Category Archives: Uncategorized
Planning a new ARIS game: DCF Book Run
Next week, my nascent group of Burlington-area ARIS developers will be meeting to begin work on the construction of “DCF Book Run”, a game in which players will complete up to thirty mini-challenges to demonstrate that they've read the thirty books on this year's Dorothy Canfield Fisher (DCF) Award list. The game will make its …
So about this course I took
you can take it too: It’s a month long, run entirely online via Badgestack, and the next sections are April 1 – 26, 2013 and July 8 – August 2, 2013. It’s primarily designed for folks with teaching credentials, but I made my way through nonetheless, and I can’t wait to put my newfound knowledge …
Towards a better games rubric
I’m really taken with this educational games evaluation rubric from Sacramento State, not only because it helped me specify a lot of my thinking about what makes a great game, but because I think it’s well-crafted as an online tool teachers could use to quickly score a video game for potential use in their classrooms. …
Found: Hidden object games
I confess, I’ve been hunting and evaluating hidden object games for literacy purposes for nearly a year now, so I’m kind of coming at this from a skewed background. But having played nearly a dozen hidden object games to their conclusions with this growing awareness of literacy needs in mind, I’m starting to put together …
Hidden object games and ELL learning
ELL students and others who struggle with reading issues feature an uphill battle for skill mastery that’s compounded by the social stigma and real-world functional problem that language deficits present. While they’re trying to learn from textbooks they’re also missing out on social interactions that a) could otherwise bootstrap their skills and b) put them …
More BlogIt, now with less blogs
I love twitter, and check it basically every chance I get. I find great content and get exposed to dozens of new perspectives and ideas every day. It’s magic if you create and curate lists, so you can hop between themed conversations. Here are some video game critics whose twitterstreams I enjoy: Mattie Brice (https://twitter.com/xMattieBrice) …
The best of twitensions
I tried really hard to take this tweeting thing seriously, because after all, it does earn you a *badge* with *points*, two of my very favorite things in the world, it turns out. So I started with the best of intentions. And at the same time, I also started working on the Code Fred badge …
A snapshot of middle schools in Chittenden County
We’ve noticed that an overwhelming number of workshop attendees, survey respondents and general requesters of information come from Chittenden County, where our organization is located. But what do Chittenden County middle schools look like? I got the data via PublicSchoolsK12.com’s Chittenden County Middle Schools page, and their Vermont Middle Schools page. Their data is aggregated …
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Hidden object games for literacy?
When I think about how to incorporate hidden object games to support literacy, I’m mainly thinking about the ELL/ESL population, and a comment made by one of the teachers we work with, that the commercially available hidden object games would be great to give some of the older students in her ELL population because they …