SparklingDrift's Page

Sylvia and I have been emailing back and forth about video games, mostly because I've been bugging her. My vision, unfulfilled so far, is to have my students create a working video game simulation of The Grapes of Wrath.



Why?



First, a slew recent books have convinced me that video games represent an evolution in thinking about motivation and how we learn. Steven Johnson's… Continue

So, recently I read E.D. Hirsch's The Knowledge Deficit. Hirsch (Core Knowledge Reading Program) is know as being a heavy proponent of phonics, but this book goes further in advocating a knowledge heavy curriculum (You can always look it up...or can you)?. Not only that he suggests the curriculum… Continue

...is really, really hard.



I thought it would be a good idea to actually try and do the things I ask my students do, even though one of the great perks of being a teacher is avoiding homework. And I realized that creating a digital essay is ridiculously, insanely, exhilaratingly hard.



One of the issues is that no one's really sure what a digital essay looks like because the form is in it's infant stages. Probably the best examples out there right now are… Continue

So, a lot of the edublogerrati have heard of and referenced Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's Flow. It's one of those memes--the desired state of total immersion in a complex task that enables you to experience a state of semi-ecstasy--that's… Continue

So, this is the first time I've been involved with Ning or any kind of social network. Normally, I lurk. Big time lurk. I have a pretty good list of Google Reader feeds and my own diet of info that I hoover semi-omnivorously (Arts and Letters Daily, Will R, Metafilter, Bookslut, Mr. Verb,… Continue