2012 Program
Download a mobile version of the program using Guidebook! Download the app on your mobile device at http://guidebook.com/getit/.
Literature on teacher professional development (PD) has narrowed down process of adult learning to a 'primer' (Desimone, 2011). Yet expert teachers present a broad range of learning styles and reasons for PD. PD is an internally motivated act; at best it's a lifestyle. This session reviews current research that is recognizing relevant resources for top teachers across the country and what they are doing to re-frame their work, re-imagine their teaching, and relate to other passionate teachers.
Educational games can be powerful learning tools, but it’s not always easy to start implementing them. This workshop will help you pinpoint high-quality, free digital games that tie right into your curriculum. You’ll learn how teachers are using these games to spark inquiry, cultivate critical reasoning and systems thinking, and encourage creative, interactive problem-solving. We'll also share grant and funding resources as well as the top findings from new game-based learning research conducted by the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop and BrainPOP. Through video case studies and a national survey of tech-savvy teachers, the research sheds light on educators’ attitudes and beliefs about video games in the classroom.
In an effort to show the usage of a smartphone in a classroom, we developed a lesson for CSC-204, Educational Computing involving the use of a mobile app called SCVNGR. SCVNGR is a game all about going places, doing challenges and earning points. This mobile app focuses on completing challenges within a “Trek” at a particular location. In this workshop, we will share with you the scavenger hunt we created for our campus as well as some examples that our students created. We will also walk through the steps so that you can complete your own trek to use with your students.
Valve software is a commercially successful gaming company and this past year they began a new educational initiative called "Teach with Portals." Based on their very popular Portal video game series, Teach with Portals is an access point for educators, students and researchers to look at video games and learning in a new way and to use some really great software. In this presentation we explore the whole Teach with Portals idea, look at one teacher's experience as a beta-test teacher for the Portal 2: Puzzle Maker, talk about some of the big ideas behind video games in the classroom and look at what educators across the country are doing with the Portal 2 and Puzzle Maker software.
Evidence for game-based learning for standardized testing.
In this class designed for Pre-k through 3rd grade teachers, we will explore how to create and facilitate games on the SMART Board. Games can be used to review and explore academic concepts in all subject areas. We will look at and create games for small groups and whole class instruction.
Minecraft is an incredibly popular multiplayer sandbox game that has stormed its way into schools worldwide. Boys and girls love it equally, and it offers something for every age group and every type of learner. In this presentation, Joel will showcase how teachers around the globe are using Minecraft both to teach specific curriculum as well as to springboard self-directed learning. He will also introduce MinecraftEdu, the official remix of the original game designed to meet the needs of teachers and students.
Sit at tables with conversations decided by you (and everyone else!) in the morning.
Rehearsal for the Niobe performance in the afternoon.
Get your hands on games and technology that your kids and other educators are using.
Calling all Teachers: Sign up for your 10 minute interview at theWMHT Listening Booth
What do you love about teaching? Do you use games in the classroom? Do you have something to share about the challenges and successes of teaching?
As part of the WMHT American Graduate Teacher Wall project www.wmht.org/americangraduate,
WMHT is looking to find great stories about what our region’s teachers are doing and thinking about education in the 21st century.
We invite you to join us for a 10 minute conversation on Wednesday August 1 or Thursday August 2
I will present Scholastic's upcoming reading project and explain the game mechanics, why they were chosen, and how they were executed, and then explore other learning games that work well to engage learners.
For the Game in Education Conference, we would like to lead a workshop where participants play our genetics game RoboGen,learn about its pedagogical approach, and discuss other possible ways it could be used. RoboGen is designed around game mechanics that are analogous to scientific concepts, and we’ll share information from our field test about how teachers and students responded to this approach. Our goal is to help middle school teachers understand how games can supplement traditional classroom activities to help students unravel scientific misconceptions, as well as elicit their ideas about using games to support teaching and learning.
It's time to play! First, participants new to Minecraft will receive an orientation and learn the game. Then we'll dive into the nuts and bolts of getting MinecraftEdu up and running in a classroom, a library, a museum... or even at home with your family. We'll cover how to pull in educational content created by teachers worldwide, as well as how to create an activity from scratch.
Have a great idea for an educational video game for your class, but there's not anything available that fits your needs? You can write the game yourself! This workshop will take you through creating a complete simple game, and will give you ideas for future work. We'll use a freely available programming environment called Game Maker that truly does allow anyone with no experience to create a video game.
A few years ago, Valve software created a video-game called "Portal" a puzzle-based game that enabled users the ability to shoot holes called portals which which allowed the players to move and travel in a unique way. Upon the introduction of their second game, "Portal 2" the company decided that it would great if they had a level-building software for the game that anyone could use, but that perhaps would also have educational applications. In this workshop, we will explore the level-building software known as "The Puzzle Maker" and its applications for the classroom. No previous experience with the video game is necessary (although you'll probably want to play it after the workshop!) but please come ready to build levels, experiment, brainstorm and design some lessons!
NOTE: This presentation is 30 minutes total, it is 15 minutes shorter than most presentations.
At its best, an education can help us to create a broad and deep mental model of the world that is personally meaningful, fulfilling, and self-determined. Unfortunately, schools by and large continue to function within 19th century methods of repetition, memorization, lecture and testing which do not adequately build the skills necessary for students to formulate these mental models. Getting students to think conceptually around the BIG IDEAS is integral to learning, long term engagement, and is crucial within students’ expressive lives where they must use knowledge insightfully. Joe Wise is the Associate Director of New School Models and Curriculum at GameDesk, a Los Angeles based non-profit, to try to fix the disconnect (Resnick, 2002) between media and maker cultures, cutting edge research into games, 21st century learning, and new school models of instruction. In this talk, Wise will showcase GameDesk’s model for play and assessment-based conceptual learning supported by its AT&T-funded national education and research network. This network includes a community-based learning center, PlayMaker School in Los Angeles, and a web-based portal for nationwide distribution of the very best in 21st century education. Attendees will also get a view into everything happening and being produced in these spaces from GameDesk’s games and technologies, to unique processes within its DreamLab team for creative “Playmaking” curriculum development, and demos of GameDesk’s PlayMaker educational modules.
It's great to want to gamify a class, but how can you convert from grade book to game-based and still meet the mandates of a school environment? Dr. Haskell will discuss various pedagogical approaches to organizing curricula in a game-based classroom. Chris has been utilizing a fully quest-based approach for two years at the university level. He will share his research on student outcomes, experience, standards alignment, and numerous organizational approaches.
For most of us, Technology is a tool we use daily (hopefully with effectiveness and efficiency) to amplify and clarify our physical, verbal, and written expressions in an interactive game we call Communicating. However, if individuals enter the communication game with impaired skills impacted by special needs or attention issues, can they still play well enough to find purpose and success? Join Michael Gerrish and Danielle Jiguere in a conversation about how Art, Technology, and Mentoring relationships can help close the gap between individuals who communicate and socialize with ease, and others who struggle to participate and connect.
Mr. Gerrish will share examples of past art projects designed to promote social as well as scholastic learning; Ms Jiguere will speak about her experience as a Special Education teacher who is also the parent of a special needs child who uses common technology in an adaptive manner. Both will encourage participants to review their own skill sets to see how to better engage and develop the learners they meet every day.
Michael Gerrish and Danielle Jiguere are colleagues at the Rensselaer Educational Center, a QuestarIII B.O.C.E.S. Career Tech high school in Troy, NY. Mr. Gerrish is a visual artist who has taught Art and Technology courses in a variety of private and public school settings in NJ and NY. He has presented workshops at the P. Buckley Moss Foundation, SWIDA, the TRLD Conference, Constructivist Conference at St. Lawrence University, and others.
“Niobe” is the re-telling of the story from Ovid’s Metamorphoses in which the deaths of Niobe’s fourteen children and her husband will be staged in real-time in front of the audience using Halo: Reach and several, system-linked Xbox 360 consoles. Hemispheres Magazine described the piece as “an act of 21st century puppetry…that might be theater’s future.” The performance will be followed by a short Q and A with the director and the performers.
EK Machinima Theater is a group of students from the Pierrepont School in Westport, CT, that is led by Eddie Kim, their teacher. The group has been presenting works of machinima theater, pieces in which video game characters are used as puppets since 2007. Each year, they present a classical story or collection of stories using video games. They have performed in various venues including at the ART in Cambridge, MA. In 2010, the New York Times called one of their pieces "an impressive feat of engineering, coordination, and storytelling.” They just completed a successful run of their newest collection, “Kwaidan: 4 Machinima Theater Pieces” at the Brick Theater in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
Enjoy light refreshments and coffee
Calling all teachers! Sign-up for your 10 minute interview in the WMHT Listening Booth.
What do you love about teaching? Do you use games in the classroom? Do you have something to share about the challenges and successes of teaching?
As part of the WMHT American Graduate Teacher Wall project www.wmht.org/americangraduate,
WMHT is looking to find great stories about what our region’s teachers are doing and thinking about education in the 21st century.
As a participant observer and youth advocate in the online safety field for 15 years and having served on two national task forces on the subject, I'll be talking about how the field unfolded and how the research in youth-online-risk has been misrepresented since the early days of the Web. So this presentation will be a reality check, providing the key research findings in both youth-online-risk and social-media research and some context to the public discussion on this issue. I will also offer some thought on how children learn good online safety and citizenship practices best.
This hands-on session will introduce free, educational multimedia resources for teachers and students available from WMHT and PBS, with a special focus on early childhood learners. (PreK – Grade 2).
In "The Art of Game Design", author Jesse Schell asserts that the most important goal of a game designer is to provide an experience. Effective teaching is much the same. When developing learning units, we strive to integrate content, student engagement, problem-solving, collaboration and cooperation, and other higher order thinking skills (HOTS). Each of these 21st Century skills is necessary in nurturing and developing students that are college and career ready after high school. The goal of this seminar is to explore how board games can be used to facilitate the teaching of the Common Core and prepare our students for the challenges of working and participating in an interconnected global world. Whether students are building train routes across the U.S. in Ticket to Ride, storytelling with Once Upon A Time, managing resources to build a wondrous medieval cathedral in Pillars of the Earth, or overseeing German electric distribution in Power Grid; they are taking on various roles and exploring models of real world interactions.
There is growing evidence that playing games can develop an array of skills and competencies identified as essential in today's world. Of course, some games lend themselves better to this task than others. The crème de la crème of these games go even further and inspire engagement beyond the actual game itself. Dr. James Paul Gee refers to this as the "Big G" or the community that grows up around a game. He maintains that the real 21st century literacies are embodied in these affinity spaces where learning is intrinsically motivated.
When students are offered these kinds of spaces in school, magic happens. Traditional learning paradigms are shattered as students drive the learning forward and teachers run to keep up!
The Elisabeth Morrow School has been working with multiple virtual worlds and MMOGs since 2008. Projects have spanned grades 2-8. Come see several examples of what happens when students initiate the learning. 4th-6th graders will join us remotely to share some of their Minecraft projects from camp.
Over the past two years I taught a very open and unstructured Video Game Design enrichment course and this past school year I taught our Gaming Technology elective course to sixth grade students using Scratch (www.scratch.mit.edu) . We began with computer programming and Scratch basics to make images and short animations before we progressed into an inquiry-driven game design unit. My students created, shared, and critiqued STEM games that they created for this class along with financial literacy and numeracy games for one of our school's special education contained classrooms. This class was a new offering this year for our small, rural middle school. Our "Big C's" for this class were Communication, Collaboration, Critical Thinking, and Creativity. These "Big C's" drove our hands-on, inquiry-driven learning experience.
This fall GameDesk is opening the PlayMaker School, a new Los Angeles school dedicated to student-driven learning through play and making. DreamLab is the portion of GameDesk's new PlayMaker school devoted to making sure professional development and curriculum creation capture the same vibrant, playful, and constantly evolving culture of the school. In this workshop, Joe Wise, GameDesk's Associate Director of New School Models and Curriculum, and Tedd Wakeman, a PlayMaker teacher, will demonstrate DreamLab's generated curriculum and processes. During the workshop attendees will be introduced to three modules developed in DreamLab: first, two modules designed to foster conceptual knowledge of physics through experimentative play. Last, Aero, a digital game created by GameDesk and curricularized by DreamLab which transforms the user into an albatross and teaches the forces involved in flight. Workshop participants will be invited to both test the modules and participate in the DreamLab process generating new ideas, modules, and pathways collaboratively with the GameDesk team.
This is a hands on workshop that will introduce the participants to the animation software. There will be various materials available for participants to be able to create their own animation. From claymation, how to do something, or to illustrate a poem! The program is fun, easy to use and will engage and enhance the learning experience in any curriculum K-12.
Researchers have been working diligently for several years to understand the learning impact of games. Educators currently working with MMOGs and virtual worlds are documenting the powerful learning opportunities they bring into the classroom. Still, it continues to be a challenge to convince the education community to take games and play seriously. But we may be overlooking one of the most important and powerful rationales for using these unique platforms with children in school. Guided learning in games and virtual environments has protective as well as educational properties, creating space for practicing citizenship while learning the core curriculum. Recommendations to Congress made by the 2009-'10 national task force, the Online Safety & Technology Working Group (OSTWG), stated that finding ways to work with children using the tools of their world is important. In fact, it is critical if we are to help them develop the skills necessary to function safely and successfully in a networked world.
Students are introduced to the concepts and process of creating a Video Game. Students create 2-D computer art and all the programing necessary to create a working video game each marking period.
My presentation will provide an quick overview of our development and design process leading into a focused topic of our education integration. We break down our integration through three steps: critical thinking, teacher empowerment and accessible work. The critical thinking component is a breakdown of how we chose to use many of the mechanics currently being employed by science and math games applied to english. The second part of our process is empowering teachers, one of the drawbacks we have seen with many educational gaming titles is that teachers must learn the product and information with the students, or race just ahead of them to keep up. We are providing teachers a new avenue to explain a topic they are already intimately familiar with. The third being our curriculum placement, that Kill Shakespeare be it the graphic novel or the app have shown great success when put towards the start of the semester in advance of the Shakespeare unit, it gives kids a comfortable easing into the more heavy and intense Shakespeare content.
I would like to do a Q&A as I think this the best way for everyone to get something out of it. With time permitting.
In this second part of the Board Games seminar, we will look at a variety of designer board games, brainstorm strategies for lesson design and implementation, as well as, discuss the challenges to using board games in the classroom to meet the Common Core and State Learning Standards.
Sit at tables with conversations decided by you (and everyone else!) in the morning
Get your hands on games and technology that your kids and other educators are using.
Build a webpage!
Create your own meme!
Trick-out your Tumblr theme!
Make your own web-made film!
Think of it as a learning party, where youth have the opportunity to play with cool, new digital tools that help them make awesome stuff on the web, while also learning a bit about HTML and CSS. Activities are best suited to those ages 12 and up.
Hive Learning Network NYC is a Mozilla project and part of The MacArthur Foundation's Digital Media & Learning initiative. Hive NYC is comprised of thirty-nine non-profit organizations—museums, libraries, media and other youth-facing organizations—that create opportunities for tweens and teens to explore their interests using digital media and other technologies for educational outcomes. For more information please visit www.explorecreateshare.org.
What if schools just started to look at how games engage and motivate? There are patterns, designs, and language that draws millions of kids to play games, what if they could be employed for learning too. This session looks at three examples of game-based PD, pedagogical strategies, and curriculum overhauls. The best part is that these changes require no gaming experience, just a willingness to meet students where they play.
Take games in education to the next level by having kids create their own games. Kodu lets kids and teens create games on the PC and XBox via a simple visual programming language and can be used to teach creativity, problem solving, storytelling, as well as programming. Anyone can use Kodu to make a game, young children, as well as adults, with or without design or programming experience. In this session, we’ll explore the Kodu environment, create a simple interactive game, and discover ready-to-use curriculum resources including video tutorials, lesson plans, and student activities. We’ll take a look at Kodu lesson modules for mathematics and science. In a special segment, we’ll look at advanced Microsoft technologies that will allow students to create games for an Xbox, PC, Kinect Sensor, or even a mobile phone. Kodu and all tools demonstrated are available for free.
This workshop will focus on experiences in two virtual environments where learners have the opportunity to experience digital citizenship as a direct and lived experience. Workshop participants will explore the issues that surround individual identity, community cultivation, norms and leadership; Quest Atlantis/ Atlantis Remixed and Massively Minecraft. These two environments are representative of safe spaces/games where children are able to tinker with creating their own identity, exploring and cultivating community norms and understanding what it means to engage positively in online social spaces. These games are what Jim Gee refers to as affinity spaces, affinity spaces for both students and teachers, with strong positive values. These projects are designed and managed by educators and bring together students from around the world into one global community. The design of activity in these game spaces is intended to expose learners to positive social interactions and to develop strategies for keeping them mindful of rules and strategies that promote that kind of engagement. Both these game spaces allow learners to to experience positive norms and encourage them to take these out into future online spaces they will inhabit like Facebook and Twitter.
View the presentation at: http://youtu.be/b-0oe8vx8ig
Video games are emerging as a incredible interactive medium for storytelling. As in literature, all of the key components of a good story are present, however, unlike other media, video games invite the player to actively participate in the story world. In this session, Lucas will share his latest game-based project that encourages middle school students to explore the rich storytelling in video games on a variety of platforms including the XBox, PlayStation3, PC, iPad, and even handheld gaming systems. See how students are not only exploring these games, but analyzing their story elements, writing online reviews, and telling their own stories!
Game design courses create fun challenges for students. As they solve problems in YoYo Games’ Game Maker, students apply concepts from STEM: Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math. Students show off their projects, and discuss the influence of game-development-based learning on their academic experience.
Mark will demonstrate how his students use Google Docs-most notably Spreadsheets, web applications, charts and Google SketchUp to create 3D models. Using the data they collect, students create 3D models of a selected Constellation (usually their birth sign) as well as a 3D model of the Solar System as it was at the moment of their birth. All software used is free and works equally well on Macs and PCs.
View the presentation at: http://youtu.be/JomZhScHXvY
The original focus of this project was to develop a curriculum for an after school program or "club" for at-risk students at the middle and/or high school level. This program would use the game, World of Warcraft, as a focal point for exploring Writing/Literacy, Mathematics, Digital Citizenship, Online Safety, and would have numerous projects/lessons intended to develop 21st-Century skills. Because of the success of the first year's implementation as an after school program, the program is now being implemented as a language arts elective, The Hero's Journey, for middle school designed to provide enrichment for all types of learners!