Online Educational Game — Reflection

As a math teacher, I strongly believe in teaching through playing. My belief in this is based on the adage of you learn best when you're having fun. Aside from maintaining interest longer than textbook work, a visual representation of content found in videos and educational games can help students understand concepts better, stimulate curiosity, and encourage self-learning (NeoK12, 2012).

Math inherently represents quantities and yet, as teachers, we often forget to use actual quantities to explain it. Many online games do an excellent job at graphically representing these quantities for easy comparison. When compared to a typical classroom lesson, games can have the benefit of combining instruction with demonstration. This is an more effective learning method than direct instruction (Entertainment Software Association, 2013).

While I still endorse the game my group selected for the Online Game Presentation, the other group's game was more successful at encouraging creative thought. This reminds me of Bloom's Taxonomy and that I need to be more critical in selecting activities that truly encourage higher-order thought (Bloom, 1956). Exploring within my curriculum is good, but I need to remember my goal as a teacher: to develop complete learners.

I have stated in the past that I believe my subject to merely be the canvas where I teach students how to teach themselves. While my curriculum is relevant, people forget most of what they learn so my real goal is to make sure students can learn whatever is needed in situations they encounter in life. In the future, an online game selection should take advantage of the opportunity to encourage creativity while meeting curricular goals. The rubric must focus on encouraging higher-order thinking as much as aesthetics or specific content.

Bloom B. S. (1956). Taxonomy of Educational Objectives, Handbook I: The Cognitive Domain. New York: David McKay Co Inc. 
 
Entertainment Software Association. 2013. Games: Improving Education. Retrieved from http://www.theesa.com/games-improving-what-matters/education.asp

NeoK12. 2012. About Us. Retrieved from http://www.neok12.com/aboutus.htm

Enabling Dreams

The goal in my classroom is to teach students how they learn. This is particularly challenging as everyone learns differently so we would have to explore several methods (Gardner, 1999). After that comes the curriculum, which was Pre-Algebra last school year for me. While I only grade students on meeting curricular goals, these goals will be attained much more easily the more students develop as learners. While I have specific methods for assessing student learning, I believe that I could easily completely flexible for a student that uses Assistive/Adaptive Technology (AAT) or requires some specific accommodation. My grading system is based on homework, in-class work, and assessment and any of these areas could allow accommodation.

It is particular challenging to develop a lesson in advance for all students with AAT as each student will require unique accommodations. I will focus my lesson plan suggestions on students with fine motor control-based disabilities such as cerebral palsy. Many students that use AAT have at least moderate access to and abilities to use text and video computer resources. This opens up a broad world of alternative assignments. As an alternate to many in-class paper assignments, I can allow a student to look up online resources that address curricular skills. Unfortunately, online access and computer usage is frequently limited on DOE campuses and the student may have to do these alternate assignments at home.
Certain activities in a math class involve time at the board. I would want to come up with alternate methods to involve this student such as allowing a partner to work at the board. On game day, I would have to make sure that the student that uses AAT is allowed to play a game that allows oral feedback in contrast to a game like darts.

One concept I would explore to replace homework is having a student that uses AAT gather and review games and similar resources that practice the skills we are covering as a class. While they may not be able to do typical worksheets and textbook work at the intended pace, they may be able to assess online resources efficiently. One drawback of this approach is that it requires regular homework to be completed by the student with AAT to keep up. In my experience, very few students do homework on a nightly basis.

My assessment is typically a battery of short topic-specific mastery tests that are offered individually as we cover the topic as a class. These tests are then provided in new versions to be retaken until students achieve a passing score of 85% to show mastery (Duckworth, 2008). These tests function both as formative and summative assessment. Students with AAT could easily be allowed to take these tests orally, receive extra time, or produce some form of project that conveys the skill.

I do have to be careful of accommodations given to students with no cognitive disabilities as not all accommodations are valid in their impact student ability versus a control group (Weston, 2002). While I may be willing to adjust my competency expectations for students with identified needs, a grade of "A" could not be obtained without a student conveying a thorough understanding of the subject matter.

As a teacher, it is my responsibility to give every student an opportunity to learn. I am only required to provide accommodations for students with identified special needs. However, I am willing to provide accommodations for any student that it appears would benefit from them so long as that student is still willing to put in work and can convey competency in the subject matter.

Duckworth, C. C.. 2008. Mastery Learning and Home Tutoring: The Power of 100%. Retrieved from http://www.masterytutors.com/articles/home_tutor.htm 

Gardner, H. INTELLIGENCE REFRAMED: MULTIPLE INTELLIGENCE FOR THE 21ST CENTURY. New York: Basic Books, 1999.

Weston, T. J.. July 2002. NAEP Validity Studies (NVS) Panel. The Validity of Oral Accommodation in Testing.

Fun with Unicorns

Here's one tool that I'll have to think about more before I use anything like this in my classroom.

Post ONE: Taking the Blog for a Testdrive

This is my first time on blogger.com. I've got a little going on my Wordpress, but that tends to be of a political nature.

This blog will be about Educational Technology. It will be a learning experience for me and, hopefully, for you. I have typically been of the opinion that newfangled technology is of little use in the classroom and I have been critical of over-emphasis on the use of new technology in the classroom. I believe the shortcomings in our classroom to be primarily related to two issues:

1. Excessive focus on memorization
2. Lack of focus on actual thinking and problem solving

Those two shortcomings result in boring the students and decimating their innate ability to solve problems. While most students will need technology skills in our increasingly digital world, I believe they will learn most of these skills in their recreational time--as I learned HTML and lightweight programming in mine.

However, I consider myself a lifetime learner and that means I have to be open to the idea that my preconceptions were incorrect. So this summer and next school year, I'm going to give some educational technologies a chance. The class I am currently enrolled in has a focus on Internet tools an integration--strictly software based. However, there are also many hardware bound considerations such as projectors, Elmos, smartboards, smartphones, laptop carts, digital cameras, digital camcorders, and more.

From what I can gather, these tools are primarily useful for engaging students. If that means they'll learn more, then I should use them.