Bill MacKenty

Technology strengthens, deepens, and broadens our learning...

In reply to the above question, here’s my list so far.  Anyone have anything they’d like to add?

1) Theory of fun by Raph Koster
2) Anything by Mark Prensky
3) What video games have to teach us about
4) Anything by David Williamson Shaffer
5) I would also wamrly encourage you to check out: this link and poke around the “research” section.
6) There is also a seriousgames mailing list! click here It’s exceptional.
7) For a very thick book full of game theory (not math-game-theory) read Rules of Play by Salen and Zimmerman, It’s not directly related to your question but it’s sooooo gooood!!!
8) I also love Richard Bartle’s book, Designing Virtual Worlds - again, it’s not particularly targetted to educational gaming, but the ideas which it develops are outstanding. 

This is an excel gradebook template I just finished.  I grabbed the basic layout (and some formulas) from here, and then added some cool features:

1) there are 5 different categories of assignments
2) each assignment can be weighted
3) the gradebook dynamically calculates the score depending on the category (which is cool, imho).

PLEASE tell me if you find any bugs and/or problems.

Thanks!

Phew. Been a while since my last post!

Part of using technology in a school is understanding how people use it, where they would like to go with it, and what frustrates them about it.

As I start my first school year, we are surveying the faculty.  I’m going to be looking for near-100% return on these surveys, and from the results, hope to:

1) Help create a technology road-map
2) Use the survey as an assessment device to measure how well we are using technology
3) Understand what the teachers want from technology
4) See how I can best support the staff
5) Look for trends and categories of requests

Here’s the survey (at least so far, I might edit it):

How can technology enhance our learning, communication, and teaching?

1) Do you have a computer at home?

1a) is it connected to the internet?

2) What are three things are doing now with technology, either for yourself or with your students?

3) What are three frustrations you have about technology?

4) Where would like to be in a year from now, technologically speaking?

5) What are three things that could be done to improve or support your use of technology?

6) Any other comments about technology?

As many of my faithful readers know (all four of you), I am very interested in the role of games in education.  And while I don’t consider games to be the panacea for all our ills in education, I do think they can really push us in the right direction.

After reading and digesting The World is Flat, my wife and I started talking about education.  She is European and came from a very different educational background.  As we were talking about what’s wrong with American education, and American competitiveness, we tossed around some ideas, and came up with the following questions:

* Maybe our students just aren’t working hard enough?
* Maybe parents don’t make education a high-enough priority?
* Perhaps we aren’t doing the right kind of work in school (like focusing on basic skills instead of innovative thinking)?
* Maybe we are doing pretty good, and the media is tainting our perceptions with yellow-journalism.

I’m not saying our kids aren’t capable of working hard enough, but as I think about American shrinking dominance in the world (which I think is happening) I look back on our educational system, and wonder how we can do it better.

When I was living in China, I noted the kids weren’t more or less smarter than any other kid - they just worked much much harder than students I was used to working with.

I write this as a question, looking for a response and any comments.