This week, I headed in a slightly different direction for my program choice. While I'm not a gamer, the notion that gaming and game design can be a way to enhance learning and memory creation (the subject of this week's Medina chapter) drove me to discover a fascinating (and free) app for the iPad called TinyTap. Of course, the dilemma here is whether or not my classmates will be able to actually PLAY the game, using an embedded code. (See bottom of page, or follow this link.) It seems for now this is just an iPad game, but since I'm teaching an iPad mediated course right now, I thought I'd explore. Of course, that is also one of the significant limitations of the product, and the reason I thought about adding screen shots of each page in case folks are only accessing this page with non-iPad technology. (It turns out, I did not need to go that far.)

This was a happy-accident find, and one which has been a lot of fun to play with. The learning curve isn’t very steep, although I did have to visit their blog tutorials to discover how best to edit my in-process creation (and I did have to start over a few times). The idea of an interactive game really appeals to me in terms of how to build multiliteracies and address the 21st century standards and participatory culture issues raised by Rankins-Robertson et al., Barr & Tagg, Jenkins, Selfe & Selfe, and Haas. Game-making on such a basic scale allows students (including me) of all experience-levels to take an assignment and flip it, to become the teacher and meaning maker using concepts from either the classroom, a textbook, or a student project to use multimedia as both the product and the process.

The program includes not only text elements, but auditory and visual (Kalantzis and Cope would love this). Game creators can add 30-second instructions to a page or activity or simply read the text (an element that answers accessibility issues). There is also an option to add background music to enhance the overall effect / environmental cues. Graphics may be selected from the built-in images supplied, but there is also a web search feature to find more –  or upload images from the user’s own collection. The puzzle feature is an interesting interactive step that may appeal better to younger readers, and is one I only used to review vocabulary.

There are numerous user-created apps to use as inspiration or templates, and most are free. After a little digging on the TinyTap blog, I found this page: http://blog.tinytap.it/2013/12/teachers_on_tinytap/, which points to several “experienced” teachers using this app in their classrooms. The game is international, so there are any number of uses for multilingual applications. The story behind TinyTap is what grabbed my attention, which you can see on my Reading Notes here. There is also a How To / Tutorial blog which provides useful suggestions on some of the user questions (although, not all): http://blog.tinytap.it/2014/08/tutorials-enhance-your-app/.

This week I reviewed Heather's BR7 using Socrative. I really do like the versatility of this
online quiz; I can see using this as a way to create Reader Responses, perhaps as a conversation
starter at the beginning of class. It might also be useful as a way to review assignments at the 
beginning of a new unit. The cross-platform access capability is a real plus on this. 

I also reviewed Kim's use of Glogster for her notes on NL7. I was relieved to hear I am not 
the only one who decided Glogster may not be the best tool for a writing classroom. However, I 
think her timeline offers a lot, including her caveat about the overlapping nature of these 
paradigms -- which is true of much of historical events anyway (one of my beefs with timelines 
as a learning tool is that they make history seem so 2-D and "clean" when it's anything but). 
I think her selection of images and shapes capture the essence points of this chapter!