Week+5+Reflection

=Week 5 Reflection=

This week’s videos were fascinating in how they described the use of video games as educational tools. It just makes sense that children are going to learn when they are truly engaged by what interests them. I like the emphasis that video games put on problem-solving. Our students must learn to take what information they have and use it to arrive at solutions. This in turn, constructs new, additional knowledge. As I researched further, I found a YouTube video that described a great divide between educational video games and video games made purely for entertainment. The entertainment video games seem to be to more engaging, whereas the educational games tend to be too obvious in shoving a certain skill down your throat. In his video, David Floyd explains that when students are exposed to information they are already interested in, then there’s a window of opportunity for expansion of their knowledge. However, it has to be done very carefully so that seeking new knowledge is their “own” choice. You can find the video at []. (Please be advised some material may not be suitable for young children.)

In our readings this week, the idea of teaching students to relate effort to achievement was explored. Students can use a rubric to define their level of effort throughout a unit of instruction. Then, they can take the grades they make on weekly assignments and graph the correlations. A spreadsheet software program such as Excel can be used to make the rubrics, chart data, and graph results. I can see this as having a huge impact on student learning and increased confidence. We also read about using electronic portfolios as an ongoing formative assessment. In the Web 2.0 Wisdom section of this week’s readings in //Web 2.0 New Tools, New Schools//, Helen Barrett made a good point. In response to students describing the TaskStream electronic portfolio as an “academic MySpace,” she said, “If only we could capture that level of motivation while furthering the goals of deep learning in formative electronic learning portfolios, then we may realize the real promise of using technology to both improve and showcase student achievement.” (2000) I can definitely see us moving in this direction. This seems much more conducive to the way these students will have to perform in the workplace.