Learning Reflections: # Inte 5320

My first realization was the fear of playing a new game via distance that I had not encountered before. This reinforced the idea of peer to peer mentoring/instruction. When an instructor puts out a new item into the classroom without any instruction and then wonders why people are not accessing it, the reason maybe because the students have now had interactions with this type of material before. The second is, syncing in to live games from a distance, when a student cannot physically be in the room to notice body language with people they do not know very well then it makes new experiences more challenging because of the idea of failure or lack of understanding the rules. Both of these relate directly back to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. When a person is uncomfortable or lacking stability in the lower areas it makes it harder to learn. Thus as I continue educating teachers it is important that I bring up these facts as well as take them into consideration in my distance classrooms. Students need support and comfort in order to learn and feel empowered to explore a game.

Though I have always believed that technology has shifted our learning silos into interdisciplinary webs, these past few weeks I have been reflection on Literacies. How I have inadvertently missed, in part, that link. The other was Affinity spaces. Though I knew there were dynamic groups/websites that changed regularly to meet the needs of the participants I had not fully explored any yet. I am interested to see how the Teachers Pay Teachers website changes over the course of the semester. Though I am assuming any great change, unless there is some breakthrough research that emerges, will be slow and needing observation over a longer course of time.

Twitter has not been a resource that I use very often. Though I do make my Ethics students explore it because of all the drama being posted compared to other social media website. Kayne – GoFundMe – wow makes my head hurt. For this class I am learning to access it more, though I regularly forget the #. I do receive information for Google Trends which has been beneficial for watching for research regarding gaming and early childhood education. There is a very slowly growing body of research regarding how teachers can use gaming to benefit young learners.

Why on earth would anyone want to have their young child learn to play games? Well this question actually comes from my mother-in-law who feels games are there to learn to manipulate other people. Game playing has several benefits for all people, especially young children. Children playing a simple game of Go Fish learn number recognition, problem solving, appropriate social interactions, determination, and how to control emotions. All of these strategies that they learn during the game are beneficial as they transition from the game into the real world.

As I move from teaching in an AA program to linking into a BA program I will need to take the gamification that I have added to a higher level of cognition. Thus I will need to continue to find current supporting research to share with students along with strategies to create games that will help students to gain a deeper level of understanding.