Can Gaming Help Kids Develop Social and Emotional Skills?

Do video games have to be non-social, violent, or mindless for users to want to play?

The gaming center Games+Learning+Society doesn’t think so. Their role playing game Crystals of Cador is an action packed and engaging game that helps young people develop empathy, self-control, and other “non-cognitive” skills that are needed for success in school, career, and life.

“Why not build games that actually save people. Save the world,” said co-director of Games+Learning+Society, Constance Steinkuehler. In Crystals, you, the player, are a space travelling robot who gets marooned on a foreign planet. The goal is to enlist aliens to help you put your spaceship back together only using nonverbal cues. The game not only improves students’ social and emotional abilities through virtual interactions, the it is also fully equipped to assess the player’s progress while they play, making the playing of the game and the assessing of the player one in the same.

Watch the creators explain how their game is taking social and emotional learning into the 21st century in the video above.

 

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Are Millenials Really the “Worst Generation”?

Millenials have it rough. Not only are these 18-25 year olds struggling to complete college, land a job that requires a degree, and start a family, they get criticized for all these shortfalls, and on top of it, get called narcissistic, lazy, and lecherous.

Matt Bors is one Millenial whose “rage” over the headlines about his generation lead him to create the opinion cartoon below, “Can We Stop Worrying About Millenials Yet?“. Our own summer intern, Sarah, a college senior who works, has an internship, goes to school full time, and lives with her parents, also had something to say in response to the TIME magazine article “The Me Me Me Generation” with her article, “Long Live the Twixter!”

Check out the Cartoon below (via @CNN), and let know what you think.  Can we stop worrying about Millenials yet?

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21st Century Writing: More Does Not Always Mean Better

 

The ability to write well is meant to evolve naturally from a few simple sentences on a first-grader’s notebook to the polished draft of a senior paper, and when it does the entire school experience tends to proceed naturally as well. In the workforce, good writing is the hallmark of a professional that can express himself clearly and display one’s company/product in an attractive way. This has only become more true in today’s world, where email, text messaging, and social media have taken over many of the communications that used to be performed by phone or in person.

In fact, the changing role of writing in the world today has many teachers wondering how they should adapt their teaching to make it more relevant to today’s writing needs, personally and professionally. Susan Lucille Davis, a writing teacher with over 30 years of experience, expresses this question in her blog, “Teaching Authentic Writing in a Socially Mediated World,” but admits that she herself doesn’t have the whole answer. She and many of her colleagues agree, however, that the answer would need to address and prove relevant towards improving writing in the following categories:
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Day 2 at the Schools of the Future Conference: Learning through Real-World Simulation

Over the past two days at the 2012 Schools of the Future conference, I had the opportunity to meet a variety of amazing people whose ideas are already making impressions on learners today and are bound to create new opportunities for learners of the future.

One of the highlights of the conference was hearing John Hunter’s keynote speech. John is a public school teacher who took his background in religious and philosophical studies and applied it to the 4th-grade classroom. In his quest to engage 4th-grade students in a lesson to become change makers and critical thinkers, he created a plexiglass real-world simulation game that exercises students’ critical and creative thinking skills, compassion, and strategic thinking. The World Peace Game is a complex game that stands at 4 feet x 4 feet x 4 feet, has hundreds of pieces, a 13-page crisis document, a classroom of 4th graders versed on Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, and much more.

The quote he shares in his bio illustrates his game’s philosophy: “Accepting the reality of violence, I seek to incorporate ways to explore harmony in various situations. This exploration would take form in the framework of a game – something that students would enjoy. Within the game data space, they would be challenged, while enhancing collaborative and communication skills.”

With his game, students are in control of the lesson and the world’s outcomes.

 After all, these students are the ones who we will hand the world to; ripe with environmental problems, warfare, ethnic tensions, and economic disparity. Though John has been using a version of this game in his classroom since the late ’70s, his philosophy that learning should be in the control of the student and the teacher should act as facilitator is the future of learning. Flipped classrooms are asking students to be in control of their learning at home and to bring questions to class; computer software can customize learning for an entire classroom of individual students with different needs while the teacher stands by; individuals are in control of advancing their learning around the world with MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses); and the list goes on.

It was a great experience to be among leaders who were driven by a similar mission as LifeBound. My book Critical and Creative Thinking for Teenagers also addresses the need for students to solve the world’s biggest problems through real-world experiences, exploration, and learning about innovative trailblazers before them. Leadership for Teenagers: From Ancient Times to the 21st Century asks students to create a vision, become an influencer, and take action to create change in their life, school, community, and one day, the world.

John’s book World Peace and Other 4th-Grade Achievements is due out in 2013. You can also find out more about watching the documentary of the same title via his website, worldpeacegame.org.

Watch John’s TED Talk, Teaching with the World Peace Game, which shares the journey he took to create the World Peace Game and clips of his students speaking passionately about their roles in this political simulation.

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At the Schools of the Future Conference: The Future of Learning

I’m at the Fourth Annual Schools of the Future Conference this week being held at the Hawaii Convention Center. The conference brings together leaders in education and technology to address the need for a paradigm shift in education. Over this two-day event, among many topics, we will explore how to create a 21st century learning environment; explore new roles for education publishers, teachers, and librarians; and how to blend, flip, and mobilize the classroom.

Yesterday morning I attended Dr. Mark David Milliron’s keynote, “Emerging Insights on Learning, Technology, and the Road Ahead in Education.” In his speech, Milliron outlined a few trends that we are seeing as education and technology converge in the classroom, and as more research is available on the pros and cons of the digital classroom:
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Harnessing the Upside of Technology in Higher Education

Achieving Student Engagement in the Digital Age

How will technology change the college-going experience over the next decade? Can the plugged-in generation harness their proclivity for technology in ways that their professors can understand? Can professors move from teaching and telling to coaching and facilitating? Can faculty across the disciplines understand enough about technology to give their students the reigns they need to craft and deliver their own interactive learning? Can students have the self-reflection, judgment, and personal discipline  to create the boundaries they need to aggregate and create the content from which they can learn? Can they resist the temptations to camp on Facebook or play video games to join on-line class discussions and make meaningful, thoughtful contributions to their fellow classmates while juggling reading and other self-paced class responsibilities?
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Will Khan Academy Replace the Traditional Classroom?

The flipped classroom model has begun to pick up speed in classrooms around the country, allowing students to watch lectures at home and teachers to spend more one-on-one time with students in the classroom as they complete work that would typically be done at home.

Khan Academy is an open-source website that has attracted many followers, from teachers creating a curriculum that require students to watch a Khan Academy video to students looking for online help to complete their homework. Many experts in education believe the flipped classroom, with the help of Khan Academy or websites like it, will change the traditional classroom for the 21st century student. However, Khan Academy and the freedom that comes with learning behind a computer doesn’t come without its critics.

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Earning Success: Why the Exceptional Get Results

It’s a harsh reality: average workers will have a much harder time in today’s economic climate. The competition is heating up and those who are exceptional will have traction, gratification and fulfillment in the workforce.

Average workers don’t put in the extra that sets them apart from other members of the team, whereas exceptional workers draw energy from harnessing  their unique abilities. It may sound like becoming an exceptional worker will be much more depleting than putting in average effort, but, in fact, it’s the opposite. People who feel “very successful” and “completely successful” at work are twice as likely to say they are happy than those who only feel “somewhat successful,” with their level of income making no difference in their levels of happiness, according to Arthur Brooks in the article “America and the Value of ‘Earned Success.'”1 Exceptional people are driven to become exceptional for its intrinsic value (in happiness and fulfillment), not extrinsic value (in dollars and status).
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Launch Pad for College Grads: Skills for Entering the Digital and Global Workforce

The world of work is ever- changing. However, new graduates will experience a heightened level of change over the span of their careers, as technology becomes more integrated and new software, tools, and gadgets make their work more efficient and far reaching.  Add to that the entrepreneurial and innovative spirit of today’s young people who will be launching many of the new businesses which will fuel our economic growth over the next several decades in areas that don’t yet exist, and it could be hard to predict what the workforce will look like in 20, or even 10, years.
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Business Leadership Lessons Applied to The Game of Education

Today’s working world has fewer jobs and more expectations for its workers. The economy is one reason employers have become selective with their limited positions, but another factor involves the speed in which technology is taking over certain jobs–all or part–to save both time and money. However, people who can bring something extra to the table, who can do something more than technology can, are still in demand. Thomas Friedman says this is why “everyone needs to find their extra — their unique value contribution that makes them stand out in whatever is their field of employment. Average is over.”
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