Monday, July 2, 2007

CUE Conferences

If you haven't thought about presenting or attending the 2008 CUE conference in Palm Springs, you should seriously think about it. Besides having great hands-on workshops and sessions on ways to integrate technology into the curriculum, this year they are also offering short 20 minute "CUE" tips. I've submitted to present a Cue Tip on how students and teachers can add backgrounds to photos, literally immersing students in the curriculum! To the right is an example of how we recently had students dress up in costumes to prepare for their role-playing of characters from the Aeneid. You can download the handout I'll present from tipsPS.doc. The annual CUE in Palm Springs will be held March 6-8, 2008. Can't wait that long for your technology conference fix? Then check out the CLMS Technology Conference in
Monterey, November 29-Dec. 2, 2007

Great Resource

I found a great blog site posted by Mark Wagner at edtechlife. He posted a lot about what he learned at the recent NECC conference. One very useful post was about RSS links to educational journals, and how you can have these links automatically feed to a free Google Reader. Just go to Google, get a free gmail account, and check out the Google Reader. You then simply add "subscriptions" (RSS feed links) into the Reader. Then go to the reader and check out the latest info as it regularly updates for you. I found several articls relating to gaming in education that I would not have found otherwise. Thanks Mark W.!

Invited by U.S. Dept. of Educ. to Review Games in Education

Monday, July 9, I'm off to Madison WI. I was invited by the Dept. of Education to sit on a review panel and listen to presentations by grant recipients who are developing games and simulations for the Dept. of Education.

One product I will review is under the direction of Kurt Squire. I read some of his work while developing my dissertations's literature review, and also saw him moderate panels and also give talks at last year's
Games, Learning, and Society conference in Madison WI. (I attended
GLS last year and presented my Rome KaMOO). I feel privileged to get a look at one of Squire's recent projects. The project, "Augmented Reality Simulation Games for Mathematics and Literacy Learning with Emerging Mobile Technologies" seeks to leverage the effectiveness of AR simulation games on mobile computers with global positioning systems to improve middle school mathematics and literacy instruction and student achievement in those fields. Its target populations are under-served urban middle school students and teachers.

I will also participate on a review panel evaluating a University of Oklahoma project that "plans to incorporate current digital game-based learning research to develop an interactive game environment in order to allow students to experience a wide array of real-world challenges that require a combination of team collaboration and the constant use of a series of process and content standards. The project will also introduce teachers to a form of professional development, Lesson Study, that promotes a cross-curricular team to collaboratively plan, teach, observe and reflect on student engagement and interaction during the researach lesson."

Incorporating game-based strategies into the curriculum is one of the elements in my dissertation, so I am very excited to serve on these panels. Stay tuned on further blogs as I go on site!