103 – Games With A Purpose

This week the WELSTech Podcast focus is educational gaming and Gail Potratz joins the conversation.

The discussion:

Safe sites that teach – Gail Potratz, Technology Coordinator for Emanuel in New London, WI and WELSTech’s semi-regular classroom technology correspondent, joins Martin and Sallie for a discussion on gaming in education.  There’s no denying student interest is peaked by video games, and there are many excellent gaming options which also teach.  As schools develop lists of these recommended edu-gaming sites, they are also creating a safe environment for students to surf the web from home.

• Quest To Learn gaming school
• Sallie’s Wacky Wonderful Web Sites – stjohnsse.com/wwws
• 35+ Educational Games and Games Resources
• Arcademic Skill Builders – features games which can be played on the Wii
• Planet in Action – utilizes Google Earth
• PurposeGames.com – Create your own games
• Embed Novel Games in your site

Safe site suggestions by age group

Pre-K to 2nd grade (non readers):

• Between the Lions Games
• Build Your Wild Self
• Hammy the Hamster
• Super Hyper Spider Typer
• This is Daniel Cook

3rd to 5th grade:

• Dance Mat Typing
• Discovery Music Tone Matrix
• Doppelme
• Lego Mini-Mizer
• Poptropica
• Word Mosaic

6th to 8th grade:

• Animoto
• Fantastic Contraption
• Picnik
• Scratch – software download
• Typing Web
• USA Map Review Puzzles
• Voki

Ministry resources:

• (28:15) BabelWith.Me – Real time translation engine for chat
• Check out the new Lutheran Study Bible from Concordia
  • Videos
  • Podcast
  • Follow lutheranbible on Twitter

Picks of the week:

• (30:25) PickaTime.com – Help with scheduling parent consultations
• The MegaPenny Project – How big is a Quintillion?
• Mint.com – One-stop for online banking

Of interest:

(37:17) We’ve created a new compilation page for our Ministry Resources

Community feedback:

• (38:58) Jason Schmidt from Gethsemane in Omaha, NE shared some great links using #WELSTech on Twitter
  • 15 tools to help you go paperless (in the classroom)
  • Schoology offers free accounts for teachers
  • Chartle.net is the Web 2.0 tool for great charts
• Pastor Emile Burgess from Trinity in Caldonia, WI is a fan of the Getting Things Done (GTD) system by David Allen and wrote to thank us for the WELSTech resources on GTD

Coming up on WELSTech:

(41:39) Martin is presenting a workshop on Digital Bible Study at the Wisconsin Teacher’s Conference, so we’ll tap into his session notes and hear from the attendees. (Release date 11/04/09)

The featured artist:

(43:03) This week we close with the music of WELS artist Stephen Bautista (www.stephenbautistamusic.com – Follow stephenbautista on Twitter) – Abandon from his CD of the same title ”Abandon”

Get involved:

• Add a comment below
• Send us an e-mail welstech@wels.net
• Leave us a voice mail 405-FOR-WELS (405-367-9357)
• Add to the WELSTech wiki welstechwiki.wels.net
• Contribute to the #WELSTech Twitter conversation
• Follow us on Twitter – mspriggs and welstechtrainer
• Use the del.icio.us tag welstech
• Join the WELSTech community:
  • WELSTech listserve
  • WELSTech on facebook