Earlier this year I blogged about a new book edited by Scott McLeod and Chris Lehman, devoted to learning technologies for the digital age and written for school administrators. I’m honored to have written the chapter on educational games for this book. Here are a couple updates.
First, the name has been changed by the publisher to What School Leaders Need to Know About Digital Technologies and Social Media. This makes sense, since many school leaders may not necessarily be administrators and could still benefit from information in the book.
Second, Chris Lehman notes the release date is in October. When we talked about this book within the tech directors’ SIG at TCEA, several members expressed an interest in buying it and maybe buying a copy for principals and superintendents. At the time, we expected the release date to be this summer. Still sounds like a good idea. I think it will be a worthy addition to any educator’s library. Fortunately, it’s now available for pre-order on Amazon.
I’m spending a chunk of the week in Austin for TCEA 2010, and today was the day for LoneStar EduBloggerCon. This is the first year for the “unconference” at TCEA. A nifty promotional video is here:
A great session was delivered by Scott Floyd, who is the technology curriculum specialist over at White Oak ISD in east Texas. He is an outspoken advocate on the state level for students and technology, and runs the influential ed tech blog, A Piece of My Mind.
Scott is a former literacy teacher, and technologies that facilitate and encourage student literacy are always fascinating to him. I sat in on a session he delivered on using blogging to encourage reading and writing with students.
The interesting thing about using blogging tools, WordPress in this case, for students in the classroom is the way their use resembles gaming. Students are charged with a task, often collaborating with one another in producing their product, and complete the “quest” together.
But when the product is published, deep concerns arise among teachers and students regarding errors in the text. So, Scott said, what’s a teacher to do? Should she let an error-riddled post go live on the Web, refuse to allow it to go online without student editing, or just edit it herself? Interestingly, the problem seems to resolve itself through the students, and more concern on “getting it right” is displayed by them when they realize everyone in the world can see their work.
Cool stuff. Anything that helps kids read and write more gets a thumbs up in my book. For more neat stuff on technology and student literacy, follow Scott Floyd on Twitter here.
It’s Saturday, and a good time to reflect on news and events of the week. I chaired a NECC proposal review committee for NECC 2008, which will be in San Antonio next summer. Last night we wrapped up our consensus recommendations for paper acceptances. Several proposal submissions involved educational uses of videogames, continuing an ed tech conference trend that has lasted through the decade. (Doing my part for the trend, I presented on the topic most recently at Fall TECSIG, and earlier at TCEA 2007). I suspect use of appropriate educational videogames as pedagogical tools has moved beyond debate, and educators now are actively looking for products that meet their subject and testing needs.
Kathy Sargent, editor over at TechEdge, the journal for the Texas Computer Education Association, has accepted an article from me based on educational programming languages aimed at students. In this blog previously I’ve covered GameMaker and Logo, Scratch, and Alice. This upcoming article brings together these discussions and promotes the use of freely available programming languages as learning tools in schools. Look for “Programmed to Learn” in the next issue of TechEdge.
Dr. Richard Ferdig over at U. Florida edited a special issue of the Journal of Educational Multimedia and Hypermedia on educational video games. He included my article, “New media resistance: Barriers to implementation of computer video games in the classroom.” I did a qualitative review of the research and found six barriers to using video games for classroom purposes:
Barriers included negative perceptions toward video games as educational components; the difficulty of providing state of the art graphics in educational video games; a lack of adequate computing hardware in the classrooms to run advanced video games; a school day divided by short class periods which hindered long term engagement in complex games; a lack of real world affordances; and a lack of alignment to state standards.
This paper was an expansion of one I delivered at AERA 2006. Check out the abstract at this link. If you are on a university connection, there’s a good chance you can access the full text. Check out the rest of the issue for six other articles on educational gaming.
In other news, I’ve been invited to speak at the Fall TECSIG meeting in Austin this October. TECSIG is the Technology Coordinators Special Interest Group, the largest SIG in the Texas Computer Education Association (TCEA). TCEA is the largest state organization for technology in education, and holds one of the biggest educational computing conferences in the nation at the Austin Convention Center every February. In my presentation at the October meeting, I’ll touch on research surrounding instructional games and demo a virtual interactive environment or two.
References
Rice, J. W. (2007). New media resistance: Barriers to implementation of computer video games in the classroom. Journal of Educational Multimedia and Hypermedia. 16(3), 249-261.
TCEA, books | John Rice | 
June 17, 2011 11:45 am | 
Comments (2) 
