Gaming in Education

I don't play many online games but I do see the value in them for educational purposes. I just read about the use of MineCraft in schools.  It's such a great idea to use a game kids love for educational purposes!

I have, I admit, recently become addicted to one online game called Trivia Crack.
The basic idea is that you answer questions in 6 subjects: Art, History, Science, Geography, Entertainment, and Sports.  The goal is to earn characters from each subject area in order to beat your opponent.  You can play multiple games at once.  So far I've played against my husband and friends in Florida.


Here is the Link to it:

http://www.triviacrack.com

And here are the characters you earn along the way.
These remind me of the gamification mechanics in our digital technology class...they are the "badges" or "rewards".


As we were traveling last year we did not allow our children to have gaming devices or other electronics, only Kindles for reading (no internet access)  However, there were two games that I kept on my phone for us to play sometimes, which are educational and a lot of fun:

Whirly Word

This is a great game for spelling and vocabulary practice.  It gives you 6 random letters and you have to make as many words as possible out of them.  It is also equipped with a dictionary so you can learn the meaning of new words.  Of course there is a point system whereby you earn points, the more words the more points!

Stack the Countries and Stack the States

These are great games for geography, history and social studies.  You have to answer questions about countries (or U.S. states depending on which game you're playing) As you answer correctly you earn countries which you have to stack to a certain level to win.  Again, gamification mechanics that I see in Digital Technology class.

These games, used responsibly could be a great tool for the classroom.  I could envision using the games themselves as a reward for hard work...i.e. you earn 10 minutes of game time if you complete an assignment correctly...or something along those lines.  Or maybe even as a homework assignment...have students report 5 new things they learned about a place or 5 new words they learned.  There are lots of possibilities.

My digital story

Here is my digital story....told in my first Gami!

https://tellagami.com/gami/U0FD9Q/

The Maker Movement and how it could impact my future classroom

Many schools are attempting to incorporate the Maker Movement into their curriculum by creating maker spaces where students can create things as part of the learning process.

It's easiest to think of the Maker Movement in terms of how it can impact science or math classes... building robotics for example.   However, I will be teaching history/social studies so I've been thinking of ways that I could use the maker movement in my class.

I think there are many ways to incorporate the maker concept of learning through doing into social studies.  I could use it to have students work collaboratively on writing projects or presentations.  It could be used for map making projects as we learn about different cultures. They could also incorporate some science as we learn about various inventions and inventors.  For example, the class could build catapults as we study medieval times.  Or students could plant a garden /make clothes and learn about the food American Colonists ate and the way they lived.   I think that is one of the great things about the Maker Movement:  it fosters the blending of many different subjects into one area of learning!

Beth cooking with TPACK

In our technology class we were required to do an exercise to demonstrate the TPACK concept.
TPACK is the intersection of technological, pedagogical, and content knowledge.

Our exercise involved having someone pick out a plate, bowl, and random kitchen utensil.  Then the person drew a number out of a hat.  The number corresponded to a specific task which we had to complete using the tools given to us.

My son, Levi, got a plate and bowl for me.  He then selected a mezzaluna(herb chopping tool) as the utensil.  He drew the number 5, the task for which was to slice vegetables for a veggie tray.

I got lucky!  The utensil he selected was easy to repurpose into a veggie peeler and slicer.  The technology was represented by the utensils.  My ability to effectively demonstrate vegetable slicing and peeling with the utensils symbolized the pedagogical aspect of the task.  In my case, I was able to  use the technology with the content(slicing vegetables) and pedagogy to create a useful lesson with the intersection of the three.

However, some people were not so lucky!  I watched three other videos of my classmates.  Tanya's was entertaining because she had to make fruit salad with a corn cob remover!  She did a great job working with the tools she was given.  But this is a good example of how the technology doesn't always match the task.

That is a lesson we should keep in mind....just because we have the technology doesn't mean we should use it for every single thing!

ISTE Standards for Teachers: Classroom Observation

I spent time observing an 8th grade Social Studies class at Cane Creek Middle School in Fletcher.
All in all it was a great day.  I learned a lot and I believe that I would actually enjoy teaching that age group, which is a switch because when I first started the MAT program I thought I would prefer high school.
Anyway, the teacher was very knowledgeable in his subject area and he clearly enjoyed his career.  I noticed a couple of things about his class that relate to the ISTE standards for teachers.

He began each class by letting the students watch CNN kids news.  I thought this was a great thing to do.  They spent the first 10 minutes or so of class watching the news and then they could discuss the current events.  This is a good example of ISTE standard 1:  "Facilitate and inspire student learning and creativity" He used the video to explore real world issues and to spark classroom discussion and reflection.

Here is the link to the ISTE standards:
https://www.iste.org/docs/pdfs/20-14_ISTE_Standards-T_PDF.pdf


http://www.cnn.com/studentnews



I also noticed a non-example during my observation time.  The class was studying the Vietnam war era.  During the lesson a student told the class that he had heard some scandalous rumors about JFK having an affair during his tenure as President and also that JFK had accidentally called himself a jelly donut during a speech in Berlin.  So, of course this intrigued the class and several of them immediately pulled out their phones/ipads, etc. (Cane Creek is a BYOD school)  and started pulling up info on JFK and sharing what they found with the class.  The teacher basically just shut them down, telling them that JFK rumors were not the topic of discussion, which is one way to handle it. But, I thought that he could have used this as an opportunity to practice ISTE standard 4 "promote and model digital citizenship and responsibility".
He could have turned the situation into a lesson about making sure your digital sources are reliable.    He could also have fostered a discussion about appropriate use of their devices for classroom research.  

Digital Citizenship

In many ways digital citizenship is very similar to traditional ideals of good citiizenship that have existed throughout history.  Here are some examples:

  We should always check your sources for reliability whether they are digital or not.

  We should always be careful about what we write, whether on the internet or in a traditional medium.  Once it's written down it's permanent and can follow you the rest of your life!
 
  We should always be concerned with ethics and issues such as plagiarism.  It doesn't matter whether it's in a digital forum or not, plagiarism is inherently unethical and wrong.

It seems to me that the main differences between the digital citizenship world and the traditional view of citizenship are the speed and ease with which information is available and in which it can be spread all over the world.

We have research and communication tools available at our fingertips.  It is SOO easy to find an answer to a question, assume it's correct and send the answer to everyone you know without ever checking to see if it's valid.

So many websites seem legitimate. It's hard to tell the good ones from the bad ones, especially for students who are under pressure to get research papers completed.  It's also so easy for students to find information and copy it into their own work without giving credit to the person who authored the information.

I liked this comparison of traditional citizenship and digital citizenship that I found on Pinterest, so thought I would post it here:

I believe that teachers have a responsibility to foster good citizenship in both the traditional sense and in the digital world.  They can do this by making sure students check their sources and that they give credit to authors.  

Teacher can also create many interesting projects to demonstrate to students how poor digital citizenship can get out of control quickly and have drastic adverse  and long lasting affects.  It is important to teach these things while students are young so that they grow up to be responsible adults.  Learning hard lessons now will pay off for them as they move into the adult world.

I thought the following article from The Atlantic (I've attached the link to it below) comparing the plagiarism of a 6th grader to that of a U.S. Senator was very interesting.  It is written by Jessica Lahey and appeared on July 24, 2014.

http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/07/plagiarism/374999/

Thoughts On Sugata Mitra's Ted Talk About the Future of Learning

Thoughts On Sugata Mitra's Ted Talk About The Future of Learning


This was a very interesting Ted Talk.  

I am not surprised that the children who were given access to the computer in the hole in the wall learned to use it and were able to teach themselves about complex issues.  Children are completely unburdened by fears and expectations the way adults are.  I think of my own children and how from very early ages I could hand them my phone and they would fiddle around with it until they figured out how to do all sorts of things with it.  However, I question his thoughts about the future of learning.

Children can be eager to learn but I suspect that the children in the small Indian villages were even more fascinated by the computer Mitra gave them than others might be,because they have so very little.  The reality is that most of them probably do not even have indoor plumbing.  Getting a computer to use whenever they want must have been a monumental event....naturally they experimented as much as possible with it.

School in the cloud?  Sounds great in theory, but I spent last week observing 8th grade classes.  The kids were doing an independent assignment, not on a computer, but they were expected to work independently or in groups to complete the assignments.  Only a handful of these students actually spent their class time doing the assignment.  The rest were either secretly playing video games on their personal devices, or where chatting among themselves about things that had absolutely nothing to do with the assignment.  So, how does SOLE work with a bunch of American teenagers who couldn't care less about DNA (or whatever the topic at hand is) and would much rather be shooting people on a video game or talking about who likes who.  Can "cloud granny" get their attention and keep it?  The teacher in the actual classroom had a hard enough time and he was right there in their faces!
I witnessed a student tell the teacher during a discussion about the Vietnam War that he was going to join the Marine Corps so he could kill Communists(...and terrorists too,he added as an afterthought) because they are bad.  Yet this student could not tell the teacher what Continent Vietnam is on.  Other students had similar issues and made similar comments.  They could not locate Vietnam on a map.  One pointed to a body of water... the Bay of Bengal.    Another had no idea whether France was part of Western or Eastern Europe, let alone what role France played in Vietnam or how any of this history could be relevant to what's going on it our world today.   This was all in spite of the fact that they have been in social studies class all year and they have been studying Vietnam and the Cold War for quite a bit in that class.  I could go on and on.   (And, in case you were wondering, this was not a class full of LD or special ed. students.)  
One thing they did find fascinating was when a student shared that he had heard John F. Kennedy had an extramarital affair.  This immediately caused a great commotion as several students pulled out their phones and began "researching" that issue.

Oh, but I guess it doesn't matter because KNOWING IS OBSOLETE!

Knowing is never obsolete...only how we get the information changes.  Teachers need to provide guidance and push students to learn.

It seems to me that Sugata Mitra is the one in the cloud!!

Developing Personal Learning Networks (PLN)

As part of our technology class we are required to explore and create PLN's.
This has been an excellent exercise for me as I have never been on Twitter, Pinterest or anything other than Facebook.

It has also been somewhat frustrating.  There is an awful lot of junk on twitter.

But now that I have played around with it for a while I see that it will be quite helpful in keeping up to date on educational issues.  I have followed a few twitter chats although I haven't felt comfortable participating actively yet!
I am also learning how to use tweet deck as I think this will help me organize the important items I'd like to keep track of.

I plan to cultivate my PLN by continuing to follow chats and start participating actively.  It seems like a great way to meet other people and share ideas.

Here are some screenshots of my first foray into twitter land !!

file:///Users/lane/Desktop/Screenshots/Screen%20Shot%202015-02-25%20at%202.35.47%20PM.png

 

I've also started using Pinterest which is where I have created my digital toolbox.  I think this will be a great learning tool as well.  I've already found so many great ideas on it!

Here is a pin from my social studies idea board.

TPACK is valuable! We should use it...but use it WISELY!

http://prezi.com/dl4mnpkho02e/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy&rc=ex0share



When I started thinking about this assignment (to make an argument either for or against TPACK or SAMR) I REALLY wanted to make an argument against the use of both of them.  Of course the assignment is to pick one or the other, so I chose to make my attack on TPACK.

As we were learning about the TPACK model in our Technology class, I thought that there was a significant drawback to TPACK.  Primarily that it encourages the use of technology just for the sake of technology.  That is to say, it seems to promote the use of technology in the classroom just because it is there and available.  In spite of the fact that its goal it to encourage teachers to use technology appropriately, TPACK lends itself to misuse.  It seemed to me that the TPACK model could cause teachers to grasp for ways to connect technology to the content they are trying to impart to their students without really understanding whether the technology is valuable to the content or not.  What about just teaching??? Teachers shouldn't feel forced to use technology.

So, I started doing some independent research and sure enough I found that my concerns about TPACK were shared by others.  HOWEVER,  as I delved further into the issue it dawned on me how truly valuable the TPACK model is and I came to the conclusion that it SHOULD be used, but used wisely.



In today's world the ability to use technology is vital and becoming more so everyday.  Therefore it is also vital that our students emerge from their educational experience equipped to use technology in their lives.  Also, the technology tools available to teachers and students can greatly enhance learning in all subjects.  However, if it is misused technology can be a distraction or even a detriment to learning.  So it is imperative to have a model that teachers can follow which when used properly encourages the appropriate use of technology in the classroom. TPACK is such a model.

By using TPACK, teachers can find the intersection of the content matter they have to share with students, the manner in which they share that content, and the technology which can enhance the presentation of the content and the students' learning.  Employing the TPACK model keeps teachers on track.   If there is no intersection of the three types of knowledge (technological, content, and pedagogical) then don't use the technology!

Attached to this post are a prezi about TPACK and an article from the International Journal of Technology in Teaching and Learning which I found interesting and on point.

www.sicet.org/journals/ijttl/issue1101/1_Willis.pdf

Technology class! Yikes

Well this is my first blog post on my back to school blog.   I am fulfilling a longtime desire to give up the practice of law and teach!  Of course before I can teach I have to be a student myself.   So in order to get my teaching certification I have enrolled in Lenoir Rhyne Univeristy's MAT program.

This technology class is a little scary to me.  Other than our travel blog, I'm not one to use much technology....my children are way better at it than I am.  Maybe they can help me!!

I'm very excited to learn though.  Should be an interesting experience.

This monkey probably knows more about using technology than I do!