Digital Literacy for St. Cloud State University
teachers said they feel they are “bombarded by games,” but despite the overall belief in the engaging quality of games, there remains “skepticism about how much games are actually helping.”
http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/5-creative-ways-to-drive-more-traffic-to-your-blog-posts/
Here are some examples of smaller networks:
promote your posts with images, audio and video.
Greg Jorgensen emailed us with his new darling:
Explain Everything – https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.morriscooke.explaineverything
and raises a very good question:
What do we know and how do we organize our tools and apps for whiteboard screencasting and lecture capture?
Greg’s choice of the day is atop of a list from the Ed Tech/y and Mobile Learning web site:
http://www.educatorstechnology.com/2013/05/6-useful-ipad-apps-for-creating.html
next on that top-6-list are
Educreations Interactive Whiteboard
Doceri (http://doceri.com/) is a very promissing app, which Bob Lessinger was pushing to be installed on campuos computers (being free), but it is ONLY iPAD-bound (not even iPHone or iTouch)
In addition to Doceri: Stage : Interactive Whiteboard and Document Camera and Splashtop Whiteboard per: 3 Apps to Turn Your iPad into Interactive Whiteboard ~ Educational Technology and Mobile Learning
Here is a neat table about the compatibility (iOS and Android) for several of these apps:
http://www.elcamino.edu/administration/staffdev/training/whiteboardscreencasting.pdf
Here is another good resource from Alaska. The screencasting apps reviewed are the same as above, but other good sources regarding a pedagogy involving the technology.
A broader approach to this issue (Presentation & Screencasting Apps) on Pinterest: http://www.pinterest.com/itechservices/presentation-screencasting-apps/
More apps and possibilities, as well as “how-to” directions here:
http://castingoutnines.wordpress.com/2011/06/07/how-i-make-screencasts-the-whiteboard-screencast/
Here is an useful blog entry, comparing ExlpainEverything with Educreation —
http://freebiologyschool.blogspot.com/2013/04/explaineverything-app-better-than.html
More apps:
Lecturnity ( http://www.lecturnity.com )
Tegrity http://tegr.it/
FlySketch http://flyingmeat.com/flysketch/
http://presentationtube.com/
a lengthy review is available here: http://smorgastech.blogspot.com/?goback=%2Egde_2038260_member_5807615489219772416#%21
http://www.edtechmagazine.com/higher/article/2013/10/awesome-power-gaming-higher-education
The University of Washington’s Foldit game enables anyone to contribute to scientific research through virtual protein folding. The university’s game developers posit that human gamers’ propensity to not give up on a gaming task – resiliency – make them much more adept at solving complex protein structure prediction and design than supercomputers. And in some ways, they’ve already proven that to be so. Foldit game participants have been named in several published scientific journal articles, including one that describes how a protein structure could be solved and used in the treatment of HIV.
The rich, interactive universe of Grand Theft Auto was the inspiration for this game, developed for The World Bank as a way to teach Sub-Sahara African youths to solve social problems in ways that also could provide a sustainable living. The platform is free and available online and can be used by schools to teach social entrepreneurship. A graphic novel serves as the game’s centerpiece, and players build out their gaming profiles as a comic or graphic novel might retell a superhero’s origin story. Participants complete projects in real life to solve real problems, such as securing a community’s food supply or establishing a sustainable power source, then progress through levels of the game. Those who successfully complete their 10-week missions ultimately earn certification from the World Bank Institute. In 2010, 50 student participants saw their entrepreneurship models funded by the World Bank, including Libraries Across Africa (now Librii), a franchise operating in Ghana.
Not all games must be played out in a virtual space. This game – developed by McGonigal with Natron Baxter and Playmatics – combines real-world missions with virtual clues and online collaboration, resulting in young people working together overnight in the New York Public Library to write and publish a book of personal essays about what they learned.
“The game is designed to empower young people to find their own futures by bringing them face-to-face with the writings and objects of people who made an extraordinary difference.”
Participants spend a night wandering throughout the library’s stacks and research materials, scanning QR codes to prove they found and interacted with the objects of their clues or missions. One 2011 participant, upon discovering the library’s early draft of the Declaration of Independence wrote an essay called a “Declaration of Interdependence.”
More on Jane McGonigal on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZjSVo8N31r4
http://www.ted.com/talks/jane_mcgonigal_gaming_can_make_a_better_world.html
http://www.ted.com/talks/jane_mcgonigal_the_game_that_can_give_you_10_extra_years_of_life.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5t3y7EeBhxg