May 2013
8 posts
6 tags
HFA:SCS "Made in Detroit" Video →
This is a video that is a small part of a Centropa Border Jumping Project. This video is designed to teach students in Belgrade, Serbia about the City of Det…
4 tags
Malkhanova Interview (with English subtitles) →
This is a video of the interview experience of Lithuanian students interviewing Ms. Ranana Malkhanova with English subtitles of the interview itself. This is…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BffyOFf9yn8&feature=youtu.b
Ken Robinson: How to escape education's death... →
Game to Learn speaks with...Mike Irwin →
Game to Learn speaks with…Mike Irwin. Mike Irwin is an 8th Grade Social Studies teacher in Michigan, America. In this video Mike talks to us about his teac…
Rita Pierson: Every kid needs a champion | Video... →
Rita Pierson, a teacher for 40 years, once heard a colleague say, “They don’t pay me to like the kids.” Her response: “Kids don’t learn from people they donât like.ââ A rousing call to educators to believe in their students and actually connect with them on a real, human, personal level.
3 tags
Living Proof - Ranana Malkhanova →
Here is a link to our wikispaces page that outlines the dialogue between my students in Detroit, a Holocaust survivor Ms. Ranana Malkhanova, and students in Vilnius, Lithuania.
Awesome experience for both myself and my students!
April 2013
2 posts
3 tags
Awesome example of authentic learning! →
Great stuff and something to aspire to as a young educator!
March 2013
3 posts
6 tags
edWeb.net Game Based Learning Community →
Great site that I am just starting to explore with Webinars on various topics in game-based learning that you can either watch live or come back to and watch at a later time. Great Stuff!
February 2013
7 posts
5 tags
The Gamification of School Begins: Solve the... →
Something similar to this with a problem that kids have to solve is what I have to aim for when creating my game-based learning materials for The Henry Ford!
holtthink:
Do you want to be a disease detective?
New outbreaks happen every day and CDC’s disease detectives are on the front lines, working 24/7 to save lives and protect people. When a new outbreak happens, disease detectives are...
7 tags
Salman Khan: Let's use video to reinvent education →
A great TED Talk by the creator of the Khan Academy, with some references to game-based learning and ways in which they are making the Khan academy more gamified as they develop it more and more. Also an interesting piece at the end with Salman being “interviewed” by Bill Gates.
9 tags
6 tags
Gaming Unit Effort and Reflection Rubric →
Here is the rubric that I passed out to my students to reflect on not only their efforts in the gaming unit but also the structure of the gaming unit and areas that I could improve on. Not anything special, but wanted to give context to how I got the feedback that my previous post is based on.
9 tags
Student Feedback on Latest Gaming Unit
Below is some of the feedback I received from my students when they were given a reflection activity on their own effort during the gaming unit as well as the structure of the game so that I could improve it for the next time that we did it. (I will post a link to the reflection activity as well so that you can see what the students actually filled out.) I have also included a ranked order list...
January 2013
21 posts
5 tags
Make Play Teach: Guns, Germs, and Criticism →
jsmummert:
I’ve used Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel in classes for years, most often as a way to explain the devastating effect of the contact between inhabitants of the Western Hemisphere and the Europeans. I find the argument that the domination of the Natives by Europeans was based on…
An interesting counter argument
8 tags
Intelligence vs. "True Grit" →
A great Ted Talk on by Dr. Duckworth on the distinction between intelligence and what she calls “grit.” Should make for great material for this Masters Project!
7 tags
Grit and the New Character Education →
thelearningbrain:
A nice article on what it may mean to measure and teach grit. The thing I really agree with is that when you create a vocabulary around character traits, it’s easier for everyone to understand the subtleties of how those traits play out in yours and others’ experiences.
This is a great article and something that helps give me a little bit more focus in terms of my research...
5 tags
Potential Problems with Gamification →
An interesting read in terms of the issues that may come up with trying to implement game-based learning. Some of these issues I still have, some I have only overcome with a lot of reading and creating and modifying more and more games in my own classroom.
8 tags
Masters Project and Teaching Fellowship
Over the next few months I will be working to complete two projects which will overlap quite a bit. I will begin using this blog as a sounding board/journal of my progress and work towards the completion of these two projects. I am currently in an Education Research class, which is my last true class that I have to complete for my Masters Program at GVSU. As part of this class I must create an...
11 tags
Replacing Grades with Badges... →
This is a great article that I will be using as part of an annotated bibliography that I am starting for a grad school class as well as preparing for The Henry Ford Teaching Fellowship. This article shows a number of interesting things, including:
How badges can make a better long-term view of education with the focus being on mastery as opposed to the hard core focus on quantifiable outcomes...
6 tags
Ron Berger: His Book Changed the Way I Teach! →
This is a great intro article if you are not familiar with Ron Berger’s work. I read his book An Ethic of Excellence last year at the suggestion of one of my Curriculum Directors and it has changed the way that I teach. Read the article and then go find the book, its a quick read and very powerful.
6 tags
WikiWars: Helping Making Difficult Connections... →
A site found on Mr. Jim Mummert’s blog (Make Play Teach) that explains how to play WikiWars. I was not familiar with this before I saw it on his blog. I could see two possible uses: 1.) By playing the game you almost have to learn how Wikipedia works, which helps with the “work harder not smarter” concept that I am a big fan of and what we should be teaching students first and...
8 tags
HistoriQuest: Links to Game-Based Learning →
This is a site I stumbled on after its creator liked one of my posts on my blog. Definitely could come in handy when developing the product that hopefully I am able to work on with The Henry Ford!
6 tags
Qin Dynasty Gaming Unit Documents →
Here are most of the documents that I used for the gaming unit on the Qin Dynasty.
6 tags
A New Group, A New Game
Part of the reason that I have not posted in quite some time is that I have moved from teaching 8th grade to teaching 7th grade this year. Those of you who have taught middle school know that one year can make a huge difference in terms of the maturity level and ability level of the students that you are working with. Also for that matter no two groups of students are alike and you have to make...
8 tags
A Quick Update
Admittedly, it has been a long time since my last post and the next few posts which will seem like rapid fire will be used to bring everyone up to speed on where I am in terms of the development of this curriculum. Since my last post, Jon Cassie and I have presented at the Michigan Association of Public Charter School Academies (MAPSA) Conference at Cobo Hall in Detroit, MI. This was a very...
6 tags
Centropa HFA:SCS wiki →
This is a wiki that my students and I have created in working with an organization called Centropa, which is based in Vienna, Austria. The students watched videos about individual Holocaust survivors and their lives before, during and after the Holocaust and then wrote letters to the survivors and their families. I then pulled questions out of the students’ letters and posted them to the...
December 2012
1 post
November 2012
2 posts
September 2012
1 post
August 2012
1 post
5 tags
Educating for Sustainable Happiness Wrap Up...
Just finished with our presentation Level Up! Implementing the Gamified Classroom with Jon Cassie at the Educating for Sustainable Happiness Conference here at the Cushing Academy in Massachusetts and I am very pleased that we were able to connect with quite a few people that seem to be interested in experimenting and iterating with gamifying their own classrooms and eventually their schools. ...
June 2012
5 posts
5 tags
Educating for Sustainable Happiness →
Really excited to announce that I will be co-presenting at this conference in Massachusetts this summer August 9th-12th at Cushing Academy. We will be presenting “Level Up! Using Games and Gamification to Foster Student-Achievement and Self-Direction”
Presenting at the conference is a great opportunity as well as being able to attend the conference and visit Cushing Academy which...
3 tags
Authentic PBL →
An article from Edutopia on that presents a quick glance at the “spectrum of authenticity” of projects within true Project Based Learning. A good read.
5 tags
“At some point in our past, we drew a line between work and play as if they were...”
– Aaron Dignan, Game Frame: Using Games as a Strategy for Success, p. 28. This is a great quote that summarizes the mentality that I think any teacher that is trying to implement the game-based learning strategy in their classroom is fighting against. I know for me personally I am very fortunate to...
4 tags
Masters Certification in Serious Games at Michigan... →
Through a friend I was referred to this program at Michigan State University. It is a 3 course certificate that will take a little over a year to complete. If all goes well I will begin in the Fall of 2012 and finish at the end of the Fall semester of 2013. It is my hope that this program will give me a much deeper background knowledge of game design that will help me to continue to develop an...
