From my perspective (as a new media arts teacher), infographics are a wonderfully valid and valuable bridge to cross-curricular lessons. So far, I've just offered the project as an optional choice. Kids have produced artifacts like Super Mario Physics but no pure infographics. But next year... :)

I'm told these are pretty good Flash CS3 tutorials. ;)

A few relevant links:

• Visual Complexity
• Visual.ly (free template)
• Let me Google that for you

Hey Mark,

My first (and only) thought right now is about availability. K12 funding typically happens in fits and starts. In the past, we could make do with what we had until another spasm of funding made updates possible. (We used Photoshop 7 for years before being able to jump to CS3.)

What happens when the funding runs dry? With this model...

Well, I'm hoping Adobe has an ace up its sleeve for those of us who have to deal with the ebb and flow of funding.

Wonderful! As others have said, this will be valued in class. Thanks for sharing a terrific resource, Rick.

5 Balls! (Or whatever those circles in the rating system are called.)

I'm not sure that it matters but just so there's no confusion, I lean Dove, not Hawk. :)

Hi Piper,

It's through sheer dumb luck that The Mac Lab has become a recognizable brand of sorts. (Google it to see for yourself.) When I began teaching (as a second career) in 2002, I also began recording and uploading video tutorials to enable my kids to work at their own pace. A couple of years later, the email began arriving. (I don't add metadata or play search engine games. I just uploaded my resources.)

At first, I recorded silent movies like these (we had no funding for headphones) then expanded to richer, more developed videos like these. Today, I maintain a blog that's a little more than four years old. In that time, people from over 9,000 cities in 184 countries and territories (and all 50 states) have accounted for more than 2 million pageviews (and that doesn't count any hits on the older video tutorials).

I don't particularly like Facebook or Linkedin but I do tweet from time to time. Outside of my blog, my main outreach mechanism is right here on Adobe's Education Exchange. I firmly believe in radical openness—sharing everything, but I'm not really driven to building a brand.

If you are, my best advice, to paraphrase a favorite movie of mine, is to just build it, and they'll come.

As for the difference, well, the kids are always amazed that so many others are paying attention to what we're doing in our little classroom. It raises the bar and as you well know, when expectations rise, student achievement usually follows.

Nicole: you're too nice. :)

Kelley: Epic response. You're inspiring! And you have to post this story on the Exchange for others to benefit from. What a learning adventure for the kids! (Can't wait to meet you in person this summer at Adobe.)

Thanks for sharing this, Melissa.

I've been reading about d.school, MIT's Media Lab, and IDEO. I'm convinced we, as educators, would be failing our students if we don't infuse design thinking into our programs. Some initial ideas are conveyed in this post.

Most importantly, I don't plan on lowering the bar because I "only" teach high school students.

How did I miss this?

Put me in the evangelist category. :)

• Changing the Game: Assignments as Quests (June 2011)
  
• Gamifying the Learning Environment: The View from Level 80 (Feb 2012)
  
• Gamified Curriculum Delivery System (Sept 2012)
  
• FTW! Turnkey Online Gamification System (Feb 2013)
  

Dang, dang, dang! Long comment filled with lots of links lost. (Due to user error. Stupid user!) Summary:

Judy is right; a website can provide a scorecard of sorts. When I switched to WordPress in Jan 2009, the scorecard became much easier to read. For me, blog-based teaching with weekly posts, daily updates, and video tutorials provides the ultimate in self-paced learning and crystal-clear reflections. Throw in a gamified curriculum delivery system and the promised land seems to draw nearer.

Our district hosts my site but if they didn't, I'd throw down the credit card to make it happen. It's that important to me.

You're too kind, Judy. (Or you have a huge ink and paper budget. ;)

I print the best work and mount it to our Wall of Fame (WoF). Other work that meets Mac Lab standards is featured on our website. The rest, the students post to their own class blogs. If a student's work makes the WoF, they get a free print.

Then there's the problem of students with sub-standard work who want prints. Since I don't require students to print, I feel no obligation to print—and certainly not for free. First I try persuade the student to improve the existing work. When it's a good as it's going to get, the student is allowed to purchase a print with Gold (our virtual currency earned within our gamified classroom). I used to charge cash for paper and ink but that always felt wrong.

Alright! I got an email notification regarding Nathan's last comment. We may be back in the loop!

Nathan: Good questions and don't worry about posting multiple questions if more occur to you. I'm happy to help! (As are others.)

First Up, Security: According to the article, the attacks target an admin user named "admin" then unleash their evil. So, for now, we shouldn't ever activate an admin account so named. Thanks for the heads up.

Next Year: I'll leave the posts up and create new ones each week. The first Week's post this year was titled Week 1 (1213). Next year it will be Week 1 (1314). I've tried to append the (1213) to quests as well. I'll reinvent the wheel for a couple of years as I learn to write more interesting and engaging quests. (This is one of the critical components I've yet to master.)

EDIT: Forgot to mention that leaving the posts up will preserve a record of things that worked well or crashed and burned. In these early days, it's good to have a map of sorts to help guide us as we figure out how to implement this potentially epic system. I'll be writing a reflective piece discussing wins and fails by early summer.

Multiple Classes: This would be your call but I would advise using the KISS system. One install, four separate class pages linking players to their respective quests. If you use an honor system, you can just direct the students to limit questing to their class quest lines. This way you can direct all classes to common quests such as class policies and expectations and keep others separate. However, this is definitely a subject for broader discussion.

Student Account: Just set it up. Let me know if you have questions. You're in Period 7 and you sit at computer 22. (Love this feature!)

And reloading the page fixed it. Just so no one thinks I'm crazy, here's what I saw.

http://maclab.guhsd.net/2013/aeeCommentGlitch.zip is my comment. Sheesh!

My hunch was right. The blasted thing changed the text! See for yourself.

http://maclab.guhsd.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/aeeGlitch02.jpg if the link glitches.

Crud. Is this thing changing my post each time?! I'm taking a screenshot this time.

Java needs to be enabled.

That's J a v a S c r i p t -- NOT Java.

Really need that edit function!

Not Java. Java needs to be enabled.

D'oh! I forgot to tell you that you have to enable Java for some of the cool stuff to work.

Sorry!