This Saturday, June 1st, Explainers and Technovation Challenge were two Iridescent programs among the presenters at the Emoti-Con! NYC Youth Digital Media & Technology Challenge 2013. Over 150 New York City-area youth gathered at the Bartos Forum at the Fifth Avenue Library for the event. Youth participants from MOUSE, Global Kids, the New York Public […]
We sat down with Technovation 2011 Alumni, Jasmine Gao to catch up and see what she has been up since her with us as a Technovation Droidette. Jasmine is an entrepreneur at heart, a gamer, and a tech-driven insomniac. She is currently a Data Strategist at bitly and an Enstitute fellow. You were once a […]
Before these trends get too overblown, I’d like to dissect and compare two terms that are on their way to becoming the next big thing in education: gamification and badges. Gamification is a very broad term, that basically involves applying components of games to things that are not games, to make more addictive, enjoyable, and/or […]
In a previous post, I laid out what it means to gamify education (short answer is: incorporate best teaching practices). If you read that post, it should be pretty clear that those ideas are quite far from our current educational system. Gamifying education means doing so much more than giving kids badges or points when […]
I always like to say the gaming industry has done in 30 years what the educational industry hasn’t been able to do in 300, namely make self-sustaining learning. The reason games are fun is that games are learning tools, and people inherently like learning (or more specifically we have an intrinsic motivation towards competence). I […]
It’s a great time to learn coding! Everyone from will.i.am to Chris Bosh to Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook are stating the facts: software is now part of all we do, but very few people know how to code. (Check out code.org for more on this). App Inventor is a great way to start because […]
…I don’t like them very much. It was Thursday morning, and the Mozilla Teachtheweb MOOC was about to kick off. I was languishing in a simple decision: should I try out yet another MOOC or give up on them altogether? This would be my third MOOC, the first two being pretty big failures. In both […]
You might be thinking, “What is a Technovation life and why would I want to live one?” For the last 3 months, I have been a mentor in the Technovation Challenge, a program to encourage young women to become high tech entrepreneurs. This is my fourth Technovation Challenge. For the participants and the mentors, going […]