ClassDojo - a simple way to motivate students

Have been meaning to write a quick note about a new tool that I have found gives a useful addition to a middle school class.

ClassDojo allows you to assign points to students in your classes for a variety of activities. These points can be both positive and negative ... And the software keeps track of the points over time. I have used it for about 6 weeks and am continuing with one of my classes this term as it seems to be helping with keeping students both on track and motivated.

Here is a view of the main class screen as it sits with my class at the start of this term.

The green scores are for positive behaviors and the red for negative. This display shows both values, though another setting displays just the net score, the positives less the negatives. I use the net score at an end of term prize giving whereby each point gives the student one entry into the draw for the term prize. The more positive points the more chances the student shave to win.



While it is still early days, offering positive points for extra work done is seeing students emailing in answers to extra work sheets at night, over weekends and on days when we don't even have mathematics. I'd love there to be an embed function so that I could embed the chart on my class Maths site - at the moment I capture the screen at the end of each week and post it on the site.

So - give ClassDojo some consideration - it's simple, but so far seems to appeal to the students and so worth a shot.

A real future - or Glass Cleaner required!

Just over a year ago, Corning (the glass manufacturer) posted a video on YouTube called  a Day Made of Glass. In the past year it has had over 18 million views on YouTube - viral by any definition. The video is about 5 minutes long and is here for you to watch.



Now - anyone who has used an iPhone/iPad or tablet of any nature (or wears glasses for that matter) will smurk - how do you keep the stuff clean! Bad enough with just your own prints on it - just imagine everyone elses! But of course - this is not the point - the point is the possibilities for the future.

I remember Alan Kay and his great quote - the best way to predict the future is to invent it. So - it's the direction that these creative people are looking that makes the video worth watching.

In February of this year, Corning released a sequel. A Day Made of Glass 2. Here it is.



It has had 1,500,000 views in the last month or so.

And then to top it all off, a video showing the "truth" behind the video - how it was put together and explaining the technologies and where they are at, and what might be possible in the near future and what might not. This video has had 650,000 views in the past month.




Watching these visions of the future is cool.  When you couple this kind of "biased" look through the eyes of a glass manufacturer with that of the latest version of the "Did You Know" series of videos, maybe you start to think of just how fast things are moving.




And how a sense of urgency is required when it comes to opening your mind to other ways of doing things ... particularly in education. Do you, for example, use YouTube as your second source of searching on the web?

Now - where do I get a large supply of  glass cleaner?

Big History via Chronozoom

Thanks to Microsoft's Research labs Chronozoom is now open for viewing.



According to the Microsoft information

"Embark on a voyage through time, infinitely scalable from the Big Bang to today, exploring this master timeline of the cosmos, Earth, life, and human experience. By unifying a wide variety of data and historical perspectives, ChronoZoom provides a framework for examining historical events, trends, and themes, enabling researchers, educators, and students to synthesize knowledge from different studies of history, specialized timelines, and media resources, courtesy of the cloud. This platform for research and learning helps users develop a broad understanding of how the past has unfolded and discover unexpected relationships and historical convergences that help explain the sweep of Big History—and the relationship between the humanities and the sciences. Become your own time traveler and check out the beta today"


Head to here for a tutorial on how to use Chronozoom and to here to try it out

Infographics by Visual.ly

Infographics interest me - for a number of reasons. I'm basically a visual learner is probably the main one, but I'm also a closet mathematician so always look for a way to present data in visually attractive ways.

A long time ago I registered for visual.ly and heard nothing until my email this morning reminded me they were there and are now "open for business". Well, kind of - they have a couple of options only at the moment taking your stats from Twitter and Facebook. I took the opportunity to see just what the "you are what you tweet" option gave - and the result is below.  What I look forward to is the tools becoming readily available to build infographics like the ones they have here.

TED for Ed

Many of us know and love TED for the vast array of inspirational "talks" that have graced the internet over recent years. Today sees the official launch of Ted-Ed, an initiative to introduce the world's greatest teachers and animators to classrooms across the world.

Don't get the wrong message to start - this is an initiative to try and generate great lessons by joining great ideas by teachers with great animators - so there is not much content available yet (12 videos there at present) - the initiative is designed to get you to nominate your ideas to TED and then the community will do its thing and bring the best to life. That's the way I read it anyway. This is from the PRNewswire release:

"In the first stage of this initiative, TED-Ed launches a new education channel on YouTube today [http://www.youtube.com/tededucation]. It offers up original video content that marries the talent of great teachers with top animators to bring concepts like neuroscience to life in in short videos, typically 5 minutes long.  The channel is part of the youtube.com/edu offering – a collection of half a million educational videos – available in many schools as well as to the public online.
Through its open submission process, animators and educators from around the globe can contribute lesson plans and video reels on any topic [http://education.ted.com/]. Select lesson submissions will be matched with chosen visualizers to create video lessons worth learning, watching, and sharing."

Here's the launch video on the Youtube channel for TED-Ed.



So - I'd encourage you to do three things.

1. Subscribe to the YouTube channel for TED-Ed - this is the link
2. Suggest a lesson or nominate someone you know to contribute the great idea - we must have some of those here in our own community.
3. Share this blog post with colleagues of your around the country - as I said earlier - many of us have benefitted from using TED talks, so the more we get for education, the better our classrooms might be.

Thanks TED and good luck!

The Ethics of Solitude - vs Group and Shared Everything

I have subscribed to the Ethics Newsline for a while now - ever since I started teaching the IB ITGS course a few years ago. Often I merely skim their regular updates, but this time I was intrigued by the title of one of their posts. The Ethics of Solitude.

In a world where everything seems social, from the peer pressure "need" to be on FaceBook and Twitter, to be on Tumblr, LinkedIn or whatever. Everywhere we seem to be challenged to be "social" in our use of technology. Maybe this is a reaction to the often heard comment that technology makes people less social - they have less need for community because they can "commune" at a distance now. In fact, a report I heard yesterday on radio news stated that online dating was now second most common way to meet a love interest - behind being introduced by a mutual friend.

So - I read the Ethics of Solitude. It's worth a read. The world is not made up of clones. Everyone will have a different perspective. At a time where we do seem to spend a lot of time on sharing and teamwork - and they are important - there is a place for solitude.

Enjoy the read.

The Importance of Being Awesome

Faris Yakob is the Chief Innovation Officer for some crowd ... likely a media and advertising company. What attracted me to this 18 minute video was not, however, his name nor the fact I had never heard of him. It was the comment on my Mashable feed that he was a founding partner of Spies and Assassins. What a great title - and on their page they are "Thinkers of Things. Makers of stuff." I love that! That and the title of his presentation which is basically that the future belongs to the most awesome.

Now, at first look, don't be put off by his style of presentation,or the fact that this is just a video of it and some of the detail on his slides doesn't show all that well. There are some very important messages here. For individuals,  business and education (at lest, I think there are). Listen for the commentary around information flow and time for effect. Make the connections between rate of development being almost infinite and the cost of technology basically zero.  Think of the opportunities that are being created daily as a result. The link between content, the media, the medium, and awesomeness.

The danger I think is that we ignore this type of thought provocation at our peril. I think Faris touches on critically important issues. It's up to us how we react and respond. Enjoy.