Digitizing Learning

The adoption of video games as an alternative classroom resource is acknowledged in technology and multiliteracies discourses as a strategy for meaning-making and developing cultural knowledge. This chapter addresses how educators may be informed about strategies that can potentially reinvent traditional literacy pedagogical boundaries and how boys' meaning-making establishes new ways and practices shaping their learning processes. This multi-case study examined the experiences of four boys engaged with video gaming in two different contexts: a community center and an after-school video club. A number of findings emanating from this study, including the following: (1) boys use their video gaming practices for meaning-making and collaborative efforts; (2) boys apply their cultural knowledge as creative innovators; (3) boys demonstrate peer mentoring through storytelling, face-to-face interactions, or in their online community of practice; (4) boys make meanings using metacognitive literacy skills; and (5) boys focus on cultural preservation and narrative storytelling.

Former Students Feedback On A Liberal Arts Undergraduate Course In Entrepreneurship

We present initial and preliminary results from a questionnaire survey in early 2005 of former students who took the only entrepreneurship class taught once/year at Macalester College. The objective was to elicit their opinions of what should be taught, the importance of alternative classroom pedagogies, and judgments on how to evaluate student performance. Highest encouragement was given to having outside guest entrepreneur speakers. They were not enthusiastic about the importance of journal articles or even textbooks. They would counsel entrepreneurial students facing constraints on what other courses they might consider, to take especially accounting/finance. They believe grades should be based more so on projects and participation than on performance on exams. They would emphasize the courses focus to be more on starting than growing a firm.

The Pennsylvania State University Medieval Garden: Using a Specialized Garden as an Alternative Teaching and Learning Environment

The Pennsylvania State University Medieval Garden (PSMG) showcases varieties of medieval plants used as ornamentals, food crops, medicinal ingredients, and for household purposes in a stylized setting representing a medieval garden. Since its installation, various colleges within the university as well as community groups have used the garden as an alternative classroom for learning activities, educational demonstrations, and events related to the medieval period. This article focuses on the initial development of the garden design and how the installation and continued use as a classroom has contributed to meeting educational goals for students in the landscape contracting program at the Pennsylvania State University and the Pennsylvania Governor's School for Agricultural Sciences.

The Need for Different Classroom Settings For Effective Development of Thinking Skills

A study was conducted in the southern areas of the former Transkei evaluating the development of thinking skills through Feuerstein’s Instrumental Enrichment (FIE) program (Sonn, 1996). The researcher came to certain conclusions and made several recommendations. One of these recommendations was to change the classroom setting to facilitate the effective development of thinking skills. This paper is divided into three parts. Part one discusses the need for an alternative classroom setting. Curriculum developers seldom address the type of environment in which a curriculum should be implemented, even though the environment is a factor that affects the implementation of any curriculum. Therefore, if we want to change the curriculum to allow for the teaching of thinking skills, we have to change the classroom setting as well. Part two is a review of various examples of classroom settings and the alternative instructional structures. Specifically discussed are the advantages of: (a) biology laboratories, (b) longer blocks of time offered several times a week, (3) developing junior science laboratories, historical societies, social policy institutes, publishing houses, television stations, and (d) junior think tanks where groups of interested students, under adult guidance from either a teacher or a professional policy analyst, focus on a problem of concern to the adolescent and adult community. The third part of the paper addresses the question of why alternative instructional settings and structures have not taken root and flourished.