I in my day off in Hong Kong. It’s a Chinese holiday, and I’m fighting to get the final proof done on Redefining Literacy 2.0 before I get busy again. Today may be my last day off in weeks.
Anyway, in testing links, I found myself at Will Richardson’s blog, and scanning through his report on his first 90 minutes with Spore. I’ve not gotten it yet, but texting my son, found that he was in outer space in less than six hours. But he said that the fun was in going back and just playing around with the possibilities, testing ideas about adaptation. [Image ((“Spore Everywhere.” Shadowstorm’s Photostream. 16 May 2006. 14 Sep 2008 <http://flickr.com/photos/shadowstorm/147918291/>. ))]
One of the 18 comments on the post came from someone named Ryan. He didn’t include a blog URL, and although I could speculate on who he is, I’ll not here. The conversation was about instructional integration, and Ryan said,
…we need to quit looking at tools and saying, ?How can I make this educational??, we need to look at an educational need and say, ?What tool that exists can fill this need?? or ?What needs to be built to fit this need??
So many posts about, ?trying to figure out how to get twitter into the classroom.?
Don?t try to cram every cool new technology into the classroom ? it?s bad for our cause!
This is so very true. It doesn’t mean that we should avoid paying attention to these things, and playing them ourselves. I think that it is important for us to understand these experiences and what and how our students are learning in them — even if they are not part of the st-st-st-standards.
Thanks, Ryan…
Hubby got Spore over the weekend – it’s a great game that doesn’t jsut let you “tweak” and play with combinations, it keeps a timeline detailing the evolution of your creature. Its potential in the classroom is pretty cool – there’s so much you can do with all the subject areas.
I like the idea of using more sites like twitter in my classroom, but honestly I don’t have a good enough reason. Silly, but having students communicate using the computer is not a better tool than having them talk directly to each other. We should always be more interested in the content than the method it is delivered. (Unfortunately, the delivery is often way more fun!)
I’ve really enjoyed reading your blog. This post especially caught my attention, as it is what a lot of educators seem to be struggling with. I am in the process of developing a blog of my own and have taken away some great ideas today.
Thanks,
Julie
http://www.nfib.com/eitc
I really like your idea especially the photos .Great man!