Recent articles
9 resources for teaching digital citizenship
12/23/2014
Topics: 1:1, Assessment, Augmented reality, BYOD, Coding & robotics, Computational Thinking, Digital Citizenship, Digital storytelling, Flipped learning, Gamification, Gaming, Makerspaces, Online learning, professional learning, Technology infrastructure, Tools
How can we teach kids to use technology responsibly when the technology is changing faster than we can keep up? How do we foster the values of good digital citizenship in students who are old enough to scoff at the “thou shalts” and “thou shalt nots”?
Grappling with these questions is…
Minecraft: A primer for teachers
11/20/2014
Topics: Gaming
Want to strike up a conversation with your younger relatives this Thanksgiving? Ask them about Minecraft.
If they don't play themselves, they'll know friends who do. And maybe, just maybe, they're even using it in the classroom.
More and more teachers are finding ways to…
Simulation game helps students understand traumatic brain injury
11/07/2014
Topics: Gamification, Gaming, Standards
From a tackle in a football game to a fall on an icy sidewalk or a car accident, the dangers of traumatic brain injury are real and sometimes even fatal. To help educate students about traumatic brain injury and heighten their awareness and ability to make informed decisions,…
Minecraft 101: The Underwater Dome Project
09/15/2014
Topics: Gaming
At Punahou School in Honolulu, Hawaii, where I teach high school computer science, I gave my students an assignment to play Minecraft together, hoping it would…
What is the future of gaming in education?
07/01/2014
Topics: Gamification, Gaming, STEM & STEAM
After asking around the ISTE 2014 conference floor, I discovered some great predictions and big dreams for the future of digital gaming and virtual environments in learning.
Educators discussed the potential of wearable technology with excitement. Improved efficiency and access to…
Student hacking: Awesome or awful? Awesome
06/09/2014
Topics: Coding & robotics, Computational Thinking, Digital Citizenship, Education leadership, Gaming, Robotics
While hackers appear frequently in the news and other media as criminals who steal vast amounts of data ranging from email passwords to Social…
Teach kids to find the math in video games
10/22/2013
Topics: Gaming, STEM & STEAM
Imagine: Students take turns bowling a frame on the Nintendo Wii. The teacher then asks how the score can be represented as a fraction. As a class, they discuss what each digit in the fraction represents and reach the conclusion that the numerator represents the number of pins knocked down…