Wow, ten weeks goes really really fast here at EdLab! Tomorrow’s already my last day, and to follow the precedent set by Scotty and Rebekah, I’m going to take this opportunity to post about my experiences as an intern this summer and talk about the projects I did.

(All the goodies are after the jump)

This morning's NY Times featured a short article about a project called Realty PD. In essence, the short videos are done in a reality-tv style (aka with testimonials), and are designed to show examples of exceptional teaching in the DC school system, allowing teachers to see what their peers are doing in the classroom.

The idea reminded me of TORSH and their idea for professional development through video (though this project only included video of exceptional teachers, without any other elements).

What do you think of this project? If you were a teacher would you want to watch your peers to get ideas to improve your own teaching?

Overview:
Code Avengers is a gamified learn-to-code website, designed to teach beginners the basics of coding in Javascript and HTML/CSS. The Code Avengers approach starts from the very beginning, but quickly scaffolds into more advanced concepts.

A fourth-level robot lesson, using While loops

Pros:

• Each lesson is designed to be interactive, with output-driven assignments. As you work through the levels, the assignments get more and more complex.
• If a wrong solution is entered, a hint becomes available. After two wrong responses, the answer can be viewed. This allows the user to move on instead of hitting a wall.
  

Overview:
Veri is a platform designed to “Learn. Teach. Play.” What started as SocratED and later renamed Veri is an alum of the inaugural TechStars class. The platform itself allows users to create courses to which other users can add questions as well as comment and discuss.

Pros:
The idea behind Veri is quite interesting: a combination of gamification and social learning. In “Play & Learn”ing a course (aka taking or enrolling in a course) you gain points for correct answers and level up as you get answers correct.

Anyone can create a question to add to a course, allowing for a flexible structure where one person’s gaps can be filled by another person’s knowledge. Learners can also suggest edits or changes to questions to improve them. Content support can come from anywhere on the web, the purpose of which is to expose learners to new resources they might not have otherwise encountered.

Cons:
I found the structure of the individual courses frustrating. Instead of learning material and then taking a quiz on it, the quiz questions are presented first. (Imagine my surprise when the first question I was presented with the Ruby course was an advanced programming language one. I just wanted to learn a few basics....) While you can view the related resource in lieu of the question, the question is still presented first.

This was the first question in the Ruby course. Even the explanation given was way over the head of this non-programmer

The Librarian in Black made what is sure to be a much-talked about post today titled "I’m breaking up with eBooks (and you can too)".

The author likens the relationship between libraries and eBook vendors/platforms with a dysfunctional relationship, noting the issues in ownership, proprietary platforms, and restricted titles. While the patron demand tends to be there, the inherent issues in having eBooks are a regular struggle for libraries.

What do you think about her statements? I for one can see exactly where she's coming from. Until there's a library-friendly eBook platform a lot of concessions need to be made to provide the service to our patrons, sacrificing quality, ownership, or formats.

Overview:
PowerMyLearning is an internet portal to online enrichment content for students in K-12. It was designed as a part of the CFY program. As they describe the relationship:

CFY is a national education nonprofit that helps students in low-income communities, together with their teachers and families, harness the power of digital learning to improve educational outcomes. CFY pursues this mission through the combination of a groundbreaking K-12 learning platform, PowerMyLearning.com, and an on-the-ground direct service initiative, the CFY Digital Learning Program.

While PowerMyLearning is a key component in the CFY program, the platform is open to all parents, teachers, and students.

Playing a game through the PowerMyLearning interface. Along the right teachers can view related lesson plans and add resources to playlists for students to access

Overview:
iCivics was started in 2009 by Justice Sandra Day O’Connor as a way to engage students in learning about civics. The site includes several games relating to different aspects of civics (including the branches of government, civic involvement, and the courts), as well as lesson plans and materials for teachers to use in the classroom.

Pros:
Really, anything that can get students interested in civics is good, considering how important it is. While I can’t speak for the lesson plans, most of the games are entertaining. The games each allow you to log in to track your progress over all the games that you’ve played, but you can also play them without logging in (I consider that to be a plus). There are also links under each game to view the related lesson plans and appropriate state standards.

As part of my morning reading of the New York Times, I ran across an interesting article about ways in which colleges are using hard data to help their students.

With a shocking number of students at public colleges failing to graduate from college in four years (only 31% do) or even six years (only 56%), colleges are looking for ways to help keep their students on the degree-earning path by developing systems that look at student behavior to do things like predict success in a given major, predict courses students would find most useful or have the best chance at succeeding in, or work with students' existing knowledge to help plug in the gaps.

After sitting through several webinars over the last five weeks and seeing a plethora of other webinar offerings listed, I can't help but ask, is there a widening divide between academic and public libraries?

We all know that the days of the library as the sole place to find information is behind us. A lot of the examples given in my reference class of questions patrons ask were already outdated, and with the proliferation of smartphones and other mobile devices potential patrons can access a lot of basic information from anywhere. (Did people really go into or call the library to ask who the 11th president was or what movies a given actor was in? They always seemed like weird examples to me...)

As a result, libraries are working on ways to stay relevant, but how they're doing so seems to depend on the type of library.

So far I've been two webinars that brought up the idea of "maker spaces" or fablabs, where users can actually create things, be them 3D printed objects or a fully recorded and mixed album. There's also seems to be a greater move towards public library as community center, a place where the community can gather for programs and events, whether they have anything to do with the library or not. Then there's the idea of libraries loaning materials beyond traditional media (including tools, bakeware, and toys).

Lentil (still in its Alpha stage) is the first product developed by Learnirvana, a startup in San Francisco. It’s designed to be a new approach to learning by memorizing, and currently includes reading Japanese and Korean and geography (US states, and countries and capitals of the world).

The Lentil Interface