Carmen San Diego Stand Aside

image courtesy of wikipedia

Technology and educational gaming has made some leaps since Carmen San Diego first graced our PCs.  I remember playing the original Where in the World is Carmen San Diego? on the glorious orange monochrome of the Casper monitor we had in the mid to late 80's.  I played some of the  sequels such as Where in the USA is Carmen San Diego? at my best friend's house in glorious full color VGA.  In the early to mid 90's I watched the TV show and can still hum some bars of the theme song.  Carmen San Diego made learning about geography fun.  That may still be the case today.  You can download Carmen San Diego Returns for PC and iOS.  However, if you want to save a couple of bucks, there are two websites that are the most fun I've had with geography since hunting for that red-trench-coated  criminal mastermind.

A random spot on the planet where a road happens to be.

The sites are GeoGuessr (www.geoguessr.com) and Earth-Picker (www.earth-picker.com).  Instead of using clues provided to find what country or state or even part of space (Really! Where in Space is Carmen San Diego? 1993) an elusive Latina is hiding, these two sites drop you in a random location anywhere in the world mapped by Google Maps.  You are presented a location in a Google Street View.  You may navigate around turning, going forwards and backwards, but you may not zoom out into an overhead view.  An overhead map of the entire world is shown in the corner of the screen and the object of the game is to place a pin as close to the location of the street view as possible.  The closer you are, the less points you get.  Games on both sites take the sum of the distances you're off from the actual location for 5 rounds.  Like golf, the lower your score, the better.  There are of course leader boards for folks that choose to sign in.  Don't be confused initially like I was though by the high low scores though.  Both sites were made by European programmers that use decimals instead of commas and vice versa.

To get as close as possibly to the actual locations presented, the player can navigate around and search for clues such as road signs, business names, topography, flora, fauna, etc. that would help them find where on the planet he or she is.  It can be quite challenging especially since Google Street View isn't limited to just streets.  While Earth-Picking I've been placed inside of temples and also museums.

These games are a great way to learn about other places, unfamiliar places, ones where you would never visit as a tourist.  These two games develop observational skills, reasoning, logic, and deduction.  While the player may not be tracking down Carmen or her V.I.L.E agents, or finding where she had hidden the Eiffel Tower or all the sushi in Japan, GeoGuessr and/or Earth-Picker are both great fun and a valuable tool for learning geography through observation and exploration.

The only shortcut you need to know in Google Drive

Otto Frederick Rohwedder
courtesy of Wikipedia

Google Drive is the greatest thing since sliced bread (Sorry! Otto Frederick Rohwedder inventor of the first loaf-at-a-time bread slicing machine).  It's a useful tool and if you're anything like me, you'll want the most efficient way to do things with that tool.  For all the applications that are part of the Google Drive suite that means keyboard shortcuts.

Why take a dozen clicks of your mouse or touch-pad and seconds of your time to copy the formatting of a portion of text when you can hit Ctrl+Alt+C instead?  Why?  Because you can't remember what Ctrl+Alt+C does.  That's why.  We can remember the shortcuts that we use everyday like Ctrl+C & Ctrl+V for copying and pasting.  But things that you don't do everyday or keyboard shortcuts that you see once on a list on the internet are quickly forgotten.  What's the solution?  Dozens of post-its? Keeping a list on a pad next to your work space?  An awesome tattoo on your forearm or the back of your hand? And let's not forget that each application has unique keyboard shortcuts.

Ingress: A Game Ripe with Educational Possibilities

For the past several months I've been testing my wife's patience with a game from Google called Ingress.  Ingress is an augmented reality massively multiplayer online game.  The game uses your Android or iOS device's GPS to show you an augmented view of the world around you; this world has portals that look very much like fountains of light erupting from local points of interest like public works of art, monuments, cenotaphs, popular hangout spots, etc.

Two world-wide teams vie for control of these portals (and the future of all mankind) using game mechanics that I won't get into here, except to state that the goal of the game is to link portals together to create large triangular fields.  The area of these fields are constantly totaled and the team with the combined greatest area of triangles is winning at that moment.

Richmond as seen by someone Ingressing.  The points
are portals and the shaded areas are triangular fields.

It seems simple enough, just make big triangles on a map by standing on a portal and linking it to two other portals that you've been to before and that are already connected thus completing the three sides of a triangle.  However, the lines connecting the vertexes of triangles cannot intersect any other lines.  This makes making longer lines far more difficult.

Since the app will only show you portals within about two kilometers of your current location, creating large triangular fields require either a lot of luck or careful planning and teamwork.  Fortunately, a Smurf or a Frog (colloquial names for members of the blue Resistance and green Enlightened teams respectively) can see real-time maps by visiting ingress.com/intel to plan their "ingressions".  They can also join online communities that work as teams to create huge fields and/or destroy the opposing team's fields.

Universal Design for Learning and Accessibility: A Summary Through the Eyes of an Instructional Technologist

A family friend and former educator that has since moved on to bigger and  better (but probably more boring things) asked me if I was familiar with Universal Design for Learning and Accessibility.  I replied "Nope but I can be."  After some research I found that many of the concepts of Universal Design for Learning fell in line with my own beliefs about how technology can prepare learners with 21st century methods to fill 21st century needs.
Universal Design for Learning is a spin off of the concept of Universal Design.  Universal Design is term coined by architect Ronald L. Mace "to describe the concept of designing products and the built environment to serve the needs of people regardless of their age, ability, or status in life."  Ramps that lead up to buildings and curb cuts are examples of universal design in action in architecture.  Flexible drinking straws, automatic doors, and Q-Drums are example of products that exemplify universal design.  Anyone can use them.

Q-Drums ease the burden of transporting water in developing countries.

Universal Design for Learning (UDL) takes concepts from Universal Design and applies them to learning via a framework based on research in cognitive neuroscience.  How?  By creating curriculum that includes multiple means of representation, multiple means of expression, and multiple means of engagement.  Thus giving learners various ways of getting information and demonstrating that knowledge while challenging them appropriately to ensure engagement and motivation.

An Evaluation of TimeMonsters.com as an Instructional Asset

For the past 4 years I've had the privilege of being a kindergarten teacher.  For 3 of those years I taught only kindergarten and for the last year, I taught a combination class of kindergarten and first first grade.  One of my favorite standards to teach was telling time.  This was not just because of the nostalgia I felt when I broke out the the Judy Clocks.  But also because I got to listen to the soothing voice and enjoy the humor of Professor Tempo, the host and instructor of timemonsters.com.  How does timemonsters.com stack up as an instructional asset?  Let's take a look...

TIMEMONSTERS.COM

A. Desired Outcomes

Specific Virginia SOL: Math K.9: The student will tell time to the hour, using analog and digital clocks.

B. General Product Description

Title: Time Monsters

Designed and Developed by Marc Gunderson

This program can be used at home or in the classroom by either individuals or small groups.  It can also be used whole group with the use of an interactive white board and projector/computer setup.  The purpose of the program is to teach learners how to tell time.

The program is presented by a virtual instructor, the animated Professor Tempo.  The first time to website is loaded, Professor Tempo tells the students how to navigate through the program interface and the suggested order that the lessons should be completed in (indicated by a bright blue flashing arrow for the next suggested lesson).

The material is divided into 15 lessons with post-lesson quizzes and 2 large tests at the completion of all lessons.  A suggested order of completion exists.  However, the lessons may be completed in any order.

The intended users for this software are children who do not know how to tell time.

4 Of The Fastest Growing Trends In Education Technology

4 of the Fastest Growing Trends in Education Technology

Anna Francesca's article (linked above) lists 4 growing trends in Ed. Tech.  They are:

• Learning Analytics
• 3D Printing
• Mobile Apps
• Game-based Learning

Let's first discuss leaning analytics.  Data is one of the most important tools we have as educators.  We're constantly gathering and acting on the data we acquire.  However, something we do very little of is using that data to predict what our students will do in the future.  We use the data to see where our students are and what their current deficiencies or strengths are, but we rarely use that data to predict future behavior and performance.  Why not?  If Target can figure out that a teen girl was pregnant before her own father knew that she was, why can't educators use data to figure out the a student (or even a group of students) who is struggling with a particular objective use that knowledge to predict that that same student will likely struggle with correlated objectives later and proactively prevent it rather than remediating it after the fact?

Media Selection: Newer isn't always better.

One of the most important aspects of sound instructional design is media selection.  Choosing the right picture, video, soundbite, or print asset can increase both student engagement and learning.  During my tenure in Virginia Tech's Master of Arts in Instructional Technology program, peer reviews of programs and lessons I was developing were used to provide valuable feedback.  A point of contention that I encountered more than once was my use of what my peers referred to as "outdated" media.  To this I say "Nay!"  Just because the media I selected was old doesn't mean that it wasn't the best choice for my instructional design.  Newer isn't necessarily better when it comes to media or even delivery system.  What matters is the role and efficacy of the media chosen.  With that in mind here are 10 classic educational television programs that still rock today via i09.com.  The vast majority of these programs can be found on YouTube.com.  Enjoy!

Classic Educational TV Programs that Still Rock Today