I received my September/October isse of Learning and Leading from ISTE and immediatley the article titled “Web 2.0 Today’s Technologies,Tomorrows Learning” grabbed my attention since I am reading the book by Solomon and Schrum Web 2.0 New Tools, New Schools. I was drawn to the role that digital games and simulations in our edcational environment and the role they are playing in some classrooms across the globe.  It happens when I am planning a hands-on gaming and literacy night with parents and students in February with the assistance of the Georgetown County Library System. Our county library system has received a grant to study the impacts gaming has on literacy, and they will be hiring a gaming expert to help the library sytem in this process.  The library system is sponsoring they workshop and providing an expert in this areal to lead the workshop. A few week ago I started my inquiry in this area.

The two authors of this article Groff and Haas are research associates at the MIT Education Arcade.  We are caught in a dilemma with students about them caught up in the disruptive influence of video games on their classrooms. We complain they are not reading and not learning. We hear constantly about the hours our kids are spending in virtual world and the heralded fear of what this might be doing to our kids. What we have neglected to do or what Groff and Haas dedicate research to studying the positive benefits or the potential benefits gaming and simulation can bring to the classroom. They are not alone in this study, but other follow suite around the world attempting to make games and procedures that can help bridge the gap between the traditional scholastic culture and the culture of learners today (Jennnifer & Jason, 2008).

Mark Prensky, an internationally acclaimed speaker, writer, consultant, and designer in the critical areas of education and learning, make a great point in his famous article Digital Native, Digital Immigrants about the impact of the digital world his having on our kids brains. Marc states that “it is highly unlikely the Digital Natives will go backwards. In the first place, it may be impossible - their brains may already be different “(from Digital Native, Digital Immigrants).  With that in mind, I find the article empowering to learn about something I don’t know a bunch about.  How does gaming and literacy mix?

My son has been an avid player of Sims City and War of the Worlds.  I have been amazed for several years what impact these games have had impact on his learning when comes to history of wars from the bible era to present and what he has learned about civics and economics from the games.

One thing we know about learning from brain research is that student learning takes place while they are immersed in real world authentic task.  This task has troubled educators for years in trying to accomplish such task, but the future is here now. Through gaming and simulations, we can involve them in real world situations that were not an option of the classroom. There were always time constraints, accessibility issues, and lacking of resources. We now have ways to explore the human circulatory system and many ways to provide analogies of real world situations. We have the ever-increasing ability to relate all this to the content of the classroom.

Graff and Haas provide classroom examples and website that need to be explored. They do give warning there are bumps in the road to overcome. There are issues with hardware and school networking systems.  They point out there is a steep learning curve as one explores the technology and actually implements in their classroom. Gaming and simulations are open ended and not teacher directed. Sometimes one can see the teacher may not know what is going on all the time in the virtual worlds.

I have much to learn about gaming and simulations. I have a lot to learn this year and plan to take advantage of what our county library system has to offer me and the students at my school. In the weeks to come I will be exploring this area of instructional technology. I welcome readers with their comments and suggestions.

Don’t miss this article!

Example of gaming literacy that connects with topic.

Jennnifer, G., & Jason, H. (2008, September/Octover ). Web 2.0 today’s tecnologies, tomorrow’s learning. Learning and Leading with Technology , 12-15.

We all maybe familiar with YouTube, but how many have you discovered TeacherTube.  Sunday morning, I spent some time exploring Teacher Tube and I am very excited about the things I have found.  TeacherTubeis dedicated to providing an online community for sharing instructional videos. They seek to fill a need for a more educationally focused, safe venue for teachers, schools, and home learners. It is a site to provide anytime, anywhere professional development with teachers teaching teachers. As well, it is a site where teachers can post videos designed for students to view in order to learn a concept or skill.

Membership is free and community members may

• Upload, tag and share videos worldwide.
• Upload Support Files to attach your educational Actvities, Assessments, Lesson Plans, Notes, and Other file formats to your video.
• Browse hundreds of videos uploaded by community members.
• Find, join and create video groups to connect with people who have similar interests.
• Customize the experience by subscribing to member videos, saving favorites, and creating playlists.
• Integrate TeacherTube videos on websites using video embeds or APIs.
• Make videos public or private - users can elect to broadcast their videos publicly or share them privately with those they invite.

Members are encouraged to not only upload educationally relevant videos, but also to make constructive comments and use the rating system to show appreciation for videos of value to one as an educator or learner. Users also have the ability to preserve the integrity of the site by flagging inappropriate videos. TeacherTube staff review flagged sites and will remove any inappropriate posts. With more collegial commentary and discussion through messaging and responses, the quality of this resource will only increase. And most important, it is free.

Below are two examples from TeacherTube that caught my eye.

Tutput aims to provide simple, fun, competitive games that help children learn and gain confidence with Math, English and other key skills and knowledge. Their focus is to help children gain confidence and mastery of basic educational skills. Tutpup is free for any child to use and children can only participate with their parent or guardian’s approval. They also have an account for educators. The educator account is cool! The teacher can enroll students and manage student’s accounts. Students compete with other kids around the world without ever having to give away their identity. As a matter fact, children cannot se their own names. When a child registers to use Tutpup they choose a unique screen name, a combination of a color, animal and number e.g. BlackDog10 or PinkSnail2. Children cannot send messages to other players.

I set up an account for me eight year old daughter and received an email asking me to approve of her using the site.  Anna played on this site for several hours this morning. Her reviews are great. She loved having the competition with another child somewhere else in the world. Even though she could not chat with the kid, she thought it was neat, especially when she won the match.

Once you arrive to the Tutpup, it easy to sign up an account for your child, but to get the free teacher account, you have look at the bottom of the page to see the link  teachers signup .

About Tutput

• Tutput is a brand new web site (still in beta) and we’re hard at work creating exciting new features and games.
• Our site has no advertising or sponsorship for commercial products or services for children.
• It is entirely free for any child to use, but only after being approved by their parent or legal guardian (including their classroom teacher).
• When a child wishes to use Tutput we ask them only the minimum amount of information needed to use Tutput.
• We aim to exceed the information security and privacy requirements of the U.S. Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) and other relevant international privacy and data protection legislation.

I taught sixth grade language arts and social studies from 1989 to 1996 in a middle school in my district. From 1996-1998 I worked at the same school as a reading specialist.  For the last four years at this school, I was the chairperson of the language arts department. During that tenure, I remember a discussion with teachers about teaching writing and the writing process. I distinctly remember one teacher explaining to me that a child could write a complete sentence until they had mastered the art of distinguishing the difference between noun, verbs, adjective, adverbs, subjects, predicates and much more.  Her efforts as middle school ELA teacher was to make sure they could have these distinctions before should could expect her students to write a sentence or even begin to write a paragraph.

I too was guilty of this methodology in my classroom. I remember trying so hard to teach sixth graders how to identify subjects and verbs. I think I spent two weeks and still less than half I felt mastered the concept. It was not until I read Nancy Atwell’s book In the Middle did I understand the how to teach reading.  It is the year 2008 and I am amazed how so little progress we have made. We continue to immerse students into small chunks of learning with fear of letting them take the big plunge.

Today we know more than we did in the early 90’s about how students learn.  Cognitive science helps us understand how the brain functions and how people learn. The scientific approach have indicated that everyone learns, but schools do not always understand how best to approach each student (Solumon & Schrum, 2007)  Geoffrey Caine and Renate Nummela Caine described 12 core principles of brain based learning:

1.     The brain is a complex adaptive system.

2.     The brain is a social brain.

3.     The search for meaning is innate.

4.     The search for meaning occurs through patterning.

5.     Emotions are critical to patterning.

6.     Every brain simultaneously perceives and creates parts and wholes.

7.     Learning involves both focused attention and peripheral attention.

8.     Learning always involves conscious and unconscious processes.

9.     We have at least two ways of organizing memory.

10. Learning is developmental.

11.Complex learning is enhanced by challenge and inhibited by threat.

12. Every brain is uniquely organized. (Where Did the “12 Brain/Mind Learning Principles” Come From? Caine and Caine)

Caine and Caine conclude that “Optimizing the use of the human brain means using the brain’s infinite capacity to make connections-and understanding what conditions maximize this process.” We are a world of images and I keep preaching to teachers the importance of using images in presenting content. Finding the images takes time and overtime it comes easier. The Internet makes it easy to find images and video. The old cookie cutter teacher was the idea of teaching skill until you were capable of being in the driver’s seat or capable of orchestrating the whole process since one had mastered all the skills.

Caine and Caine also indicate that three interactive elements are essential to this purpose.

1.     The teacher must orchestrated the immersion of the learner in multiple, complex, authentic experience. Solomon and Schrum use the example of immersing student in a foreign country to teach them a second language  (Solumon & Schrum, 2007) Another example is allowing students to solve a real world problem to learn multiple standards or moving learning to the creation stage in Bloom’s taxonomy. Students are able take ownership in learning when they are able to connect the learning to the real world.

2.     Students must have a personal meaningful challenge. Challenges stimulate our brains (Solumon & Schrum, 2007). The learning activity must be of low threat and high challenge (Where Did the “12 Brain/Mind Learning Principles” Come From?). Yesterday I told the group of seventh grades they were charged with making digital posters to give tips to other students how to deal with emotions.  What challenges can we offer when we ask students to write an essay on leadership, a former President, etc?

3.     There must be an active processing of the experience in order to make meaning from the learning. Students need to know that there are multiple ways of making meaning. The teacher must rethink and offer multiple ways to students to tackle an assignment or tackle presenting the content. Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple Intelligences should be in the forethought in planning classroom curriculum.

We understand the fact that student learn in a variety of ways, mainly because our brains are different. We know students process and understand information differently because our brains are different and we each bring different life and cultural experiences to our classrooms. This should matter to the teachers, but the old school of thinking we are back to school and back to teaching and not to back to learning. Teachers too are a part of the learning process. With technology today it helps us target the right approaches for each student.  (Solumon & Schrum, 2007) We have a tool that helps students analyze, synthesize, and communicate information. Technology offers ways to apply new pedagogy to make target auditory, visual, and tactile kinesthetic learners. We must find ways to take advantage of these tools. We must find time in our professional lives to learn these tools.

We can use targeted teaching methods to help students analyze, synthesize, and communicate information.  We can combine this with Web 2.0 tools. We know so much more today and it seems we are so far away from facing the truths in education. Eric Jensen wrote a great book Teaching with the Brain in Mind that offers more insight with the design of curriculum and teaching with the cognitive science in the forefront of our thinking in transferring brain research to the classroom. Technology and all the tools encompass ways we can move our students forward to the twenty first century.

Bibliography

Solumon, G., & Schrum, L. (2007). Web 2.0 new tools, new schools. Eugene, Washington: ISTE.

Where Did the “12 Brain/Mind Learning Principles” Come From? (n.d.). Retrieved September 5, 2008, from Brain Connection: http://www.brainconnection.com/topics/?main=fa/brain-based3

Today I had the very first opportunity to teach nine students in the Media Center Arts class how to create a podcast.  Over the weekend, I spend several hours locating resources. I reached out to my Twitter followers and the resources flooded in.  It has been over a year since I have created a podcast so I began my process by downloading Audacity and the Lame to my desktop. Then I went out to ccmixer.org to find royalty free music and this wonderful website shares music and sound effects through Creative Commons.

I picked three musical selections and then I edited them down to three 20-second sound bites. I then created a four-minute or so podcast title Poetry Today and I feature two poems by Langston Hughes.  I created a storyboard and planned the different scenes including the music and a moment to give credit to the reference the websites I used. Next, I mixed all the pieces together by using the quick mix feature in Audacity. Then I exported the file as an MP3.  The only problem was the quality of the recording of my voice.  I am not sure the cause except may be something to do with the microphone.

At this point, I was ready to write the lesson plan with standards and objective.

Students use digital media and environments to communicate and work collaboratively, including at a distance, to support individual learning and contribute to the learning of others. Students: communicate information and ideas effectively to multiple audiences using a variety of media and formats.

Then the objective:

Students will create a podcast to share poetry.

I gave each student a scripted podcast show already in a storyboard that I prepared. I modeled the whole process and created a podcast by them watching the process.  Four of them followed along and created as I did. Most students are quick learners. Then I turned them loose and they each with laptop in hand headed toward the quietest place in the media center they could find.

It was actually fun to watch as I circulated around as they were asking for help.  I find it amazing how they forget to ask other around them. Students can be a better teacher at these skills than I am. One student was hung-up with playing with the music. He had to be reminded to focus.  After twenty minutes I brought them back to the circle and they had good how to questions. They were able to answer each other’s questions.  Since they each had to install the software to the laptop, I had walk through of installing the Lame file on the first export as an MP3 file. They did rather quickly and only a few minutes before the bell were to ring.  I have them each a “pause and ponder” sheet to think about what they have done.

Over the next two-class meeting, these nine eight-graders are expected to make a polished podcast on the same topic as today except they get to pick the poet and the poems to read.  At this point, I still have control over the music. I will be with them again tomorrow and Friday.

Overall, it was a good class and I had a hard time imagining teaching this in a regular classroom setting all at once.  I was please that each participant was able to complete a podcast. My goal would be to teach small groups of students and make then the podcast expert. Today was definitely an adventure and now I am better prepared to teach this again.