Free Game Giveaway and Back to Work

There's a chance I'll move the free game giveaway to another site and extend it, but I'll still give a game to a winner as described in the original post. If you haven't entered, check it out. It is free and takes about 1 minute.

Work officially started this week, so that accounts for the lack of posts. It's been hectic, but I have remembered how much I love Jing the past few days. It is indispensable for the work I do communicating with text and images.

Beyond that, I'm working two to four technology classes this year, so I hope to have plenty to highlight in the weeks ahead.

I did put up an Oh, Really! flipchart for Christian education. I figure it will be my least popular on Promethean Planet, but I think it has value. A new, exciting project will be tested within the week and I hope to post it by next weekend. If it goes as well as I hope it should be a good series.

What Matters Most in School? -- Promotion for Oh, Really!

It is my goal to have thousands of students all over the world having fun and discussing the things that matter most this year in school. I’m doing that by giving away a free copy of my party game Oh, Really!--"The Lively Game of What Matters Most"-- and by highlighting my free classroom activities.

The free activities are available on Promethean Planet here:

• My Back to School version of Oh, Really!
• All activities based on Oh, Really! with versions for various subject areas
• All of my free games activities

Keep reading for details on how you can win a copy of the game.

To help with this promotion, I asked Bernie DeKoven to (sort of) play Oh, Really! with us and to share his thoughts on the game. In case you don’t know, Bernie wrote the book on games and fun (as well as the blog, articles and other books). He has decades of experience with games in the classroom.

And several years ago his review of my simple party game helped me take the next step in publication. As someone who has played Oh, Really! in various forms almost as long as I have, here’s what he has to say about my game and what’s most important in the classroom:

For me, a game like Oh, Really is an opportunity for people to have fun (which I personally rank the highest) talking to each other (next highest) about things they care about, listening to others about things other people care about, exercising reason, becoming aware of different, but equally valid perspectives.

All of these, from the fun part to the reasoning part to the learning to accept and understand differences, belong in the classroom as much as they belong in the courtroom and at least as much as they belong at the family dinner table.

None of these have immediate relevance to anything that is generally identified as a learning objective in anybody's curriculum. And yet the impact on the students, on the relationship between them, and between them and the teacher, and between them, the teacher, and the learning enterprise, is welcome and often profound. It sets the stage for learning and understanding and wanting to learn together.

Thanks Bernie for your support of Oh, Really! and for always sounding the call for positive classroom experiences that remind us what matters most in education!

The Giveaway
I asked Bernie to rank the five words from Oh, Really! below from most important to least important. If you want to be entered in a drawing for the game, please visit this link. There you will rank the five items that Bernie was given:

• Tradition
• Attitude
• Teachers
• Goals
• Laughter

From all entries that I receive by September 16, 2011 (whether they match Bernie’s rankings or not) I will draw a winner who will receive a copy of the game. (See below for restrictions and other information.)

Here are the cards from the game that I sent to Bernie. Rank them in order from most important to least important as you think he would:

Tradition Attitude Teachers Goals Laughter

Details on the giveaway:

• This is solely my promotion for the game, as the game’s creator. Neither Bernie DeKoven nor Find It Games (the publisher of Oh, Really!) is responsible for the selection of the winner or sending the prize.
• I will send one copy of the published party game Oh, Really! to the winner. (Depending on shipping costs we might work out a different arrangement if the winner is outside of the continental U.S., but I’ll make sure we come up with something equivalent in terms of cost.)
• I will select a random entry from all that I receive as described above shortly after September 16, 2011. The winner will be contacted and announced here on the blog after that time.

Back to School Game

I put up a flipchart for a back to school edition of Oh, Really! recently. It should make a fun activity for any teacher and class in the first days back. It has one slide relating to summer, one relating to the start of school and three for general discussion.

Teachers should consider creating their own words for this one to personalize it.

As always, find all my flipcharts here.

Free Music and Audio Tools for the Classroom

I have played and written a lot of music in my life that would not have been possible without technology. I'm not a great musician, but technology can fill in the gaps and make a rewarding experience for me and others.

Here are a few free tools I've been using lately that could be used for fun classroom activities. For one, imagine students turning short poems into songs or raps and then using them as their favorite ringtones. They can also make for great background music in videos and podcasts.

Audacity - I'm sure almost everyone has heard of this free audio recording tool. It's not perfect, but excellent for almost all recording needs in the classroom.

Gsnap - This is my best find of the summer. It offers many of the benefits of the famous (and pricey) Auto-Tune pitch correction software, but Gsnap is free. I'm not a vocalist, but this helps me make sketches of my songs that I'm not embarrassed to play for the people who can perform them correctly. It works with Audacity 1.3, so you have to download that version if you want to use the two together. Supposedly you can get it to do the robotic voice effects popular in many songs, but so far I have only achieved a more natural correction, which is all I need anyway.

And this one is unfortunately dead now...
Roc - This is the music creation tool at Aviary. It can be used to easily make basic beats and loops. Check out all of Aviary's tools for great graphics tools too. I didn't have much luck with Myna, the audio recording tool.

edWeb.net - Webinars and Discussion

Last spring I joined a community on edWeb.net that is focused on gaming and education. Several other communities focus on everything from technology integration to special education are available as well. I would link to some specific resources, but almost everything at the site requires registration. From what I have seen so far, it is well worth joining.

Discussions almost always bring up a resource that is new to me or a good question to consider. The webinars that I have watched have also been useful. I haven't been able to catch any of them live, but they are always accessible after the event. I play them in the background while doing other things.