Therese Weel

Posting the first draft of the PDF summary for this session.  I still have some work to do however I wanted to post it early as we wind down the discussions.  Tia is in the UK and will be online for the closing remarks this Tuesday.

We will not be having the event in There with Ron Edwards before the end of this conference.  We thought it best to focus on digesting the contributions  that have been provided rather than scheduling an event on the last day.

The PDF summary has a space for reflections on what we learned during our time here.  I will create a new thread to hold our thoughts.

Making this comment as I re-read this forum thread

I for one really appreciate the advice and experience of parents and  teachers who  can shed some light on the use of technology in k-12 education.   Something I can't do.  Think of the challenges that we as technology -literate adults have in finding and using serious games and virtual worlds.  It is a bigger challenge to incorporate them into the everyday classroom. 

We should also question - Should we?  Are the kids better served by them or by a real teacher and traditional teaching methods.  A serious game is not necessarily virtual it could also be table game or a physical puzzle. 

Balancing the challenges of large class sizes, our own busy lives and the need to get kids ready for the real world is not easy.   It makes sense to focus on "bits of the best" games and tools that parents and teachers can share and incorporate into their children's life.

Thanks for rambling!

Thanks Sylvia, 

Sounds interesting, sent a message to BJ and made an entry in my handy dandy google calendar.

BTW

Toot Toot!! - What is this announcement I see on the first page of scope

SCoPE is the recipient of the BC 2007 Innovation Award in Educational Technology

Congratulations to you and a pat on the back to all the participants who make scope a great place to be.

Hi Kim

You are doing some interesting work!

I'd love to read the papers you've suggested and put them in the summary.
Unfortunately the links are broken - for me at least. 

Could you repost the links for us?

"Online Sites for Generative Play"
1337 |)r4/\/\4 : Drama across the digital Divide (

Therese

I've had a look at the ellumninate recording as I missed the original session.

Samia's discusses simulated virtual labs for science students and provides some insight into the value of them compared to traditional science experiments.

Whereas a recipe type science experiment will give you one try and one result a virtual experiment allows you to get multiple results, relflect, compare and share that information with others.

She gives several examples of projects and provides the results of practical real world uses of these tools.  She also gives voice to the drawbacks of virtual experiments such as missing out on the experience of have an experiment fail because of soap residue in your test flask.

It was good to have the rewind button to better absorb the ideas she  presented.