apart from Ms. Booth having her students say thanks Enah! (say it in your head with a classic Aussie accent), the video in the post below is just cool to see how many instances of SoaS her class is running! seeing so many PCs in one room with OpenSim is almost overwhelming!
most of us probably use OpenSim from our homes where only one person has OpenSim open. i’ve never heard of LAN parties for OpenSim (sounds really geeky but also awesomely fun!) =D
seeing so many students actively working in OpenSim is pretty fun and it clearly works as a great educational tool for Kate Booth. it’s really nice to be thanked but the real hero is Ms. Booth!
she is the kind of educator that will find interesting, engaging, and effective tools for her students that allow them to express their creativity in meaningful ways
truth be told, the biggest win are the students – they “get it” and run with it like mad. and that means our future is brighter. when you see kids grasp technology and intrinsically excited to learn and express what they have learned, then they are unleashing their potential
Sim-on-a-Stick might be defined by so many megabytes on a USB drive, but in the hands of Ms. Booth’s students, there are no proverbial boxes to think outside of! her students are well beyond traditional learning constraints and no longer have the sky as a limit!
to Ms. Booth’s, and all, students: never stop being awesome and never stop pushing the limits!
read the post and watch the video - The longest maths lesson… =)
superstars!
Wonderful video. Thanks Ener! Great to see kids having so much fun learning math.
Did you build the Heptagon display for the kids? If so, kudos to you. I think I recognized the wire frame of a small stellated dodecahedron on that page.
Wizard Gynoid
22 Feb 13 at 8:19 am
I have some reservations about this school about what the other classes are that it teaches. on the link for the video they got the students to practice having mug shots taken (scroll down about halfway and its on the left)
joe
22 Feb 13 at 9:28 am
Not me Wizzy but that is something right up your alley! They’d probably love to see some of your incredible poly metric art =)
Hey Joe =) so you are referring to their human calendar images – I haven’t looked at theirs yet but have seen some very cool image-based clock/calendars. They used to be made using flash but there must be some javascript ones out there
Hmm, this could be scripted in OpenSim too – that would be neat for a grid like InWorldz where they could pull profile pics to build an avatar clock
Ener Hax
22 Feb 13 at 10:26 am
Awww coolest video ever! Love the sound of excited little ones learning and that clip captures it so well! … and yay ‘Enah’! ;)
jokay
22 Feb 13 at 10:31 am
although the bane of a past headmistress I had in Dallas, the noise level is a strong indicator of how excited the students are
amazing that some people still want quiet classrooms and kids that don’t move – not my idea of encouraging passionate learning!
So Jokay, are all you friggin’ Aussies really this cool?
Sure seems like it! =)
Ener Hax
22 Feb 13 at 11:48 am
That was a great moment and they just love the tree – out of all the OAR’s I have tried that one is the most popular with so many kids. They get to have ‘free play’ after they have completed their maths tasks and that involves lots of building which we all know is still so mathematical and requires so much higher order thinking but I just don’t tell them. @Jokay is a role-model for me as she showed what could be done here in Australia. When I first started playing with virtual world tech at Southern Cross University (I’m still there in my final 4th year) I was always stalking her grid and presentations to gain understanding into ‘how do I teach this to kids? How to embed best practices and keep other teachers happy with the knowledge that their students were learning and not just ‘playing a game’.@Jokay redefined how virtual worlds could be justified especially through the creation of @Massively Minecraft.
For me there are good days and bad days where nothing seems to go right, and I am constantly tweaking lessons as all the students are so different but overall this technology is fantastic, authentic and creates meaningful learning in a highly engaging manner. That’s fine by me and obviously the Principals that have employed me at their schools so thanks Enah! for packaging it all up and making it possible for schools and teachers to bring virtual world technology into their classrooms in Oz. @(*0*)@
Kate Booth
22 Feb 13 at 4:41 pm
Great stuff! I’m looking forward to seeing the first implementation of Opensim in the classroom with something like this Plug Server.
ELQ
22 Feb 13 at 10:06 pm
i have to get me an aussie hat.
bristle
23 Feb 13 at 6:58 pm