New School Year

With the start of a new school year I find my self preparing for grade 6 at St. Charles school. I am very excited to have a higher grade and hope to challenge and engage them as they prepare for the P.A.T.s.

Video Games in Education

Criteria for evaluating games in education
1. The game has an educationally-accessible context (historical, contemporary, hard science-fiction).
2. Game play has genuinely educationally-accessible content.
3. Success depends on intelligent choices and decisions.
4. Failure exists and teaches when it happens. It is possible to lose.
5. The tutorial is crystal clear, and checks for understanding.
6. There are multiple victory conditions.
7. The feedback model is short - students can quickly see how a decision effects a larger whole picture.
8. The game becomes increasingly challenging and difficult.
Taken from:
http://www.mackenty.org/index.php/site/comments/criteria_for_evaluating_games_in_education/

Websites of note:
http://digiplay.info/
Research papers and other publications on the topic of understanding digital games.

http://powerup.wikispaces.com/ -
Mark Wagner is completing his PhD.

http://www.furl.net/member/ewagner -
A list of educational games.

http://www.socialimpactgames.com/index.php -
Entertaining games with Non- Entertaining goals. (Serious Games)

Games:
Starfall (K- 2)
Multiflier (Gr. 3)
Plupon (3- 6 warm up)
Third World Farmer (Gr. 6- 8)
Games for the Brain (Gr. 7-9)
?Speare (Gr. 10- 12) password needed
Not a game- Game Maker (Gr. 8- 12)

Song Lyrics

Here is the link to the song I've created for the grade threes using Apple's Garage Band software. They have been writing lyrics for it over the past week. Go ahead and download it. I won't be publishing the final song on the blog, only students will be able to hear that in class. I will be awarding a recording contract to the best lyrics. This just means that the student will record their words over my song with my MacBook and I'll burn them a copy to take home.

http://www.balla.ecsd.net/files/My Song.m4a

Here is a link to this week's spelling workout. It is number 31 and it deals with the prefixes un and dis.

Art by Larisa Email

Hi Larisa

We wanted to thank you for your time yesterday. We really enjoyed the lesson
especially with the Ukrainian village as a backdrop. We really liked your
art work. We thought that it was very beautiful how the stories were well
represented using it. Your art was very creative in that you used great
detail to bring out the different parts of the story.

We want to thank you for sharing your ideas about how you plan
illustrations. We are going to use the five step process to write our own
comic books. We remember the five things you plan for they are:
1. Setting
2. Characters
3. Actions
4. Special details
5. The medium you worked in.

Number five for us will probably be markers, pencil crayons, pencils, or
crayons.

Thank you for teaching us about all these fun things,
St. Leo's Grade 3

P.S. - Good luck and God bless you in your creations.

Here is Larisa's email back...

Dear St. Leo Grade 3's

Yesterday was great! You were a wonderful group of students. It was my
first class of the season and your patience was appreciated.

You are also a very talented group. Your illustrations were all very
creative and I was very impressed by how carefully you all drew out your
pictures. Very good attention to details. I know that there wasn't much
time to show you how to use watercolours but you all did very well.

I hope that the day inspired you all to stay creative and keep writing and
drawing.

I look forward to running into some of you during the summer. Please say hi
if you see me.

All the best to all of you.

Larisa

Hi Larisa

We wanted to thank you for your time yesterday. We really enjoyed the lesson
especially with the Ukrainian village as a backdrop. We really liked your
art work. We thought that it was very beautiful how the stories were well
represented using it. Your art was very creative in that you used great
detail to bring out the different parts of the story.

We want to thank you for sharing your ideas about how you plan
illustrations. We are going to use the five step process to write our own
comic books. We remember the five things you plan for they are:
1. Setting
2. Characters
3. Actions
4. Special details
5. The medium you worked in.

Number five for us will probably be markers, pencil crayons, pencils, or
crayons.

Thank you for teaching us about all these fun things,
St. Leo's Grade 3

P.S. - Good luck and God bless you in your creations.