Free Classroom Management and Recording

This was one of my stumbles last night...

Classroom management is a real challenge for some teachers, I find it difficult to objectively assess students  behaviour, because so much is tied up in my emotional investment in the class.

This looks like a good option - ClassDojo, it's both an app and a website that helps you collect and visualise student behaviour data.

You can also have a live behaviour chart up and running on your IWB.

The interface is easy to use and the App for your smart phone means you can take it with you for sport and out of classroom activities. With an easy way to record both good and bad behaviour, and a great visual way to report on each student, you can start to manage classroom behaviour issues.

You can customise behaviours and the students can change their avatars and track their own progress.

It is much easier to manage what you can measure.

Make your own games! Serious Games

A lot has been said for "Serious Gaming", where there is an educational purpose for playing the game. These have been used for a wide range of educational contexts, and even TurningPoint ARS can be used as a game platform.

I was having a scan through Sourceforge and came across this little beauty - e-adventure

Cross platform for both the development and games means that games can be written once, played by users on different platforms. Because it is written in JAVA there is also the possibility to push them to iPhones and android based devices.

There are a range of pre-made games to check out as well as comprehensive help files.

I you ever wanted to make a point and click adventure story or get you students to demonstrate what they have learned this might be the tool to have a look at. Take a look at the video to get an idea of what it is all about.