Week 6, Assignment 2

As a physical educator, I love the ideas of using games in the classroom.  Students of the 21^st century are motivated by being actively engaged in their learning.  It is my experience that students do not enjoy “chalk talk” or in another words, being lectured for a lengthy amount of time.  Their interest can be peaked by involving them in the learning process. 

Using different types of multimedia, especially games, encourages students to be active learners.  Who doesn’t like games? Put a game in front of students and watch how the classes’ participation and enthusiasm increases.  The key to using games, is to find high quality and appropriate games to support the lesson concepts being taught.  

Our classrooms are filled with students with different types of learning styles.  It is important to differentiate instruction in order to meet the needs of all our students.  One way to differentiate the lesson is to reinforce concepts by using different types of  teaching mediums.

My opinion, from a technology coordinator’s perspective, students need to be prepared for the 21^st century workforce.  In that being said, they need to be digitally literate and competent.  Although finding quality educational games can be a little daunting, it is important for teachers to collaborate on what has worked or not worked for them.  With that type of collaboration, teachers will be able to support their lessons with quality games.  If they have problems finding games, they can have their students create the games using Gamestar Mechanic and Quest to Learn. 

Week 6, Assignment 1

I love the idea of using Gamestar Mechanics to engage and motivate students.  Game design helps students with digital citizenship while motivating them to enhance science, technology, engineering, art and math skills.   Teachers are using Gamestar to teaching different types of math concepts.  For example, Mike Petty created a lesson that reinforces math concepts like ratios, proportions, and percents.  To reinforce his lesson he uses a Change the Element template from Gamestar Mechanic.  I tried it just for the fun of it.  Mike’s lesson plan completely used the game element to reinforce his lesson.  It was a lot of fun and it didn’t feel like work! Pretty stinking cool!  Another teacher, Kevin Hodgson, uses Gamestar Mechanic to teach students about creating a storyboard.  He has students create a story and map each phase of it out on paper. The students work in small groups and brainstorm ideas.  After their peer feedback, students creates their game using Gamestar.   

I read on a blog that one teacher has students upload their fluency files, which are audio clips of themselves reading, and have other students post positive comments on it.  I thought that was a brilliant idea.  In my school, we are Dibeling our students and I feel like this would be a fantastic way for the students to practice their fluency skills.  It also creates a social responsibility throughout the class because students would not only have to critique each other’s reading but they would need to do it kindly. 

Another great idea is to correct, as a class, each of the postings capitalization and punctuation.  This way student will be able to the corrections on practical material.

One teacher does a Flat Stanley on Holiday project.  They have students log into Edmondo throughout the summer and post pictures and comments of themselves standing with Flat Stanley at different location.  This allows students to communicate with each other thus enhancing their communication skills.  The students love to see where Flat Stanley has been and they eager to comment of their classmate’s postings. 

I think Edmondo could be a great tool for educators.  It is really easy to setup I think students will be drawn to it because it’s a type of structured social network.  I also like that it is a voice for the most quiet of students.  On my classmates used Edmondo with his honors history class and I remember him telling me that even the shyest of students enjoys to converse on it.  Very cool and I can defiantly see it enhancing students learning experience.

Technology, Writing, & Student Engagement

The Author of this article decided to change his teaching medium because his students were “not actively engaged in writing”.  He decided to give blogging a chance.  He found that students enjoyed having an audience to read their writing.  They  began to post comments on each other’s blogs and actually began correcting each other’s grammar.   This article was light and refreshing and dare I say a bit motivational.  

Week 4, Assignment # 2 - Simple ELA lesson plan

Assignment#2 Create a simple ELA lesson plan

     Grade level: 4^th Grade

  Common core standards and learning outcomes:

• Know and apply grade-level phonics and word analysis skills in decoding words.
• Use combined knowledge of all letter-sound correspondences, syllabication patterns, and morphology (e.g., roots and affixes) to read accurately unfamiliar multisyllabic words in context and out of context.

• Instructional activities (how does this game help develop language acquisition and development, both oral and written, be creative?)

• Students will be able to reinforce their phonics and word analysis skills by creating words from a given amount of letters.
• They will have rely on syllabication pattern and morphology awareness to create words.

Assessment:

• At the conclusion of the game, the students will take a screenshot of the board.  They will hand it in for the teacher to review.  The teacher will grade both students as a team.  The winner will get 5 bonus points.  For each vocabulary word used (from all year, the students will get an 5 points.  For each multi-syllable words, they will get 3 points per syllable.

       Debriefing:

Students will answer the following questions in their journals:

• What was challenging about this game?
• What word scored you the most points in the game?
• What letters were the hardest for you to place and why?
• What are some strategies you were able to use?

         Cognitive Skills:

Planning moves

• Flexibility – being able to change their move based on the outcome of the other players move
• Reading: decoding and recoding words
• Analyzing/evaluating – but playing the board.

        What new literacy skills do this game help to cultivate?

• Basic computer skills such as, turning on the computer, logging into the computer, accessing the Internet, finding the game, creating the game, communicating through the game, creating a screenshot of the game, and printing the screenshot, maybe emailing the screenshot, and word processing in their digital journal.  They might have to do some basic troubleshooting if something isn’t working correctly. 

Week 4, Assignment 1 - Gaming Elements

Facebook:  Words with friends

1. What gaming elements provide users the learning content and how? (Refer to the journal article page 4).

•  Text: The first time someone plays words with friends, they are brought to a tutorial.  WWF (Words With Friends) is just like scrabble but you are able to play your Facebook Friends.

•  Visual-graphic elements: The visual-graphic elements resemble the scrabble board.  The words that have been played on the board are yellow tiles with black letters. The word(s) that was played last is in yellow tiles with white letters.  This allows both players to see what word was added to the board. On the side of the board there is a pane with pictures of your friends that you currently have a game opened. 

•  Audio elements: The audio element of the game is very simple.  The sounds are present when a tile is moved, a word is played, or when a word is not accepted.

What is the goal of the game?

•  The overall objective of the game is take turns forming words horizontally and vertically on the board, trying to use the bonus tiles and scoring as much points as possible.  You win the game by scoring more points than your opponent when all the letters are used.

3. What are rules of playing this game?

•  The rules of the game are just like playing scrabble.  Each opponent is given 7 letter tiles, each with a different point value.  Players take turns placing words on the board so that at least 1 tile is shared with an existing word on the board. The words must be “REAL” and cannot be a proper noun, abbreviations, prefixes and suffixes standing alone or words requiring a hyphen or an apostrophe. 

4. Does the game have any scenario design?

•  No, the game does not have a scenario design.

Hands-on Helping ELA teachers practice new literacies in their classrooms

-      Grade Level:  Third Grade

-      Topic: The environment

Standards addressed: (The Common Core State Standards Initiative)

W.3.2. Write informative/explanatory texts to examine a topic and convey ideas and information clearly.

• Introduce a topic and group related information together; include illustrations when useful to aiding comprehension.
• Develop the topic with facts, definitions, and details.
• Use linking words and phrases (e.g., also, another, and, more, but) to connect ideas within categories of information.

Learning outcomes:

After completing the lesson, the student will be able to record his or her understanding/knowledge by creating a digital story about their environment topic.

Technologies needed: 

Digital Camera and/or Flip Camera, Internet Access, Microphone, access to a Slideshare, Qwiki or another digital storytelling platform and a smart-board or projector for their presentations.

Timeline for implementation:  8, 45 minute classes.

How can it be integrated and implemented in the lessons?

Students will use the digital camera and/or flip camera in school and use their own at home to capture pictures to support their stories.  Students will work on the Internet research in school but create the bulk of the narrative as homework.  Students will put the presentation together during the last three, 45 minute, lesson blocks.

Assessment (on writing skills and technology):

Students writing skills will be graded on a teacher created rubric.

Students technology skilled will be graded on students/teacher created rubric.