games

On this episode of TTT http://www.teachersteachingteachers.org/feed/podcast/ , we talk about a new endeavor at Youth Voices http://youthvoices.net/play where students are invited "to become a social media power user through commenting on other players’ posts, responding to literary and informational texts, doing long-term research projects, composing, revising, and publishing with text and media, and becoming a self-directed learner."

We're looking for teachers of English, history and social studies, arts and media, and science to come play with the Common Core Standards on Youth Voices.

Our guests on this episode are:

Erick Gordon Jeremy Hyler Chris Sloan Jennifer Woollven

Len Schiff Valerie Burton monika hardy Fred Haas

Click Read More to see the many details of this new game, available at Youth Voices http://youthvoices.net/play

On this episode of TTT (recorded earlier in the summer), join Samantha Adams and Jack West, along with Jeremy Hyler and Erin Wilkey Oh to learn more about mobiles, tablets, games, PLE's, augumented reality, and natural user interfaces.

If you haven't read it yet, after listening to TTT#305 you'll want to read the NMC Horizon Report > 2012 K-12 Edition. You can get the report at the NMC site: http://www.nmc.org/publications/2012-horizon-report-k12 or you can join the conversation about on the report at the NWP's Digital Is: http://digitalis.nwp.org/resource/3977.

• Samatha Adams, Director of Communications at the New Media Consortium (NMC), and here are some of the things Samantha does athe NMC:
  • Lead writer and researcher for the Horizon Report series (http://www.nmc.org/horizon-project/horizon-reports)
  • Lead writer/editor - web and print
  • Community manager, social media strategist and analyst
  • Membership, press, and public outreach
  • Webinar production/hosting
  • Content manager for all nmc websites, including nmc.org and navigator.nmc.org
  • Project analysis and user experience for NMC partners -- mainly large companies

On this episode of Teachers Teaching Teachers, Monika Hardy, Chris Sloan and Paul Allison invited Amy Lewark, Mary Ann Reilly, Adam Mackie, and Jodhbir Singh, who has been visiting visiting the Lab that Monika Hardy facilitates. He has a passion to help change education in India where he is from. Monika writes, "We've been corresponding for some time now. This is our first face to face. He's incredible and will have some good insight of what we're doing and how it looks in person."

Mainly, we learned from a group of educators who teach the classics using gaming. We hope you'll enjoy learning more from the Pericles Group.

From their web site:

Kevin Ballestrini teaches Latin and Mythology at the Norwich Free Academy in Connecticut. He has received an M.A. and B.A. in Classics from the University of Colorado and University of Connecticut respectively. In addition to experience teaching in a traditional classroom setting, in the 2010-2011 academic year Kevin deployed the first fully practomimetic introductory language course at the high school level in a section of Latin I. The experience has clearly enhanced student engagement and connection to life and culture in ancient Rome. For 2011-12, he will be expanding the offering of practomimetic courses to the second year of introductory Latin in addition to the first. As an avid technology enthusiast, he maintains his blog, Techna Virumque Cano (http://kevinbal.blogspot.com) where he discusses the intersection of technology and his teaching. He is also a regular contributor to the collaborative blog Play the Past (http://playthepast.org). Kevin is the leader of a large kinship in The Lord of the Rings Online and active in many gaming communities.

Roger Travis is an Associate Professor of Classics in the Department of Literatures, Cultures & Languages of the University of Connecticut. He is also the Director of the Video Games and Human Values Initiative (http://vghvi.org) at UConn, an interdisciplinary online nexus for online courses and scholarly activities like fellowships, symposia, and the initiative’s Proceedings, of which he is the editor. He received his Bachelor’s degree in classics from Harvard College, and his Ph.D. in comparative literature from the University of California, Berkeley before arriving at UConn in 1997. He has published on Homeric epic, Greek tragedy, Greek historiography, the 19th C. British novel, HALO, and the massively-multiplayer online role-playing game He has been President of the Classical Association of New England and of the Classical Association of Connecticut. He writes the blog Living Epic (http://livingepic.org) about his discovery of the fundamental connection between ancient epic and the narrative video game, and is a founder and contributor of the collaborative blog Play the Past(http://playthepast.org). In the 2009-2010 academic year, Roger offered the first courses ever designed entirely as practomimes (seehttp://www.academicimpressions.com/news.php?i=59 for detail).

Stephen Slota is a Ph.D. student in Educational Psychology at the University of Connecticut and holds a full-time assistantship with the UConn Two Summers Program under his advisor, Dr. Michael Young. Stephen received both his Bachelor of Science in Molecular & Cellular Biology and Masters in Curriculum and Instruction from the University of Connecticut, followed by two years teaching life science at a Title IX Connecticut high school. He has previously served as a professional development specialist in educational technology and now works with Dr. Roger Travis of the UConn Department of Modern and Classical Languages on the effects of game-based learning in high school and college Latin courses. Stephen’s research interests include: gaming and its effects on student engagement and achievement, situated effects of gaming on secondary learners, prosocial learning through massive multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs), the influence of imagination and dreams on situational perception, and pedagogical means of improving student self-efficacy.

21st Century Learning #99
Sarah Hanawald - Designing Games and Activities for Faculty Professional Development
April 2, 2009

Sarah Hanawald from Greensboro Day School and the Literacy, Technology, and Learning blog joined us this week.  We discussed desiging games and simulations for faculty professional development around using social learning tools.

What are your thoughts about this?  How would you design a game for faculty to learn how to participate in online communities? 

* Photo from: Vizzzual-dot-com

<click here for the chat transcript>