Laura Wright

I haven’t blogged for over a month because I have been so excited about our adventure to… drum roll please… South Korea!

This is the view from the roof of our school: Taejeon Christian International School in Daejeon Techno Valley. My gorgeous talented husband will be teaching Music in the High School and I will be teaching elementary – grade level is to be decided at a later date. This is such a big thing for us: moving to another country, Caleb and I going to school full time… but I think it is going to be the best thing for our family. I feel so blessed that we will be moving into a Christian community and all that that entails; bible study, Church and just being around like minded people. I also feel blessed that we are moving to a school that has a focus on academics and sees their students as future leaders.

We have so many things to do: passports, Ebaying all our stuff, buying snow clothes… But once I start in the classroom in July I plan to use this blog more regularly… well, thats the plan anyway 🙂

Christmas is behind us and I am back reading the Guided Inquiry book I started about a month ago. I have been reading it when I get a spare moment but I did get a little side tracked by a Kindle Christmas present from Samuel: Finding your Element by Ken Robinson. I, like many, have been somewhat entranced by this Englishmen both as a presenter of TED talks and as a author of Out of Our Minds. I had heard about the Element book and so I was happy to see it on the iPad ready to be devoured on Christmas morning. I have read the book, completed the majority of the exercises, and have decided that Technology Integration in education is where I want to be headed towards… I think it might be my element… I can’t be certain till I get there but everything seems to be pointing there… 🙂

Next post is more about guided inquiry…

Here is a big “thank you, thank you, than you!” to the amazing staff at Coursera and Wisconsin University for working so hard on the Video Games and Learning MOOC I have just finished and thoroughly enjoyed.

Particular thanks to Constance Steinkuehler and Kurt Squire. You are both amazing and I am so very grateful for your work.

Further Reading: http://www.news.wisc.edu/22184

Armed with our new website and prepared with the experience of the Happy Prince, we were over the moon when International Grammar School approached us to do another iBook. This time it was a much larger project: three books publishing compositions of three classes of Year 8 students.

This time around the compositions where done on iPads in small groups, the illustrations were drawn my Japanese exchange students to the school, and the narration was done by the Japanese teacher (in Japanese). We used Screenflow to create the intro film. We also used Bookry widgets to view web pages inside iBooks rather than linking and viewing in Safari. The Blue Book is available on the iTunes store here and the two other versions are currently under review by iTunes (a very long and sometimes painful process I must admit). Feedback so far has been very positive – the music staff of IGS are very happy and we tweeted it out to a few colleagues who also thought it was really exciting. Click on the above image to link to our Wrightstuff Interactive iTunes account to download these student created content iBooks.

Our next project with those innovative folks at IGS is in the planning stages and we are very excited to be working with the Music and Art department… stay tuned 🙂

UPDATE: All three books are now available! Click here!

Yay! This week focuses on gaming in education. In the intro today Constance said the participation is over 40,000 people for this course! Thats amazing.

Technology: Inside verse Outside the Classroom.
Cheryl: technology to amplify learning in the classroom
John: technology in competition with classroom

Our goal to move towards creating classrooms were Cheryl is the norm. We should strive to model a integrated technology life.

Games are part of participatory cultures
modding: creating modifications of games and then sharing these mods (qCraft)
machinima: taking video of your game play and setting them to music
game-walkt-thrus: like tutorials that are then critiqued

These participatory cultures bridge technology inside and outside classroom.

Games are just an easy context for learning through interest.

This video is so cute and Mac like i just had to share it. Sorry if this is breaking the rules 😉

General Rap-up:

I have loved this course and all the work Constance and Kurt have done is just down right impressive.

I have learnt about aspects of gaming and research which I didn’t expect to yet I found really interesting.

In this video the lecturer is talking about what role scientific reasoning – thinking in mathematical scientific ways – has in gaming in MMO games. In a study she conducted the following scientific practices were gleaned from AAAS (American Association for the Advancement of Science) standards and divided into three categories.

These standards where then used to analyse over 200 forum posts and these are the results;

In the lecture she expounds each of the above habits of mind. One of the most amazing results was the 1% mathematical computation that was exemplified with this impressive spreadsheet:

The last category of tacit epistemology was interesting. The three minds of the absolutist, relativist and the evaluative. Data was then presented showing that WoW gamers have a much higher percentage of evaluative thinkers than the general public, and many less absolutists. This makes me think of the inquiry based learning book I am reading at the moment. Inquiry based learning requires people to be evaluative thinkers. Student creative content as apposed to teacher/expert content is another important aspect of modern learning that can foster evaluative thinkers.

Sorry this post is so late. Week 5 has been really dense in content I am particularly interested in and I didn’t want to rush through just for the sake of finishing. We have also been having a busy time at home with family and work – published student created iBooks for Wrightstuff Interactive (post about soon…).

The next couple of lectures were about using video games to teach historical content. The lecturer – Kurt Squire – first spoke about his research into Civilisations. This game is strategy based. It places the gamer in different historical periods and requires them to build and sustain an empire through time from ancient to modern time. Gamers create the world incorporating new technologies relevant to the era.

After the lecture I watched this introduction to the game – it was a great intro but only watch it if you actually intend to teach with or play the game because its almost an hour and a half long!

The next lecture was about giving students the opportunity solve problems within a historical space. In the Stronghold 3 simulation game the goals are to build a castle and maintain the community connected to that castle. The gamer is forced to make choices and negotiate tasks within a historical frame work. I also had a look at Europa Universallis IV which I immediately liked because of the authentic geography – I couldn’t understand in Civilsations how one gamer had just created Otowa, then turned it into Toronto which no topographical transformation and then Venice attacked him???

I really liked in this lecture when he started talking about history as a series of choices rather than a pre-determined story. History is simply the choices that others have already made. Games can allow students the space to live history again and see what their decisions would be – yes they have a benefit of hindsight but once the timeline errs far enough away from the reality they can then get a sense of making history changing choices.

Don’t worry – this isn’t another course – it’s a book 🙂

Was given this to read by a beautiful teacher and I am so glad she did as it’s bring the practicalities of inquiry learning/facilitating into focus for me. Here are a few points of interest and things I just don’t want to forget…

Guided Inquiry is a way of thinking, learning, and teaching that changes the culture of the school into a collaborative inquiry community. (It) develops academic competency, career readiness, and life skills… Learning content in isolation is an inefficient, outdated practice. (As) student cannot possibly learn all of the content that is known, learning how to learn and understanding one’s own learning process are more important than ever before.

Guided Inquiry Design Process

1. Open: invitation to inquiry, open minds, stimulate curiosity

2. Immerse: build background knowledge, connect to content, discover interesting ideas

3. Explore: explore interesting ideas, look around, dip in

4. Identify: pause and ponder, identify inquiry question, decide direction

5. Gather: gather important information, go broad, go deep

6. Create: reflect on learning, to beyond facts to make meaning, create to communicate

7. Share: learn from each other, share learning, tell your story

8. Evaluate: evaluate achievement of learning goals, reflect on content and process

Classroom time is not call lessons – which infers a teacher-led classroom – they are called sessions. The book contains a session plan – consisting of starter, work time, reflection and notes (pretty simple but clearly marked with a copyright symbol so I can’t share 🙁

Five Kinds of Learning