Some of you may already be familiar with Codecademy, which offers free on-line courses in programming and web-site authoring. Now, the site is offering a free after-school program that it states can be used with students as young as 7. During the first semester, the students learn how to build a website. The second semester … Read more
The topic of gaming and its usage in the classroom has been popping up more and more in the last year or so. Jane McGonigal, who is an expert in this area (check out this link to see her extensive experience and list of “unlocked” achievements), gives some good reasons that we should not dismiss … Read more
This is, in part, a continuation of Friday’s post on the gamification of the classroom. In this post, by Ben Bertoli, the teacher explains how he turned his 6th grade class into a role-playing game. I love his ideas on allowing the students to create their own characters and to participate in “Random Encounter Friday”. … Read more
In my post that featured a TED talk on Classroom Game Design, I mentioned the interest that I have in trying to use the interest that my students have in gaming to engage them in the classroom. Rather than having them play video games in the classroom, I am considering making the classroom, itself, into … Read more
Teach with Tournaments is a curriculum written by Josh Hoekstra, and was recently featured in a blog entry by William Bennett, former U.S. Secretary of Education. I highly recommend that you read William Bennett’s blog entry, as it gives a very good summary of the idea successfully used by Mr. Hoekstra with his U.S. History students. I … Read more
“Classroom Game Design“, a TEDx video presented by Paul Andersen, suggests an interesting idea for organizing your classroom. Why not leverage the fascination that many youngsters today have with gaming by making your own classroom a video game? Have your students earn Experience Points to “level up” and gain new freedoms (and responsibilities) in the … Read more