Every Kid Needs A Champion

I thought I would share Rita Pierson's recent TED talk as your semester winds down. A little motivation at the end of a school year is always a good thing, isn't it?

Rita has been a teacher, counselor, testing coordinator and an assistant principal for 40 years. Unbelievably, she once heard a colleague say, "They don't pay me to like the kids." Her response was, "Kids don't learn from people they don’t like.” Her TED talk is an inspiring challenge to educators to believe in their students and to actually connect with them on a real, human, personal level. As she quotes James Comer, "No significant learning can occur without a significant relationship."

Please watch the video below or click HERE:

Small Demons: Creating a Library of Shared Details

Small Demons is an interesting web app that lets users enter the name of a book and then the site reveals any references that are tied to the book.

For example, enter the name of a book and the site presents any references to people, things, places, media, etc. that are mentioned in the book.

What it kind of reminds me of is that you are getting the story behind the book or as the site states, you are getting "The people, places and things from books, and everywhere they can take you."

I have highlighted numerous other search engines on this blog, but Small Demons is unique because it "picks apart" literature and creates a huge library of shared details. I hope you will take a look, create your own collection, and see where literature can lead you.

Additional resource:

22 of the Best Search Engine and Web Resources for Education

Can Gaming Make a Better World?

I have occasionally revisited the Ted Talk by Jane McGonigal entitled, "Gaming Can Make a Better World" for the last few years and I have to admit that I'm still on the fence as far as my thoughts go.

I believe that as we continue towards blended and online learning that the technology and software will become more and more interactive and I can see where McGonigal is headed, but I'm not so sure it is obtainable. The thing that intrigues me is when she says that the average gamer plays 10,000 hours of video games by the age of twenty-one. When you consider the fact that, in the United States, a student receives 10,080 hours of instruction from the beginning of fifth grade until they graduate 12th grade we seem to have an entire parallel track of education. So how can we harness the time and abilities of gamers?

According to McGonigal:

Reality is broken and we need to make it work more like a game.

So why doesn't the real world work more like an online game? In the best-designed games, our human experience is optimized: We have important work to do, we're surrounded by potential collaborators, and we learn quickly and in a low-risk environment.

Games like World of Warcraft give players the means to save worlds, and incentive to learn the habits of heroes. What if we could harness this gamer power to solve real-world problems?

In her work as a game designer and director of game R&D at the Institute for the Future, she creates games that use mobile and digital technologies to turn everyday spaces into playing fields, and everyday people into teammates. Her game-world insights can explain--and improve--the way we learn, work, solve problems, and lead our real lives.

Also, several years ago McGonigal suffered a serious concussion, and she created a multiplayer game to get through it, opening it up to anyone to play. In “Superbetter,” players set a goal (health or wellness) and invite others to play with them--and to keep them on track. While most games, and most videogames, have traditionally been about winning, we are now seeing increasing collaboration and games played together to solve problems.

So can gaming really make a better world?

Watch the Ted Talk below or click HERE:


Additional resources:
Institute for the Future
Game-Based Learning: What it is, Why it Works, and Where it's Going

Tagboard: Organizing Your Hashtags Across Platforms

Tagboard.com

Tagboard is a free tool that allows anyone to search hashtags across networks, including Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Google+, App.net and Vine. To get started, you’ll just need a Twitter, Facebook or Instagram account.

Tagboard allows you to follow hashtag conversations in a "bulletin board" display by simply entering any hashtag and then viewing all of the Tweets, Instagram pictures, Facebook posts, Google+ posts, and Vine posts associated with that hashtag. From this page you can share the tagboard or individual tweets or posts with friends.

You can also create your own Tagboard page for your hashtag. A tagboard page can be used by an educator, brand manager, business owner, or twitter chat organizer to promote a hashtag or to aggregate posts using a hashtag for class or group projects, events, etc.

Related posts:
Follow the CareerTech Testing Center on Twitter
Have You Developed a Personal Learning Network (PLN)?
The A-Z Dictionary of Educational Twitter Hashtags
The Complete Parent’s List of Education Hashtags on Twitter
100 Twitter Tips and Resources for Educators
The Ultimate Twitter Guidebook For Teachers
What Twitter Has Done for Me

Predictive Analytics and Education

I'm beginning to read and hear more discussion about how predictive analytics could impact education.

So what exactly is predicitive analytics? According to Predictive Analytics World:

Predictive analytics is business intelligence technology that produces a predictive score for each customer or other organizational element. Assigning these predictive scores is the job of a predictive model which has, in turn, been trained over your data, learning from the experience of your organization.

Predictive analytics optimizes marketing campaigns and website behavior to increase customer responses, conversions and clicks, and to decrease churn. Each customer's predictive score informs actions to be taken with that customer — business intelligence just doesn't get more actionable than that.

In other words, Google, Bing, Chrome and every other search engine has been using predictive analytics in your online searches in hopes of refining your choices and maximizing your user experience.

So what does predictive analytics have to do with education? As Tom Vander Ark states, "I’m enthusiastic about the potential for data to improve global learning outcomes.  Predictive analytics have transformed every consumer activity and, as more learners engaged in digital experiences with embedded measurement, they will transform learning."

I believe education is undergoing a monumental shift from a one-size-fits-all approach to a more individualized and personalized model and predictive analytics has the potential to keep students more actively engaged in the learning process. Also, as we continue to mine (transform large data sets into intelligence) and gather data, the security and privacy of student information is paramount.

Additional Resources:
PAR Framework
Predictive Analytics Presents: A Typical Day in 2020
Blended Learning and the Promise of Data
Big Data is Opening Doors, but Maybe Too Many
Data for Action 2012: Focus on People to Change Data Culture