I had a great day, yesterday, at Kent Denver School, on the edge of the rolling plains of Denver, Colorado. It was a beautiful campus that blended perfectly into the rural landscape. The first thing I did was to moderate a conversation with parents about schooling, the future, video games, cyber safety, etc. “Maybe I should allow my son to play video games!”
That was followed by a presentation on contemporary literacy in a wonderful lecture hall, that I practically needed climbing gear to enter, the seating rows were so inclined. Very intimate, and now lapel mic necessary. Nothing else new here except for this picture. I did a little activity that I’ve done for years, where I find earthquake data on the Internet, import it into a spreadsheet, and then use the spreadsheet to generate a scatter plot of longitude and latitude for the quake of one month. It generates a compelling map of the world.
These two young teachers, I’m so sorry that I didn’t get their names, worked through the activity at their seats, and then superimposed the graph onto a map of the world. So cool!
I hate it when they aren’t paying attention 😉
Great piece ! I wonder if parents views of video games would be more positive if they seen them as controlled virtual environments? We have had a lot of success engaging students with our new Edusim concept we have been piloting at our Education Service Center and have a beautiful piece of a teacher building a 3D interactive lesson using their SMARTboard as a tool to encourage the direct manipulation or her 3D virtual lesson objects.
Here is her piece:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LN5JRl8_sU
Best regards,
Rich
======