103 – Games With A Purpose

This week the WELSTech Podcast focus is educational gaming and Gail Potratz joins the conversation.

The discussion:

Gaming in EducationSafe sites that teach – Gail Potratz, Technology Coordinator for Emanuel in New London, WI and WELSTech’s semi-regular classroom technology correspondent, joins Martin and Sallie for a discussion on gaming in education.  There’s no denying student interest is peaked by video games, and there are many excellent gaming options which also teach.  As schools develop lists of these recommended edu-gaming sites, they are also creating a safe environment for students to surf the web from home.

Safe site suggestions by age group

Pre-K to 2nd grade (non readers):

3rd to 5th grade:

6th to 8th grade:

Ministry resources:

Picks of the week:

Of interest:

(37:17) We’ve created a new compilation page for our Ministry Resources

Community feedback:

Coming up on WELSTech:

(41:39) Martin is presenting a workshop on Digital Bible Study at the Wisconsin Teacher’s Conference, so we’ll tap into his session notes and hear from the attendees. (Release date 11/04/09)

The featured artist:

(43:03) This week we close with the music of WELS artist Stephen Bautista (www.stephenbautistamusic.com – Follow stephenbautista on Twitter) – Abandon from his CD of the same title ”Abandon”

Get involved:

1 reply
  1. Jeremy Johnson
    Jeremy Johnson says:

    I’ll add a +1 to Martin’s pick of Mint.com. I’ve been using it for over 3 months now, and my overall experience has been positive.

    I love the fact that it can track almost all of my financial accounts and automatically update them in once place. The only thing it can’t access yet is my mortgage, but it does allow me to easily provide this information manually and I only have to update it once per month.

    The budget tracking has been very helpful to my wife, who does almost all of our shopping. We can easily see if we are on target for our monthly goals at any time. I also like the fact that I can easily get a summary of our net worth, and how it has changed over time. Dave Ramsey fans should love this feature!

    We did have a recent problem where our bank’s information wouldn’t update for over two weeks, but that’s the only big problem we’ve had so far. I also think their investment reporting could use a lot of work, but at least it is able to display the current totals reliably. I’m hoping that Intuit can help work out these little quirks. Also, a PC desktop widget would be a nice addition to their iPhone app.

    Currently, the data is read-only, and I like that. If someone were to gain access to my Mint.com account, they would only be able to view my data, not change it. Regardless, after reading through the forums I’m pretty confident in their security.

    Reply

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