activity
  

Weekly Tech Tip - Scratch & Moodle

Since last week was a wash in meetings and subbing for people out sick I missed my weekly tech tip. So, I am going to attempt to do two of these this week.


Weekly Tech Tip #1: Scratch

One of our district AYP initiatives is to integrate math into all content areas. One way to do this is by having the students use a program called Scratch instead of PowerPoint for creating presentations. Scratch is a free program by MIT that is a visual programming environment where students can create movies, animations, presentation, simulations, and interactive games by clicking and dragging puzzle piece-like commands into place. In the process, they are both creating a presentation for your class and working with algebra, complex linear algorithms, numeric reasoning, and logic skills. Scratch is appropriate for grades 3 and up though I have heard of some schools using it with students as young as 7 years old. We have it installed on all of the elementary lab computers and students in the HS can install it on their own student accounts.

Click Here to watch a screencast demo of scratch.

Click Here to visit the Scratch website where you can explore Scratch resources and download the free software.

Weekly Tech Tip #2: What is Moodle


I have had a few requests from teachers to explain what Moodle is and why we should care as educators. This screencast attempts to answer those questions. I also have created a self guided Moodle course on how to use Moodle. If you are interested in taking this course or even just getting onto Moodle and playing around let me know and I will ask Aaron at WETC to create an account for you.

Click Here to watch my brief overview/tour of Moodle.

Moodle is boring! - Great Blog Post By Mike Walker at Edina Public Schools about Moodle teaching strategies.

Link Stew:

• Edina Go Wireless CoP - Great resource put together by teaching and technology staff at Edina schools exploring 1:1 laptop use.

• I have attached a great white paper describing some of the biggest 1:1 laptop initiatives in the US in recent years. This article does a great job of weighing the pros and cons of each project and gives a good overview of what worked and did not work in each case.

• eduperience.com | Bloggings for Teachers and Students - another great blogging platform for schools

• Docu-View: Free Online Documentaries

• Online Audio Editor - Aviary.com's Myna

• Clipgenerator - create music videos with your own video clips and pictures online.

• Moomeo - Turn any email into a published webpage

• inudge.net - Nudge - Make your own music, other than that this one is hard to explain.

• Ahead - Playground for creative minds - interesting new type of online presentation tool. Build nonlinear presentations.

Atmosphir

A couple of months ago I heard about a new game that was in development called Atmosphir. This game is a first person shooter game similar to Mario Bros. What sets it apart from other games is that all the levels in the game are created by the users. When I heard about this I thought it might have some potential for education so I signed up to be a beta tester. This week, after having completely forgot about signing up, I received an email from the developers of this game accepting my invite.

Now, for a few years now some commercial games have come on the market that allow users to make their own mods. What is different about Atmosphir is the whole game is a mod. When you download and install the game you are asked to go to their website and create a user account. When you load the game it asks you to login with your username and password. You are then presented with a few options. You can play, create, or modify your character. When you choose the play option you are presented with a display that looks kind of like YouTube where you can choose from among other user created versions of the game sorted by ratings, most played, etc.

When you choose create you are brought to an editor screen with a blank grid. You can choose among many different objects to build your level. My 4 year old and I spent a good afternoon engaged in this world building and game play. The game engine itself is nice. You get a rich 3D environment, smooth graphics, and complex movement. The biggest downfall I can see is there are no options for users to build or import their own objects. If there were such an option I could see this program being ideal for building educational games. For my purposes this limitation is a huge downfall. However, this project is in private beta and possibly this kind of feedback could make it into later edits of the game.



In its current version it is still a nice constructivist toy. You can build much in the same way you can build with legos. There are quite a few user created levels that exhibit high ammount of creativity. It could also be used to teach about game theory to an extent.

My hopes with this program were that it might have the same potential for engaging students in programming and game creation that Scratch or GameMaker have. While my hopes have been slightly let down at the moment I will continue to watch the development of this game and how it influences other game developers.

A new version of Scratch that works in Second Life came out over the summer. I have yet to play around with it but it looks promising. However, Second Life is not free and presents some unique challenges for use in K-12. I also intend on taking a look at later this fall as it also looks like it might have some potential for education.

Do you know of any other free programs for game creation or free games that allow users to make mods of their game?

Goodhue Techspo 2008

Goodhue Techspo 2008 wiki - A public exhibit of educational techn... via kwout

TIES 2007 - Kristin Straumann: Using Scratch in the Science Classroom - notes

Kristin Straumann
Science Instructor
ACGC Public Schools

How I use ScratchScience Explanation Stories
- Naming Compounds
- Balancing Chemical Equations
- Element Stories
- Earthquakes
- Collisions

This session is basically an introduction to Scratch. A lot of time was spent demonstrating how to do simple things in Scratch. I am not blogging about it because I already have used Scratch and all this information can be fund on Kristin's presenter handout page.

One thing she showed us that I did not know was that you can download Scratch programs that are published and see how they were programmed or even edit them.