Very interesting! What does this mean to your praxis? Are we missing an audience? Could we improve engagement?
Every once in a while, all the stars align, and an opportunity to both teach and participate in social action arises. Tomorrow, May 10, 2011, is one of those days. It’s the Great American Teach In. What will you do to empower your students to inquire, contemplate, compose, and declare their educational rights?
As gamers play, they build structures to succeed. They build communities to meet their goals. They gain access to knowledge to complete their missions. This transfers to civics. BUT, we have to create environments where they feel empowered to have a mission, opportunities to collaborate for planning and gaining knowledge, and support to grow their identities and voice. They have to care to want to make a change.
QR codes can help with a gaming atmosphere for gathering knowledge. Hunt for the info. Collect it in a portfolio. Earn points. Need to explore this.
How New Digital Media and the Internet are Fueling an Innovative Surge in Communication, Creativity and Collaboration. from DML Research Hub on Vimeo.
Shout out to NWP’s Elyse Eidman-Aadahl! What a wonderful video reiterating the importance of understanding that it’s not about the technology, it’s about using the tools to help students become more precise writers who are aware of audience and purpose. She discusses the many changes that have ocurred since her childhood. Consider the many changes yet to come. We are preparing our students for the unknown. As she states, “The moment to capture is not now. The moment to capture is the future.”
Loved this video for its honesty. Constance Steinkuhler cuts to the chase and stops me from making similar missteps. Gaming engages, but it’s not about knowing tons about the games. It’s not about being gaming experts. It’s about knowing how to bridge gaming to learning. Knowing how to adapt their idenitities as gamers and what it means to their identities at school, at home, at work. It’s about knowing and understanding our students’ cultural wealth. What are their funds of knowlege? They are highly engaged in gaming. Why? What do games make them want to learn? Find out. Use students as a resource to integrate meaningful ideas into curriculum.
It’s scary to walk into a classroom without a whole lot of structure, but isn’t this how we approach life? We find something we like. We ask questions. We seek answers. We challenge ourselves to make sense of it in our worlds. We can learn more from our students than we think. We just have to be brave enough to do it.
Online Games and Interest-Driven Learning are Transformative for Today’s Young Learners from DML Research Hub on Vimeo.
Replace “therapist” with “teacher” and “client” with “student”. Incredible start to uncomfortable yet imperative conversations.
