An educational game is a
game designed to teach players about a specific subject and teach them a skill
from the game. With the purpose of our assignment was to assess an educational
game and find out what set of skills does the game offer. The web offers a
variety of educational games and to figure which game could be used in a
classroom setting is overwhelming. There many games I found that had potential to
be used for elementary students but, I wanted to find a game that would fit my personality
and a game that involves students struggling in language arts. I feel that students would learn more with hands-on
learning activities and keep them engaged. Shapiro (2014) shares that, “The promise of game based learning lies in the premise that the technology provides an
efficient and effective tool with which to replace a points-based extrinsic
motivation system with a contextualized hands-on learning experience.”
From the first day the
assignment was given, we were given time to find an educational game that we
could implement as a learning tool but, I was not able to find a game I was
comfortable with. Not having a game in mind made creating a game rubric
challenging as I did not have a set of standards to base my rubric on. I
thought as a future educator, I wanted to set some specific criteria that could
be used for any educational game. I wanted an educational game that was easy to
navigate, a game that was creative but not too overbearing and most importantly
what set of skills can the student learn from this game.
As a student majoring in
elementary education, I thought back to when I was an elementary student being
an ESL learner and having a difficult time in my language arts class. Panda
Pop is a game that demonstrates to students the different category of which
word is assigned to its grammatical property. The game not only teaches the elementary
student parts of speech but, to listen, read and think carefully. I feel that
this game would allow student who speak English as a second language feel a
part of the class.
When using an online
educational game, I would probably use the online educational game in at end of
the lesson. I know that children love to play games and I feel that if they get
excited to play the game, they will be motivated to continue the game even if
the lesson had ended. If I was teaching an English class an online game would
be perfect lesson to challenge the students. According to Gee, “Games are
believed to promote ownership of learning by providing the learner with control
over the gaming process and difficulty levels (experimental approach) (2008)”. Once
I see that the student is improving, I would test the skills learned from the
game either an oral or written test for mastery.
For my presentation, I
wanted to try different websites and eventually ended up using Go Daddy for its
simplicity. I wanted to create an educational website that anyone can view and
a website that is easy to navigate. Go Daddy was easy to use and offered many
customizing tools for a free user. For my survey I tried different websites unfortunately,
Google Docs was the best option to use as a presentation tool for sharing my
questioner and response to my audience.
I never really thought to
implement an educational online game in a classroom until this assignment. The website
offers many educational games and majority of the game can expand the students’
knowledge. This assignment made me realize that not all online educational
games are academic and to be mindful of what game to select as a learning tool.
Through this assignment, I was able to use different websites and it also
expanded my knowledge of websites to use for presentations and online games as
a learning tool in the classroom.
References
Shaprio, J. (2014). Games in the Classroom: What Researcher
Says.
Retrieved October 10,2018, from Mindshift website:
Gee, J. P. (2003). What video games have to teach us
about learning and literacy. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
