Speaking of Video Games...

The debate on video games in classrooms continues. The only computer game I played in school was Oregon Trail during social studies in elementary school. It wasn't until college that I gave another thought to games in the classroom when my professor of quanitative mass media research was researching Second Life.

I found a few articles/research papers listed below that consider video games in the classroom either as a topic of conversation, or method of learning.

I think Social Studies Central offers the most comprehensive look at video and computer games in the classroom. Their post Video Games in Education offers several links to tips as well as research documents.

Game to Learn, by Dr. Timothy Marsh. Marsh discusses using games to complimet learning and the challenges to consider before integrating them into content. Assistant Professor of the Communications and New Media dept., and faculty member of the Mixed Reality Lab, IDMI at NUS.

Integrating Off-the-Shelf Commercial Video Games into Classroom Curriculums, by Dennis Charsky and Clif Mims. Charsky and Mims consider integrating video games into classroom content as film is - through critique exercises.

Rebekah Shultz Colby and Richard Colby wrote A Pedegogy of Play: Integrating Computer Games into the Writing Classroom. Shultz-Colby and Colby discuss theuse of massive multiplayer games, such as World of Warcraft (WOW), into the classroom.

National STEM Video Game Challenge - Vote!

The competition, hoted by the Joan Ganz Cooney Center engages middle school and college students to develop video games. Submissions have already been made, vote here!

The Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop focus on the new challenges children face today, asking the 21st century equivelant of her original question, "how can emerging media help children lean?"

Green Education Foundation (GEF) Announces National Green Week 2011

Fun, educational and engaging classroom content for Earth Day that incorporates subjects other than just science and math.

There's still time to enroll for the Green Education Foundation's National Green Week February 7th 11th. The foundation encourages teachers to spend time with students on green topics and provides green currculum, activities and snack ideas for each grade level.

Curriculum such as Land Fill Gas as a Source of Energy incorporates social studies, science, math & language arts into one lesson.

Teachers who register before Feb. 4th are entered into a drawing for $5,000 GEF eco kit. THe program kicks off the week of Feb. 7th, but teachers can choose to participate any week between 2/7 & 4/22nd.

Tech Valley Career Pathways Consortium at Union College

Questar III BOCES hosted its Tech Valley Career Pathways event today at Union College in Schenectady, NY - organized by Ted Hennessy. Teachers, guidence counselors, and other administrators attended listened to Keynote speakers Annette Finsterbusch, Investment Director at Applied Ventures followed by Robert Karlicek, Director at Rensselaer of Smart Lighting Engineering and attended breakout sessions discussing specific courses guidance counselors should recommend to students planning on pursuing technical higher education, college math readiness among other topics.

Annette talked about Applied Ventures, how the fund works and stressed the demand for innovators and the competition for funding.

Robert Karlicek introduced smart lighting as a developing industry and discussed its current and potential impact on businesses and consumers.

Chancellor Zimpher's State of the University

Last week I attended Chancellor Zimpher's State of the University at the Egg with Jeff Lawrence, CEG's EVP of Technology. The chancellor unveiled her plan for bringing SUNY closer together and its impact on the NYS economy after visiting all 64 campuses. I learned a lot about the SUNY sytem from her speech - a few stats:

+ SUNY is the largest system of comprehensive higher ed: 465,000 students in 7,500 degree/certificate programs in 64 campuses

+ SUNY's community colleges provide workforce training for more than 240,000 NYers ea/yr.

+ SUNY educates more teachers than any other institution in NYS, at about 5,000/yr.

+ SUNY's research portfolio is worth $1.2 billion

+ SUNY was granted 55 patents in 2009 and took in $13.2 million in royalties

+ SUNY led 70 start-up companies in 2009

House Backs STEM Education Bill: Next Stop, White House

Education Week delves into Obama's STEM Education bill ...

House Backs STEM Education Bill: Next Stop, White House

Introducing the First #scichat Challenge | Edutopia

Introducing the First #scichat Challenge Edutopia - connect students & scientists

A quick search on twitter will show you the scientists & the projects students worked on... http://twitter.com/#!/search/%23scichat

EduTopia aims to host one "challenge" per quarter. Challenges are discussed & selected on #SciDo - a community of science teachers. Join the discussion here.

Teachers Personally Spend $400/yr on Students

I left the Waiting for Superman round-table a bit disenchanted with everything relating to the education system wondering what am I supposed to do now.

www.waitingforsuperman.com has separate sections for parents, teachers & students. One section allows teachers to upload projects that you can browse and fund that links to: http://www.donorschoose.org/ -pretty cool

CEG's Workforce Development & 21st Century Education Initiative

The mission of the initiative is 2-fold:

+ To create a self sustainable high-tech skilled workforce in the 11-county greater capital region to support the region's growing tech industries

+ To integrate STEM (science, technology, engineering & math) subjects into schools and spark the interest and curiosity among students in these and related subjects at a younger age.

On the right is a one-sheeter describing the initiative and our efforts through 2010. We are currently supported by the Greater Capital Region Workforce Investment Boards consortium, an entity under the umbrella of the NYS DoL.

Waiting for Superman

Back in November, I attended a free screening of Waiting for Superman at the Spectrum Theater sponsored by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Albany Colonie Chamber of Commerce followed by a ">round-table discussion with Kenneth Adams, President and CEO of The Business Council, Reg Foster, Corporate Community Relations Manager, IBM and Dr. L. Oliver Robinson, Superintendent, Shenendehowa Central Schools. Video of Dr. Robison's response to the moderator's question: If you could change one thing about the education system, what would it be?

One of the interviewees, an education professional said that upon graduating from Harvard he estimated it would take him at least 2, but no longer than 5 years to fix the education system; he's been his career in education is in the 20 - 30 year range if I remember correctly.

The Film: A definite watch in my book. Growing up in suburbia going to a school where honors, AP and Project Lead the Way courses were popular and where "everyone" goes to college - I was isolated from the mediocre & worst case scenario schools & districts. Certainly awareness is necessary and this film does a good job of a day in the life of disadvantaged students and communicating the minimal say a student or parent has in their educational destiny - at least in public schools. Of course the education system is not "all" "bad".

Capital Region STEM Education

About:

CapitalRegion_STEM_Ed

This blog focuses on CEG's Workforce Development & 21st Century Education Initiative. The initiative was created in response to the region's growth in multiple industry sectors in the region and aims to develop a new high-tech workforce pipeline in the short term and working to implement more STEM into curricula to stimulate interest in and better prepare students for technical careers.

Center for Economic Growth

I write this blog on behalf of the Center for Economic Growth - a non-profit economic development firm based in Albany, NY and serving 11 surrounding counties whose three-pronged approach: Grow, Attract, Prepare focuses on 5 tech industry sectors - Advanced Materials, Biotechnology, Renewable Energy, Homeland Security/Defense, and Information Technology. For more information, please visit www.ceg.org.