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Ideas for Fun and Learning During the Holiday Break

December 24, 2012 | 8:00 AM | By

Flickr: Andrew Beeston

With two weeks of holiday break stretched out ahead, here are some fun ways to keep kids occupied and engaged, as collected over time on MindShift.

1. DIVE INTO MINECRAFT.

Simply put, Minecraft is a game that lets you build worlds out of blocks. But Minecraft’s visual simplicity belies what is a completely open-ended and therefore terrifically complex world. And the best of that world: it’s up to the player to design. Minecraft is what’s known as a “sandbox” game, giving players almost complete freedom to build within it. While many video games are focused on certain goals — level up, save the princess, destroy the aliens, for example — Minecraft has no clear-cut missions, at least not in that way. Players in Minecraft must scavenge for resources in order to build things — mining for stone to build buildings, mining for coal to build fire. One of the only limitations in-game is time — the sun sets each evening and when it’s dark, spiders and skeletons come out and can attack the characters.

2. MAKE A FILM.

The next Steven Spielberg might emerge from a summer movie-making project. Kids can exercise their writing, creativity, organization, and artistic skills by making their own movies, just as any director does: writing scripts, choosing actors, practicing lines, not to mention actually filming and editing. For those who own an Apple computer, iMovie makes the process very simple. YouTube also offers free editing, and you can find other editing software online.

3. START A DIY PROJECT.

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 DIY.org, a site that allows kids to upload photos of their projects and share it with their friends, family, and the Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Learning Methods, apps, Games, Minecraft

FTC Urges App Makers to Protect Kids’ Privacy

December 11, 2012 | 10:14 AM | By

Flickr: Christopher Frier Brown

By

Developers of smartphone and tablet apps aimed at children have done little in the past year to give parents “the information they need to determine what data is being collected from their children, how it is being shared, or who will have access to it,” the Federal Trade Commission reports.

“Our study shows that kids’ apps siphon an alarming amount of information from mobile devices without disclosing this fact to parents,” FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz says in a statement released by the commission. “All of the companies in the mobile app space, especially the gatekeepers of the app stores, need to do a better job. We’ll do another survey in the future and we will expect to see improvement.”

The FTC’s report is posted here. In it, the commission’s staff:

“Strongly urges the mobile app industry to develop and implement ‘best practices’ to protect privacy, including those recommended in the recent FTC Privacy Report: (1) incorporating privacy protections into the design of mobile products and services (‘privacy by design’); (2) offering parents easy-to-understand choices about the data collection and sharing through kids’ apps; and (3) providing greater transparency about how data is collected, used, and shared through kids’ apps. These standards should be developed expeditiously to ensure that consumers have confidence in the growing mobile apps marketplace.”

According to the FTC, among its more troubling findings is that many children’s apps “shared certain information with third parties — such as device ID, geolocation, or phone number — without disclosing that fact to parents. Further, a number of apps contained interactive features — such as advertising, the ability to make in-app purchases, and links to social media – without Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Culture, apps

The App’s the Thing: Shakespeare Goes Social

November 30, 2012 | 11:29 AM | By

TonyTone/Ian Hill/Photologue_NP/

By Aran Levasseur

Shakespeare is going digital.

Notre Dame professor Elliott Visconsi has co-created a new app for the iPad called The Tempest that he says helps accelerate student learning by allowing them to develop deeper comprehension in less time than solitary reading. At the heart of the app is a social network that encourages students to communicate their interpretations and collaborate with others.

“We’ve found that most people learn best when they are in the role of author, creator or collaborator, when they are teaching others,” Visconsi said.

We spoke with Visconsi about transforming Shakespeare for the 21st century and why the intensely social experience of the app is what, in essence, the humanities have always been about. The following is an edited transcript of that conversation.

Q&A

The Tempest app is described as transforming Shakespeare for the 21st century. How does it do that? And why do you think Shakespeare needs to be transformed for the 21st century?

Elliot Visconsi: We are trying to lower the entry cost of difficult content like Shakespeare by adding in great tools and features that allow readers from all backgrounds to grapple with, appreciate, and Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Culture, Learning Methods, Teaching With Tech, apps, Shakespeare, The Tempest

Four Smart Ways to Use Cell Phones in Class

November 29, 2012 | 11:55 AM | By

Erin Scott

By Jennifer Carey

A good rule of thumb for any classroom use of cellphones: the lesson/activity must be engaging as well as productive. You don’t want technology for the sake of technology (and students aren’t going to be intrinsically fascinated with a device they use routinely when they’re outside of school). If the students don’t enjoy what they’re doing, they will be more tempted to use their phones inappropriately.

Here are some ideas:

IN-CLASS POLLING/QUIZZING. Educators like using the program called Poll Everywhere. It’s free for audiences up to 40, and allows you to create quiz questions for which students text in their answers. No expensive clicker systems to buy, set up, and maintain. If students register their cellphone numbers (a requirement in my class) you can even track their answers for impromptu quizzes or review.

IN-CLASS BACK-CHANNELING: Backchanneling refers to the use of networks & social media to maintain an online, real-time conversation alongside spoken remarks. For example, if you attend a keynote presentation at a conference, you’ll often find that some listeners in the audience are using their mobile devices to comment to other audience members about things the speaker is saying, while the speaker is saying them.

Backchanneling can be a great way to give quiet students a voice, to introduce additional facts and insights during a lesson, or simply to encourage “conversation” during lecture or group readings when you don’t want to actually interrupt the presentation.

While Twitter is probably the most popular medium for backchanneling news and entertainment events (using #hashtags to create an instant network), teachers may want a more controllable Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Learning Methods, Teaching With Tech, apps, cell phones, Mobile Learning

Going Retro: Reading Apps for Real Books

November 27, 2012 | 8:00 AM | By

Reading Rainbow app

YouTube clips. Texting. Twitter. Facebook status updates.

The prevalence of short-attention-span media — easily scanned or consumed — has led to much hand-wringing over how students will develop that lifelong love of reading perceived to be so critical to lifelong learning.

One answer (in addition to “it’s not as bad as you think,” as a recent Pew Research Center study might be summarized) may be in adapting the function to the form. Which is to say to put real, and sometimes classic, children’s books on the latest digital devices via apps and the web.

That’s the tack several tech-oriented companies are taking with both fiction and non-fiction. And while the customer for each effort differs — ranging from parents to teachers to librarians — the emphasis is remarkably similar: instilling the love of reading and books early, even if there isn’t a physical book.

A handful of recent examples for this revenge of the retro:

LIVING BOOKS.  Your first reaction may be that “Living Books” sounds familiar. And it should.  A startup, Wanderful, is bringing back titles in the much-loved series that software company Broderbund originally produced two decades ago, at the dawn of the CD-ROM age.

No longer restricted to physical discs or desktop computers underpowered for multimedia, the updated titles are returning as $5 iPad iOS apps (and eligible for Apple’s Volume Purchase Program for Education), with plans to add Android versions after the first of the year. These newest Living Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Teaching With Tech, apps, books, Reading

For Holiday Travel, Apps to Keep Kids Busy

November 21, 2012 | 11:06 AM | By

Flickr: GoodNCrazy

By

Thanksgiving is Thursday, and that means more than 43 million Americans will be on the road, driving to family gatherings. For many parents, the crowded roads can bring another challenge: Keeping a 9-year-old entertained along the way. And sometimes, DVDs are not enough. These days, kids love to tinker with smartphones and tablets, as well.

With that in mind, NPR’s Renee Montagne spoke with an actual 9-year-old, Jane Frauenfelder, and her father, Mark. Together, they host the podcast Apps for Kids.

Here’s a list of apps the Frauenfelders recommend for traveling kids, in an interview airing on Morning Edition Wednesday:

Story Dice — Making up stories is a time-honored way to pass the time on the road. This app gives you the basic elements of a story, in the form of simple images on dice (a face, a king’s crown, a rocket, etc.). Players then string the images together.

“What we like to do,” Mark says, “is take turns, each of us telling a story that uses all of those elements. And then we, as a family, vote on the best one.”

Jane describes a typical story: “One day, there was a kid on a school bus, and he was carrying a soccer ball. Then it flew out of the school bus, so he had to chase it. Then he met a magical unicorn that gave him a piece of toast.”

“That’s the short version,” Mark says.

The game is similar to Rory’s Story Cubes, which comes in both app and physical form. Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Learning Methods, apps, Boing Boing, Games