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final reflection

At the end of this semester, think, again, about “Why games in education?”; and reflect on your experience in this course and share what is the most important take away for you. The blog is due by Sunday night (Dec. 9) Games in education make sense. I say this because in todays world students are so used to technology being engrained into their daily lives. They see their families on their phones, their teaches wear smart watches, at school their teachers use smart boards to deliver lessons. Every single day students are exposed to technology. With technology comes a need to understand it and use it effectively. This is also true in regards to technology based games. I think so often technology is used at a surface level instead of its full potential.  Games in education make school more fun. How boring is it for students to sit at their desks all day and never play a game. I remember when I was in school it was so much fun when we got to play games like heads up seven up and j
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Week 10 reflection

This week I had a lot of fun looking at ways I can incorporate play into my classroom. Right now since I am not in my own classroom, it is a great opportunity to explore and learn more wonderful ways to seamlessly incorporate play and exploration into my daily classroom. I learned a lot from reading other classmates and how they already use play in their rooms. I love the idea of using Class Dojo. This is something I would like to start implimenting in my classroom. It seems like a great way to encourage positive behavior in students and gives them meaningful rewards to work towards.
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Week 10

How do you currently infuse play into your class? How might you change this as a result of some of the ideas you have encountered? Currently I am not in my own classroom, so I will base this off my student teaching experience last year. I spent my first semester in a first grade classroom. Everyday students were  expected to do their work and complete lessons, but after their work was done they had free choice. In speaking with the teacher this was something she highly valued. It was something she felt that the students needed everyday. I remember questioning if they still needed free choice because they seemed older, but when they started to play and tinker and construct I realized how important exploration is for all children.  In my second classroom of my student teaching it was a kindergarten and first grade split room. There it was a bit different because of the different ages of students. Again just like the class with all first graders it very quickly became apparent how much
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Week 9 reflection

This weeks essential question brought up a lot of fun ideas. Almost everyday reminds me how truly excited I am to have my own classroom. Questions like this weeks are great reminders to me of how unique everyone experience truly is. Again in this class I go back to my personal experience of seeing how effective games were in the Spanish class at my high school. Keeping that in mind I am so excited to incorporate different types of games and stories in my own classroom. This week I looked at the blogs written by Amanda, Josie, Cherie, and Sam. Amanda talked about how she keeps a log on her laptop of ideas she comes up with. This is such great idea because so many times throughout the day I think of ideas, but most of the time I forget them because I simply don't write them down. I really liked how she organized her post with different headings and in each discussed what she would do to accomplish each. Josie this week had a great table that talked about the differences between
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Week 9

Which aspects of story and game mechanics will be useful in your class and how might you use them? This weeks main question has a lot of room for  interpretation. I feel that with everyones unique situation and experience the blog posts this week will be a lot of fun to read. For me I will need to think of this question in hypothetical situation because I am not currently working in a classroom.  When I was in my own classroom I used games a lot. We would play games with Osmo sets. We would also play structured games outside on the playground to help them understand and practice taking turns, sharing, and playing nicely with each other.  There are so many aspects of game mechanics and stories that can have a positive impact on students learning. Whether it be from actual games that are played like ones that allow students to practice their letter or sound recognition, look at parts of speech, or prepare for a quiz. All these will help students find the motivation to learn more. Th
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Week 8 reflection

This week we focused on the language of learning. For my post I focused on more academic learning. I talked a lot about how we as teachers can have a huge impact on the view our students have on learning based on what we say. We always need to be positive and encouraging for our students. It was interesting to read other students posts because not everyone focused on this type of language. Some focused on game language. They discussed more of the enthusiasm and competitive nature of games in the classroom. Sam did a great job bringing more of the discussion to focus on game-based learning and language. Because I am not in my own classroom I think it provides me a different approach to the impact of language in classrooms. I am in and out of many rooms every week so I get to see different teachers use of language. This has provided me with a lot of experience with what type of language works and what does not. I also have started working at my sons daycare, where I am working along si
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