Have you got game?

From a young age, Millennial students have been exposed to video games. (This picture is courtesy of Sean Dreilinger.) Some of them have spent almost as much time gaming as they have in class. Can we use this to our advantage, and incorporate games into our classrooms?

Of course we can. Even for non-Millennial students, adding games to your classroom can make learning more engaging and fun, and as long as you can connect the game back to the material, students are likely to remember the lesson much longer than a dry lecture on the same topic. Although there are many ways to incorporate games into the classroom, here are just a few ideas...

1) Using a "Jeopardy" type game for review. You can download a PowerPoint template for the game on the internet (here is one such site). All you do is enter the categories and the answers (remember, contestants must answer in the form of a question). You might want to consider Bloom's Taxonomy as you match questions to the increasing dollar amounts. This game works best with a small- to medium-sized class. With my classes of 40-50 students, I split them into teams and each team member takes a turn being the contestant. The team with the most points at the end of the session wins a prize (e.g., bag of candy).

2) Although I am a newbie to SecondLife, I've been hearing a lot about the innovative ways in which it can be sued in the classroom. SecondLife is a virtual community. Students can join for free, and create their own avatars. You can create a virtual classroom, hold office hours, or create scavenger hunts (where the clues are related to your course material). SecondLife has its own economy and social networks that students can study. For a list of examples of ways SecondLife can be used, see this handout, created by a computer sciences professor.

3) Although not a video game, Barnga is a great game to help teach intercultural awareness. It's great for use in classes where you will be discussing these issues, and should not be overlooked as a community-building tool in any class, especially those in which students will be doing a lot of group work or participating in discussions.

To read some research on the use of the games in college classrooms, check out this article from the International Journal of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education.

How do you use games in your classroom? Please share your ideas!

CVs move into the digital age

Yesterday on my commute home I was listening to NPR's All Tech Considered. They were discussing how resumes and vitae have moved into the digital age. More and more companies are using not only websites meant for job postings, such as Monster.com, but also social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter to learn about their employees or potential hires. Already, academia is not far behind. There have been many conversations on campus and in the blogs and lists I follow about e-portfolios, both for students and faculty.

Making your CV available online can have many advantages. If you are currently seeking work, it allows potential employers (including headhunters) to search for you on the internet. Even if you are currently employed, having your CV online is a great way for students and collaborators to learn more about you. Indeed, many of us already have our own web pages (contact your department to find out how you can get your own).

But of course, there are also downfalls to being online. You may have read in the Chronicle of Higher Education about how a professor at Dartmouth put her foot in her mouth on Facebook (you can read the article here). Tech faux pas such as these are becoming known as "Cisco Fatties", after a woman "tweeted" herself out of a "fatty paycheck" at Cisco (read about it here). Apparently, students and employers can view not only the amazing, impressive items you post, but also the devastatingly stupid.

So a word to the wise - as you venture out into the world wide web, keep in mind that, for better or worse, you are being watched.

Did you know?

The graphic used in this post is an electronically created visual cloud of my own CV, created using wordle. Find out more about wordle, and make your own, at http://www.wordle.net/.

Copyrights and wrongs

When starting this blog, I wanted to use images to give you something pretty to look at in addition to something to read and think about. My first instinct was to search the internet for images and copy them to the blog. Instead, I started searching the internet for articles on fair use and copyright.

Trying to muddle through all of the legalese and complicated issues became more than I could handle, so I contacted Allyson Mower, the U's Copyright Librarian. Allyson pointed me to 2 great resources that made it much easier to understand what I can and cannot do both on the blog and in my classroom. One is Know Your Copy Rights, where you can download their informational brochure "What You Can Do", or the handy 1-page chart that breaks down what you can do with written and audio-visual resources in face-to-face classrooms and online classes.

Allyson also pointed me to one of several sites that now exist where you can find images that you can post or modify without the need to ask permission. Many images can be found on Flickr - just use the "Advanced Search" option and click the box for "Creative Commons-licensed content". You can learn more about the Creative Commons on their website. If you use their search tool, you can simultaneously find images, video, and music. Just be sure to check out the different types of licenses, as they limit what you can and cannot do with the content you find.

(Luckily, the artist who created the image above gave her permission for others to distribute it. You can see more of Roberta Murray's work here.)

I think that incorporating images and other media into my teaching (and my blogging) enriches the experience for everyone, and helps me to reach people with different learning styles. Learning how to do this without violating the rights of the artists and scholars who have produced this work can become complicated in the "digital age" when everything seems to be just a click away. I'm very grateful that we have resources like Allyson to help us - both as creators and consumers of media content.

University of Utah faculty, staff, and students who would like to contact Allyson with questions about copyright issues can reach her at allyson.mower@utah.edu