Using Technology to Help Students!
Alice for Fun Learning!
Teaching Students to Program With Stories
Alice is a 3D virtual worlds programming environment that makes it easy to create animations for either story telling or interactive games. Students can learn the intricacies of programming through enjoyable activities.
Available for free download on the internet (provided by Carnegie Mellon), Alice has been used with 4th-6th grade youngsters on up to high school students.
Teachers can use Alice to integrate computer science with any other discipline.
Alice can be used in two ways:
- At the lower level students can learn enough Alice to build interactive worlds to integrate it into course modules
- At a higher level, Alice is a complete course on learning programming. In any current module in which a student creates a poster or presentation, the student now can build an interactive story or game as the presentation.
The wonderful thing about Alice is that students, yes, even middle school girls, can learn computer programming through storytelling.
What a breakthrough!
Inspired Teaching Made Into Fun
MYST is another technologically-advanced program for involving and engrossing students to achieve peak levels of performance.
These videos are about an award-winning teacher in the U.K. and the techniques he uses to motivate and inspire his students. As Clive McGonigal (the friend who told me about Tim Ryland) mentioned in his email to me. . .
“How many classes of kids do you know that moan when the lesson’s over?”
Enjoy the videos and take a look at the website. See what can be accomplished when teachers are allowed to use their creativity.
What a fellow teacher says about the effectiveness of this technique.
For years, Don Kingsland, author of “Set Our Teachers FREE! A Plan to Save Public Education” and “The Kingsland Plan” utilized creative techniques to help his students far surpass expectations. The newest generation of creative teachers is exemplified by Tim Ryans.
Our students are bright and they deserve the best education we can give them. Schools must be revamped to allow excellent teachers to provide innovative learning environments for those students, at all ages.
Take a look at Tim’s website Tim Rylands website and his blog Tim Ryland’s blog to learn more about the results of education done creatively.
Just think, the POSSIBILITIES ARE ENDLESS!
Until next time!
Brennan
Filed under: Education Reform
I’m sure that my kids will enjoy more interactive and creative learning from computer programs.
Already it’s hard to keep them away from the PC. I’m more traditional though. I’d rather they spend some time exploring the offline ways of creativity, rather than get on the PC too much.
It’s great that teachers are allowed to use their own ideas to help the kids. They have to be relevant to the changing needs of today’s kids.
The main issue I wanted to emphasize here is that this ONE teacher was allowed to use his creativity - and achieved phenomenal results.
Carnegie Mellon has made an invaluable contribution to education with the Alice programming training.
Unfortunately, most teachers in the U.S. have very restrictive guidelines as to how and what they can teach. That’s the whole message in SET OUR TEACHERS FREE! and THE KINGSLAND PLAN - that parents and teachers need to be working together to implement programs and curriculum that WORKS, without having to jump through hoops, or risk getting fired.
Look at the results that Tim Ryland was able to achieve when he was given academic freedom.
I could tell you hundreds of stories about students that Don helped to SUCCEED. As he tells in his biography, he saw and experienced the positive impact when he worked in a school that utilized teacher input. He got into hot water when he tried the very same techniques in restrictive districts. Oh, well!
The important message is, nowadays, teaching needs a total revamp.
Thanks for your comment, Evelyn! Right on the mark, as always!
I am so glad to have come across this! This type of creative teaching in the classroom keeps me from falling into the depths of despair about public education.
Education reform is a must. I have homeschooled out of desperation, and public schooled with disappointing results. My kids are now in private schools, and I still shudder at the loss of control that teachers in the US area allowed to have. I will be writing on this in my blogs and sharing it with others. Good job!
Thank you, Miss Suzy, for saying that education reform is a must.
If more teachers were allowed to use their creativity to expand children’s love of learning, we wouldn’t have so many students who become bored and drop-out - or who become behavior problems disrupting everyone else’s ability to learn.
I was so tickled when I saw what Tim Ryland was able to accomplish, that it reinforced my determination to help bring about desperately needed changes in our public schools.
When you think about the fantastic learning skills Alice can bring to our students, it inspires optimism for the future at a time when the picture looks so dismal.
I don’t feel the need to have any special day celebrating
Harvey Milks, there many other important important individuals who should also be honored then too!
Harvey chose his life style just as we all have and I’m sure there are many non-Gay men who are just as deserving as Harvey is so why aren’t we proposing a special day for all of them?? I’ll bet we could find 365 if we looked real hard.
My two cents.
Dear David,
Thank you for commenting.
I agree that there are many more important issues in education that we should be focusing on, other than narrow special-interest agendas and “political correctness”.
My two cents agrees with your two cents.
Brennan