RECESS IS GOOD! The State of Play : Recess is linked to academic achievement and social development.

Below are links to the information about a Gallup survey of principals about school recess, commissioned by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the National Association of Elementary School Principals, and Playworks. With the push for academic rigor and higher performance on one-size-fits-all state-mandated group tests, young children have had fewer opportunities to play while at school, despite the observation that children return from recess more focused and ready to learn.

First-Of-Its-Kind Gallup Poll Links Recess To Academic Achievement

The State of Play: Gallup Survey of Principals on School Recess

State of Play Recess Report (pdf)

From what I can tell, the survey results are based on the perceptions of the principals.

I think we  knew this!
Here are a few quotes from the RWJF website:








"Recess doesn’t come without challenges. Because it is often disorganized and difficult to manage, recess is the time when principals encounter the vast majority of their school’s disciplinary problems."

“Recess offers an extraordinary opportunity to improve a school’s climate,” said Jill Vialet, founder and president of Playworks, a national nonprofit and grantee of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation that helps schools improve their recess. “Just a little bit of training for staff can go a long way in helping schools dramatically reduce disciplinary problems at recess and direct more attention to teaching and learning.”

"The poll echoes findings from a growing body of clinical research, including a study by Dr. Romina Barros, a professor of pediatrics at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Her groundbreaking study, published in the February 2009 issue of the journal Pediatrics, found that children who have more recess time behave better in the classroom and are more likely to learn."


RELATED
Daily School Recess Improves Classroom Behavior
Einstein News, 1/6/2009
"The study, published in Pediatrics, suggests that a daily break of 15 minutes or more in the school day may play a role in improving learning, social development, and health in elementary school children. The study's principal investigator is Romina M. Barros, M.D., assistant clinical professor of pediatrics at Einstein."
Why Play Matters
4 Reasons More Recess Helps Kids Do Better in School
Nancy Shute, US News & World Report, Health  2/4/2010
Playscapes: A Blog About Playground Design
How children lost the right to roam in four generations
David Derbyshire, Daily Mail, 6/15/07
The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) says free and unstructured play is healthy and essential Kenneth R. Ginsburg, MD, MS Ed, the Committee on Communications and Committee on Psychosocial Aspects of Child and Family Health 1/1/2007

Here's what I wanted to see at IXDA's Interaction10 in Savannah - ( & some other links)

I really wanted to attend IXDA's Interaction '10 conference in Savannah, Georgia. Unfortunately, it is sold out. If you are interested in learning more about the hot topics in interaction design, take a look at the Interaction '10 Speakers  page that includes links to each speaker's presentation or workshop description, and in some cases, some interesting links.

Some of the presentations I wanted to see:


Designing Social Interfaces: The Game
Erin Malone, tangible ux and Christian Crumlish, Yahoo!


The Use of Virtual Worlds Among People with Disabilities
Kel Smith, Anikto LLC


Augmented Reality: Is it Real?  Should We Care?
Kevin Cheng, Twitter (also author of OK/Cancel)


Interaction Design for the Fourth Dimension
Maria Cordell, Macquarium


Thinking Like a Storyteller
Cindy Chastain


Citizen Volunteerism and Urban Interaction Design
Solomon Bisker, Carnegie Mellon/School of Architecture


Designing for the Web in the World
Timo Arnall/Oslo School of Architecture & Design



NOT TOO RELATED


So why didn't I go to Interaction 10?   


For those of you new to this blog, after spending a few years working part-time at one and taking graduate courses, I returned to work full time in 2008, due to the economic downturn, daughters in college, etc. 


I am a school psychologist, and my "day job" sometimes spills into several evenings, as I serve two small high schools, a small "early college" program in addition to my home site, a program for students with severe disabilities. I have quite a bit of paperwork to complete, and this time of the year is especially busy.  I often must work on psychological evaluation reports, counseling& consultation notes, and mandatory special education paperwork/data entry, outside of work hours.


I try to devote about one hour a day, on average, devoted to researching and writing for this blog, and about 5 hours a week working on computer projects to keep up my design/development and programming skills.  When I'm out and about, I pay close attention to people and how they interact with a range of technologies in public spaces.  


Comment:
If you are interested in education and the range of topics of concern to school psychologists, the following link is to web page of the National Association of School Psychologists (NASP).  This page that includes and extensive list of links to articles written by school psychologists that were published in the Principal Leadership magazine, a publication of the National Association of Secondary School Principals.  


There is a need for solutions in education that incorporate the use of useful and usable technology. If you are interested in designing, developing, and researching applications for use in educational settings, I encourage you to spend some time reviewing some of the topics included on the NASP website! 

Principal Leadership Magazine Articles
(Most of the articles contain useful references.)

Sample of articles-in PDF format:
Understanding and Fostering Achievement Motivation
Transformative Leadership for Social-Emotional Learning
Promoting School Completion
Self-Concept and Self-Esteem in Adolescents
Angry and Aggressive Students
Preparing Students with Disabilities for School-to-Work Transition and Postschool Life

Gigantic Social Interactive Direction Sign in London: Nokia's promotion of the free Ovi Maps application.

I meant to post this a while ago and forgot about it. A huge digital arrow sign was installed over London to promote Nokia's free Ovi map navigation system. It was up and active for two weeks. People could interact with the sign by sending it a message from their phones. See the videos below for more details!

-My Nokia Blog


The World's Biggest Signpost from adghost on Vimeo.

Notice how the people who see the signpost use their mobile phones to take pictures and share with their friends.

I found a similar video on the Infosthetics blog:


"This gigantic, interactive signpost sponsored by Nokia Ovi Maps in the form of a dynamically rotating electronic LED screen allows passers-by to send in their favorite location and coordinates via text or email. The giant pointer, hung on a 60 ton construction on height of 50m, then automatically rotates to the given direction and displays the submitted description to the world."

Interactive Visual Supports for Children with Autism: Gillian Hayes' work at the Social and Technology Action Research Group:

Here is an update about the work of Gillian Hayes, an assistant professor at the School of Informatics at the University of California at Irvine. Much of her work focuses on technology that supports young people with autism spectrum disorders. Hayes received her Ph.D. from Georgia Tech:  Documenting and Understanding Everyday Activities through the Selective Archiving of Live Experiences pdf  (2007).

In the YouTube video below, Gillian Hayes discusses her work with technology with young people with autism spectrum disorders.


Photos from the STAR website:

The STAR group is researching the SenseCam, too!


About the SenseCam, from the Microsoft Research SenseCam Website:

"SenseCam is a wearable digital camera that is designed to take photographs passively, without user intervention, while it is being worn. Unlike a regular digital camera or a cameraphone, SenseCam does not have a viewfinder or a display that can be used to frame photos. Instead, it is fitted with a wide-angle (fish-eye) lens that maximizes its field-of-view. This ensures that nearly everything in the wearer’s view is captured by the camera, which is important because a regular wearable camera would likely produce many uninteresting images."

New study proves that Microsoft's sensory innovation aids memory recall
Technology Review Article 
Images from Microsoft Research:


The SenseCam application has the potential to be a resource for people who have developmental delays, traumatic brain injury, severe attention deficits, and autism spectrum disorders. It would be a great tool for special educators, occupational and speech/language therapists, and rehabilitation specialists.
SenseCam Videos      Research and Publications


RELATED

STAR:: Social and Technology Action Research Group
Interactive Visual Supports for Children with Autism

Technology helps teach kids with autism: Informatics assistant professor designs computer devices to aid instruction, record-keeping.

Monibi, M., Hayes, G.R. Mocotos: Mobile Communication Tools for Children with Special Needs. Proceedings of Interaction Design and Children, pages 121-124 ACM, 2008

Sen H. Hirano, Michael T. Yeganyan, Gabriela Marcu, David H. Nguyen, Lou Anne Boyd, Gillian R. Hayes vSked: Evaluation of a System to Support Classroom Activities for Children with Autism. To Appear In CHI 2010 (Atlanta, GA, 2010).(pdf)

"Particularly interesting for students with autism who often struggle with group work and social interaction, we also uncovered the potential for these types of interactive classroom technologies to support these challenging focus areas."

vSked

Note:  I think the following website contains the vSked prototype application. I poked around the site and it looks teacher-friendly. 

vSked Teachers View

Two topics: Visualizing Unemployment by County over Time; Kurt Squire's Recent Work on ( Video) Game-Based Learning

Below is a screen shot of a web page that shows the increase in the number of unemployed people, by county, in the U.S. from January 2007 until November 2009. According to information from the web site, the data is from the U.S. Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics.

From what I can tell from the URL, this visualization was a multimedia final project of Latoya Egwuekwe. Here is the link to the webpage: Unemployment Rates by County, January 2007 through November 2009

Here is the YouTube version:



Thanks to Kurt Squire for the link!

About Kurt Squire:
Kurt is an assistant professor of educational communications and technology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and is associated with the Academic ADL Co-lab.   He previously was the research manager of the Games-to-Teach Project at MIT and co-director of the Education Arcade.  He also was a Montessori and primary school teacher.

I encourage you to take a look at Kurt Squire's recent research and work.  I reviewed some of his earlier work for a paper I wrote back in 2004, when he was  It is exciting to see how far his research in the area of game-based learning environments has come since then.

Here are links to a few of Kurt Squire's publications:
Video game-based learning: An emerging paradigm for Instruction
Open-Ended Video Games: A Model for Developing Learning for the Interactive Age
From Information to Experience: Place-Based Augmented Reality Games as a Model for Learning in a Globally Networked Society
Video Games and Education: Designing learning systems for an interactive age
Video-Game Literacy: A Literacy of Expertise (To appear in J. Coiro, M. Knobel, D. Leu, & C. Lankshear, Handbook of research on new media literacies. New York: MacMillan.)


More about the Academic ADL Co-Lab:
Local Games Lab
"Many kinds of games can be made about local environments. At the moment we are most engaged with augmented reality (AR) games in which players use digital technologies to enhance their immediate experience of walking around in real-life locations. We are also interested, among other possibilities, in classroom simulations, board games, virtual tours, and desktop video games."


CivWorld!

"This is a site for people interested in using Sid Meier's Civilization for learning academic content, including history, geography, or even game design. We have custom-designed game scenarios, curricula, case studies, and experts on using Civ for learning. Our goal is to help players, students, parents, and even teachers use the game at home, in after school centers and maybe even classrooms."

Teach Paperless Blog "Seeking social solutions to the mysteries of 21st century teaching" -Quick Links

Here is a good blog for educators interested in using technology to transform education:

Teach Paperless "Seeking social solutions to the mysteries of 21st century teaching"
(Shelly Blake-Plock, author)

I especially liked this post:
Top Eleven Things All Teachers Must Know About Technology

About:
"The objective of TeachPaperless is to help classroom teachers merge Green Thinking and Interactive Technology into their everyday classroom experience. The result is a classroom that not only only uses zero paper, but that recognizes and utilizes the best features of the growing Internet to extend learning opportunities to students. Furthermore, we want to see students benefit from and gain experience in real-life problem solving, task determination, and creative thinking through total immersion in an authentic 21st century digital workspace."


RELATED
SOCIAL TECHNOLOGY IN EDUCATION LESSON PLAN WIKI