Discussions, Games, and New Evaluations/Assessments

Today, Abbie and I had a nice discussion on how we can move our students' games forward a little faster.  We have been putting a lot of thought recently into the idea that we can hold them to greater accountability through individual assessment.  So, on Friday, we will be meeting with the class to discuss daily grading on their individual roles.  

We have decided that the teams need to have playable demos of their games ready by January 16th.  This will have them ready to present to the World Wide Workshop representatives the following week.  It is good for our students (and teachers....) to have a solid deadline to be working toward.  

All in all, both teams are working to finish their game planning by the end of class today, and their doing very well.

That's all, I hope to blog more often in the next few weeks....

It's been a long time since I rock & rolled...

Well I am coming back to life after my post-marching band season coma.  Globaloria has been going well.  Mrs. Franks and I have been able to keep the students pretty well on task.  So far, they have created paper prototypes for their game which they recorded on video and posted to their wiki.  In addition, they have re-created their paper prototypes using flash.  These are also posted on the wiki under the group projects pages under assets. 

Next class period, we plan to have the students working on the Planning Your Game lesson.  We would really like the students to be able to take their laptops home to work on their games, but we are still trying to resolve the issue of being able to sign into the computers away from the school network.  Once we take care of this, we should open up more opportunities for the students to work outside of class.

Again, all is going well.  Hopefully, I'll be able to get myself to blog more often once again...

Until next time.

Flash Day 1

Today our students completed tutorials on flash in the Imagining Your Game topic.  The students had opportunities to play with flash and try out the drawing tools.  However, we do not have flash on our classroom desktop computer which is hooked to the SmartBoard projector, so we were not able to do any class demonstrations.  Hopefully we'll have this all worked out by next class on Monday.  Also, I am trying to work out getting a Flash license for my Mac.  

Looking Forward to Next Time..

Finally back on!

Ok,  I feel kind of stupid.  I haven't been posting for a while now because I was having trouble logging onto the blog.  All I had to do was reset my browser.  Well, I'm back on now.  We sent in our first progress reports in yesterday.  I saw Abbey's after I had already sent mine.  She did such a good job on the student progress reports.  Mine were so plain and hers were so descriptive.  I'll have to do better next time.

On other news, our school got Flash this week.  Unfortunately, I still don't have a working license on my MacBook.  I'll have to get that figured out soon.

Glad to be posting again...

Class 9/10/08

Today the students continued the play to learn lesson. We had 4 students present their game reviews to the class. We'll have to continue this lesson for one more day. We will be finishing up the review presentations, linking to our game review pages, linking to our blogs, and set up RSS feeds. I'll have to be sure to remember how to do all of this.

I did set up game review pages for each of the students. We will have them watch the tutorial to set up the links as part of class on Friday.

Everything is still going very well!

Third Day of Class

Today is the third meeting we have had with our Globaloria Class. Last class we got all of our students signed up with wiki and blog accounts. The students set up their personal wikis and chose avatars. They also published their first blog post. Daniel Workman put up a little fight about having to post on a blog, but he did it. I think the class is going very well so far.

Today, the students are doing game evaluations using the rubric we received at the Globaloria Workshop in August.

Mrs. Franks and I are moving into our roles fairly smoothly. Hopefully, things will keep working out.

We are getting our students!!

Here is a list of our students for the class:

Roger Terry

Kenna Hintersteiner

Jessica Tuckwiller

Kim Gum

Shannon Adams

Terry Bess

Garrett Vess

Daniel Williamson

Casey Workman

Kayleigh Megley

I think this will be a pretty good class.

Teacher's Leadership Academy & Project Based Learning Reinforces Globaloria Objectives

I am sitting in a teacher training session about project based learning being put on by teachers who attended the teacher's leadership academy.  It may help us get others on board with the Globaloria mission and objectives.  It seems that the ideas are very much in line with the globaloria ideas.

Finishing Up August 08 Workshop - Things to remember.

We're finishing up now.  It is about 3:40 pm.  We just had a great session where we all posted questions on the educator wiki and answered them for another group.  Abbie is compiling a list of ideas for a presentation for us to do during the first faculty senate meeting.  So far, she has:

Globaloria - Wat is it, its large vision and specific goals?

It is a vehicle which provides intrinsic and extrinsic motivation for learning 21st century skills.

Students use analytical and critical thinking skills to create an authentic, relevant product.

Presentation Skills

Collaboration

Web 2.0 Skills (wikis, blogs, transparent learning)

Student Opportunities:

Dual Credit through MU (MCTC)

Paid Internship 

Professional Activities (presenting to Governor's Office, MU Faculty, Soliciting ideas from GEHS Faculty (Research)

Acountability:

Students not only report to teachers, but also to the World Wide Workshop Foundation.

Final products will be on display for all to see and use. 

In other topics...

When students create accounts on the GEHS wiki, they will need an email address.  If possible, all students will need to get a Gmail account.

For user names, etc.  students should not use their full name online.

Abbie and I will keep a full list of all user names and keep them on our user page of the educator's wiki.

We will need to accept students as members and assign them temporary passwords which will be emailed to them.

NOTES FROM LEE

1st Day:

Purple Paper - Survey

Consent Forms

Final Enrollment Names ASAP

First Mini-Workshop is September 10th (wednesday 5:00 pm) Flash

Wow, this is alot!!!  But I think it will be very cool.

Wiki Recent Changes, RSS Feeds, and Whatnot...

Lee just showed me how to link changes from the educators' wiki as an RSS Feed to my Mail program.  All I had to do was copy and past the url from the RSS (located at the bottom left of the educators' wiki recent changes page) and add it as a new RSS feed in Mail.  According to Lee, you can do this from any of the wikis with recent changes.  It is alot of information.  Probably too much, but it is there and provides quick access to any changes.

We are finishing up our August 19th session and I feel pretty confident with all we've done today. The challenge for Abbie and me will be the flash programming.  We'll be asking for help, so all you flash experts out there be ready....

Here we are on August 19th, 2008.  I've been crazy busy for about a month now with band rehearsal, camp, the State Fair and what not.  I'm very lucky to have an understanding wife & family.  Now it is time to turn attention to this Globaloria adventure.  While in the current context I feel a little overwhelmed, I am confident that once Abbie and I get in full stride we will be very successful this school year.  We have a pretty good, diverse list of students we are recruiting for the course.  I'm looking forward to this project!

1st Post

Well, this is my first blog post!  I am excited to finally start using this resource.  I hope it helps me to communicate better with others, share my thoughts, and ultimately be more productive.  This Globaloria workshop is extremely informative and helpful.