Resource of the Week - Admongo

Admongo is an educational game designed to teach children how to recognize and understand advertisements. Students journey through a game world where they overcome obstacles, collect coins, and solve challenges designed to teach them about advertisement. Throughout the game students learn how to answer three important questions:

• Who is responsible for the ad?
• What is the ad actually saying?
• What does the ad want me to do?

Additionally, a free advertising literacy curriculum designed for 5th and 6th grade classrooms is available. The curriculum contains lesson plans, worksheets, classroom resources, and handouts. Teacher training videos are forthcoming. Admongo also includes areas for both parents and teachers as well as a Text Version (containing all of the information learned in the game), a Glossary and an Ad Library.

Faculty Spotlight: Rick Schneider

Sharing Student Projects Through Wikis
Illustration Survey, Fall 2009

Introduction

In Rick Schneider's traditional face-to-face art history course, students had little opportunity to share perspectives or engage in dialogue about artists. After learning about wikis, Rick set up this tool to enhance student engagement with the content. He created an environment where students could research and collaboratively profile artists to share with the class. By creating this space, Rick was able to engage the students in a lively discussion about the artists they were viewing.

Timeline

In June of 2009, Rick participated in the Online Course Development Seminar. Through that seminar and attendance at various other workshops, he began to see the value of a shared online environment, even in a face-to-face lecture class. Rick then decided to build a wiki for his illustration Survey course. After completing research on his own, he was able to figure out how to create one.

Equipment

• Wikispaces (www.wikispaces.com)

Process

Rick set up a wiki with module pages for each of his course topics. In response to each module, students were required to create their own wiki page featuring an artist in that weeks' genre. The students created artist profiles, incorporating text, images and video. The students then commented on each others' pages with constructive feedback. In this way students were able to share what they were learning, and create a rich repository for the various artists explored throughout the course.

Outcome

In the wiki, students were able to view each others work in a way they hadn't before. This gave students exposure to more artists than they would have had time for in the classroom. According to Rick, "The students clearly benefited from the shared insight. They engaged in dialog about content, agreed or disagreed about conclusions, and read about topics outside their own required writing." In terms of assessment, the transparency of the activity in the wiki allowed Rick to easily see who was contributing.

Rick's Next Steps...

Rick continues to refine the instructions to be clear around what is expected. By providing better guidelines, Rick hopes to help students understand how to collaboratively write and edit one another's papers. Using what he has learned from developing the Illustration Survey wiki, Rick will create a fully online course for undergraduates called A History of Illustration.

You Can Create A Wiki Too!!

• Keep an eye our for our Wiki Workshops - http://www.lesley.edu/elis/programs.html
• Participate in a self-paced, online Wiki module in the eLearning Faculty Resource Center
• Contact eLIS@lesley.edu for special one-on-one training sessions
  

Resource of the Week - 8 Wonders of the Solar System

8 Wonders of the Solar System is an online interactive from Scientific American. 8 Wonders of the Solar System takes users on a journey to unique places within the solar system: Saturn's rings, Jupiter's red spot, Mars' Valles Marineris, Enceladus' geysers, Triton's geysers, the moon's Peaks of Eternal Light, Mimas' Herschel Crater, and Mercury's sunrise. The site features stunning artwork by Ron Miller, as well as information on the location and current and future space missions.

Be sure to visit the eLIS Digital Resources Collection for more resources like this.

Resource of the Week - ReadCoud

ReadCloud is a social eReading platform designed for schools. It consists of social eReading software with built-in learning tools and a Digital Library Management system. Users may embed comments, videos, pictures, and sound bites to facilitate conversations and discussions. The video below provides an introduction to the tool and how it may be used:



ReadCloud features a Digital Library Management system of out-of-copyright classics, poems, plays, and creative commons books but also allows users to upload their own content. The program currently works on both Macintosh and Windows machines and mobile phone support is forthcoming.

Check out the eLIS Digital Resource Collection for more resources like this. This week we added the 700th resource to the collection! Resources are available for multiple subject areas, age ranges, and tool types.