Latinity Points (XP) as a Replacement for Grades, Part 4 In the previous three parts of this exercise, I laid out the criteria required in order to evaluate without grading, explained how Latinity Points are utilized as a part of Operation LAPIS, and then provided a full discussion and response from a group of three students. In this final part my aim is to elaborate on what the end of that process looks like, specifically when it comes time to assign a traditional grade in a very non-traditional classroom. As a reminder from the first post, the following were the four criteria that I argued had to be a part of this system.Continuous embedded formative assessment of progressA record system with meaningful feedback towards meeting learning objectivesA record of all student workStudent agency in the evaluation process 1) Continuous embedded formative assessment: Every component of Operation LAPIS is designed with this at the core. All team discussion happens in secure sub-groups on the Edmodo platform. Now for the fun part.
Eye tracking study reveals 12 website tactics Eye tracking studies have revealed valuable information about how people read and interact with websites. One study, Eyetrack III, published a summary of their eye tracking results for news sites. While this is just one eye tracking study focused on a particular type of site, I think there are instructive nuggets here for any informational website. In no particular order, here are 12 results I found particularly interesting. 1.Headlines draw eyes before pictures. But the participants in this study looked at headlines, especially in the upper left of the page, before they looked at photos when they landed on a page. 2. This means you should front-load your headlines with the most interesting and provocative words. 3. The implication is the same as before. 4. No nonsense. 5. Be careful with this one. 6. The point may be that anything at the top of a page will be seen immediately. 7. In online writing as in most ad writing, you have to forget normal paragraph development. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12.
NewsiT Raises $500K To Gamify Crowd Journalism Crowdsourced news platform NewsiT.net just announced that it has raised $500,000 in seed funding. And, timed to match the beginning of South by Southwest, it’s also launching its iPhone app. The company was founded by longtime journalist Melinda Wittstock, who has worked for the Times of London, BBC Television, the Guardian, the Observer, ABC News, National Public Radio, and MSNBC/CNBC. Wittstock says she wanted to reinvent the newsgathering and publishing model after attending “too many conferences with a lot of moaning and not a lot of solutions.” This is hardly the first experiment with crowdsourced journalism. So the startup doesn’t expect any of its members to create a complete news report on their own. For example, the site is currently working on a story about the effect of digital media on politics. Eventually, someone from the NewsiT editorial team will take on those contributions and combine them into a polished article. Investors include Sandra D.
Mobile Apps vs. the Mobile Web: "It Doesn't Matter to Consumers" The latest in its series of discussions about the future of the internet, the Pew Internet Project released a new report this morning that wades into the mobile “apps vs. web” debate. It’s positioned as a metaphor or surrogate for a larger argument about the battle of platforms and the internet’s future: It is in part a debate about the future of the personal computer vs. smaller, portable mobile devices. Pew asked a number of “big thinkers” to respond to two provocative opposing statements about the shape of the internet at the end of the decade, and indicate the one with which they most agreed. The following are the two opposing viewpoints: Apps dominate: In 2020, most people will prefer to use specific applications (apps) accessible by Internet connection to accomplish most online work, play, communication, and content creation. The pro-web view beat out the pro-apps position 59 to 35 responses. As one respondent put it, “People never cared about the Web vs. apps and devices . . .
Candidats à l'Elysée et gamification La grande question que se posent les communicants politiques quant à la campagne présidentielle de 2012 porte bien évidemment sur la manière d’investir et d’optimiser la présence de leur favori sur les médias sociaux. La grande question que se posent les communicants politiques quant à la campagne présidentielle de 2012 porte bien évidemment sur la manière d’investir et d’optimiser la présence de leur favori sur les médias sociaux. Avec un taux de pénétration et une puissance de diffusion incroyables, Facebook et YouTube ont en effet de quoi faire de l’ombre aux supports médiatiques traditionnels. Certains me diront que l’étendue de leurs cibles n’est pas comparable. Mais là n’est pas le sujet. Jeux Vidéo et Politique, 30 ans d’histoire L’origine de la rencontre entre jeux et politique remonte aux années 80. Les partis d’extrême droite se sont particulièrement illustrés en la matière, même si cela n’a pas toujours été avec honneur.
Mobile URLs vs. Single URLs: Making The Right Decision For Your Company The Bing statement about mobile SEO last month, which followed Google’s announcement about the new smartphone crawler in December, has sparked some discussion, and given mobile SEO some time in the spotlight. The debate has been interesting, but all of it seems to focus a bit too much on the wrong question. The search engines all emphatically instruct webmasters not to make decisions purely on the SEO implications, but to also consider the user experience. While I always take this suggestion with a very large and suspicious grain of salt, I do think it is important to consider the users who access the site….as well as the marketing managers who have to promote the mobile content and the developers who maintain the site, (and who will readily tell you that they almost always get the short end of the stick, whether you are talking about mobile design and development, or just about anything else … poor misunderstood souls!). What Do SEOs Want? What Do Users Want? What Do Developers Want?
No Longer An Awkward Teenager? Gamification Grows Up Editor’s note: Guest contributor Joseph Puopolo is an entrepreneur and startup enthusiast, who blogs on a variety of topics including green initiatives, technology and marketing. Over the last year, you may have noticed that a once-niche trend not only crept into the mainstream, but is starting to really make a big splash. Gamification has become one of the hottest buzz words in the industry and is probably in the process of taking over a website or user experience near you. For the uninitiated, gamification, said simply, is the use of game design techniques and mechanics to solve problems and engage audiences. Over the last year, even large companies and enterprises are starting to get in on the game, with Gartner saying that all CIOs should have gamification on their radar, and M2 research predicting that the gamification market will reach 2.8 billion in direct spending by 2016. Badgeville started by making a big splash center stage at Disrupt in the fall of 2009.
4 Tips For Getting More Site Conversions Getting people to your Web site is one thing. Getting them to do something while they’re there is another. And then, of course, getting them to do what you want them to do is another beast entirely. But, as a marketer, that’s your job; to get someone to your Web site in order to take a desired action. Absolutely. If you’re finding that customers are landing on your site but are either leaving prematurely or are leaving without doing what you’d hoped they do, below are four conversion optimization tips to stop that from happening. 1. Your Web site doesn’t sell a product or a service; it sells a customer benefit. It doesn’t matter if your business is set up to sell life insurance or overpriced toasters, realize that it’s not the item itself that your customer is paying for. The benefit may be a lazy Sunday morning breakfast at the table with their family or that they save 15 minutes every morning because that toaster cooks frozen waffles faster. And that’s what you have to promote. 2. 3.
The Trouble with Gamification In a May 29, 2012 post on her blog, game designer Elizabeth Sampat outlined some of the problems with the gamification movement as seen from the perspective of a seasoned game designer. Here is a look at what Sampat believes is wrong with the gamification of education as well as a few other issues with the concept, and some suggestions for what we might do to move the concept beyond the canned solution it is becoming. The Game Designer’s PerspectiveQuoting herself on Twitter, Sampat stated her main issue with the movement is that: "Gamification assumes all games share the same mechanics, which means everything that’s gamified is basically the same shitty game. Using badges and leaderboards and offering toothless points for clearly-commercial activities isn’t a magic formula that will engage anyone at any time. Lack of Usable Games At the most basic level, gamification is the integration of games into the curriculum. Image: FreeDigitalPhotos.net
UX: Beyond a Beautiful UI | Technori What do you think of when you hear the term “UX?” Do you think wireframes and software interface design? It’s true having designers to translate marketing requests into visual representations for your developers is a competitive advantage, but user experience design is more than just visual. A Systematic Approach to Empathy In order to truly be “UX” design, a solution should be based on a process that reveals what users really need. “Empathy is my stock and trade,” says Joe Sokohl, a UX consultant in Richmond, VA. “We are the people with the skills to bring empathy,” says Sokohl, “through training, focus, and attention.” UX to Define the Problem and the Market That empathy ultimately leads to a better definition of the core problem. But as he began talking with their management team to assess their needs, he began advocating for a more comprehensive, “Big D” design approach. Karthi Subbarraman describes “Big-D” Design Match UX Hires To the Business Goals “Be strategic.
Video Games, Addiction, and the Potential for Addictive Education | Learning Through Play & Technology by Hap Aziz Dr. Paul Howard-Jones has been creating somewhat of a stir for the better part of the past year in a series of interviews and conference presentations regarding the addictive nature of video games, and the possibility for leveraging that addiction in the process of education. There has been a series of articles published in the recent weeks covering Dr. Howard-Jones’ ideas, research, and findings, and the education and the game communities have been enjoying a fair amount of discussion and debate on the topic. As the Senior Lecturer at Graduate School of Education at University of Bristol, specializing in Neuroscience and Education, he does have a natural interest in the field, and his research is currently focused on finding better ways to help students learn. “It certainly didn’t arise from trying to find an application for interactive whiteboards. To understand where Dr. Dr. (1) Koepp, M. Like this: Like Loading...
Visualizing the Consumer Path Indra // June 15, 2012 // Advertising, Digital, Public Relations, Social Media // Comments Off Couple of months ago I wrote about the challenges of measuring social media and the terrific new tools Google is developing, like Multi-Channel Funnels, to help marketers track a consumer’s path toward purchase. I kept thinking about that consumer path and what it looked like. Research tells us that on average consumers are using up to 10 sources to make a purchase decision. So I enlisted the help of the talented Kelly Day to make the image in my head something I could share. Here’s what we came up with for someone making a travel purchase - By following the dark orange signposts, we can see all the steps an integrated marketer needs to take to ensure that when a consumer is researching or thinking about a purchase, their brand is visible. Here are some key things to think about: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. This visual is not exhaustive by any means.
[MONITORING] 10 millions de dollars pour gamifier l’éducation de la jeunesse | Gamorlive, The Blog Aux Etats-Unis, l’industrie et les associations du jeu vidéo se sont récemment associées afin de créer un laboratoire du « game design » dont le champ de recherche va être fondé sur l’engagement et l’apprentissage des étudiants. Cette initiative tombe dans un contexte de société où la grande tendance actuelle de »gamification » se mélange au domaine de l’éducation dans le but de rendre tout enseignement ou apprentissage, aussi amusant et engagent que le plus commun des jeux. Ce nouveau labo aka le « Games, Learning and Assessment (GLASS) Lab » sera géré par « The Institute of Play », une association à but non lucratif qui sera soutenu à hauteur de 10.3 millions de dollars par la fondation John D. et Catherine T. MacArthur, la fondation Bill et Melinda Gates, l’éditeur de jeux Electronic Arts ainsi que de l’ « Entertainment Software Association (ESA) ». Le laboratoire GLASS reconnaît qu’il y a un changement majeur dans la façon dont les élèves apprennent et acquièrent des connaissances.
This Is Your Brain On Boarding: How To Turn Visitors Into Users Editor’s Note: Nir Eyal is a Lecturer in Marketing at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. He is the founder of two startups and blogs about the intersection of psychology, technology, and business at NirAndFar.com. Follow him on Twitter @nireyal. Before you can change the world, before your company can IPO, before getting millions of loyal users to wonder how they ever lived without your service, people need to on-board. Building the on-ramp to using your product is critical in every industry, but few more so than in the ADD world of web and mobile apps. However, done correctly, the on-boarding process can be the first step in creating strong user habits. Pulling the Trigger The first step is bringing users in. To be most effective, the articulation of what the product is for should connect to when the product should be used. Instagram does a particularly good job of inception during their on-boarding. Of course, not all triggers are created equal. Prompting The Action