A new and upcoming, but skeptical, trend in educational and teaching practices is implementing computer and online gaming into lesson plans. A younger generation who grew up playing online games now being able to teach are coming up with different ways to bring excitement to the classroom, such as online gaming. They use games such as Angry Birds to study Newton's Law of Motion, SimCity to demonstrate spatial relationships when designing a city, and many different types of games to educate students in science, math, writing, history, and team collaboration. Gaming has many benefits to learning. Because many games give you either a certain number of lives or multiple lives, students and try, fail, and repeat until they find a solution which helps develop problem solving skills. Games like Call of Duty, which will most likely never be used in a classroom, also have educational benefits despite violence and graphic scenes. Call of Duty educates gamers on the history of different wars with accurate reenactments and displays of war battles. However, many adults in the older generation have problems with this new concept of implementing online games into the classroom. Gaming can cause a lot of distraction, with students only looking forward to using computers to play games instead of balancing gaming and traditional teaching. Also, gaming in the classroom may require certain ages to play them, and some parents may not be comfortable with their children playing certain games. After some debate, what do you think about gaming in class? Should students be allowed to play video games in class, or is it distracting and ineffective?
A new educational idea that is spreading around the world is Mystery Skype. Mystery Skype is a classroom activity where one classroom guesses another classroom's location through a series of yes or no questions. Pernille Ripp teaches fifth grade at West Middleton Elementary
School in Middleton, Wisconsin. In her article found in the teacher magazine Learning and Leading with Technology called “Where in the World Are They? Students Find Out with Mystery Skype,” she discusses how she used the idea of Mystery Skype in her classroom with her students. She designated a series of roles to her students such as: greeters, inquirers, answerers, think tanks, question keepers, Google mappers, atlas mappers, clue keepers, runner, photographer, videographers, clue markers, problem solvers, and closers. Having different roles allows all students to participate and collaborate in a team setting to find out the other classrooms location. Mystery Skype has many beneficial aspects. Students learn about geography, different languages, how to use a map, history and historical sites as well as global studies. Students enjoy this activity because it's like a puzzle and they are eager to solve the mystery. For the teacher, it's easy to set up. They just need a computer with a webcam and microphone, Google Mystery Skype and find a participating classroom. With all of its benefits and easy setup, do you think Mystery Skype is a helpful activity to benefits students learning? After reading the article "Why Vicious Online Comments are like Killing," on www.popchassid.com, my eyes were opened to the harm that online comments can do to bloggers. The author talks about how people naturally don't want to hurt or cause harm to others, however, when they are not in direct contact and can't see the pain they cause to a person, they don't feel as guilty. When using blogs in an educational setting, it could be helpful for students to interact and collaborate with each other while sharing ideas. However, this article shows the harm that could happen through cyberbullying and why it's sometimes unsafe to expose students to this technology.
Hello, welcome to my blog! This blog has to deal with education and technology. This blog is for a learning through technology course provided at Marist College.
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