Archive for May, 2012
Building Civilizations, Brick by Digital Brick
Take a look at how teacher Joel Levin uses the online game Minecraft to teach second-grade students how to work together and build little civilizations. The video was released as one of three case studies along with the report by the Joan Ganz Cooney Center on Teachers’ Attitudes About Digital Games in the Classroom. [...]
The Ups and Downs of Game-Based Learning
By Nathan Maton Games have shown great promise for learning, but it’s not always easy to figure out the logistics of how to use them in class. Every student and teacher’s experience is unique and it takes time to calibrate and tinker to get the best out of the experience. What’s more, using games might [...]
Quick Look: MIT and Harvard announce edX
Another huge disruption in higher education: MIT and Harvard launch edX. From the announcement: “The gathering of many universities’ educational content together on one site will enable learners worldwide to access the course content of any participating university from a single website, and to use a set of online educational tools shared by all participating [...]
Google Launches New Search Education Site with Lesson Plans
Google has launched a new site called Search Education aimed at educators who want to teach online search strategies. The site includes lesson plans geared at different levels of expertise — beginner, intermediate and advanced– as well as training videos that walk through different strategies for subjects like using Creative Commons and Google maps. The [...]
New Survey: Half of Teachers Use Digital Games in Class
No longer relegated to experimental programs, digital games are becoming much more commonly used in classrooms across the country, according to a survey by the Joan Ganz Cooney Center released today. Half of the 505 K-8 teachers surveyed said they use digital games with their students two or more days a week, and 18 percent [...]
Create, Capture, Upload: New Site Features Kids’ Digital Projects
DIY.org By Katrina Schwartz Refrigerators and fireplace mantles might still be covered with children’s projects, but more and more, those projects are finding a home online. That’s just one of the purposes for the launch of DIY.org, a site that allows kids to upload photos of their projects and share it with their friends, family, [...]
Search Tip for Students: Try Predicting Your Search Results
Just as having students predict answers to math problems is a way of creating more meaningful learning, prediction can be a useful strategy in successful searching too. Search results can be presented any number of ways: tables and charts, videos, infographs. We teach students how to develop an understanding of the kinds of information that’s [...]
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