Get Your Game On!
Posted on November 14th, 2012 by Mary Lord
Do your students enjoy gaming? Harness their interest – and boost their STEM learning – with the Got Game design contest sponsored by STEMFuse.The competition is open to students in grades 5 – 12.
Filed under: Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Grades K-5, K-12 Outreach Programs | Comments Off on Get Your Game On!
Tags: Competitions for Students, computer, Computer Engineering, Contest, games, gaming, STEM education, STEMFuse, Technology
The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) program aims to provide each child with a rugged, low-cost, low-power, connected laptop. To this end, hardware, content, and software has been designed for collaborative, fun, and self-empowered learning.
On a hike through the Catskill Mountains in New York, Aidan Dwyer, a seventh-grader, noticed that the branches of oak trees seemed to follow a pattern. Inspired, he created a tree-like arrangement of small solar panels capable of generating 20-50% more energy than a traditional flat designs.
Apple’s iPad hasn’t yet taken over the nation’s classrooms, but it’s starting to look as though it might. In Colorado, Manitou Springs Middle School plans to buy an iPad for every fifth-through-eighth grader next year and have one for every high schooler the following year. Now in pilot: an iPad-only algebra curriculum. 
Ever stumble with students’ names? Or struggle to perk up class participation? Most schools view cellphones as disruptive nuisances, but a new iPhone app called Pikme could turn them into powerful tools for educators.
Forget politics and budget battles. Digital learning, not legislatures, represents the biggest threat to teachers’ unions, argues Stanford political science professor Terry Moe in his new book, Special Interest. Part history, part analysis of education trends, the book details the rise of the National Education Association and American Federation of Teachers.
Within five years, every K-12 student in America will be using a mobile handheld device as a part of learning, according to Elliot Soloway, a professor at the University of Michigan. “Smart phones are the one technology that can eliminate the digital divide.”
Seventh-grade technology education students in Hampton, Va., are learning to create clay animation videos using a webcam, software and clay. They research, design and create a five- to 10-minute episode for a hypothetical TV show, creating a storyboard, script, animated characters and digital imagery. “They’re only limited by their imagination,” says teacher Terry Beddow.
Even as more schools adopt new technology to boost student learning, researchers are voicing concern about what the stream of stimuli from computers and cellphones is doing to young brains. “The worry is we’re raising a generation of kids in front of screens whose brains are going to be wired differently.” 
