Friday, February 19, 2010

Level Up, Not Grades

This article talks about the integration of games into education.

A professor at IU has decided to not give grades, but you need to level up your avatar to pass the class.
"Games and real life are colliding in unique ways. One professor at Indiana University, Lee Sheldon, doesn't give grades. Rather, students start as a level one avatar and level up through the class based on attendance and performance, like in a role-playing game. And the students' performance in class seems to indicate that the system works."
Interesting idea.

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Millions of Dollars in your pocket

Hard to imagine when I was in high school that I would have a computer smaller than some wallets I have owned. Ok, I might have imagined it, but I read alot of Sci-Fi.

Then make an application for that tiny computer that lets me access images from the most expensive and highest quality space telescopes and it just boggles the mind.

Oh, and the application is free.

Truly amazing.

Tuesday, February 02, 2010

Remediating the Classroom



This seems like such a no-brainer, to update the way knowledge is taught from the knowledge gained over the last...hundred to two hundred years.

I think the perfect solution would be a device with a small screen that could be 'docked' to a larger screen, keyboard and other peripherals as needed. I just don't think carrying around a keyboard and large screen, especially for younger kids.

Such use-cases could be a large touch or stylus screen for art focused lessons, digital instruments for music, the advance of digital microscopes (how cheap are they now?)



With the availability of inexpensive and task specific hardware, it would just need a coherent vision and software to make this possible.

Yes, I am an optimist.