Bringing the Nintendo DS into the classroom?

September 22, 2008 at 10:12 am | In Uncategorized | 6 Comments
Tags: , , , , ,

How do you feel about using games to teach? We’ve long played classroom games like “Math Bingo” and “word finds” to find that most kids respond well to getting to having fun while they are learning. It gives them important practice time, and helps them recharge for more serious tasks.

More recently, computers have come into play. Early computer games were mostly skill-n-drill kinds of games; popping up math facts and having players fill in the missing letters to spell a word. But they got better (interactive), and better (adaptive), and better (immersive). Soon there were simulators, and even MMOGs (the evolution of the MUD and MOO) like Second Life entering education. Games worked their way up the Bloom’s Taxonomy. (SLURL to very cool SL representation of the Taxonomy as pictured.)

As good as Artificial Intelligence has become, working with classmates and friends is even better…

Simultaneously, I’ve been carrying forth a belief that we need to start working with the technology in the student’s pocket, and not trying to keep up by providing computer labs and redundant resources to our students. Cell phones, MP3 players, palmtops and organizers…

So, why not a Nintendo DS?

Doesn’t it seem these days like every child has one? They have been around for about 4 years now, and more than any other handheld, they seem to be exactly the ticket for the device of choice carried around by the 6-18yo crowd.

This is a pretty cool little device – two small color screens with a relatively decent resolution for reading very small text. One is a touch screen. There are stereo speakers and a microphone built in, and a standard headphone jack. Batteries last about 5-6 hours with a full charge. But best of all, this device has built in WiFi enabling it to connect to other DS units, Wii consoles and other Nintendo Kiosks.

Software can be purchased on cartridge, but it can also be downloaded from special download kiosks such as the Nintendo Channel that is part of the Wii. Downloading takes just a few moments for most software, and the software stays in memory until you turn the DS off.

I would love to talk more about the FOSS and “homebrew” movements, but perhaps I had better save those for a future blog post. There are obvious difficulties with getting YOUR spelling words into software to be deployed on Nintendo’s DS Download service. And Nintendo doesn’t appear to be THAT education friendly to provide us with special teacher units to put in our classrooms capable of allowing us to run our own software on their platforms.

So how else to get it on there?

Nintendo’s Opera-powered browser was a terrible failure, being canned just months after getting released last year. Its biggest problem was that it didn’t support Adobe’s Flash, and shipping on a cartridge, couldn’t be easily updated. That sort of rules out downloading flash based applications to a DS via web browser.

So lately I’ve been playing with a little developer cartridge from a Chinese company called SuperCard. For $30 or so, plus the cost of some additional SD flash media, you can put just about anything you want into your handheld.

So far I’ve put an application called Moonshell on mine which allows me to play music and videos on the DS. And I’ve tried out a few more homebrew titles – the one we’re having lots of fun with right now is called Video Games Hero, a free “knockoff” of the popular Guitar Hero and doesn’t require the additional hardware. (It’s really good, so perhaps Nintendo’s lawyers will move swiftly to punish them.)

But as for now, I can only hope and dream a bit that the FOSS and Homebrew movements somehow inspire at least a few neat educational games that will make use of that Nintendo DS in my kids’ pockets beyond just recording their homework assignments.

I keep wondering how I might be able to use this to help inspire and teach. Got any ideas?

Death of the library?

August 5, 2008 at 11:53 am | In Uncategorized | 1 Comment
Tags: , , , ,

My new Plurk friend Carol Vanhook just posted an interesting question:

vanhookc wants to hear anyone’s ideas of high school library cafes! Building new HS with cafe; taking to school board for Oct. approval–outsourcing!!!

Have to admit, my mind had never wrapped around this idea before! In business, we know happy employees are healthy and productive employees. It would stand to reason that the same would hold true for students in a school. I’ve watched as cafeterias in many of our nearby schools have become food courts, and large student commons areas have been divided into more intimate atriums and gardens with lots of year round natural light and plants.

I do admit, that I feel good when I enter these spaces. And I think that the students value them as well, as generally vandalism is down, and care and upkeep seem to be high.

But I’ve never considered putting a library back to back with the kitchen! In fact, I think in most of our schools, the two are usually pretty far apart. While Barnes and Noble pioneered the Coffee Shop Bookstore, and magazine stands moved into the local Starbucks – it never occurred to me that perhaps it was time for our schools to start rethinking the library spaces beyond just providing students WiFi access.

Would this encourage reading? Would it have any impact on student achievement? Do students already like to “hang out” in the library to avoid the over stimulating atmosphere in other common areas since the library has generally been a quiet and productive haven?

Have to admit: the idea is somewhat sexy. I do like the idea of a space where the chairs are comfy, and fruit juice, bottled water, and perhaps at some time of the day even regular coffee is available for both staff and students. I like the idea of tall tables with somewhat public computer screens, where a small group of students can gather around, and discuss in relatively quiet voices. I like the idea of magazine racks, and the “atmosphere” created in a coffee shop.

But I think I would also mourn the loss of the quiet and focused atmosphere of the “library.” (Just go to any college campus, and you’re likely to see coffee shops and all kinds of rich meeting spaces all over the “library” – so this isn’t so much of a stretch of the imagination as my mind just had not gone there yet.)

I hope Carol keeps us posted with how it turns out!

Powerful Partnership

May 13, 2008 at 8:35 am | In Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

For those that know me in real life, you know I’ve long been fascinated with museums and other “non-formal” educational institutions. You know, the places that many home-school families buy memberships to and use as hands on labs throughout the year, but that the kinds of places we work in kind of sort of discourage us from using too much because its probably not on the test.

Last fall, I challenged some of the participants in my Lead Teachers program to think differently about what they do. Use technology to communicate in some new way. Open a new door for students.

A museum educator and great friend for many years, Gaye-Lynn Clyde, happened to be in my class, and offered a program that had been done in person at the museum for the past 5 years. Students would collaborate on a project throughout the semester, working with various departments at the museum, to develop an exhibit. Nothing too groundbreaking there, I know. Classrooms have been creating mini-museums for years. But in this case, these kids would actually get to create an exhibit at the Milwaukee Public Museum that would really go on display! And in the process, the exhibit would have to pass all of the same standards that any other exhibit designer had to go through to get his or her exhibit on display.

Peggy Fleck, a teacher at Wileman Elementary in Delevan, took us up on our challenge. Located an hour away, her students got to visit the museum once in person in February to talk about what their exhibit might look like. There were several great ideas, but Delevan has a rich heritage as the home of the Barnum and Bailey Circus, and winter home to more than two dozen circuses in the 19th century. We decided to bring back the rich tradition of the Great Circus Parade to the Streets of Old Milwaukee!

Each week these kids put in considerable personal time developing artwork for rack cards, circus posters, costumes, floats, and more. The Nickelodeon was the stage for the circus, and the parade ended up there. A barker in the hall drove museum patrons in to see the show! Every other week, students in Peggy’s 4th grade class, an hour away from the city, video conferenced from their classroom with curators, image specialists, educators, and many more people at the museum as they consulted on how they would bring the circus back to town.

I hope that videoconferencing wasn’t the focus of this project. At the same time, I know that without these great communications technologies, this project would never have been possible. Years from now I hope these kids are still all fired up about what they have done, even if they don’t remember the role that our technology played in making it happen for them. THAT is great technology integration!

Have you ever been part of something truly life changing?

Maturation – blogging about Twitter?

May 1, 2008 at 10:45 am | In Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
Tags: , ,

Yesterday my friend Stuart posted a fine note about Twitter: http://manintheblackcoat.blogspot.com/2008/04/5-essential-twitter-truths.html

I started using Twitter a few weeks after Stu did. So, you could say that he’s a bit more experienced than I ~ but I think when the sum of our experience still totals less than a year, maybe we’re both still attracted by the pretty packaging. But I think his post shows a certain maturation of social networking and our understanding of how to use it to make our lives better.

What do I mean? Watch the common mistakes of folks new to the media – they follow hundreds, perhaps thousands of people. There are people talking about “Twitter Etiquette” which includes following those who follow you. A recent “experiment” called Osen recently found that 17% of people who know nothing about you will follow-you-back.

There already is a public timeline, and I’m not sure if somehow there is some sense of self worth that people are finding by following thousands of others while replicating that timeline. Of course the advantage is that you can then spam a short message out to those foolish enough to follow you. It’s a PR wet dream of sorts.

I read a piece the other day calling it “permission based stalking.” Too funny!

But maturation of the users of the technology includes redefining a new social etiquette around its use. One popular education web2.0 star recently got in some trouble for this:
http://dossthoughts.blogspot.com/2008/04/special-twitter-message.html

I don’t want to get to the gravel of casting stones with any of the people involved, but it does certainly raise an interesting point: yesterday @WillRich45 raised this point in a uStream session by asking if your network exists solely to agree with you, or to provide thoughtful discourse to your thoughts and ideas.

There are people who will never follow me. Never read a thing I blog or write. And I’m not sure if I should care. Yeah, maybe it bothers me a little bit when I know there is someone who “has the answer” but won’t talk to me, but it doesn’t bother me that much ~ because the shoe has been on the other foot before. Today, I follow a nice mix of people that I feel I can trust, that interest me, and are usually pretty willing to respond back to me. I make liberal use of the BLOCK button to keep spam bots from following me, although I let some of the more innocuous mega-followers join in the fun.

Ego takes a back seat so that I can take the time I need to during each waking day to get a good sense of 70% or so of what has been said through my personal learning network. Eventually, that may result in a tenfold number of followers to those I follow. (But its certainly not that way now.) By adding just a few new and creative people every few days, my network is growing with my skill level, helping me to be more effective, have more fun, and stimulating my mind.

Would I want to throw that all away for flash in the pan status by having lots of followers I’m not personal with?

Resistance is futile…

April 14, 2008 at 9:55 am | In Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
Tags: ,

They say that great minds think alike.

Over the weekend I was thinking of a discussion I had with John Pederson and Annette Smith a few days ago. In short, we discussed how the network is more powerful than the nodes ~ referring to a great cartoon that John had posted in his blog last year:
http://www.ijohnpederson.com/2007/09/26/etc/

I took that a step further by replying with a picture of a Borg Cube ~ a reference to Star Trek that isn’t so obscure ~ but only as tongue-in-cheek. The Borg, a fully connected society where individuals had lost their meaning as little more than tools to the cluster, lacked free will.

Free will would be perhaps the greatest strength and Achilles heel of such a society. In a smaller community, it might perhaps be a weakness. It tends to spread the community thin, causes its members to lose focus, and can birth politics as competing interests collide. But in a larger society there are more resources; free will can provide the spark that helps great ideas become raging infernos.

In Star Trek, a lead character struggled with this individuality after being cut off from her community. From time to time, she would reconnect ~ the struggle between her being part of the community and having free will being a major theme of her character. After being introduced to Twitter, I can kind of understand the struggle she went through!

Within Twitter, you form a community by following people who you think are interesting. Perhaps they follow you back. In 140 characters or less, you can share your thoughts and actions with those who follow you. Things you’re reading that you find interesting, asking for help on a project ~ whatever.

Amazingly, people will answer you. Ideas travel at the speed of the Internet.

New Twitter friend Chad Lehman posted a similar thought on his blog last night:
http://imcguy.blogspot.com/2008/04/power-of-network-twitter-network.html

I have always heard that big wheels turn slowly. And of course education tends to be a very big wheel… But I really like the way that the lead has been taken in so many of these communication technologies specifically by educators. These changes are actually taking place FASTER in the EduSphere than they are across so many other places.

Granted, there are still schools banning cell phones, and we’re still teaching to the NCLB testing framework ~ but perhaps it is because communication provides a release for so many repressed teachers that blogging, Twitter, delicious and web 2.0 technologies are thriving in education.

We can communicate once again. And when we can communicate, we can teach and learn. As that network grows and grows, and ideas spread quickly and find purchase, we accelerate the speed at which we can teach and learn. It becomes a self feeding loop.

Is there a downside? My guess would be yes. But that is perhaps left for a different post ~

Just remember, resistance is futile. You will be assimilated.

Blog at WordPress.com. | Theme: Pool by Borja Fernandez.
Entries and comments feeds.