Center4Edupunx
Bootstrapping Our Way Across the Curriculum

This week, another discussion on how to take Minecraft into the classroom seemed a little……rudimentary?

So this week, between G.A.M.E. and the Games MOOC, we’re hoping not to do a
“Everything You Ever Need to Know to Integrate a Game in Your Class” 45 minute session.

Instead Knowclue Kidd is joining us on Thursday and we’re doing a warm-up in the #gamemooc tweetchat on Wednesday at 9 pm ET/6 pm SLT.

We’re going to try to get the discussion going a little early with the tweetchat and talk about Minecraft, Participatory Learning and the Maker Movement.

Here’s a few resources that are helping inspire the tweetchat

This just came out on 9/12
Designing with Teachers: Participatory Approaches to Professional Development in Education – Henry Jenkins

And then there’s looking at Makers’ Movement through the lens of what we do in games and virtual worlds. We build, mod and make Machinima. It’s digital so does it fit into the Makers’ Movement?

Maker Faire – Edu Outreach

But that’s just a warmup …

Here’s the main event:

Please join us Thursday September 20 at 9 PM ET for the second installment of the G.A.M.E.  “It Takes A Guild – A Guild of Educators” webinar series.  This episode will feature an interview with Marianne Malmstrom regarding how she successfully guided the integration of the popular game Minecraft into the activities and curriculum of most grades at The Elisabeth Morrow School.  You can access the webinar at the G.A.M.E. and Games Based Learning MOOC YouTube Channel http://www.youtube.com/user/gamesmooc.

The SIGVE Diner in Second Life will be the location of a hosted backchannel.
Slurl http://slurl.com/secondlife/Eduisland%209/69/57/22/

For the full description of the webinar, please go to http://g.a.m.e.shivtr.com/pages/webinar2

We’re having our weekly Game MOOC tweetchat #gamemooc on Wednesday at 9 pm ET/ 7 pm MT (Denver).
The topic this week will be badges, achievements, awards and xp.

The purpose of the tweetchat is to chat of course, maybe come to a consensus on when we use those terms and then maybe lead us into a bit of a bigger discussion.

That would be this discussion…
Last week at the wrap-up for Connected Educator month, there was a session on Connected Education and Badges. Chat Transcript only

Since the mission of G.A.M.E. is for gamers to advance meaningful education, badges for mastery and accomplishment in producing Machinima that does this type of outreach seems like it could be …well meaningful. So we’re going to start the development of two Machinima badges. If you would like to join in the discussion or the development – email gamesmooc@gmail.com

An additional badge, we’ll begin on is also a Metacognition badge. This would be a metacognition badge about learning in games. If you have any interest in this, again please email gamesmooc@gmail.com

There’s been a series of games based learning lists that have come out over the last two weeks.

Twitter Feeds for Educational Gaming http://www.onlineuniversities.com/blog/2012/08/50-best-twitter-feeds-follow-educational-gaming/

Blogs about Game Based Learning 20 best learning blogs http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ukhe/archive/2012/08/20/the-20-best-blogs-about-game-based-learning.aspx

Educators Blogging about Gamifying Learning http://classroom-aid.com/2012/08/23/join-the-journey-of-12-educator-bloggers-gamifying-learning/

Communities for Educators of Game Based Learning. http://classroom-aid.com/2012/08/15/top-10-online-communities-for-educators-of-game-based-learning/

So for the Games MOOC tweetchat on Wednesday, August 29th - #gamemooc
9 pm ET/7 pm MT (Denver).

The topic will be wrapping up Connected Educator Month – Games Based Learning and Virtual Worlds:
Who do you follow? What do you read? And where do you get your resources?

So let’s see what the twitterverse has to say!

EduPunxers just finished up with 3 awesome weeks over at
3D Game Lab with Machinima 4 Mere Mortals.

We have an EduMachinima tab on the G.A.M.E. Gamers Advancing Meaningful Education site. Events will be announced  as they are organized.  We’ll also announce other Machinima events you may like to participate in or attend.

EduPunxers will also be doing “Second Sunday”  Machinima making in World of Warcraft. It will be held on the US server, Sisters of Elune realm on 9/9, 10/14 and 11/11 at 11 am server time which is noon ET. Please join us. We’ll all shoot Machinima together. We also need actors and voice talent – please join us.

The Virtual Worlds and Games UnSymposium will take place on November 2 and  3, 2012. We will have a Machinima viewing as well as field trip into World of Warcraft for the Day of the Dead celebration.

If you have ideas for events or just want to collaborate – please email que.jinn@gmail.com

Connected Educator Month!

The U.S. Department of Education declared the month of August to be online Connected Educator month, as we have always been part of an online community of educators, we’re a bit involved.

Edupunkers and friends representing…

Tuesday August 21^st 6 pm SLT

This immersive environment field trip will include visits with Peggy Sheehy from G.A.M.E. Gamers Advancing Meaningful Education, Kae, Chris and Vasili from the Games MOOC,  Tanya Martin from SIGVE, Andrew Wheelock and Marie O’Brien for Virtual Pioneers and VSTE,

It will be a live Broadcast on Google Hangout and showing on the Games MOOC YouTube Channel

http://www.youtube.com/user/gamesmooc

The focus of this field trip is show the immersive and game environments where the online professional development happens and the communities meet. These groups all have either weekly, bi-weekly or monthly events online.

Wednesday, August 22nd - #gamemooc tweetchat 6 pm SLT

The Games MOOC tweetchat

Topic will be Connected Educator Month focused – Guilds, PLNs and Collaborative Play. Why does John Seely Brown state in the opening line of this video, “I would rather hire a high level World of Warcraft player than a MBA from Harvard?” http://bigthink.com/ideas/45592

If this is your first Tweetchat, go to www.tweetchat.

Login with your twitter account and when prompted put in the #hashtag  – #gamemooc.

Using tweetchat will allow you see every tweet that has #gamemooc included.

Thursday August 23^rd 6 pm SLT (GMT -7)

It Takes a Guild – A Guild of Educators

http://www.classroom20.com/forum/topics/it-takes-a-guild-a-guild-of-educators

2012 Learning 2.0 Conference

Blackboard Collaborate link TBA

http://www.classroom20.com/page/2012-learning-2-0-sessions-schedule

Panel will consists of EduPunxers – Kae, Chris, Joseph Doan, Mellody Collier, Valerie Noll, and Beverly G. McCarter

Why does John Seely Brown state in the opening line of this video, “I would rather hire a high level World of Warcraft player than a MBA from Harvard?” http://bigthink.com/ideas/45592

In celebration of the US Department of Education declaring August Connected Educators Month, come hear why from a panel of connected educators who play in this highly complex learning environment known as World of Warcraft.

“It Takes a Guild – A Guild of Educators” is the launch
of G.A.M.E., Gamers Advancing Meaningful Education,
(an online community of educators who game)
August 16, 9 PM ET.
Live Broadcast on Google Hangout
Games MOOC Youtube Channel
http://www.youtube.com/user/gamesmooc

At its core G.A.M.E. is an online synchronous gaming community. This intellectually curious network of educators develop curriculum and offer online open courses, webinars and F2F presentations on the opportunities and deeper learning that takes place in games. The Cognitive Dissonance Educator guild in World of Warcraft is the “home base” where this group regularly plays online. This community is involved in WoW in School, EduMachinima Fest, Virtual Worlds and Games UnSymposium, Games MOOC and open courses on P2PU. G.A.M.E. is for educators who game, want to learn how to game, and want to incorporate gaming strategies into teaching and learning. Participants in the session will learn about how this informal professional development has benefited educators who are in K-12, Higher Education, Education Administration and military training.

The panel will include:

Moderator: Laurence Cocco
Director, Office of Educational Technology
New Jersey Department of Education

K-12

Peggy Sheehy
Instructional Technologist
Suffern Middle School
Suffern, New York

Melody Collier
State and Federal Programs Director
Howley ISD, Texas

Higher Ed

Chris Luchs
Associate Dean, CTE
Colorado Community College System

Deborah Bakken
Nursing
Community College, North Carolina

Industry

Valerie Noll
Instructional Designer
Crew Training International
Omaha, Nebraska

Beverly G. McCarter, principal
Human Mosaic Systems, LLC
Certified Virtual Worlds Architect and Designer
Certified Facilitator of Self-Organizing Systems

G.A.M.E. http://g.a.m.e.shivtr.com/ will be holding monthly webinars on the third Thursday of each month at 9 PM ET. It also co-sponsors the weekly games tweetchat #gamemooc on Wednesday evenings at 9 PM ET.

In our livestreaming on Saturday for the Games Based Learning MOOC we were able to record Grid and Izzy first battle grounds. We were in week 2 of the Games MOOC with the topic being – fun, flow and fiero in games. The battle grounds did not disappoint!

We started with an Arathi Basin – were we won at the last minute by 10 points. All four of us earned the “We Had It Along’* Cough”Achievement.

The next two battlegrounds we entered were both Warsong Gulch.

The first Warsong Gulch had us easily demonstrating the vocabulary word “gank.” As in being killed repeatedly by players with BOA (Bind on Account) equipment.

The second battle ground was the reverse and we all received the achievements Warsong Gulch Win and “Warsong Gulch Perfection.”

UnCut Video of a Grid and Izzy first battle grounds

Three in a row!

Fiero, Epic Fail and then Epic Win.

We’re doing a MOOC!  To be more specific, we’re doing a Games-based Learning MOOC. A MOOC is a Massive Online Open Course based on the learning theory of connectivism. Since 2008, there have been a series of these free open online courses offered. This course is informed by their design and implementation. This MOOC will be an introduction to games-based principles and the motivation and engagement aspects of different types of games as they relate to learning.

This is a free, open course for all educators. The model for the course design is based on social network knowledge construction. http://edtech.boisestate.edu/ldawley/SNKC_pdf.pdf

Participating educators will be able to engage the course on several levels from lurking (reading the discussions) to actively creating content in the course with the course design team. It is expected that each participant’s level of engagement will vary each week based on the individual’s interest in the weekly topics.

The MOOC will have both synchronous and asynchronous components. The asynchronous portion will be individual readings and text discussion on the guild portal and challenges in P2PU. The synchronous portion will consist of sessions in Second Life, Google Air, field trips into games and tweetchats every Wednesday evening.

The Games-based Learning MOOC begins on July 9, 2012 and will run for 5 weeks
with a sixth week and optional project in mid-September. The MOOC is under
development and for right now we’re asking
interested participants to go here to register (http://bit.ly/gamesmooc). Below is a tenative outline of the topics for each week.

Game-based Learning

Week 1 Games Based Learning/Game Principles

Week 2 Overview of Commercial Off the Shelf Games

Week 3 Gamification or Behavior Motivation Elements for the Classroom

Week 4 Epistemic Games

Week 5 Introduction to Alternate Reality Games (ARG)

Week 6 Assessing Student Learning and Data Collection

Additional Course Activities

ARG Prime July 23 – August 5

Machinima  August 4 – 19

In May, a group of educators that just finished up with the Virtual Worlds, Games and Education MOOC decided to take educational DYI a bit further and design an ARG (Alternate Reality Game).

So for three weeks, they studied, discussed and constructed components of an ARG. They even presented their thoughts at the University of Michigan’s 4T (Teachers Teaching Teachers about Technology) Virtual Conference http://4tvirtualcon.soe.umich.edu/?page_id=12

The result is ARG Prime! Not your traditional entertainment ARG – but an ARG to teach teachers about ARGs.

So from July 23 – August 5, you can be involved in an interactive narrative that crosses multiple media platforms and mixes realities.

Are you curious? – good you’ll need to be!

Curious enough to go to learn a little more about ARGs?

Look for the Rabbithole (like Alice in Wonderland) at SIGVE in San Diego or at SIGVE HQ in Second Life during the ISTE conference. But if you are ready and willing to just swallow the red pill right now – go here to sign up for what will hopefully be two weeks of challenge, hard fun, flow and fiero!

The at a glance "make a tag" page for Tagwhat.com makes it easy for the creator to see all their work on the same page

At ISTE 2012 in San Diego, one of the Augmented Reality tools that we received the most questions about was tagwhat.com. So I decided to do a quick review of the tool and discuss what I like about the application.

Tagwhat Basics:

Tagwhat has both a mobile app and website components that users will need to utilize. The free mobile apps works for both iOS and Android and allow the user to see “tags” that have been created nearby. The interface stacks the tags in rows based on distance. The closer tags will be at the top of the screen and the furthest away will be at the bottom of the screen.

To make “tags,” users will need to access the website at http://www.tagwhat.com. The website provides you with the opportunity to create “tags.” You will need to create your account and provide an email. Once you have an account, you create your tag and provide a Title, Description, Main Image, Attribution, select a channel, add up to 6 additional media pieces, select an action that your users will need to take, and then add keywords and submit.

Tagwhat also allows you to tie your tag to a location using a physical address and preview your tag prior to submitting. Once you submit, your tag will be reviewed in a day to two and you will get an email letting you know if it was approved or not.

Review

I really like that the tagwhat website is very easy to use with minimal issues. I really like how compact the screen is when you are making a tag so you do not have to scroll and you can see everything at a glance.  The administer / educator in me really likes the fact that Tagwhat does take the time to review and approve each tag. It really gives you a little jolt of confidence that someone else likes your tag and that you have someone keeping an eye for NSFW type of tags. This application is a very easy to use and flexible tool for those starting out with AR or ARGs.