Should Schools Implement Social Media Policies?

via Mashable

Facebook wasn’t a topic of conversation in high schools 10 years ago — it hadn’t even been invented yet.

One decade and a billion users later, and with the introduction of Twitter, Instagram and other social networking platforms, it’s become an unavoidable cultural commodity. If you’re a teacher, your students most likely have profiles, and vice versa.

There are plenty of examples of Facebooking-gone-wrong in the education field so far. There’s the teacher in Pittsburgh, Pa., whose colleagues discovered her photo with a stripper online, and the Boston-area teen who was arrested for alleged “terrorist threats” in a rap video he posted to Facebook.

But the logistics of what is and isn’t acceptable between students and teachers online are still being figured out — and it largely varies by school.

Mashable reached out to a few schools across the U.S. to ask about how they’ve adjusted to the digital era. Our primary question: Should there be an overall policy for social media use?

Hans Mundahl is the director of technology and integration at the New Hampton School, a private boarding high school in New Hampton, N.H. The school is a “one-to-one iPad” institution, meaning every student and teacher is provided with a tablet.

“We have three levels of policies, loosely phrased, when it comes to social media,” Mundahl tells Mashable. “The first is a pretty straightforward policy that teachers are not to friend or follow any of their students on any social media channel. We, teachers and staff, are sort of the ‘parents-plus.’ It’s important to establish great relationships with students offline that are not necessarily ‘friend’ relationships online.”

“I strongly believe this can be used positively. By allowing our teachers to connect through social media with students, we both understand the risks that come with it.”

The second policy has to do with Facebook groups. Mundahl said it’s common for the school to create groups for their sports teams and update them with photos, game schedules and rosters.

“The only policy here is that the coaches work with me, and the rest of the social media team, to set up the right privacy controls,” he says. “It’s a great way for someone — say, an eighth-grader thinking about joining the lacrosse team in high school — to ‘meet’ the current team and get a glimpse at what it’s like to be a part of it. But, even though they’re loosely interacting, the actual players and coaches are not to be Facebook friends.”

The final policy is about respecting students’ personal social media presences. In other words: No online “sting” operations.

“We do [conduct] some passive monitoring for our school’s name using TweetDeck. Usually, the results are about the new Hampton Inn hotel or something else unrelated,” Mundahl says.

“But sometimes we’ll find a student, whose profile is public, who’s raising a bit of a red flag with their posts or tweets. We’ll normally update the student’s adviser, and sometimes send the student an email saying, ‘Hey, by the way, we came across this post where you weren’t representing yourself or the school well — just want to let you know.’ But no punishments are issued,” he says.

Other schools have looser regulations regarding student-teacher relationships online.

Robert Dill, who teaches government, psychology and sociology at the public Forest Hills High School in Sidman, Pa., says it’s not uncommon for students and teachers to be connected on social media.

“We don’t have a ‘policy’ in place, necessarily, but it’s definitely an evolving process,” he says. “Initially, when Facebook and everything started exploding, the school district frowned on teachers using it, fearing there would be a miscommunication or improper use with students.

“Over the years, though, it’s changed. Teachers are still cautioned to not discuss a student’s grades or performance over social media — but really, that’s the only rule of thumb. I know several teachers who are Facebook friends with their students.”

Dill’s not one of them — instead, he interacts with students on Twitter. If someone has a question about an assignment due date, or needs clarification on a subject matter, they’ll tweet at Dill. He’ll respond, usually through email.

“If it’s a quick ‘yes or no’ question, like, ‘Is this due tomorrow?’, I’ll just tweet back at them,” he says. “But for longer answers, I’ll switch over to email.”

Dill follows his students back on Twitter, and occasionally comes across some not-so-great-for-a-teacher-to-see tweets. But, similar to Mundahl, he said he’s not out to play detective on anyone.

“There have been some situations in which a student has tweeted something disparaging, usually about a coach or a teacher — but I don’t comment,” he says. “I strongly believe this can be used positively. By allowing our teachers to connect through social media with students, we both understand the risks that come with it. I strongly believe in the First Amendment, and that this is a good forum for communication, but you just need to be cautious with it — especially with pictures.”

A rule that should also apply to teachers, he adds.

The logistics of what is and isn’t acceptable between students and teachers online are still being figured out — and it largely varies by school.

New York-based business attorney Pedram Tabibi believes social media policies are integral for both businesses and schools to implement — so long as they’re tailored to each individual institution.

“It’s a lot more common in corporations — you know, places saying what’s OK to post, things to avoid,” he says. “But I think you’re starting to see it can be applied to schools as well. Each one is different, of course, so for it to work best they need to be adjusted for each individual school and its activities.”

But there are right and wrong ways of doing so. A handful of employers, he says, have asked their employees and job applicants for their social media passwords: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram — the whole nine yards. Ten states have outlawed the practice, and the SNOPA bill (Social Networking Online Protection Act), introduced in April, is being pushed at the federal level to make asking employees for their social media passwords illegal in every state.

“This is obviously an extreme example, and it’s certainly not the right way to do it,” Tabibi says. “Social media policies are not meant to be some sort of restrictive or privacy-violating blanket. But if you take your community’s culture and values into consideration, you can nail down some sort of structure that will prevent both the staff and students from getting into trouble down the road. You just need to address it from all sides of the coin.”

Does your school have a social media policy? If not, do you believe there should be one in place? Or is it unnecessary? Share your thoughts with us in the comments.

Jeff Piontek commentary about the article, there needs to be a social media policy for our students and to protect them from the “dark side” of the web.

10 Twitter Mistakes People Make….

Do you agree?

The Differences between “PBL Versus Project Based Learning”

via Edudemic

There’s a big difference between using projects in the classroom versus project-based learning in the classroom. What are those differences, you ask? Lucky for you, friEdTechnology (great name) whipped up this snazzy side-by-side comparison outlining the biggest differences.

In the visual, they describe what ‘projects’ are and how they work in the classroom. For example, projects can be done at home without teacher guidance or team collaboration. They are based upon directions and the folks from friEd say they’re “done like last year” (curious if you agree with that or not!)

On the flip side, Project-Based Learning is a fluid technique to enhance learning that really looks nothing like projects as they’re described below. For example, in a PBL scenario, the teacher’s work is typically done prior to the start of the project, it’s graded on a clearly defined rubric, and has driving questions that keep the learning going.

As you can see, this is quite a slanted look at how projects are different from project-based learning but it’s interesting nonetheless. What do you think of this chart? Is it accurate? Are the descriptions correct? What would you change?

Jeff Piontek commentary on this is that either way these are engaging ways to get our students to look at school/classes in a very different manner. 

Report: BYOD Has the Potential to Expand Greatly in Five Years

via eSchool News

Results from a new survey presented during ISTE 2013 indicate that U.S. schools and universities still strive to expand their technology use, and postsecondary institutions often lead the way in technology integration.

On June 26, the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA) released the full report from its 2013 Vision K-20 Survey, the sixth annual national survey to measure U.S. educational institutions’ self-reported progress toward building a framework that embraces ed-tech and eLearning.

For the first time, the 2013 survey asks about “bring your own device” (BYOD) policies in the classroom. The responses varied by education level, with only 20 percent of the elementary segment currently allowing devices in the classroom compared to close to half of the secondary and K-12 district segments. However, this gap may narrow in the next five years if participant expectations are accurate.

A majority of K-12 and close to half of postsecondary participants who report devices are allowed in the classroom also mention that their institutions currently restrict their use. At the K-12 level, restrictions on use can be expected to stay the norm in the near (five-year) future. However, at the postsecondary level, responses indicate two different paths for BYOD: people at institutions that currently allow devices but restrict their use anticipate restrictions are likely to continue in the future, while those who report BYOD with no current restrictions anticipate no restrictions in the future.

Among institutions that currently allow BYOD, more than three-quarters of K-12 educators report current restrictions on their use in the classroom. Among respondents at institutions which currently allow BYOD or expect their institution will allow BYOD within the next five years, a majority anticipate future restrictions on use, although a notable proportion in each segment say they don’t know.

Other notable findings include:

• Levels of ed-tech integration at schools are holding steady despite budget challenges, while interest in ed-tech integration continues to remain high.
• Schools and universities continue to rate the importance of ed-tech integration as very important.
• Postsecondary continues to lead the way in ed-tech integration compared to K-12.

The final 2013 report is available here.

The 2013 Vision K-20 Survey was developed to provide benchmarks against which educators and administrators can measure their institutional progress in using technology to provide 21st century tools, anytime/anywhere access, differentiated learning, assessment tools, and enterprise support.

“Jeff Piontek” as an administrator and as a teacher this is interesting. Being the former Director of Instructional and Informational Technology I have implemented a 1:1 program and it is daunting. This is the way of our students in our schools today.

Become a Teacher (Infographic)

via Certification Map

Teacher certification requirements vary greatly from state to state. Most states have various levels of certification for teachers based on the age group or subject area they wish to teach. Please see our state-by-state breakdown to determine the specific requirements needed to get certified in your state.

This is pretty amazing as a teacher (Jeff Piontek) I remember going through the process and it was daunting.

The World According to Google

via New Zealand Herald

Jeff Piontek comments: I believe this is a great conversation about “Google” as I have been fortunate enough to be at the “googleplex” in Mountain View and have friends who have been there from the early 2000’s.

It is Monday morning, and 150 “Nooglers” are gathered in a large room on Google’s campus in Mountain View, California.

Jennifer, a woman in her early thirties wearing a pair of hi-tech “Google Glass” spectacles, bounces around the stage welcoming the new starters. She is a compelling mix of preppy California girl and science fiction-obsessed geek that is de rigueur in Silicon Valley.

“I’m a little bit nerd. I love Star Trek. But I also love reading,” she says. “This summer, in fact, I’m reading all of Shakespeare’s works in chronological order.”

Her presentation is interspersed with science fiction jokes and slides of the Starship Enterprise as she tells the assembled audience they are now part of a company with the ability to turn “super-cool” sci-fi ideas into reality.

In the past few months Google has launched Google Glass, which allows users to photograph whatever they can see, or pull up information in their peripheral vision. Then there is Project Loon, which will use giant balloons to connect a billion people in sub-Saharan Africa to broadband.

Outside, self-driving cars navigate the campus. In the next-door buildings engineers are hard at work improving Google’s voice-activated search and translation tools, so that soon even people who cannot read or write will be able to request information in any language and find exactly what they are looking for.

Over the next few days the new starters – or “Nooglers” (for “new Googlers”) – will be drilled in the company’s mission to “organise the world’s information”, its history, and how, as “part of the Google family”, they must keep everything they are working on a secret.

“You can’t even tell your mom,” says Jennifer. At the end of the course they will attend a staff meeting hosted by Google’s founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin. The glasses and the broadband balloons are examples of what Page, now chief executive, calls “moonshot” ideas, adding glamour and the promise of new growth opportunities to what is, at its heart, a hyper-efficient advertising business.

Google’s slick web search engine helped to pull in US$50.2 billion ($64.4 billion) in revenue last year, more than US$40 billion of which came from display advertising. Its profit stood at US$10.7 billion.

Its shares may have slipped from their May peak of US$920.60, but at US$887.88 they have still climbed more than 50 per cent in the past 12 months, making the entire company worth US$295 billion. More than one technology analyst has bet their reputation on Google stock topping US$1000 within the next year.

But as Google’s near neighbours, Facebook and Apple, can attest, investors grow nervous at the hint of a slowdown or absence of a new growth story, never mind that the main machine is going full throttle.

Last year Google investors took fright at a 20 per cent dip in profit and a decline in the revenue it receives each time a user clicks on one of its ads. The balloon project might be inspirational, but it is also there to do the basic job of stimulating demand and keeping the foot on Google’s gas.

Shareholders are also concerned about the company’s outgoings – not least the cost of its enormous appetite for Nooglers. Google had nearly 39,000 staff at the end of the last quarter, a figure which is steadily growing.

Much has been written about the free food and the zany decor of Google’s HQ – the slide in reception, the treadmill desks, the sleep pods and the colourful bikes on which employees get around campus. Less well documented are the free dry-cleaning services, the complimentary buses to work, the on-site doctors, dentists and hairdressers.

The pay is also considerable. According to the jobs website Glassdoor, the average Googler – the company’s favourite term for its staff – receives US$110,000 a year, before share awards or bonuses. Even Google interns reportedly receive the equivalent of US$69,000 a year. And if an employee dies, his or her partner can collect half their salary for the following decade.

Just like on a university campus, staff are invited to join groups that reflect their interests. There are the “Gayglers” for gay employees, and “Jewglers” for Jewish staff.

Google and its staff are almost relentlessly upbeat, which can make some people uneasy. As the first British journalist to be allowed into the Noogler session, I couldn’t help but recall Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World.

The company, as Jennifer tells the Nooglers, goes to some lengths to hire “the smartest people on the planet”.

Google’s prowess in search technology depends entirely on the quality of its engineers, many hired from Stanford University where Page and Brin met. The company’s entire campus is designed to make them want to stay.

“It’s the revenge of the nerds,” says one analyst who has followed Google since it started. “These were not the guys who were popular at high school. They don’t have a girlfriend waiting for them at home. They don’t have a life outside work. This is it. But life is so easy for them, they feel they have the last laugh.”

That stereotype may be a little extreme. There are certainly enough charismatic characters to balance the geeks. JOB CANDIDATES sit through four interviews with executives they may never work with, who are looking for four things. The individual’s skills are the least significant. The most important, says Lazlo Bock, Google’s senior vice-president of “people operations”, are the candidates’ cognitive ability; evidence of “at least a tiny, tiny bit of humility”; and their “Googliness”.

Humility is not a trait many people would associate with this company but Googliness is a word used often at the Mountain View campus. Some employees say they found it cringeworthy at first, but have now adopted it to describe a certain mindset. It means “comfort with ambiguity”, says Bock.

Sunil Chandra, who, as vice-president of “people technology” and operations, heads Google’s recruitment machine, defines it as people who are 100 per cent themselves at work. “They are people who are really inquisitive and want to do what’s right by others. You’ll find that they’re unbelievably down to earth,” he says.

Whatever it is, Page must be personally convinced that new recruits have it. He signs off on every single hire – upwards of 200 staff, week in, week out.

There is an argument to say that this focus on hiring people in a certain image can distance Google from public feeling, particularly over issues such as its tax bill in Britain or the privacy of its users.

But Chandra argues that the obsession with how staff “fit in” has been key to preserving its innovative start-up culture, even as it has developed into a multibillion-dollar machine.

Managing this evolution has been difficult. Page has made it a priority to slash the number of projects on which Google spends time and money. It has shut down – or “sunsetted” – at least a dozen operations in the past three years.

“We want more wood behind fewer arrows,” says Bock, borrowing his boss’ favoured metaphor. “Instead of launching 1000 arrows at our enemies, we launch one or two big ones.

“You used to very much have a system where anyone could work on anything on the technical side. You got a lot of creativity and innovation, but what you also got was a lot of pet projects which didn’t have a big impact on the world. Or, quite frankly, you got things where we were trying to do something and someone else was doing a better job.”

One of these was Knol, a crowd-sourced encyclopedia launched in 2007, six years after Wikipedia, a similar and superior service. Knol was shut down just over a year ago.

In recent weeks reports have emerged of a Google smartwatch and a Google videogame console. It also has plans to expand its Streetview project to include hiking and biking trails, as part of its ambition to create a detailed 3D map of the entire world. But all these are accessories to search, which remains its core.

Google already has an iron grip on the search market, but the way it views things, there is still huge change ahead.

“Google search is not done. It is far from done, in fact. I’d say it’s maybe 20 per cent, 25 per cent done,” says Jon Wiley, head of user experience for the search operation.

Users have become used to modifying their search criteria so they extract the best results from Google, he says. The company wants them to be able to ask questions using normal speech, to have discussions with Google’s technology and to use it to find answers to subjective issues.

If you asked an interior designer what color to paint your bedroom, they would not shoot back “red” or “green”, Wiley explains. The first thing they would do is ask questions back, about the size of the room, its aspect, what colors the person happened to like.

“When we look at that class of problem, we say here is an opportunity for innovation for the types of problems we could try to solve. What kind of artificial intelligence could we create that could help people actually have a dialogue about what colur to paint their bedroom?”

Wiley also hints at how the new technology will help Google harness enormous new markets in the developing world. Voice-activated search, coupled with sub-Saharan broadband, could transform education and economic growth in those regions.

“People can ask a question, get a response, and ask again, and go back and forth and have a dialogue of information, in their native language,” he says. “I look at that as a goal, to be able to have that kind of experience.”

But Google is not relying on organic growth. Its appetite for acquisition has steadily increased over the past few years.

In 2011 Google paid US$12.5 billion for Motorola Mobility, to get its hands on valuable patents. Last month it signed a US$1.3 billion deal for Waze, a traffic-mapping tool set to transform Google’s maps service, widening its lead over Apple’s rival product.

Against this backdrop, Google’s “Googliness” can cause problems. The company has had to tread a fine line as it has expanded overseas, coming up against cultures which take a dim view of the amount of data it collects about users.

Users in Europe, in particular, have been riled by projects such as Streetview, Google’s mission to photograph and map every street in the world by driving down it with a camera, or Google Glass, which enables people to discreetly take photographs without James Bond-style hidden cameras.

Last month Google was one of nine technology giants accused of routinely handing information over to the US Government as part of the Prism surveillance project. Google claims it has done no such thing, and asked the authorities to be allowed to publish statistics about the number of information requests it has pushed back on.

But even with the categorical denial, the episode remains incendiary for staff as well as the public. Google employees demanded answers from Brin and Page at their routine meeting that week. In Britain, anger has also rumbled around the company’s tax contributions. Google paid just over £10 million in corporation tax to the Treasury in the past five years, on revenue of £11.5 billion.

Eric Schmidt, Google’s executive chairman, has argued that the company has a moral duty to shareholders to pay the tax that the laws of each country say it owes, and no one has accused it of breaking any laws.

Many would agree, but the row over Google’s financial contribution has tarnished its reputation. Last year Britons identified Google as the fifth most desirable brand in the world. In the same survey this year it had tumbled out of the top 20. Senior Google staff privately admit the episode has taken a toll on morale.

It remains in Google’s nature to constantly push the envelope. Its modus operandi is to experiment, get products out fast and fix any problems on the fly. “Launch and iterate” is a phrase used often.

Allied to Google’s fearless ambition, and its increasingly strategic approach to investment, is also the fleet-of-foot behavior that will underpin its future growth. Google might shoot past the US$1000-a-share mark before the year is out.

Being that I have also visited New Zealand and I am amazed at how things have changed for the better in New Zealand and how fast Google is pushing.

5 Online Discussion Tips For Students

via Edudemic

Have you ever felt that your online students needed more direction on how to approach a discussion board? Have you thought that with just a bit more assistance students would really engage in the forum and take it to the next level, rather than just do the minimum required to get points?

I have written several useful tips that I would encourage you as faculty to share with your students. These guidelines will assist students as they complete the online discussion board assessment that is inherent in every online course.

Dear students: in order to make this essential assessment both worthwhile and meaningful please take a moment to review these helpful tips and thoughts on how to approach an online discussion board:

1. Firstly, be sure to read all the submissions by your classmates. Most learning platforms, like Blackboard, give your instructor and option to see which students have read what. However, please don’t approach an online forum with the reduced mindset that you HAVE to participate and that I am checking up on your level of engagement, because then in reality you will lose sight of the point of the exercise. For example, if you were in a brick and mortar classroom you would “hear’ all the comments, so why wouldn’t you read all the comments in an online class? The more you participate in the forum the more you will get out of it.

2. Despite what I just said please recognize that an online forum does not translate exactly to a discussion in a traditional class. Because the discussion board is asynchronous the responsibility is on all the members of the class to make sure that the conversation flows, and this only happens if students buy into the assessment and do the work. I promise it will pay dividends.

3. When you are commenting on the posts of your classmates, stay away from the “That’s a good point, Joe.” Or “I agree, Sue.” Those types of comments good places to start but please do not end there. Give your fellow classmates feedback and tell them why it is a good point or how it resonated with you. Put yourself in the role of your teacher and critically evaluate the post of your classmate by providing substantive feedback in the form of a detailed and well thought out response. Peer feedback is the most powerful kind! In addition to assisting your classmates it will help you learn how to critically evaluate a piece of writing. This is a life skill that will serve you long after you leave the classroom.

4. Remember that an online forum is meant to be a discussion, so always respond to those classmates that respond to your original posts. This develops community and rapport and quite frankly it is the polite thing to do. You wouldn’t ignore someone if they spoke to you, would you?

5. Finally, feel free to discuss your opinions on the topic, but always remember to be respectful of different positions that maybe voiced. If your opinion is backed up by facts, be sure to reference your sources appropriately. Some discussion boards are designed to not have a right or wrong answer whereas others ask for research to support a position. Be sure to recognize the difference and respond accordingly.

Jeff Piontek my comments: As a leader in educational technology and online learning I believe that how students communicate with each other and their teachers.

The Future of Gamification

by: Janna Anderson, Lee Rainie

via Pew Internet

Overview

Tech stakeholders and analysts generally believe the use of game mechanics, feedback loops, and rewards will become more embedded in daily life by 2020, but they are split about how widely the trend will extend. Some say the move to implement more game elements in networked communications will be mostly positive, aiding education, health, business, and training. Some warn it can take the form of invisible, insidious behavioral manipulation.

“The development of ‘Serious Games’ applied productively to a wide scope of human activities will accelerate simply because playing is more fun than working,” observed Mike Liebhold, senior researcher and distinguished fellow at The Institute for the Future.

Click here to view credited survey participants’ contributions to the discussion of the future of the Internet and gamification by 2020

Click here to view anonymous survey participants’ contributions to the discussion of the future of the Internet and gamification by 2020M

About the Survey

The survey results are based on a non-random, opt-in, online sample of 1,021 Internet experts and other Internet users, recruited via email invitation, Twitter or Facebook from the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project and the Imagining the Internet Center at Elon University. Since the data are based on a non-random sample, a margin of error cannot be computed, and the results are not projectable to any population other than the experts in this sample.

Click here for full report

Disney ‘Connected Learning’ Aims To Infuse Games with Learning

Via edSurge

By contrast, the launch of the Disney Connected Learning program has been as subtle as, oh, say a green screen.

Six years ago, Disney began exploring how use its considerable design, entertainment and financial muscle in the “learning” arena. It decided to try to create games that children would find genuinely entertaining that were nonetheless built on legitimate learning “goals.”

Over the past two years, it has quietly been refining eight games based on learning objectives in its wildly popular online site for kids, Club Penguin. Several of the games have been hits. “Pufflescape,” for instance, is the second most popular game in Club Penguin. More than 30 million children have played it over the past two years.

“No child should have to choose between a ‘learning’ game and ‘fun’ game,” says Starr Long, who is executive producer of Disney Connected Learning.

Whether the students are learning anything deeper than they do when they play the purely “entertaining” games in Club Penguin, however, is still anybody’s guess.

Disney, on the other hand, has learned a lot in the process. This has been a long project: After a slow two-year start, in 2009 it recruited top talent in the massively multiplayer online industry–Starr Long, who started his career as director of Ultima Online, now the longest-running MMO in history. It convened a team of more than a dozen well-regarded educators including Stanford’s Roy Pea and the University of Georgia’s John Olive and Linda Labbo. Together, they identified 2,500 learning goals, or targets–crucial concepts that students need to understand by the fifth grade. They worked through the ideas until they had learning concepts for students from preK through 5th grade. The goals could not contradict the Common Core standards, noted Long, but they also had to be relevant around the globe. “One woman even wrote a dissertation on this,” Starr says.

“No child should have to choose between a ‘learning’ game and ‘fun’ game,” says Starr Long, who is executive producer of Disney Connected Learning.

Over the next four years, Long’s team built a programming environment to support how to connect those learning goals to “events” or actions. They also built a developer’s platform, a parent-facing app, the digital plumbing to report children’s progress through the games to that app and so on. They evaluated between 20 and 40 game prototypes. Two years ago, they began beta testing their eight top game picks.

Currently three of the 26 or so games in Club Penguin incorporate these learning goals: Pufflescape, Jelly Bean Counter and Bits & Bolts. (Another five games are slated to go online in April.)

In Pufflescape, a creature (a Puffle) bounces and glides through an obstacle courses, collecting prize tokens and unlocking higher levels.

The Puffles interact with their environment according to the rules of Newtonian mechanics. Different levels of the game encode or represent different learning goals.

Meanwhile, about 30,000 parents of those Penguin-playing kids have download a Facebook app that creates a “profile” as the kid plays through the games, letting parents know what learning concepts their kids have played through. Play through a level and the app will share that you and your Puffle have experienced simple levers or more complex ones. “We want to empower the parents,” Long says. “There’s a real need for parents to connect with kids who are living a different life than we did.”

(Parents get other benefits from their Facebook app, too, such as learning “secret” codes that they can share with kids who get stuck on games.)

The three learning games currently in action in Club Penguin echo familiar game play themes that were pioneering in the likes of Donkey Kong and even Tetris.

But these are just the beginning.

Long says that Disney will soon be releasing five preschool titles for mobile platforms, created from scratch, that use Disney characters such as Cinderella, Toy Story, Ariel, Cars and Fairies–and are based on the scaffold of learning goals created by the team of educators. “We want to build content and long-term, want to work with other to build content” based on the Connected Learning platform, Long says. Disney has not yet worked out the specifics of its partner strategy.

But will kids absorb mechanics or the rules of motion from their Puffles or whatever characters are in the game? Will they understand that the rules of physics will dictate how a creature will bounce or if it can catch a lever in motion at a certain moment? Or, skeptics will ask, couldn’t kids just go outside and throw a baseball at the roof of the house and watch it fall?

It’s too soon to tell what kids will learn from the games, Long says.

“We’re not making any claims about what they’re learning,” he observes. “We are just saying that the child is exposed to the concepts that are inherent in the game play.”

Many edu-game companies shy away from any efforts to do rigorous testing of how much learning might happen in their game. Long isn’t daunted by the problem; he believes that Disney needs more data–say, enough games that at least half the learning objectives were covered by games. So far, the games constructed cover less than 5% of the concepts, he says.

What he has learned is this: “You can make these games as compelling and exciting as one that don’t have learning concepts embedded in them.”

Money, Time, and Tactics: Can Games Be Effective in Schools?

There are so many people out there in education who truly don’t understand the power of games and gaming in education. I have been fortunate enough to work with a few people who are experts in the field, Henk Rogers (Tetris) and Mark Loughridge (F9 Entertainment) in the development of games, animations and simulations we have used SUCCESSFULLY in education. You can see some of our work on our website  and if you are interested in collaborating then contact us.

via Mindshift

If it’s true that 97 percent of teens in the U.S. are playing digital games, then the focus on how games can fit into the shifting education system becomes that much more important. Schools, districts, and individual educators are trying to figure out how games and learning can fit into the current complicated landscape.

The newly released report Games for a Digital Age: K-12 Market Map and Investment Analysis,released by the Joan Ganz Cooney Center and the Games and Learning Publishing Council,describes the many different criteria in play in detail, including obstacles from the policy standpoint, lack of teacher development, as well as how the Bring Your Own Device movement is influencing the push towards games and learning.

“Games are more popular than ever with youth today with many students spending hours a day playing them,” said Michael H. Levine, executive director of the Joan Ganz Cooney Center. “What we don’t know yet is whether and how they can be a key ally in driving pathways to academic success.”

Though it’s well worth reading the report in its entirety, below are excerpts pulled from the report, conducted and written by Dr. John Richards, Leslie Stebbins and Dr. Kurt Moellering.

ON FINDING WAYS TO USE GAMES WITHIN CLASS TIMES