Virtual Reality Made of Cardboard! Seriously Folks ... Cardboard!

The following is a guest blog by Dr. Roland Rios, Ft. Sam Houston ISD, San Antonio, Texas.

A few weeks ago, I was fortunate to attend one of Google's Texas Roadshows. It was a day-long event hosted here in San Antonio. Some incredible folks from Google conducted the event, along with our local hosts from Judson ISD. We got to hear about some future plans for Google Apps for Education, learn about the new teacher certification programs, delve deeply into the GAFE administrative console, and dialogue with other techies in the San Antonio area.

But the highlight of the day for this big 'ol geek was the chance to play around with the new Google Cardboard. Google Cardboard is a small cardboard viewing device that allows you to immerse yourself in virtual reality. All it requires is a Google Cardboard device, a smartphone (Android or iOS), and a compatible app.

If you've never experienced VR, you're in for a treat. In VR you "interact" with your environment by simply moving your head in the direction you want to view. The app responds as if you were in that location live. With Google Cardboard I was able to stand in front of the Eiffel Tower, take a look at Old Faithful, or journey through the Smithsonian!

There are a variety of Google Cardboard "endorsed" viewers to choose from. The Google Cardboard website has quite a few listed on their Get Cardboard page.  And, they're CHEAP! Our district can buy directly from Amazon and I was able to find a slew of them there. One was listed at only $4.10! If you're really adventurous, you can even download printable instructions and make one yourself.

Once you have one, simply go to your applicable smartphone store (Google Play Store or iTunes) and search for "Google Cardboard." I use iOS and was able to find quite a few. Start with the "official" Google Cardboard app. Here are a few more I had some fun with:

Insidious VR - This is an immersive horror film app based on the hit film "Insidious." Note: I am a big chicken when it comes to scary movies and I didn't even get past the intro!

Volvo VR - Test drive a new Volvo XC90. This app really shows off the potential of VR!

Orbulus Mojo VR - This is an incredible collection of VR experiences from all around the world!

in360Tube - There are a slew of virtual reality videos on YouTube. This app helps you find them quickly. Note: The VR videos on YouTube can be played back in a variety of formats so they can work with different types of VR viewers. Tap the screen upon playback and choose the little icon that looks like Google Cardboard. Also, I noticed a glitch in the app. The search text box doesn't always clear and the clear text button doesn't seem to work. Just exit the program and jump back in.

Also, if you have an Android device, you can go to any location in Google Maps, go to Street View, and then double tap the icon in the lower right. It will split the screen and you can visit the location in VR using your viewer!

So the big question is ... how can we use this in the classroom? I think the possibilities are limitless. Clearly, there are opportunities to take students on "field trips" to museums and historical landmarks without ever leaving the classroom. I can imagine soon apps will pop up that will allow science students to go "inside" cells or visit planets. Google is just scratching the surface!

Image by othree (Google Cardboard) [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Makers

When my kids were somewhere around seven and eleven years old, they wanted a go-kart. A few kids in the neighborhood had them and so my children wanted one. I found a used go-kart, bought a new engine for it, fixed up the seat, added new tires, and before long we were riding up and down our dead-end road.

When I think back on this experience, I am sure I was reliving my own childhood dreams and frustrations. When I was eleven, I also wanted a go-kart. In my case I was more enamored with the soapbox derby karts I had seen through scouting. However, I knew there was no way my dad was going to buy one or even build one. So I made my own. I scrounged wheels from old lawnmowers. I picked up wood scraps off local construction trash piles. I borrowed my dad's tools. I learned a lot of physics building those childhood karts. For example, I learned that a nail was great for connecting wood to wood. I also learned that that same nail would not sustain the wear and tear of being used to hold a wheel on. In fact, nailing four wheels to a 2x4 frame and thinking they would still be there if/when you reached the bottom of a hill proved to be pure folly. I also learned that nailing a crude stick to the side of your kart to create a handbrake was more folly. I worked on these problems. In looking at pictures of go-karts, I saw they often used an axle to hold the wheels. So I sought out steel rods to hold my wheels. Unable to solve my brake design, I at least recognized the need to have room to coast to a stop.

Building go-karts was only one aspect of the "maker" nature of my childhood. Modeling was a huge aspect of my play. With money from a paper route, I bought and built many plastic models. I asked for model trains and racecar sets for Christmas and birthdays. I designed elaborate layouts, solved electrical problems, and built homemade scenery. Later I moved to model airplanes made from balsa wood that were powered by a small engine and flew in circles with control lines. I learned about fuel systems, carburetors, and different types of glue. I learned about lift and drag. I would often start with a ready-to-build kit, but soon I turned to designing my own planes. Some flew. Some just crashed. In junior high "shop" class, I learned about leatherwork, basic drafting, foundry, and woodwork ... by making things. I took architecture in high school. I was embedded into a basic drafting class where I spent the entire year doing an independent study of architecture. I learned as I designed and drafted a house. As a developing musician, I maintained, repaired, and even built my own instruments. I often made things out of necessity because there was no money to buy something new. I built speakers, repaired radios, and resurrected broken guitars. Each project delivered its own new learning about physics, mechanics, electronics, woodworking, etc.

As I grew older my projects grew more mature, as did my understanding of tools and physics. By the time I graduated high school, I could maintain and repair the family car. As a young man of 30, I designed and built my own workshop from scratch.

Phil Schlechty writes that learning begins with a problem or product about which the student cares. I do not need any convincing of this. It is obvious to me. It is a self-evident truth I live and experience every day.

This learning by making things has always struggled in the factory model we call public education, where the emphasis is on memorization of facts taught via direct instruction and where students often learn concepts in the abstract. I wish I could say that my schooling was supportive of my making, but in fact, it wasn’t. I was left to tinker and form my own explanations when concepts revealed themselves through experience. If my science teacher had just pulled me aside and said, "Here are some formulas that might make your go-kart go faster," or explained lift and pitch and yawl to me, I would have jumped to learn these things. No one ever did. Even in my junior high shop classes, we only got to make things because “all boys need shop,” not to support any project I was involved with. In fairness, my architecture teacher did give me some print resources to help me out. He really had no other choice. I was the only architecture student in a class of beginning drafters and he had no time to give me any instruction. This turned out to be a blessing as I could work to my heart's content on my house design and consult content when I needed it.

On the bright side, there are growing movements that challenge the status quo. The Schlechty Center advocates the design of engaging work that begins with a Product Focus about which the student cares. The Schlechty Center is not alone in advocating this concept. Stanford University hosts an entire strand of learning for aspiring teachers based on concepts of design. International author and educator Yong Zhao has advanced a concept called Product-Oriented Learning in his book entitled World Class Learners. The concept of Project-Based Learning has taken a foothold in many districts across America, supported by heady entities like the George Lucas Foundation and Edutopia.

And then there is the so-called "maker movement." Yes, that is an official title of a real-life movement that is committed to the concept that kids learn by making things. These people are very serious about children learning via Product Focus. They have the support of universities like Stanford and MIT. They merge the world of creative making and technology through the Internet of Things. They advocate for the creation and use of fabrication labs [FAB Labs] where 3D printers, computer-programmed carving machines, and robotics tools are commonplace. They have their own magazine entitled Make:.

As I travel around the country with the Schlechty Center, in talking to students I find that this learning via Product Focus is still a powerful heuristic for them. In the past, I made go-karts, models, house plans, and musical creations. For twenty-first-century students, making still includes entities like the arts, woodworking, and tinkering with cars. But technology has driven a whole new world of making that includes video games, robotics, rocketry, and computer apps, to name a very few. 3D printing has taken modeling and prototyping to a whole new level.

Exciting possibilities! Keep your eyes on them. Want to know more? Read Engaging Students by Phil Schlechty, Invent to Learn: Making, Tinkering, and Engineering in the Classroom by Sylvia Martinez and Gary Stager, and World Class Learners by Yong Zhao.

Digital Equity

We’re getting on our soapbox today, Kid President-style, so please forgive and indulge us.

We travel all across America working with teachers, schools, and districts. We literally go from sea to shining sea!

We see the technology scene in all its glory ... and sadness. The glory is that there are many districts that have powered up. Many issue a digital device to every student. There are powerful Internet backbones to support the work. The sadness is that, unfortunately, there are still many districts in which the teacher is lucky to have one device. And in some cases, the teacher has to provide that!

Digital inequity. We ALL need to work on it. With every professional chance we get, we need to positively advocate for all students to have access to high-speed Internet via a digital device.

But in the meantime, digital inequity cannot be an excuse for not integrating technology in some way! There may be ways you haven't even considered ...

A teacher with one laptop and a cell phone can do so much to design engaging work and resources for students. With one laptop and a cell phone (you don’t even need Internet), you can create stunning videos that affirm the good work and things your students are doing. Go ahead, take out your cell phone and, over the course of a week, take pictures or short video clips of your students doing good work in school and out of school. Got students on a school sports team? Click. Band concert this week? Click! Click! Is that Sally solving a difficult math problem? Click! There’s Johnny helping a classmate with a science problem. Click! Click! Wow, Tommy just defused an argument before it became really bad news. Click! Now send them all to your laptop, throw them into a movie program, add some background music, and play it at the end of the week. Watch your students' eyes light up. We at the Schlechty Center call that Affirmation.

Are you starting a PBL next month? Create an anchor video to kickstart the work. Make it yourself. Get in it yourself. Get your students in it.

As you move forward with this work, make a plan to expand.

For a thousand bucks, you can get five devices. Chromebooks and refurbished iPads can all be had for $200 each. So work on the money. Pull out all the stops. Tell your students' parents that you are creating a class piggy bank to save a thousand dollars to buy five devices. Apply at DonorsChoose.org. Apply for every state or local source you can find. (You never know when Stephen Colbert... ) Tell your students' parents that the best Christmas present they can give you is a donation to the class piggy bank. Hold a bake sale. Hold a car wash. As the Kid President says, "You got air coming through your nose.  You got a heartbeat." YOU CAN DO IT!

When those five devices arrive, a whole new world will open up—Internet or no Internet. Working in teams of four, your kids can create awesome videos. Acting out a scene from Shakespeare? Camera, Action, Take One! Science investigation? Camera, Action, Take One! Field trip? Camera, Action, Take One!

We call this a form of Product Focus, and it is a powerful heuristic device for designing engaging schoolwork.

Still no Internet? It’s time for a field trip. Design some awesome work that turns kids loose to explore and create the content you need them to learn. And if they do the work over lunch at McDonald's (free Internet), they will probably love you for it!

Finally, take care of yourself. Get the professional development you need to do all this. If a good conference is not in the budget, get help online. The Internet is full of awesome tutorials to get you in the game. You can get a lot right here at the Engagement Connection.

As all this grows, someone will take notice. And you, the trailblazing teacher, will have used engagement to blaze a trail to digital equity. And the Kid President will say you have shown others how to "get on the path to awesome."

Stepping down from the soapbox now. Let us know what you think about these ideas.

The Engagement People

Collaboration in a Digital World

In his book Engaging Students, on page 85, Phil Schlechty addresses how teachers might organize knowledge in schoolwork. He writes, “Given the content that is to be mastered and the skills to be developed, what resources are available that bear on the subject involved? For example, what does a Web search reveal about possible sources of instruction? Are there prepared programs that reveal sensitivity to the need to create materials and approaches that place emphasis on efforts to appeal to intrinsic motives [of students]…?”

Designers of engaging schoolwork need an arsenal of resources to create work that addresses the needs, motives, and values of their students so that students will learn what they are expected to learn. To this end, technology offers an opportunity for teacher-designers to collaborate and share ideas like never before.

Every teacher could benefit from a digital cohort of fellow teachers to follow and share ideas with. And every teacher needs a way to do it in less time!

Some examples:

Martha Lackey is a second grade ESL teacher in Dallas, Texas. She blogs the highs and lows of her classroom, and in doing so, she has created a gold mine of ideas that other teachers can learn from. http://martha-lackey.blogspot.com

Catlin Tucker is an English teacher who uses a lot of blended learning experiences in her classroom. Most recently, she had her students create their own TED Talks. Her blogs are about classroom work and products done by her students. Her site is a treasure chest of ideas. http://catlintucker.com

Mike Paul is a teacher in Louisville, Kentucky. Mike loves to write about his classroom experiences and technology in general. A recent post on an Algebra lesson using PBL would help any math teacher.  http://pikemalltech.com

Justin Lanier is a middle school teacher who leads blogs on math at http://mathmunch.org. In addition to being a blog about actual classroom experiences, Math Munch also explores the Internet for great ideas that can be shared.

These are four examples out of many. The point is that the Internet offers an incredible opportunity for sharing, learning, and expanding the teacher-designer's tool case of ideas and resources.

Some readers are undoubtedly saying, “Right. I’m already trying to squeeze ten hours into an eight-hour workday and you want me to start reading five to ten blogs a day. Get a life!”

No, I don’t want you to do that.

I want you to join the greatest blog filter of all time. This filter will give you a short teaser for every teacher blog you follow. In a quick five-minute scan, you can cover ten to twenty topics, and then choose and read any that would help you. This filter will organize the teachers you follow into columns and allow you to peruse their offerings even more quickly. Without even reading the blogs that interest you, you can bookmark and save the blogs in your bookmarks file by topic. Then, when you are designing work for your kids, you can check your resource file for ideas and read only what helps you.

What is the filter’s name? Twitter and its companion: TweetDeck.

The education world is changing every day. You need access to the latest ideas to fill your tool chest without adding an hour to your workday. The Internet gives you that access. So take advantage of it!

The Engagement People

Video Editing Has Entered a New Era

Some of the more powerful tools for designing engaging resources for students lie in the world of video editing. With powerful programs like Windows Movie Maker and iMovie, teachers are creating wonderful anchor videos for PBL lessons in addition to original video content to flip their classrooms or offer students Affirmation of their work. But let's face it, we don't always have time to get our Steven Spielberg on! You might have found a great video to use to teach an important concept, but the time just isn't there to drop it into WMM or iMovie to edit and add the necessary components you want to stress. In addition, the copyright world is downright confusing and the very idea of downloading an existing video and editing it is scary.

Enter EDpuzzle. This programs allow for quick video trimming on the front and back end. This means you can essentially make a video shorter, start the video anywhere you want, or cut a clip out of a video. But where EDpuzzle really rocks is here: a teacher can pause the video to add audio comments and questions! These tools allow a teacher to increase clarity in a video which may address a student's need for Clear and Compelling Product Standards. This feature also allows a teacher to modify and organize a video's content in a manner that may address a student's needs regarding Organization of Knowledge.

Think about it. Lots of research says that students engage with video content. If you have confirmed that with your own students, a program like EDpuzzle allows you to edit a video with text or audio and emphasize key points. And unlike creating a video from scratch, EDpuzzle is a very quick process.

EDpuzzle also has impressive student data tracking. There is a classroom panel so that teachers can easily see how and what students do. Students enroll in the class with a simple classroom code, like in Edmodo. Students can enroll with no personal information; they don't even have to give a full name.

EDpuzzle is a quick and powerful tool for addressing multiple Design Qualities in the classroom.

Here is an example in EDpuzzle using audio and multiple-choice quiz features. The learning objective is to develop a working definition of student engagement. A great video from Phil Schlechty addressing this content already exists online. Now, look what can be done with that video in EDpuzzle!

Augmented Reality and Engagement

Augmented Reality, often referred to simply as AR, is a digital phenomenon that is growing increasingly in our everyday lives and our school classrooms. It is a fascinating field that has great potential to affect the way we learn. There are many engagement connections to be made in this area.

First, let’s get clear about what AR is. Augmented reality takes an everyday experience and augments it with digital technology to create a new experience. Consider reading as an example. The reality is the important, everyday experience of reading. A student picks up a book, turns the pages, and reads. That experience can be augmented. As the student reads, he or she has handy a tablet device or smartphone with an appropriate app downloaded. At key points during the reading, the student holds the device over the book and the book comes to life with music, special effects, narration, and even related games. The reality is reading the book. The augmentation is the digital experience. Together they create Augmented Reality.

A very popular example of Augmented Reality was shown in the popular 2002 movie Minority Report starring Tom Cruise. As Cruise walked through a mall, he was bombarded with video advertising. No big deal. That is everyday reality. But the ads identified him by eye scans and immediately began interacting with him by name! That’s the augmentation. See it in this one-minute clip.

Professor Chris Dede of Harvard University lists Augmented Reality as an emerging learning style for neomillennial students (those born after 2000) in an article published 10 years ago in EDUCAUSE  entitled “Planning for Neomillennial Learning Styles.” One need only research the emergence of AR books like William Joyce’s The Numberlys and The Amazing Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore and other AR student resources to see that Dede's assertions are coming true.

To date, there are a growing number of ready-made resources that use Augmented Reality. AR Flashcards, colAR Mix, Word Lens, SPACECRAFT 3D, and Anatomy 4D are but a few popular classroom AR experiences available as student resources.

To date, we are aware of two platforms that allow teachers and students to create their own Augmented Reality experiences. The first is QR coding. QR codes are basic AR. The code symbol becomes a trigger for a related digital experience, like a video.

A second platform takes the process further. It is called Aurasma. With Aurasma, the user takes a picture of something and it becomes a trigger. The user also uploads a corresponding video into the Aurasma studio. (By doing this, the viewer is NOT dependent on a video hosting site like YouTube or Vimeo that may be blocked by the local district.) Then other users (like a classroom of students), using the Aurasma app on a tablet or smartphone, hold their device up to the picture and the experience comes alive with the corresponding video.

The possibilities are endless.

Imagine a math student learning a new process. A teacher could create an explanatory video triggered by a picture of the problem. When working the problem, a student who does not readily see how to do the math can simply hold up his or her device and an explanation appears! You can see this very example in action on the video below.

Our friends at TeachThought wrote an article with 20 different examples of Augmented Reality in education. You can read it here.

Augmented Reality is still in the early stages of development. The primary reason for that is that the development of a seamless device like the one providing eye scanning in Minority Report has not yet emerged. There was a lot of hope for Google Glass, but, alas, it has been pulled from the market for further development. When a device comes along that allows one to simply look at something and get an augmented experience, look out! This industry will explode.

In the meantime, there are lots of connections that can be made to engagement and the Design Qualities. Augmented Reality offers endless possibilities for Novelty and Variety. The ability of AR to provide on-demand help by simply holding up a device can create Clear and Compelling Product Standards. A student’s ability to choose when and where to use the AR feature provides Choice. Tech-savvy students may find that AR lends Authenticity to their work. Aurasma allows student to create their own AR experiences; that can leverage Product Focus. Teachers can create AR resources as part of Organization of Knowledge. Students working together on an AR product could find Affiliation if interdependence is built in.

Just remember, you have to know your students to match their needs with the Design Qualities and then design the Augmented Reality experience to align with those needs.

Augmented Reality is an exciting field for educators to learn about and leverage for engagement and profound learning. Have you found a unique way to use Augmented Reality in your classroom? Please consider sharing it via the comment section below. If you know your Design Qualities, please share the connection the work you've designed has to them.

The Engagement People

Whyville: A Virtual Environment Online Learning Game

This blog is the third entry in a Schlechty Center series about educational gaming and engagement. Scroll down through this site to access the first two installments or click the links below.

1. Getting in the Game
2. The Amazing World of Gamestar Mechanic

Whyville is a multiuser virtual environment platform for elementary-age children. This means that students are entering a make-believe online community where they live, play, and work. When a student registers to play in Whyville, he or she is given an avatar, which amounts to a clip-art icon. Avatars can be modified, but they cannot be made from actual pictures of students (this offers protection). Student players move their avatars around the Whyville community to interact with others who are in the community and to play the many games available.

We have stressed in earlier blogs the importance of teachers' learning to play the games they guide their students to explore. Learning to play in Whyville will give teachers a firm grasp of the strengths and challenges of virtual environment gaming. We invested approximately eight hours over two weeks learning to play in Whyville. In doing so, we only touched on the major components of the game. To truly experience this platform, teachers should join and play.

Whyville has a built-in virtual economy. There are opportunities for students to shop and buy things. For example, a student could buy different clothes or appearances for his or her avatar. Don’t be confused here. There is no buying and selling of off-line merchandise. Everything is kept within the online environment. Student players can also create and run their own online businesses in Whyville. For example, some students design and sell avatars. A student can even write and sell musical songs.

Every player gets a bank account, which includes checking, savings, and investment options. To complete banking business, a player actually moves his or her avatar to the virtual bank. Entrepreneurial content is very much in evidence.

Because of this virtual economy, there are opportunities for students to practice consumer skills and all the associated academics that go with these skills. This real-world economic simulation could create an authentic experience for some students and leverage the Design Quality of Authenticity.

Whyville is an excellent tool to teach appropriate online social behavior. Students cannot play Whyville without first passing several quizzes on digital citizenship. This may also address the Design Quality of Authenticity for some students.

Whyville has  Novelty and Variety embedded throughout the platform.

There are a lot of games to play in Whyville that cover a wide variety of learning possibilities, including academic and social content. Many of the games require a team to complete. This interdependence could address a student’s motivational need for affiliation and thus leverage the Design Quality of Affiliation. For example, we played the “Cafeteria Trash Game.” In this game, we were required to correctly divide items of lunch trash into four categories that included glass, plastic, trash, and paper. The process taught recycling. However, it was not possible for one player to complete the game in the allocated time. A second player had to join, thus creating the interdependence. When students complete a game, they receive clams (Whyville money) for their bank account.

In the “Whack-a-Virus” game, the content is science. Student players match antibodies to different viruses.

We found the variety of games to be excellent and challenging. All the games we played had multiple levels. We really liked the diversity of the different games.

Whyville has a classroom component. A teacher can thus limit players to their own class of students.

We found no negatives with this excellent virtual environment platform. The economic system is based on “clams” instead of actual currencies. Math teachers may wish that true monetary units were used but we can understand why, on a global Internet, Whyville uses a unique token economy. We did not see a tablet option. Whyville is not a game design platform—that is, students or teachers do not design the embedded games. As we mentioned earlier, teachers will need to join and play for a healthy amount of time to successfully use this platform. We feel this is true for all digital game platforms.

Whyville has an impressive list of sponsors including NASA and the US Department of Labor.

Click on this link to watch an interview and introduction to Whyville by the founder.
For a 2008 video tour, try this link.

There are many possibilities in Whyville for leveraging the motives students have regarding schoolwork.

Finally, we really like that Whyville has a completely free playing option.

Check it out!

The Engagement People

The Amazing World of Gamestar Mechanic: A Review

Using digital games for learning opens a world of design possibilities that can address many different Design Qualities. If you are new to digital gaming and learning, we suggest you start by reading The MindShift Guide to Digital Games and Learning. We reviewed this wonderful document in a blog published on February 23, 2015.

It is clear there are two avenues for exploration in the digital gaming world. First, there are the ready-made games that students play. These games cover a wide variety of content and meet an equally diverse body of design needs. Secondly, there are the games that teachers and students can design or create themselves. In this paradigm we find the amazing world of Gamestar Mechanic.

At its heart and soul, Gamestar Mechanic allows teachers and students to design PAC-MAN-style games. Once a game is designed, the players move their avatars through a maze of blocks and challenges to reach a final goal block and win the game. Along the way, creativity allows for the inclusion of a significant number of challenges ranging from "enemy" avatars to question blocks. Digital computer coding is NOT a part of the design process.

In the introductory video from E-Line Media, we learn that creating digital games fosters digital media literacy, systems thinking, and online citizenship.

There are more possibilities.

In mathematics, a variety of content can be built into the games. After all, the games are built with blocks on a grid. Where you have blocks and a grid, you have patterns and shapes. Formulas can be illustrated. Problems can be solved. Percentages and statistics can be involved. The possibilities are indeed, well, endless.

Through the use of question blocks, teachers can embed a content review activity inside a game. As student avatars move through the game, they can be required to pause and answer questions.

Game designers will tell you that the story behind a game is as important as a game itself. Gamestar Mechanic allows for the creation of story components. Now we are into creative writing, literature, and all the accompanying English language arts skills. Want to see Wuthering Heights embedded in a Gamestar Mechanic game? Click here!

For more examples, visit the Gamestar Mechanic Teachers page.

We give you fair warning: The MindShift Guide to Digital Games and Learning advances the idea that to use games in the classroom, teachers must learn to play the games they intend to use. We agree. Even in writing this review, we spent several days learning to play games in Gamestar Mechanic. Through playing the games, your creativity should be inspired. Connections between games, content, and engagement should emerge. As more and more millennials with a gaming background enter the teaching force, we see this as less and less of a barrier.

Gamestar Mechanic is an amazing platform. When used by teacher designers and students, it offers many possibilities to use Design Qualities, promote engagement, and build profound learning.

Click this sentence to hear a young student explain the Gamestar Mechanic design process.

Gamestar Mechanic may be accessed in many ways. Specifically, there is a totally free component we used to write this review. There are classroom packages priced very reasonably ($3 per student). There are premier packages available also. We applaud E-Line for offering a variety of packages and making the platform available to all.

The Engagement People

Getting in the Game--A Review of The MindShift Guide to Digital Games and Learning

One of the least understood possibilities in the pedagogy of education is the world of gaming.

Don’t worry. Help is here. The MindShift Guide to Digital Games and Learning is an excellent starting place for anyone who would like to merge gaming with schoolwork design.

Contributing writer Katie Salen Tekinbas tells us, “For a long time, learning—school learning—has demanded something different. But that something different has sometimes been manifest in policies, which emphasize outcomes like standardized test scores, rather than a love of learning, and which result in experiences that are efficient (e.g. metrics driven) yet rarely child-centered. Such an approach to education doesn’t so much discount engagement as a condition of learning as erase it altogether.”

Amen, Katie. Phil Schlechty is beaming right now!

The world of gaming provides many opportunities to address engagement in classroom work designs. While it is a no-brainer to see that gaming addresses Authenticity, Novelty, and Affiliation, the reality is gaming can address multiple qualities of schoolwork that lead to engagement.

The MindShift Guide to Digital Games and Learning is very well laid out. There is an excellent introduction followed by a section on research. If you are interested in detailed research on gaming, the authors direct you to a very comprehensive survey. Following the introduction and research, the booklet covers:

• How to Start Using Digital Games for Learning
• How to Choose a Digital Learning Game
• Overcoming Obstacles for Using Digital Games in the Classroom
• How Teachers are Using Games in the Classroom

The guide includes links to a wealth of resources and examples. There are even videos of actual classroom usage.

Teacher/designers familiar with the 10 attributes of schoolwork that can lead to engagement will find Dr. Schlechty’s 10 Design Qualities all over this document. It would make an interesting task to pencil in given Design Qualities as they appear in the article-– by name, metaphor, or synonym.

This article is a confirmation that the 10 Design Qualities drive engagement.

Whether you are just getting started with digital gaming in your classroom or are a seasoned veteran, this guide will be helpful to you. We highly recommend it!

The Engagement People

The Teacher's Dilemma

The Teacher’s Dilemma

Teachers and others who theorize about teaching are well aware that the instruction of children in large groups (larger than eight to ten children) is not ideal and that individual tutoring and instruction in small groups are probably more effective means of instruction. Until the digital age, the economic realities of mass education made—or were perceived to make—such a solution beyond reach. Consequently, educators have spent a great deal of time and energy trying to create ways to individualize and personalize instruction in a context that is designed to support mass instruction and batch processing. The result is that teachers worry much over the fact that the demands of large collections of children gathered in a single place for instruction make it very difficult for teachers to do many of the things they believe are important to educate each child—for example, to coach and assess each child each day in a careful manner. A teacher once said to me, “There are so many of them and so few of me. Their learning styles differ, and I try to adjust what I do to meet their styles, but like everybody else, I am limited in what I can do.”

As long as teachers believe that they are or should be the primary source of instruction for children in school or out of school, teachers will always be confronted with this very real dilemma. Fortunately the revolution that has developed around electronic information technologies makes it possible to address the problems this dilemma presents in ways that were not possible in the past.

Engaging Students: The Next Level of Working on the Work
Phillip C. Schlechty, 2011, p. 99

Want to see how one teacher uses technology to address the "teacher's dilemma" while leveraging the Design Qualities of Authenticity and Novelty? Watch this video.

The Engagement People