Emily Langdon's Blog - New Media and New Literacies

       "Zoo U" is an interactive simulation game developed by educators and developers at Centervention with funding from the U.S. Department of Education designed to help elementary and middle school students develop social and emotional skills. The game focuses on six main learning objectives, fostering the following: communication, cooperation, emotional regulation, empathy, impulse control, and social initiation. Gameplay involves navigating various social scenarios in a zoo themed setting, where students must make decisions and interact with different characters throughout the game. Below is an example of an in-game empathy targeted scenario, where the student must respond on how to answer, decide if they should stop playing a game to find out why their friend is sitting by himself. Tone of voice is taken into account as well. Even if the student provides the wrong response, they will see potential implications of their choices displayed further in the simulation and can

For my post, I decided to evaluate two digital platforms that I use daily in my classroom, Nearpod and Proloquo2Go.  Nearpod Nearpod Overview: Nearpod is an interactive, digital classroom tool used across grade levels and subjects in education. It allows teachers to do away with antiquated PowerPoint presentations, which can be dull and lack interactive features in order to create more engaging presentations that incorporate multimedia, virtual reality opportunities, collaborative gamified assessment (as in their Time to Climb feature) and instant formative data on student response ( McKnight, 2024) . The application became one of the leading digital tools within our special education sector at BOCES particularly since virtual learning during the COVID-19 shutdown. In our classrooms, it continues to be the primary way that we present information to students and has continued to be successful – even more so in-person (Nearpod, 2024).  Nearpod User Engagement: Nearpod can be used in mu