Heading into the new year, I thought I’d begin again with a potentially useful post that speaks to the current accountability zeitgeist in education. I have difficulty believing that the benefit of standardized tests outweighs the loss. At the same time, I think it a) helpful to be able to talk about learning in a […]

For the last several weeks students have been building their own virtual worlds using Activeworlds proprietary software (activeworlds.com) hosted and programmed by Scicentr.org (www.scicentr.org). Scicentr’s virtual world outreach programming has for the last several years produced the best results with middle school students. The students in Real Place, Virtual Space are younger. Although they are […]

Yesterday, students wrote their first blog entries to Real Place, Virtual Space. The ‘virtual worlds’ students mention refer to their own private virtual world provided to them through Scicentr.org, an outreach program through the Cornell Theory Center. Scicentr (www.scicentr.org) uses virtual world technology to disseminate Cornell scientific research and teach students across the STEM disciplines. […]

Last week I was having fun with the virtual world on the computer. It is a fun time. It is a cool game. I love to find things and then put it on my world and get more stuff on it.
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I want everything that I own in the virtual world to be red and black. I want my house to be a mansion. I want there to be a soccer filed for my back yard. I already made a fence.
It’s not very difficult.

Hello my name is V.L. I am 10 years old and in 4th grade.This is my opinon about the virtual world.
I am building a fence around a huge dome for my house to stay in. I have also built a HUGE Dilbert statue outside my house. I want to build a sign saying that the […]

I asked the students at our next meeting: What is the Internet? I first provided them with a handout - clip art icons included - that went through some primary functions of the Internet. Younger students think about the Internet in terms of what they can DO with it, or what they can find there. […]

For our second meeting, students were introduced to the concept of internet safety. Here is the handout from our meeting:
Internet Safety

The Internet is a very PUBLIC PLACE. It is like the mall, or a parade, or the airport. People are moving in and out, and you are always bumping into someone you don’t […]

Our first meeting was held on what felt like the first day of spring after an extremely cold winter. Perhaps as a direct result, only five students attended the first day. The influence of weather on learning is probably not very well studied, due in part to the givens that school is mandatory and lets […]

This is a blog to be written by students as they design their own private spaces - “homesteads” -  in a virtual world hosted by the Cornell Theory Center. Their world is one among a universe of worlds run by Scicentr.org. These students — you’ll meet them later — are  just beginning a computing curriculum […]