Well the Gaming week with my 2nd Year Ed Studies students was quite a success according to the response at the end of the module. I was a little nervous on Monday to say the very least. Not having a clue about gaming myself was the main worry. I am always telling students that you don't need to know everything about the technology you are using, you just need to have clear learning objectives and identify skill development possibilities. I took myself at my world and embarked on two hour sessions of gaming with each group. They had a range of devices to explore, from sport on the xbox kinect to brain training on the nintendo DS and as they played they had a list of specific aspects to focus on, whilst enjoying the gaming of course. As the week progressed I introduced new rules and realigned the focus, I could see what was working and what wasn't. I realised that I needed to give much more input if I wanted them to think out of the box, so to speak. Initially they were thinking of how they could just included playing the game in the class as a tool for learning per say. They had difficulty in thinking of just using snippets or adapting the games use in order to fit it into a curriculum area. At first I felt that I was forcing my own ideas on them and possibly stifling theirs. However the follow-up session where they planned a whole lesson from the gaming day idea proved me wrong. There were some fabulous ideas were the games were used as a stimulus for exciting cross curricular activities. This is just the beginning. Each group created a wallwisher as they played take a look at their games day comments!
No comments:
Post a Comment