FTC Officially Unveils Ad Literacy Game & Curriculum

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has pulled back the curtain on ADMONGO.GOV, its new "advertising literacy" online game (for tweens) and curriculum (for teachers).
The New York Times and eSchool News both have stories of interest. Not everybody likes the game or the FTC approach.

Text Messenging Used to Help Students Learn Poetry

Students in a New York state middle school who used cell phones and text messaging to learn about poetry outperformed their peers who learned through traditional methods. Students used the phones to text the main idea of poetry stanzas. Those who did got 80% of poetry questions correct on state exams, while those who were taught in traditional methods of using reading, reciting and discussing answered 40% of the questions correctly. Details here.

Video-game academy to prepare students for technology careers

A Texas school district is planning a program to teach students video-game technology. It will offer courses in 2-D and 3-D animation, graphics, art and sound and light mixing. Details here.

A school that welcomes cell phones into the classroom

A pilot middle school program aims to see what happens when students use cell phones for instruction. Says one social studies teacher: "It's not really a phone, it's their computer for class." Details from CNN.

Thinking About: Ed Video Games

Tom DeRosa doesn't play video games much. But after spending his winter break "sick as a dog" on the couch playing with his dad's X-Box, he came to this conclusion: "(E)verything we need to make paradigm-shifting educational video games that kids will actually play has already been created. Instead of starting from scratch,educators need to team up with innovative video game studios and merely tweak the powerful learning-based game models that already exist." Read more here.

Teaching Literacy Using A Kindle

Children interact with the text of an electronic book differently than they do with printed text, according to a college professor of elementary education. Lotta Larson at the University of Kansas says being able to write comment on the Kindle as they read makes the book more pertinent.

iPad Struggles At Some Colleges

The Wall Street Journal reports connectivity problems with Apple's new iPad tablet at some colleges mean the device won't work there.

6 Technologies That Will Shape Education

Cloud computing and gaming are among the six technologies that will have a major positive impact on K-12 education in the next few years, according to researchers. But education also faces some critical challenges in that timeframe, including challenges that may require fundamental changes to the way we educate in the United States. This according to a new report released this week by the New Media Consortium (NMC) in collaboration with the Consortium for School Networking (CoSN), "The 2010 Horizon Report: K-12 Edition."

Critical Thinking & Media Literacy @ The Middle Grades

Media educator David Considine contributes to the current issue of NMSA's Middle Ground (Teaching 21st Century Skills) with a piece advocating for media literacy in the middle grades. Excerpt: "Teaching students to critically analyze and evaluate advertising provides them with the skills to be competent consumers—a skill they will use for the rest of their lives, whether making decisions about their next bag of potato chips or the next president of the United States." (Article available to NMSA members)

New book on Copyright

Renee Hobbs' new book, Copyright Clarity: How Fair Use Supports Digital Learning, should be on the shelf of every K-12 professional collection. With this new book, she continues the campaign to re-educate us all about what we CAN do in the classroom with media. Check it out. (Additional support material for teaching copyright can also be found on her website at Temple University.)

50 Free Games for Teaching Literacy Online

Parents and teachers hoping to nurture the best reading, spelling, and vocabulary in their children should explore all the different literacy games available on the internet. This blogger includes her list of the 50 best to consider.

Engaging Video Games

Financial literacy, Middle East peace, the Supreme Court & Constitutional rights...these are just some of the compelling topics that are engaging students via video games.

Call for Nominations: NCTE's Media Literacy Award

The NCTE Commission on Media is proud to announce that it will award the fifth annual Media Literacy Award at the NCTE Annual Convention in Orlando. Previous award winners are profiled at this site.

Deadline for the 2010 award is Wednesday, June 30, 2010. The award winner will be notified by the end of August and will receive a plaque along with a cash award.

To see the critieria and to apply for the award, go here