Beyond Check-in Spamming: Useful Ideas for Location-Based Apps

Josh Williams of Gowalla said checking in is the gateway activity of location-based applications. In my last post, I raised the question,"Gateway to what?" Here are some ideas I have to make these programs more useful:

* Create local Gowalla trips of state parks, art museums, historical sites, etc.
* When you create a spot in Gowalla, go back to the website later and add a detailed description including dates, history, and other information.
* Add at least one tip for every place you visit in Foursquare even if it's bad. Enough bad reviews of the lasagna at an Italian place, and they just might take steps to improve it.
* Add a to-do for each of the places you normally visit in Foursquare. When you do this, you will remind yourself to try something different the next time you visit.
* Don't just road munch and go after icons in Waze. Go to their website and edit roads, post to the forums, and add location names. You will be helping your community by updating the information around them.
* If you use Traveler's Quest, don't just dig or bury treasures in the comfort of your car. Walk to out of the way locations and bury the items.
* Take your kids with you when you use any of the geocaching applications. This is a great way to spend time with family and get outdoors to explore.

There are several other applications like MyTown, BrightKite, and Flook that I think could contribute to the value of society. With it's rapidly growing user base, MyTown could turn it's real estate game into something really big.

I hope you've enjoyed some of my ideas and I hope we can start to utilize these crowdsourced technologies for the benefit of all and not just for the egos of the players.

How Games Can Shape Education and Local Behavior

Jesse Schnell’s presentation on games at DICE got me thinking about how games have been shaping our behavior for years. Weight Watcher points, frequent flier miles, stamps for free smoothies, Xbox achievements: all of these are gaming devices that shape our behavior. Game designer Jane McGonigal’s site discusses games she has created that have changed people’s behavior.

I’ve recently been noticing how gaming has changed my behavior as well. With my iPhone, I have several location-based games like Gowalla, Foursquare, MyTown, Traveler’s Quest, and Waze that I use on a daily basis. When I excitedly show them to people, I usually get the standard response, “What’s the point?” When I explain the rewards like virtual items, badges, and leaderboard rankings, most people just shake their heads and smile. But with Jesse and Jane’s work, I’m beginning to see beyond the game mechanism and how these applications are changing my life in a profound way. I’m also beginning to see how I can apply these applications to my career as a teacher. Below are some ideas I have.

Education
I am a roving teacher, servicing my students in several different classrooms during the day. I take my iPhone with me and let my students use some of the education apps I’ve downloaded. One thing I have noticed is the students take to the finger-gestures of an iPhone faster than a computer mouse and keyboard. But there was one item in Schnell’s presentation that struck me: he mentioned a college professor revamping his grading scale into an game-like version with points and levels. I began to think of all the student who have an Xbox and how they are so used to unlocking achievements in their games and completing and gaining levels. Could we implement some of that in schools? Each student has their own gamer card with all of the unlocked achievements they have accomplished with the skills and levels they have reached for the year.

Local Behavior
“Checking in” with apps like Foursquare and Gowalla is getting a lot of attention, but in watching an interview with Gowalla’s Josh Williams, he called checking in a “gateway” behavior for location-based games. A gateway to what? I believe it’s a deeper connection to others who use the application. The tips and to-do’s features in Foursquare are a far stronger draw than simply unlocking badges and earning points. These features build community among users so when someone visits a location and looks at the tips from other, it may change what they do there. Foursquare needs to flesh these features out more since other applications like Loopt and Yelp have done this for years and have a larger user base. Waze and Traveler’s Quest have a more direct impact on local behavior. They encourage you to drive to local places to find items or icons for bonus points. Further, Waze allows you to report accidents, traffic jams, and even update your local map on their web site. Finally, Gowalla lets users create their own trips and reward friends with pins if they check in at each spot. In my town, I’m working toward the 7 Bridges of Jacksonville trip and I’ve already created my Mark’s Favorite 20 Restaurants trip. My next goal is to create a trip for all 9 state parks in the area.

While these games are clearly in their infancy, we can clearly see how they can be used for something more worthwhile than spamming your Facebook friends’ news feed with endless trips to the grocery store. If used properly, they can effect social change that benefits everyone. It will be exciting to watch.

Florida Educational Technology Conference notes

FETC 2010 Orlando is over and here's my take. Maybe it's because I only attended on Friday and didn't have much time to see the exhibits, or maybe it's because I didn't know anyone at the conference, but I can't help but feel a little disappointed. To be fair, my last conference was Geekend 2009 in Savannah, Georgia which totally blew me away. Geekend was what really sold me on social media and I had high expectations of FETC continuing that trend. Alas, FETC was given by and aimed at educators, not social media entrepreneurs.
To the rundown already! First off, I wish I had an entire day just to explore the exhibit floor. Smart boards seem to be the in thing with everyone and their brother hawking their wares. There were so many cool tools to look at it was overwhelming. But as a teacher at an elementary school, my view of technology has changed in the last 5 years. It has to be easy to use, quick to learn, and useful for my students before I will even consider it. I think back to every faculty meeting when a new technology is introduced. You can hear the collective groan from most of the teachers as they think, "I don't have time to use that!" I wonder how many educational technology vendors really understand that.

Here are the sessions I attended and my notes. My apologies for the roughness of my notes. In subsequent blog entries, I will flesh out these technologies as I use them.

Integrating video production into curriculum and classroom activities

• Sony presented videos of student-created videos for writing, science, and math
• Filmmaking techniques discussed and recommendations made
• Sony videocameras with features shown (shocker!)

Lessons-in-your-Pocket: Teaching with iPhone and iPod Touch

• Paul Shuster from Media-X presented using DemoGod on a Mac
• Showed how to to hook up an older iPod Video to a projector by switching the RCA jacks (video posted on YouTube)
• Apps previewed: Mxmobile eWalk, FlashCards, Notecard Lite, History map, Multiply free, Math free, Igrade gradebook ($8. Only one on app store), Autograph (Tracks student behavior) Formulas, ArithmeTick, Math Tricks Lite, Math Magic, Number Tricks, Quick graph, kids math, Simplemind (Mind maps)
• Wondershare converts Powerpoint presentations to video
• Apple Keynote can create a presentation video for showing on iPhone/iPod Touch
• Camtasia, Zamzar, Videogetting: all for grabbing web-based video and showing on iPhone
• Backpack: homework app created by a student
• Screensplitr: allows displaying your iPhone/iPod Touch results live on a projector. Requires jailbroken iPhone (via Cydia or Blackrain)
  

Accessibility and Differentiated Instruction

• Presentation from: Shelley Ardis @shelleypa
• Nettrekker: Powerful education search engine. Showed how to display passages for comprehensive readability levels.
• LifeScribe pulse pens: note taking, auditory and visual review, text-to-speech
• Vocabulary scaffolding (www.dotsub.com) caption and video in any language
• BrainPop (www.brainpop.com)
  * animated series education-based
  * BrainPop Junior (for lower levels)
• Voicethread: drawing, speaking, sign language
• WriteOnline: scaffolding for writing
• SMART notebook: drawing, video recording
• Edmodo: a private social platform for teachers and students to share ideas, files, events, and assignments
• Comic Creator
• Glogster - poster projects
• Sketch Up - 3D models and design from Google
• Wordle.com: graphics representations of words (use for main idea?)
• Kerpoof
• Storybird
  

All Atwitter About Twitter

• Diana Dell from SqoolTechs Twitter: @dianadell
• Gamequarium.org Readquarium SqoolLibrary SqoolTube SqoolPrintables TeacherClicks Sqoolquarium: kid search engine
• Moodle-based classroom
• PLN: Personal Leraning Network
• Twittersheep: analyzes all of your Twitter followers Tweet interesting links
• Twitter book study?
• Tara Seale @tseale high school language arts teacher. Created Twitter accounts for each Greek god and had students tweet as each one.Twitter classrooms
• Hazel Owen @howen@edtechworkshop mrtweet.com wefollow.com twitter4teachers.pbwiki.com twittgroups.com/Twitpic.com Twittertim.es
• @Cybraryman#edtech #edchat Twitful Tweetchat.com
• Hootlet social bookmarking
  

3D Storytelling Using Second Life

• http://coe.ksu.edu/ecdol/presentations.htm
• Virtual Worlds
• MUVE: multiple user virtual environments
• synchronous, avatars
• There: another virtual world like Second Life
• Whyville: for elementary science
• Barbie Girls: social site for girls
• World of Warcraft
• Digital Storytelling: Animoto Educational
• Oh The Places You'll Go! telling the story. Room with a rocking chair and painted walls.
• World War I set with soldiers and nurses
• Angel Island
• Macbeth world
• Digital Libraries
• Machinima
  
  
  
  

Welcome!

Welcome to my new blog about technology for busy teachers. I decided to write this blog because as a teacher, I am very busy every day but I want to integrate technology into my lesson plans to help my students grow.

First, let me introduce myself. I am a resource special education teacher at an inner city elementary school in Jacksonville, Florida. I have been teaching at this school for five years. Before I became a teacher I was a software developer for twelve years for multiple industries including pharmacy, education, insurance, and military contracting. I have a bachelor's degree in computer science and have teaching certifications in special education and elementary education.
I believe I have unique experience that brings a different perspective of educational technology. Since I am a resource teacher, I move from classroom to classroom to work with my students. Therefore my time is limited so the technology I'm reviewing will initially be for hardware and software I use during my day. I'm going to start with iPhone educational applications since they are plentiful, cheap, and immediately usable for me. However, I will be focusing on applications that track student progress. In my school district and many others, data is what drives instruction. An application that does not collect and measure student is of no use to me so this will be an important feature of any application I review.

So come on aboard and let's find some useful technology for busy teachers!