Learning From Games - Edutopia

I featured +Edutopia in a tweet on Twitter today.  In turn they messaged me back thanking me for the mention and introduced another video of theirs from their Big Thinkers collection on their video blog.  This one features James Paul Gee and he talks about how people learn from online gaming and how there is more at stake than just the game.

We quickly discredit gaming as a waste of time and a distraction, however once you involve interested participants, learning is explosive; and there is more going on than mere drivel.  Learning is no longer a one-layer or linear method, but becomes massively multi-layered.

Who Am I?: A History Mystery

Here's a fun activity featured by Richard Byrne dealing with the Civil War.  Who Am I?:  A History Mystery is a mystery-solving activity (great for the SMART Board) from the Smithsonian.  Basically you are given a section of a photograph of an important historical individual during the Civil War for you to guess who they are.  You are, also, given a clue and five artifacts, two of them which are associated with the mystery history figure.  Each of the artifacts have historical information when you click on them.

There appears to be only six individuals - Willie Johnston (Union Drummer Boy), Lewis Douglass (US Colored Troops of America), Dorothea Dix (Union Nurse), John Simpson Crocker (Union Colonel), Bell Boyd (Confederate Spy), Stand Waite (Cherokee Confederate General).

Classroom Connection:  Could be a fun, alternative, SMART Board activity.  It is, however, limiting with only six historical individuals; especially if none of these figures are discussed in the lessons.