Motivating Students

I really don't expect that it will be very difficult to motivate the students that are going to participate in the Globaloria program. Most middle school students are very open to trying new things. There is an obvious comfort zone when students interact with technology which will make the implementation of this program pretty stress-free, at least for the kids! In the past I have tried to motivate my students with challenges or competitions. This fits right in with the gaming concept. The open-ended creativity that is encouraged will be motivation in itself.
Another "carrot" for students will be the long-range planning of the teacher. To be able to see the Learning Schedule and see what is coming up will be a great incentive to move forward.

G-Tech Middlers Team

• What role did you get? Why are you good at this job?

Our team of three was divided into 3 distinct jobs. My job fell into the graphic/design catagory. THis is a good job for me, I enjoy working with graphics;

• What was the inspiration for your game?

The social issue of homelessness seemed to be on everyone's mind and we thought this would be a great topic for middle school students.

Harrison County Board of Education

As you can see in this video, all of the participants worked very hard this weekend to learn what Globaloria has to offer our students. Many of us are anxious to put it out there and let the kids start teaching us. I'm pretty sure that they will not find this nearly as taxing as we have.

Memorable Learning Experience

2 years ago I became involved in the creation of an online grading program, LiveGrades. As a pilot project, Harrison County Schools partnered with CityNet to provide our teachers with online grading system that interfaced with WVEIS, webpages for all teachers and schools, and an complete online county directory. As lead teacher on this, I've worked closely with the software engineers, and many teachers to help with the development of this resource . This is the second year that100% of our faculty has used the program and it has been a great tool. The experience of working closely with the software engineers, and supplying input from teachers of all levels was something I will never regret.

New Blogs to Follow

While searching the internet, I turned to Kathy Schrock, who is usually a good source for educational technology advice. She didn't disappoint me. I found several blogs that I'll be interested in following.
Free Technology for Teachers offers alot of good resources to investigate. The embedded widgets make finding new resources easy to spot.
The Innovative Education was another great find. While the script is humourous, it also offers alot of good, useful information.

I think I'll keep my eye on these two blogs, looks like they may have something to offer to my classroom.

Games Played Today

I reviewed the game "Pirates of the Preamble"
I liked the graphics and agreed that it provided a quick interactive review for a social studies class. I can see how this game could be customized with different content for review.
I looked at the review of Consumer Consequences (Genre 6) that Melissa wrote about.