BP7_Commercial

Engage students with WikiSpaces!

BP6_commentJenAlman_fromCrystalDavis

I've used bubbl.us for concept mapping but haven't used cMapper. Follow this link to my comments on Jen Alman's blog.

BP5_commentJessicaGoodenowFromCrystalDavis

Jessica Goodenow has taken a look at GoAnimate to see my comment on her blog just click the word link!

BP4_Wikispaces

Wikispaces.com is a fabulous, free educator Web 2.0 tool since it has a private members only option, easy creation of student accounts, effortless posting of various media, and site customization. Creating your wiki is straightforward and making it private is just a click of a radio button. Inviting your students and creating their accounts is painless because you don’t need their email addresses. In my case this is important because I’ll have 192 students in the Fall. Yikes! Did I say that out loud? I like the idea of customizing the way my wiki looks by choosing the theme and colors I want to give it that personal touch. It allows posting of files, images, videos and other media. Additional awesome features include as many wikis as you need or want, infinite storage, and across wiki administration or site admin.

Finding a way for my online students to collaborate can be challenging, but Wikispaces will solve some of that by providing a safe online environment where students will rate the games they play, comment on other student’s game ratings, and learn from each other. Furthermore, it allows me to track or monitor each student’s post with an email notification system. That makes it practically trouble-free for me to check what each student is doing and be able to address any concerns I have right away.

In a couple of minutes I had my Game Design Wiki setup and with another a couple of hours I’ll have an amazing wiki to share with my students. The interface is fantastic! There is a great “help” section, FAQ area, wiki walk through or tour, and a link to educational wikis’ to see what other educators are doing.

BP3_yoyogames

GameMaker (http://www.yoyogames.com's game engine) is an excellent 2D game engine that is easy to use and a free download. Students can create educational or learning games for any assignment you choose. First, students should play educational games from yoyogames to get the idea. Here are a few examples to checkout to see the potential: MissleMath (squareRoots), Euromap, Halo Math, Cell-Abration, and Mental Playground. Some of the games above were created as student school projects! Isn’t that great? There are tons more, but keep in mind you need to download these on a PC to play them and to use GameMaker.

Also, you can have your students play other Educational games from FunFlow: Arithmetic Challenge, Flags, Da Vinci Cannon (trajectory), Typing Challenge, Skill Test, Brain Test, Countries, Globe Trotter XL and Construction Fall (trajectory). These can all be played on a PC or Mac and they are standalone applications. The screenshot above is from http://www.yoyogames.com.

Second, students rate the educational games they played on yoyogames and/or FunFlow. This is important because students will learn what they like in a game, peaks their interest and engages them. Yoyogames has a great rating system for their games and I would suggest that you have your students use that system. Be sure to let them know, if the game they played was fun then it will probably be fun for others. Also, stress that the goal of an educational game is to make it fun while you learn.

Third, students download GameMaker for free by clicking “Make” at the top of yoyogames and then the download icon. This step shouldn’t take very long. After that you have students do these two tutorials – “What makes a good game?” and “Your First Game.” You can find these by clicking “Make” and look to the left for “Tutorials” or just put the word “Tutorial” in the yoyogames search tool. These two tutorials will get the student familiar with the GameMaker environment.

Finally, your students are ready to create their first educational game with your guidance. They will need to create a game plan: subject (Math, Science, English, History), title, idea of the game, and images needed. Don’t forget to mention copyright law! After that they will build their game in GameMaker. You’ll be amazed at what your students come up with!

Note: GameMaker is for PC only, but if you want a Mac alternative

( http://developer.apple.com/games/gameenginesonmac.html ).

BP2_iGoogle Screen Shots

I am really seeing the value of iGoogle! Rena pointed out in her first Wimba that it would be a good idea to create a tab in iGoogle for each course because it goes so fast that things get forgotten. I am definitely going to do that. During the break I hope I can get the previous courses done, so I'll have those tabs too. Below you'll find my screen shots of iGoogle!

My first iGoogle Home page from the first month.

My new iGoogle Home page.

iGoogle FSO tab

iGoogle AR/CBL tab

iGoogle ETC tab

BP1_GoogleReader

There are so many RSS feeds that I wanted to follow, but I have narrowed it down to 5. These are the best of my rss feed search.

RSS feed 1 - Mike Darga's Game Design Blog
http://mikedarga.blogspot.com/
Since I'm a high school game design Instructor I thought it would be great to keep up with at least one game design blog. I chose this one because I like some of the games he talked about and that he is working in the game design field right now. Also, there are links to real interesting articles that I can show my students in the Fall. For instance, “21 behaviors of Great Designers” which has a wealth of information for beginner designers to avoid pitfalls and not have to reinvent the wheel. The image to the left is a screenshot taken on 6-30-2010 of what's in this article on Mike Darga's Blog, http://mikedarga.blogspot.com/ Scroll down on this page and look to the right.

RSS feed 2 – Edutopia
http://www.edutopia.org/

Edutopia has 12 different blogs and I really only wanted to rss feed 5 of them, but there was no option to do that. So I subscribed to get the following 5 feeds: Education Innovation, Education Technology, News and Opinion, Project-Based Learning, and Student Engagement. If you want to see the whole list of blogs go to their site and view the dropdown navigation bar link for “Blogs.” I looked on the iNACOL site but they didn’t a feed to subscribe to, unfortunately.

RSS feed 3 – Gaming and Culture CNet feed
http://news.cnet.com/gaming-and-culture/?tag=mncol

All the current gaming news is here! If you wanted to talk with your gaming friends about the latest games coming out or the possible delay of the game you want, this is the feed to subscribe to. The image to the right is a screen capture of CNet's Gaming and Culture Blog taken on 6-30-2010, http://news.cnet.com/gaming-and-culture/?tag=mncol

RSS feed 4 – The Social
http://news.cnet.com/the-social/?tag=mncol

I think this one will prove to an interesting one! If you want to be on the cutting-edge of how social networking is shaping our world, then subscribe to this feed. In one of the feed articles Facebook announces the first-time-ever VP of Global Public Policy. She’ll be based in Washington DC, but start in July at the Palo Alto, CA office.

RSS feed 5 – The 404 Podcast
http://www.cnet.com/the-404-podcast/

The feed is rich with current information on social media, video games and tech gadgets. Got to love those gadgets!