I was in an internet meeting yesterday and brought up the Windsor Star to make a point and this story was leading the headlines. http://www.windsorstar.com/news/Windsor+nabbed+porn+bust/2666566/s
This morning, on the site, a news report from Global National appears.
Global National video: Child porn bust, Windsor man among the dozens charged.
Sometimes, the regular teaching in the classroom robs time, and [...]
The Readability Test Tool
The Readability Test Tool provides a quick and easy way to test the readability of your work. It is the most flexible readability software for assessing readability formulas.
(tags: readability test web tool)
Juicy Studio: Readability Test
Gunning Fog, Flesch Reading Ease, and Flesch-Kincaid are reading level algorithms that can be helpful in determining how [...]
Last night was the first opportunity to meet up with my university students after their second practice teaching placement. Just like the return from their first placement, I devoted almost an hour for them to decompress and share their insights from their time out in the “real world”. It’s amazing to see the difference in [...]
Playing games in Google Earth | Google Earth Blog
Since Google Earth was first released, a variety of people (including myself) have looked for ways to use it for gaming. While it will never be a true gaming platform, there are still some fun choices out there to play with. Here are a few of the [...]
Today, I downloaded dosbox after a bit of an internet search to get a sense of its reliability (since the zombie-like dude in the top corner did not inspire a lot of confidence). dosbox allows you to run all sorts of DOS programs under Windows, Mac and Linux - Doom and Railroad Tycoon (which is a free download now) seem especially popular.
When you run doxbox, type
mount c: c:colourfulmath (where c:colourfulmath is the directory where the files are)
c:
dir
cd clrmath
4colours (the bat or exe)
and voila!, you have a blast from the past in a nice tidy emulator (or virtual console?) window.
I received a very pleasant email from the Claude Laflamme, the developer (with Industry Canada funding) of Colourful Math. He indicated that his developer interest turned to lyryx.com and Colourful Math has not been ported to any more modern operating systems.
I was thinking that folks of a certain age (probably over 18) might like to know that there could be a way to play their favorite MS-DOS games on their current operating systems, using dosbox, if they are keen on having waves of nostalgia wash over them. My kids spent hours on the evaluation version of Soleau games like Wallpipe, Ant Run and Bolo Ball - which are still available - the rousing Sine Dancing-like antrun theme is playing on my speakers as I type (even after exiting!).
I had an interesting read and reflection on Peter Skillen’s blog yesterday. A recent post “Deep Understanding & the Issue of Transfer” really resonates with me and I’ve been mulling over his words ever since I read the entry.
In one posting, Peter has been able to convey to me the essence of successful use of [...]
Plancast
You've got plans. Spread the word.
(tags: tools calendar plancast social web2.0 events planning startup)
Google Earth Resources (Google Earth In Education)
23 Interesting Ways to Use Google Earth in the Classroom . England Teacher, Tom Barrett started it, several others around the world have contributed to it.
(tags: google resources earth education Google_Earth)
I have been thinking about this question for a while and the answer depends a lot on the type of games we are talking about. There are cross-number puzzles, ciphers to decode pun-ish riddles, drill and practice games, role-playing games, etc.
It may be that "game" is a organizer for "play" which is really a state of engagement. Students can engage in a game for hours, puzzling out the rules and feeling accomplishment.
I wish that I could be at Maria Andersen's presentation - Playing to Learn Math.
This week my daughter, who is studying Math at UW and is currently in a graph theory course, was reminded of a set of games that she played as a youngster - expressly designed to introduce colouring problems in an engaging way. They are MS-DOS based and I have got them to run enough to recognize the screens, but not really to enjoy.
When I am trying to get Sketchpad or Flash to produce a certain figure or interaction, I can enter an engaged state that social psychologists refer to as "Flow", which I find enjoyable.
Keith Devlin would like a couple of hundred million dollars to develop a MMP game that would allow players to construct math learning. I admit to being a tad skeptical, but what would such an environment be worth?
What role have games and play had in your Mathematical development?
It has been quite a while since I’ve been so excited about the mass appeal of a newly licensed software title by the Ministry of Education.
But, Frames 4 is such a title.
I really like a piece of software that engages the imagination by allowing students to create multimedia productions. When the resulting product has so [...]
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