KEEPING WITH TEACHING

HFA:SCS "Made in Detroit" Video

Sat, 18 May 2013 10:06:58 -0400

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…

Malkhanova Interview (with English subtitles)

Thu, 16 May 2013 13:14:07 -0400

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 valley

Sat, 11 May 2013 12:57:52 -0400

Ken Robinson: How to escape education's death valley

Game to Learn speaks with...Mike Irwin

Wed, 08 May 2013 09:35:09 -0400

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 on TED.com

Wed, 08 May 2013 09:34:14 -0400

Rita Pierson: Every kid needs a champion | Video on TED.com:

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.

imagininglearning: “I think that we got so caught up in...

Sun, 05 May 2013 21:51:47 -0400

imagininglearning:

“I think that we got so caught up in school being a tradition that we stopped using it as a learning tool, which it should be.” -Tupac Shakur at Age 17

Follow Imagining Learning on Facebook and Twitter

Well put

imagininglearning: “I think that we got so caught up in...

Sun, 05 May 2013 21:51:39 -0400

imagininglearning:

“I think that we got so caught up in school being a tradition that we stopped using it as a learning tool, which it should be.” -Tupac Shakur at Age 17

Follow Imagining Learning on Facebook and Twitter

Living Proof - Ranana Malkhanova

Fri, 03 May 2013 13:06:43 -0400

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!

Awesome example of authentic learning!

Sun, 07 Apr 2013 12:16:24 -0400

Awesome example of authentic learning!:

Great stuff and something to aspire to as a young educator!

An piece of an ongoing project with students in Belgrade and my...

Tue, 02 Apr 2013 11:41:47 -0400

An piece of an ongoing project with students in Belgrade and my students in Detroit. This is a video made by students in Belgrade to teach my students in Detroit about their home city. My students will be making a video in the next month or so to teach the students in Belgrade about the history and city of Detroit.

novo (by Vesna Dimitrijevic)

edWeb.net Game Based Learning Community

Wed, 27 Mar 2013 09:29:55 -0400

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!

Hey HFA Students this is what the other teachers thought of your...

Sat, 16 Mar 2013 20:15:29 -0400

Hey HFA Students this is what the other teachers thought of your video, share it or regram it for everyone to see. They loved it! Great job guys! (at West Duke Building)

Washington Duke (at West Duke Building)

Sat, 16 Mar 2013 09:28:47 -0400

Washington Duke (at West Duke Building)

HFA: School for Creative Studies Hubert Massey Mural (by Art...

Tue, 26 Feb 2013 07:16:51 -0500

HFA: School for Creative Studies Hubert Massey Mural (by Art Teacher)

This is a great collaborative project that some of my current and former students have been working on for over a year! A great example of what students can do when you LET them as opposed to do it FOR them!

The Gamification of School Begins: Solve the Outbreak

Sat, 23 Feb 2013 08:09:25 -0500

The Gamification of School Begins: Solve the Outbreak:

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 sent in to figure out how outbreaks are started, before they can spread. In our new, free iPad app, you get to Solve the Outbreak.

You’ll play the role of an Epidemic Intelligence Service agent. Find clues about outbreaks and make tough decisions about what to do next: Do you quarantine the village? Talk to people who are sick? Ask for more lab results?

With fictional outbreaks based on real-life cases, you’ll have to puzzle through the evidence to earn points for each clue. The better your answers, the higher your score – and the more quickly you’ll save lives. You’ll start out as a Trainee and will earn badges by solving cases, with the goal of earning the top rank: Disease Detective.

The new app includes three outbreaks, with more coming soon. Download it today!



Perfect for teens, young adults, and public health nerds of all ages, Solve the Outbreak is a great way to take the study of epidemiology outside the classroom.

Learn about diseases and outbreaks in an engaging way.

See how disease detectives save lives around the world.

Try your hand at solving an outbreak.

Post your scores on Facebook or Twitter and challenge your friends to do better!

Salman Khan: Let's use video to reinvent education

Thu, 21 Feb 2013 07:16:16 -0500

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.

This is a tribute video to a Holocaust survivor that my students...

Tue, 19 Feb 2013 08:11:00 -0500

This is a tribute video to a Holocaust survivor that my students have created as part of a project-based learning unit on the Holocaust. More more information please check out our wiki on the subject, which has descriptions of all the different arms of this project and will soon have a link to this video as well. Students have worked really hard on this project and it is only a small piece of a much larger project that I think has taught them not only about the Holocaust but also about character and morals as well as 21st century skills.

HFA:SCS/Centropa Wiki

https://centropahfascs.wikispaces.com/home

afrankperspective: LEARN - I find this video absolutely...

Mon, 18 Feb 2013 07:29:12 -0500

afrankperspective:

LEARN - I find this video absolutely captivating. How should this inform what we do with students on a daily basis?

Sometimes its more about the experience…

Gaming Unit Effort and Reflection Rubric

Sat, 16 Feb 2013 12:54:51 -0500

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.

Student Feedback on Latest Gaming Unit

Sat, 16 Feb 2013 11:23:00 -0500

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 of things that students asked to be changed. I tried to be reflective with regards to some of the comments that students made that I have included below in terms of what I take from those comments and what I plan to address those concerns. I have intentionally focused here on the criticism that the students gave and have not included many things that the students enjoyed simply because at this point I think focusing on the things that the students would like to see fixed is the way to make these gaming units better.

Student Quotes

“I had trouble getting everything done with an equal amount of effort”; “I would plan my time differently and put more effort into my work

Not sure if planning things out the first time would be of great benefit because they would have to feel the frustration in order to understand the need for planning. So you do a small game the first time, they feel that frustration and the next time you build in time to talk about planning and what that looks like

“Have the classroom be the game board”

I am not even really sure what the student truly meant here, but the idea of making the game board and the game more a part of the classroom is just one more way to get students to buy in. Also gives students more on an “in your face” reminder of what they are supposed to be doing.

“I would also want you to make the level 2 easier because I didn’t get the hang of it at first but now I still need you to make it easier please.”

Here, while it is obvious that they are asking for an easier assignment, I think there is something else embedded within this statement that could easily satisfy this concern but also address the concerns of students that think the game is too easy and are finishing early. I am thinking here of a game like Angry Birds, where in order to pass the level you must simply “kill” all of the pigs, however after you beat the level you get a score and based on that score are either given one, two or three stars. The activities could be structured with a “1 star score” where the student accomplishes the basics of the assignment or the basic learning objectives and then a “2 star score” and so on. Just like in Angry Birds the students would have a game board showing what levels they earned 1 star and 2 star, etc. This then gives students visual motivation to go above and beyond the basics, but allows you to differentiate much easier. You can also require that students complete a certain number of activities at the 3 star level, which of course can also be differentiated based on the student.

“Give topics that we can pick from and then we learn about that topic.”

While it would be a little harder to manage this could be accomplished by starting the game after a few introductory activities in which you are giving direct instruction and inserting a bunch of “teasers” as potential topics and then let the students “choose” what they are going to study and go from there. This would be a lot easier to do in a high school setting but could also be done with middle schoolers that have a little bit of experience with the gaming model.

“I would probably want to go on a scavenger hunt. It would be five items to find. They would be incrypted (sic) riddles.”

Not really much to say here just a good quote from a kid that shows more possibilities of directions you can go with this teaching style.

“Don’t miss days of school because that’s just putting more work on you than it is.”

This is a problem for all teachers, helping students get caught up after a long absence, this student in particular had to have her gull bladder removed. On her feedback form she also included that she would like to see more group work. With a game-based unit there is always the possibility of putting your students together that have missed some time together in a group and have them do the game as a group. They don’t even necessarily have to be in the same class, you can provide them time to work after school or perhaps work out a deal with another teacher to help make this work.

“I would like to see examples of the project”

Here we see the importance of documenting good projects for showing future classes. Having never taught the same subject or grade level for two years straight I have not yet been able to take advantage of something like this but that doesn’t mean that I can’t document examples of good work to show students for them to analyze. Ron Berger’s book An Ethic of Excellence really opened my eyes to this idea, I have blogged about it in the past.

What to change (these are ranked in order of the frequency of the comments from students with #1 being the most frequently requested thing to be changed):

More levels and make them shorter
Work in groups/group or teamwork activities
More time
More explanation of the topics and activities
Smaller activities
More options to choose from for the Level 1 and Level 2 activities
Have some opinionated questions
include mini-games and bonus games
Making more like a board game
Incorporation of technology into the end products of the assignments
Incorporation of “pop-culture” or more present issues into the levels or bonus levels”