Get Ready for EAT-IT

For two days in August we will be examining the state of the art in educational uses of new and emerging technologies in education. Come to the campus of Inver Hills Community College in Inver Grove Heights, Minnesota (southeast suburb of St. Paul) for a focused conference that will provide practical teaching tips and great ideas to prepare you for the start of school in the fall.

Enjoy engaging, informative, and entertaining talks that will not harsh your mellow.

vgAlt will be there for a keynote and a hands-on seminar on integrating games into traditional classroom instruction, as well as next generation hybrid courses that build upon notions of online and extend them with new interactive media into augmented reality.

Title: 

Professionalism

and the Jekyll and Hyde Effect

Subtitle:

Games facilitate learning acceleration, no one will dis your MOJO now professor.

Brock Dubbels
12:45 – 1:45

New models of comprehension and memory validate the value of active playful learning for generative transfer:  five years of data collection on standardized reading assessments are shared from a curriculum of games, play, and virtual spaces in k-20 classrooms will be presented on the value of virtual worlds and interactive games used with developmental students and instructors.

In this presentation, on overview of research, methodology, outcomes, and descriptions of implementation will be presented on how video games and virtual worlds were used to raise standardized reading scores and improve reading performance with developmental reading exit examinations. This evidence provides some corollary to educators’ hesitation in using games as methodology for data collection and curriculum.

This hesitation was documented through genre chain analysis in the form of surveys, interviews, and discourse analysis of teacher artifacts, and the institutional experiences of educators balancing the tension of using games and play, and the fear of being stigmatized as unprofessional at their teaching sites.

The outcome of the genre chain analysis begins to create picture of educators creating two different sets of books, and two different teaching identities — Jekyll and Hyde. Where we may have a feeling games can be powerful learning tools, but dare we get caught using them?

Jekyll — standards, benchmarks, traditional curriculum to not be singled out — proper, professional, dignified

Hyde — Dude,  I know what works for my students — the role of  interpretation and translation of policy, climate, standards, content and expectation as genre chains– INTASC, Standards of Effective Instruction, Personal Development Plans, learning walks, oversight accountability, parent letters, and report cards–and offering coursework that is engaging and developmentally appropriate, and fits the teachers MOJO.

In this presentation evidence from classroom success and data collected from standardized assessments and cognitive neuroscience is presented. You can come out and relieve your fears of being caught using games in the classroom. Games are effective in learning acceleration. You no longer need to Hyde it.

You can have your fun and EAT IT too.

Come to the Break out session 2:00 – 3:00

Track 2: Brock Dubbels –

Video Games as Learning Tools

In this session, participants will be exposed to experiential learning and access to next generation game systems and an example of curriculum as games relate to content and can be used for developmental reading, technical writing, and technology.

Other content areas will be discussed, along with an approach called 9 ways to use video games for learning acceleration.