Technology in the classroom is booming, and while some may find it disconcerting, one retired teacher sees an opportunity to cure an epidemic of grammatical malfunction.
Feir Johnson is an award winning educator who finished her career teaching teachers about different learning styles and about curriculum. Now she has a new passion: video games. Johnson has created a computer game called “How to Grow a Sentence,” that teaches kids and adults how to make proper sentences.
“Grammar was being removed from the curriculum and children were being asked to proofread their work, and how could they proofread it if they have no concept of how a sentence had to be constructed?” Johnson said.
With 33 years teaching language arts and English from grades 1 to 12, Johnson had enough experience to know what worked for kids. She started out with an “old school” solution, an actual physical game that had children “grow” sentences in the form of plants. Now, like everything else, she’s moved her plant game into the digital realm.
She’s applied for government grants to help develop her idea of having kids improve their grammar by using the game. “How to Grow a Sentence” is not only educational in terms of grammar however; the sentences themselves are based on Canadian history.
Introducing digital media into classrooms is not a new invention, but support from the federal government and the educational institutions has been rapidly increasing over the past decade. Ottawa has a grant worth $50,000 for media organizations and entrepreneurs who qualify to further develop children’s media and multi-platform projects.
Support has also come from the private sector. Since 2008, Best Buy has been giving out $20,000 grants to elementary and high schools across Canada to purchase technology for classrooms. Items like digital cameras and laptops would help kids explore their creative side and experiment with skills such as video editing, notes the company.
But some countries have gone well beyond multi-media and are already moving into the realm of educational science fiction.
According to CNet News, Lyndon Baty goes to Knox City High School in Texas via his surrogate computerized robot. Without the bot, he’d have no way to interact with the regular classroom because polycystic kidney disease left him confined to his home.
In Korea though, it gets a little weirder.
Remotely operated robots have been launched in ESL classes there to address a shortage of teachers. These talking, singing, and dancing machines are operated by English teachers in the Philippines who use an avatar image on a display screen to interact with children in the classroom and teach them English.
The launch robots might seem a little far-fetched for today’s parents, but seeing how fast the market for digital media and effective, visual learning is growing, parents might expect to see more and more technology integrated into their kids’ classrooms.
Feir Johnson is an award winning educator who finished her career teaching teachers about different learning styles and about curriculum. Now she has a new passion: video games. Johnson has created a computer game called “How to Grow a Sentence,” that teaches kids and adults how to make proper sentences.
“Grammar was being removed from the curriculum and children were being asked to proofread their work, and how could they proofread it if they have no concept of how a sentence had to be constructed?” Johnson said.
With 33 years teaching language arts and English from grades 1 to 12, Johnson had enough experience to know what worked for kids. She started out with an “old school” solution, an actual physical game that had children “grow” sentences in the form of plants. Now, like everything else, she’s moved her plant game into the digital realm.
She’s applied for government grants to help develop her idea of having kids improve their grammar by using the game. “How to Grow a Sentence” is not only educational in terms of grammar however; the sentences themselves are based on Canadian history.
Introducing digital media into classrooms is not a new invention, but support from the federal government and the educational institutions has been rapidly increasing over the past decade. Ottawa has a grant worth $50,000 for media organizations and entrepreneurs who qualify to further develop children’s media and multi-platform projects.
Support has also come from the private sector. Since 2008, Best Buy has been giving out $20,000 grants to elementary and high schools across Canada to purchase technology for classrooms. Items like digital cameras and laptops would help kids explore their creative side and experiment with skills such as video editing, notes the company.
But some countries have gone well beyond multi-media and are already moving into the realm of educational science fiction.
According to CNet News, Lyndon Baty goes to Knox City High School in Texas via his surrogate computerized robot. Without the bot, he’d have no way to interact with the regular classroom because polycystic kidney disease left him confined to his home.
In Korea though, it gets a little weirder.
Remotely operated robots have been launched in ESL classes there to address a shortage of teachers. These talking, singing, and dancing machines are operated by English teachers in the Philippines who use an avatar image on a display screen to interact with children in the classroom and teach them English.
The launch robots might seem a little far-fetched for today’s parents, but seeing how fast the market for digital media and effective, visual learning is growing, parents might expect to see more and more technology integrated into their kids’ classrooms.
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