For our 2nd project, Fatima, Lisa and I explored some different platforms for digital story-telling. The work we created for this project is here.
Here is our write up for Media Project 2.
Author: sarram
Categories
Video Games Are Totally Rad
I really enjoyed the article “Good Video Games and Good Learning.” (Throwback: Oregon Trails! You have died of dysentery.) I think Gee outlines a number of great reasons to support the value of integrating video games into the curriculum.
I completely with Gee, who writes, “school too often allows much less space for risk, exploration, and failure” (35). We have talked about risk-taking in various courses in the Education program. It is essential that teachers support students in taking chances. Video games encourage learning from mistakes; when you fail at a level within a game, you try something different, you persevere until you succeed.
At the end of the article, Gee poses a question to the reader: “How can we make learning in and out of school, with or without using games, more game-like in the sense of using the sorts of learning principles that young people see in good games every day, when and if they are playing these games reflectively and strategically?” (37).
I found an article on edutopia that considers this question. “A Neurologist Makes the Case for the Video Game Model as a Learning Tool” outlines benefits of video games, because of the release of dopamine, and how to use these benefits in education. Judy Willis states that modeling the classroom like a video game and, thus, providing opportunities for “incremental progress feedback at students’ achievable challenge levels pays off with increased focus, resilience, and willingness to revise and preserve toward achievement of goals” (Willis).
It is really fascinating to consider the ways our students’ brains could benefit from both incorporating video games and also adapting our classrooms to make learning more like playing a game. Willis writes, “When learners have opportunities to participate in learning challenges at their individualized achievable challenge level, their brains invest more effort to the task and are more responsive to the goals” (Willis). If they are given the opportunity to work towards “desirable goals within their range of perceived achievable challenge… [they can] reach levels of engagement much like the focus and perseverance we see when they play their video games” (Willis). Not only can our students learn from playing video games, but we can also learn from the way video games engage our students.
When I taught ESL in Okinawa, I used modifications of TV game shows and video games in the classroom. I remember playing a version of Jeopardy on the blackboard in school. Now, technology allows us to do so much more; creating my own version of ESL Super Mario (on power point… my tech skills are moderate, at best) was definitely a highlight of teaching in Japan, especially when I saw my students engage with the material.
My last thought, in reference to something I just read on Cat’s post about video games adapted into film. On my practicum, student’s had the option to create anything they wanted for their final project, as a way to demonstrate their learning. I had 2 boys create a video game commentary (they recorded themselves playing the game and talking about things they saw, relating it to their topic). They were not in love with the project at the beginning but when video games came into the picture, they were engaged and went above and beyond the expectations for the assignment.
Works Cited:
Gee, J. (2005). Good Video Games and Good Learning. Phi Kappa Phi Forum, 85(2), 33-37.
Willis, J. (April 14 2011). A Neurologist Makes the Case for the Video Game Model as a Learning Tool. Edutopia.
Sarra, Blog Post #2
Here are just a few links/resources that we’ve found in thinking about/researching the idea of social media, blogs, and folksonomy in the classroom. Feel free to add any others you might have!!
Conversations about education BY educators on the tumblr
Ideas for using Tumblr in the classroom
Benefits of using social media in the classroom
– Sarra
For our first project, Fatima, Lisa and I created a hypertextual poem hosted on weebly. You can check out the link here!
This PDF includes our process and considerations for assessment, if we were to assign this project to students: Multiliteracies Project 1
Thanks!
Sarra, Lisa, and Fatima
Categories
Blogging As Participation
Blog Post 1 – Sarra McMillan
This article talks about Web 2.0 – more specifically, blogging – and the “deeply participatory” (2) nature of blogs. As 21st century educators, participation must be a key element within learning in our classrooms and, therefore, blogging can be a great tool. Blogging participation comes from the conversation that occurs through the post and comments, between the original author and readers.
Lankshear and Knobel introduce Blood’s definition of a blog; a blog is “a website that is up-dated frequently, with new material posted at the top of the page” (2). They also state that the majority of blogs “are now hybrids of journal entries and annotations or indices of links, or some mix of reflections, musings, anecdotes and the like with embedded hyperlinks to related websites” (3).
It is interesting to consider that this paper was presented to the American Educational Research Association in 2006; in the past 7 years, the process of blogging has evolved. For example, Tumblr was founded in 2007 and now hosts 121.3 million blogs (Tumblr). There are numerous free services available to host various types of blogs: Twitter, Weebly, WordPress, Blogger, Posterous, Pinterest, Instagram… And, often, our students are more informed and involved in the process of blogging participation.
Folksonomies, according to Isabella Peters, “consist of of freely selectable keywords, or tags, which can be liberally attached to any information resource – hence the term ‘tag’, which might be defined as either an identifying label, or the mark hung around a dog’s throat signifying ownership” (153). It is the tagging of information, as in “hashtagging” photos posted on Instagram or organizing boards by topic on Pinterest.
I found an interesting article written by Élise Lavoué titled “Social Tagging to Enhance Collaborative Learning.” Near the beginning of the paper, the framework presented by Kimmerle, Cress, and Held, which introduces 4 processes for using tagging in education is explained:
“Externalization: learners externalize their knowledge on a resource by assigning tags to it. To create tags, users have to articulate their own cognitive concepts and to translate them into keywords. This cognitive effort can arouse an individual learning.
Internalization: by navigating in the information space using the tag clouds, users collect information relating to a tag. On the one hand, they learn tags used by others and as a consequence how the others classify their resources. On the other hand, tags show new interconnections between concepts for users. If can lead to the incorporation of the concepts of the community and to the modification of the individual cognitive structures of users.
Assimilation: by discovering and using new tags (and the associated concepts) that are in agreement with their knowledge, users can widen their knowledge but do not develop new different concepts.
Accommodation: users can question and modify their cognitive concepts by learning that their associations on a specific domain are rather different, inadequate, or even false. It can occur when users realize that the other users use tags that are very different from theirs, what implies that specific resources or tags are bound to very different concepts.” (2)
In the end, I wonder if English Language Arts teachers are responsible for teaching students to tag appropriately, to organize information accurately? Who decides what is appropriate and accurate? I will use Web 2.0 and social media within my classroom, as a way to encourage participation and discussion.
Seminar – Sarra, Lisa, and Fatima
Summary – Check Lisa’s blog post here!
Social Media TED talk available here!
Activity
In small groups, read the poem What Do I Remember of the Evacuation and think of at least 5 tags (ex. Canadian( to help organize this poem among other literature. Discuss tags afterwards.
Questions
- How have you or how would you use social media, blogs and/or tagging/folksonomies within your classroom? What are some of the implications of using these platforms/tools?
- What are some of the dangers of using social media in the classroom? How can we, as educators, address these concerns?
- Some argue that students lose valuable face-to-face interaction when we utilize tools like blogs to have conversations in the classroom. Do you agree or disagree?
Sources
Lankshear, C. & Knobel, M. Blogging as Participation: The Active Sociality of a New Literacy. American Educational Research Association, San Francisco, US, April 11, 2006. Web.
Élise Lavoué. Social Tagging To Enhance Collaborative Learning. Université de Lyon, CNRS. Web.
Peters, Isabella, and Paul Becker. Folksonomies: Indexing and Retrieval in Web 2.0. Berlin: De Gruyter/Saur, 2009. Print.
“Tumblr.” About. N.p., n.d. Web. (http://www.tumblr.com/about).