Teacher Bytes

Over the weekend I purchased the Nintendo DS game Professor Layton and the Curious Village. I got this game after a review I read from Game Informer magazine which peaked my interest. The story is a professor and his young apprentice are called to a village to solve a mystery about a lost family fortune. To find the fortune, the team must solve various puzzles to gather clues that will unlock the mystery. When I read about this, I had to see if the good professor might have the key to solving a puzzle I have been working on, an entertaining game that can teach at the same time.

I have written many blog posts and had numerous discussions with educators about the use of gaming in education. During these discussions I always look back to how video games are set up. To achieve the next level the player must either learn a new skill or solve some kind of problem. Kids will sit for hours doing something teachers would love to have them do for just one hour. The mystery is putting together an enjoyable game with a storyline students would actually buy into. Throughout this game there would be problems in math, science, language arts, social studies, and other subjects that must be solved for the player to advance to a higher level. While Professor Layton does not have strict academic puzzles, some math, reading, reasoning and logic skills are needed to solve some of the 130 puzzles in the game.

It is my understanding Professor Layton and the Curious Village along with a sequel have been out for some time in Japan. This shows the Japanese are leading the trend towards games with higher order thinking skills and educational benefits. Professor Layton and the Curious Village is a step in the right direction for commercially viable educational games in the United States. Hopefully,  American game designers will start working with educators to produce more games that are both educational and fun to play. If this combination puzzle can be solved by others than Professor Layton, it could prove a commercial success for game makers and a bigger success for teachers and their students.

Click here to get your own player.

Yesterday for my Podcasting Class, I sat down and recorded my first podcast in months. There were many reasons I put it off but it boiled down to laziness. I would tell myself I just don’t have a good place to do it where I would have no interruptions. Yesterday, I just sat down, started the record function on my Sansa Clip and went at it. Here are the show notes with links.

Kid-Cast.com: A kid-friendly site for students to upload their own podcasts. All podcasts are reviewed before they are put on the site.

Blog post “Should Video Games Replace Classroom Learning?” Nice post by Andy Carvin in his Learning.now blog about a discussion at South By Southwest Interactive on whether gaming should replace traditional classroom teaching.

Another Andy Carvin blog post on Learning.now about a student who was expelled for using Facebook to do an assignment.

Adobe has released Photoshop Express online.

An ARS Technica post about where online safety belongs. The article argues it should start at the home.

Brazil and Chicago are moving along with plans to place technology into the hands of students without waiting for the OLPC.