How can interactive technology and game-based learning help engage students to learn?
The next great teaching frontier is light years away from chalk and erasers. Outside the classroom, students are fascinated and engaged in interactive technology and game-based activities. If these tools are being used for entertainment, why not take advantage of their educational value? By applying the appeal of video games – the characters, interactivity, strategy – into classroom instruction, educators can redefine learning. Moreover, interest in technology at a young age may increase the likelihood that students will be interested in technology when they choose their careers.
Recognizing the educational potential of interactive gaming, the NEA Foundation, in partnership with Microsoft – US Partners in Learning, is launching the C2i: Gaming Challenge on ED’s Open Innovation Portal. They want to know your best idea for how interactive technology and game-based learning can improve teaching and learning.
Now that you’re interested, here’s how it works.
- Submissions will be accepted until March 5.
- A proposed solution must effectively incorporate game-based learning and interactive technology.
- Portal registrants can also review, comment, and vote.
- At the end of the review period, up to 10 solutions will receive $1,000 cash awards from the NEA Foundation.
- The solutions selected will be shared by the NEA Foundation and Microsoft – US Partners in Learning via multiple outlets.
Get started and submit your idea today!
The (C2i) initiative is open to anyone with an interest in improving public education. Last June, the NEA Foundation awarded five individuals $1,000 for the best ideas around mobile devices.
Adam Bookman and Rich Wilson are the administrators of ED’s Open Innovation Portal
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Will the rest of us get to see the ideas?
Sure, you can view all the ideas and vote for the best at this link http://innovation.ed.gov/idea/index/challenge/34
Yes, students are interacting with technology outside the classroom, so why not harness this technology for education inside the walls of a classroom? Well, this is already happening here in northern Wisconsin. But if the interactive technology is utilized only to maintain a controlled and coericive curriculum within the walls of a virtual prison-like classroom where you must do your time, having learned your lesson or not, I am skeptical of this new lockdown mode freeing up real improvement in the desire and discipline of learning on the part of the high school student.