My ICT Learning Journey

Already from the outset of this module, at the course briefing – we were told that this module is not one that will train you up in various technologies – it is not a course to teach you about technology, rather it is one that will give you different mindsets and engaged learning methodologies to use in the classroom.

I must say that this course has indeed been one of the most interesting ones that I’ve taken at NIE thus far and the thought of taking a part time degree in ICT has even crossed my mind right now. I used to be one who was quite interested in IT when in Secondary 1 and 2, dabbling a lot with HTML and Programming codes and very interested in learning new technologies. Now I realise of course how limited my scope of knowledge about IT was at that time and this module has definitely broaded my understanding, but more importantly how ICT can play an important role in education – not just as a means of excitement. A thought for the future then…

Just some reflections on this course then:

How do you think your tutor has attempted to engage you in this course? Which of these strategies will you use in the future and why? [I've integrated both these questions into one reflection. It's easier to organize.]

One thing which I found very engaging for me in this course was Dr. Tan’s upkeeping of his own course blog which he updated relatively frequently. For me, this played a few functions.

Firstly, it kept me engaged in the whole issue of ICT in education not only during that Monday 0830-1030 slot, but it kept me interested in it throughout the week, especially when he updated his blog entries. The blog entries were very interesting – short and sweet, linking me to many other sources of information for ICT in education (i.e. podcasts, other blogs, wikis, etc.).

Secondly, to me, it was a form of modelling as well of how I could use a blog in the future to help my students to continually learn beyond the classroom – with short entries, but thought provoking ones, relevant to their own blogs and also to the issues being taught during the week. In his blog, he responded to our reflections and answered questions we addressed. There was a dialogue being generated across blogs – one which was productive and engaging. I really am going to think about when I start teaching. It is a form of engaging my students beyond the classroom, especially for a subject like Literature and English where there is potentially so much to explore beyond the 4 walls of the classroom. So I really have to thank Dr. Tan for that!

Now, about the classes themselves – I would say that engagement has come to us primarily through this idea of ownership. Taking ownership for our own learning – through the group demos, our wikis and our own blogs. The group demos were really challenging in terms of thinking of which technology to use, then coming up with a demo and a lesson idea. I felt that the lesson idea was definitely the most interesting part, but I liked it as well that we had the opportunity to develop this idea continually through the semester from the moment we started our wiki to our current lesson ideas. We built on the idea as we got increasingly exposed to more and more aspects of ICT not just in terms of tools, but mindsets.

Added on to this idea of ownership is that idea of collaboration vs. cooperation (though this was not emphasized that much in the course). I guess this idea of collaboration is a general one which spans across all modules as we are doing tonnes of group work. I liked how Dr. Tan encouraged us to do a lot of group critiqing to help refine our ideas and clarify our presentations. Unfortunately though, I’m not sure if I am accurate to say this – the collaboration element across groups did not come out as strongly or effectively during the group demos portion. I would have liked it if there was more active dialogue across groups to help build on, edit and modify each other’s ideas.

Dr. Tan mentioned that ICT has a powerful element of collaboration in that it allows for more effective meeting of minds - which I definitely agree 100%. Not just that it takes away the prejudices and hindrances that real world communication allows, but it is also that element of convenience. In our “busy” world today, meeting up is often such a difficulty – what more meeting up to discuss and exchange ideas is time consuming. Imagine how with ICT – you can just put an idea on a blog and after going through your whole day, you can have at many different suggestions on how to improve your idea – without having to arrange for meetings with many. This idea was definitely something which Dr. Tan tried to encourage and something I will try to do in my classes in the future. In addition to encouraging class rapport and building class spirit, I want to think of how to use ICT to generate a meeting of minds beyond the classroom.

As I end this reflection, I just want to bring up something which I will carry with me into my classrooms when thinking of using ICT – the MEET continuum.

In Dr. Tan’s blog entry, he highlighted that there are 4 levels of use of technology - to motivate, to enhance, to enable, to transform.

Prior to coming to this module, I’ve always thought of ICT simply as exciting and different – something which wil generate buzz in the classroom and engage them through the element of fun and newness. Now I’ve started to see the greater dimension of ICT. ICT can be used to motivate, enhance and enable – because we don’t always have to use ICT on a large scale, over a long period of time, but if we were going to use it to transform, then I believe that we have to meld it with an engaged learning approach.

Dr. Tan shared during the summing up of the lesson idea presentation that engaged learning often takes place over a long period of time, whether it is project based, inquiry based etc. The approach we want to use must come first, not the technology. Using ICT in the classroom is not about introducing technology to our classrooms, but rather about becoming better teachers through the use of ICT. Our teaching approach and philosophy must come first. My time in NIE is a time for me to develop my own personal teaching philosophy as I enter into the schools and I shall now incorporate what I’ve learnt from this course into my philosophy.

You watched the video on iN2015, read the resources on Second Life and experienced it, and visited the COTF. What sort of impressions, fears, or possibilities crossed your mind?  What is learning like in the COTF? What might learning be like in Singapore in 2015?

The future belongs to the next generation!

Classroom Management

I remember when I was undergoing a course in the army, the Company Tactics Course – Heucampus was a technology that was widely used. It was nice to see it being implemented again in the CoTF as a tool that might be used in the classroom in the future. (It made me think as well – is the SAF advancing faster than MOE in terms of using technology?)

However, one of the key fears that I had and a reservation about Heucampus was the possibility for distraction in the classroom. Of course Heucampus has a function that enables locking of conversations, meaning prevention of conversations between people logged on to it but when that function is unlocked, it often results in a lot of Heucampus conversations where people were not paying attention to what was going on in class and it created a lot of distraction. Of course, the fact in itself was that the lesson was already not engaging, which created greater impetus for students to be distracted. Other dimensions of classroom management come into play then.

Click here to read more

[Just to preface this post, I spent an hour trying to embed a video properly into an edublog post and apparently you need to embed the video LAST and publish immediately after embedding it if not something will go wrong. Technology can be so unpredictable and inexplicable at times.]

This week marked our first session on 21st Century learning environments where we were introduced to Second Life and then told to go back and watch a video on the Education opportunities that Second Life offers.

What struck me during our lesson on Monday was what Dr. Tan shared with us about people who are disabled having a full life through Second Life.

You know how we always talk about how kids nowadays spend too much time on computer games and internet, chatting on MSN instead of meeting ‘real’ people – and we see this as a disadvantage of IT - in that it reduces the ‘human touch’. I am guilty of that too, in a post I wrote earlier.

I realised that I somehow forgot to see that there might be many out there for whom the technology offers them something that they cannot do physically, which is to even have a normal life. Dr. Tan shared with us about autistic people having a full life through Second Life and people who have been  handicapped to the point that only their eyelids can move or hands can move having a life again through Second Life. It really put things in perspective for me.

The opportunities for education are just abundant!

As I was watching the video that I’ve just embedded, I became fascinated. The starting line was already interesting – “Welcome Second Life – where learners become immersed in their own education.”

In Second Life, it really becomes a place of where learners take full control of their learning within a learning environment created by the teacher. Whether it is a role-play or following an online tutorial or doing a scavenger hunt, the learner is central in controlling his or her own pace of learning.

Most importantly, Second Life offers experiences not possible within the classroom and most importantly – not possible AT ALL in real life. Experiences like entering into a painting, or entering into a cell – these are things we can never do in the real world. It can offer us perspectives and experiences that we can never replicate in real life.

I can imagine an art teacher using this to allow her students explore the world of a painting by Dali and to really ‘experience’ the art not just as a viewer, but as someone who is part of the painting. Or even myself as a literature teacher, creating one of the fantasy worlds in a novel where students can go around on an investigation and a quest for knowledge. These were many ideas sparked off by the video.

This seems to me to be an extension of game-based learning, in the sense that you are now in a world that is governed by the same or similar rules that our real world is governed by. In a game, although yes it does attempt to replicate reality to a certain extent, the result of your actions is still largely governed by a set of programming codes and expected reactions. In Second Life, however, the world is virtual, but the reactions of those around you are completely ‘human’ – and that adds so much more to the learning.

My perceptions of ICT are really changing as the module progresses.

When I first started, I saw ICT as a tool to enhance learning – as a different means of expressing what we do in the classroom, a different platform for students to learn and do what we do in the classrooms, just in a different way.

Then we moved on to game-based learning, where ICT became not just a tool or a platform, but it became a mindset – a mode of thinking. Game-based learning draws on the language and mental structures that kids have become accustomed to.

And now we’re looking at ICT as a mode of living and interacting – as a means not just of offering another mode of teaching, testing or thinking, but another avenue for living another life!

This surely has great implications for us in this new generation where we can supersede our own physical identities and experience what it is like to be a person of a different gender, a different race, a different nationality. I’m excited to see what else we’ll be uncovering about Second Life in the weeks to come.

I just wanted to briefly jot down some reflections today on the Demo-Project - mainly two key learning points. What I learnt from it (besides the obvious learning of a new form of technology):

• How to teach a technology to a class, which I realised is very different from learning one.

  Coming up with the job-aide and thinking through how to demonstrate the technology to the class made me consider various factors like how to ensure clarity of delivery of instructions and visual clarity of how to navigate the interface, what features to teach and what ‘materials’ I need to prepare for the demonstration.

• Thinking of using technology to transform learning.

  The demo lesson ideas portion really stretched my thinking beyond just putting in a technology into a classroom but really using the technology to change the mode of learning of the class. I especially liked the idea of the history lesson that we planned because it integrated various elements of engaged learning, in particular small elements of cognitive apprenticeship where students take ownership to teach the class and also project-based learning where they have to construct something entirely new based on what they have been exposed to in Blackbox.

Why is technology necessary in our classrooms today? Why do we need to have a whole module dedicated to ICT in NIE instead of just introducing it in the various modules?

These were questions that ran through my mind even before the module started and as I shared in my entry last week too – many of my friends who are “out there” in the teaching world have bemoaned that they are unable to use much of what they have learnt in the ICT modules in their schools. They go back to using Powerpoint for much of their teaching.

This week’s session really illuminated a lot of these questions and doubts today – through both the group demos and the sum-up session on educational gaming at the end.

We had a demo today by Terence, Frank and Jo-Ann on Comic Life, which I found very fascinating – the way you can simply paste in photographs into the comic boxes and add in comments. A very useful tool for story-boarding and teaching concepts through visual and verbal means. Definitely a tool I will consider using in my classrooms in the future!

Dr. Tan’s comments at the end was something which really struck me once again – that our youths today have to deal with media-literacy, they are handling a world where words are no longer the only way of conveying meaning, but there are so many other modes of representation they have to contend with and these modes interact in ways that generate new and often varied meanings. This is what our youth need to learn today – and creating these forms of media is the best way to teach them the underlying assumptions and thought-processes behind generating these media.

This was the basis of my group’s podcast project as well which I was really thankful that it turned out very well, in terms of seamless integration from one portion to the next. I did learn a lot through this project too. We attempted to use this technology of podcasting to illustrate to our students how to interpret and create an effective piece of oral information.

More important than our students’ need to learn  about technology though, is the fact that technology helps us to relate to our students. As Dr. Tan highlighted, games are the culture and language of the digital native.

It’s not about communicating using the technologies, but rather using these technologies to reach into our students’ minds and bring them to the end-points that we want to reach.

In the summary session, our attention was brought to the fact that all students game.

A fellow classmate of mine raised the fact that in his school that was no foundation to start game-based learning as the teachers’ themselves did not engage much in technology and there was no strong ICT culture in the school. Then he was posed the question – are the students themselves gaming?

And of course, the answer is yes.

As much as we want to deny it, electronic games (computer, WII, PSP etc.) form an integral part of our students’ lives today. When I went to the schools for relief teaching or , almost 50% of the students had a PSP and the others were engaged in at least one or two other forms of online gaming or electronic gaming.

Games can then form an important part of the “language” we use to engage with our students. An example that Laremy pointed out was very illuminating too, about how his friend had to use the “language” of a game to explain to his students complicated concepts that they did not understand.

All our students are playing games and there’s a lot of thinking that they do when playing the games. If we as teachers are able to capitalize on this and channel that, structure it, scaffold it and bring our students’ attention to what they do and how they think when playing games, perhaps we can even increase their self-esteem, in the sense encouraging them that they can learn and they are not “stupid”.

It’s time for us, teachers, to keep up with gaming!

I’m quite keen now on the prospects that game-based learning can bring to my classroom. Of course – one thing I realise – it requires me to stay abreast with games as well! Dr. Tan mentioned that implementing gaming in the classroom requires not just superficial knowledge of games, but indeed deeper knowledge of games and even playing the games themselves! Something that I was very reluctant to do even as a student.

When I was a student, I was perhaps one of the strange ones who hardly played any games and when I went to University, I just found many other things to do. Now becoming a teacher, I realise I have to take a step into this gaming world and start to understand my students through this as well.

What an illuminating session these three weeks have been. Of course I still have many unanswered questions, but I might want to explore a game-based learning module for my student-centred lesson planning assignment. Let’s see how this will work out.

The value of online mind-mapping was made more apparent to me during our Ed Psych lesson this week, where we were supposed to churn-out a provisional mind-map for our problem-based learning activity.

We were going to use one of the flip charts and do a conventional mind-map when my team-mate, Jo-Ann, suggested that we could use bubbl.us to do it.

Upon using it, we started to realize how it really made the process much more convenient. We could easily add bubbles, delete bubbles, modify their arrangement and the hierarchies. Futhermore, it allowed for easy exporting into a jpg file which we could immediately send to our tutor.

Two features of bubbl.us stuck out the most for me from this use:

• The ability to share the mind-map with all your group members after the class instead of it being kept by one person if it were to be done on a paper.
• Its potential for collaborative learning. Though this ties on with the first point, but this mindmap is supposed to be developed over the series of weeks as we investigate deeper into our topic. Bubbl.us by allowing us to save and modify the mindmaps really aids in this process of collaborative knowledge-building and allows all members to access and see how our knowledge as a group on the topic is evolving.

Whether this potential for collaborative will be fully realized in the weeks ahead is yet to be seen. This shall be an experiment for me then, to see how the use of ICT will indeed enhance and transform my learning process for this PBL. The next step now then – to ensure all my team-mates get a bubbl.us account!

[Article available at http://schools.becta.org.uk/index.php?section=tl&rid=1859]

My key take-aways from these articles were from two main sections – the first was the ‘genres’ section which highlighted the many valuable aspects of each game and how they can function as a learning tool.

More important was the Issues for Classroom Use section, which highlighted the various things we need to take into consideration when applying game-based learning in the classroom. I just want to highlight two main areas which I felt spoke to me greatly.

The first point that struck me was this point the author made regarding thinking about appropriate content:

Will using the game provide benefits, such as engagement and subject exposition, which could not be more easily achieved in other ways? … Is it the game itself, particular elements of the content and interaction, or other functions?

It comes back to this idea of really evaluating and understanding the strengths and drawbacks of using a game (or whatever ICT tool for that matter) in a classroom. Does the game really offer an educational experience that cannot be achieved by other means? Is it really pedagogically effective? If so – what is it about the game that is so important and valuable in education? Which brings me to my next point…

The idea of focus.

In the final point on considering options available in the game, the author highlights that some games have many variables which you can edit. He mentions:

Where possible, reduce the variables, options and choices to enable pupils to focus clearly on the learning objective related to the game’s use.

Just like when asking students to use the internet for research, we must always give them guidelines and scaffolding. The same applies for games.

It re-emphasized the point that using ICT is not simply about transporting a new tool into a ‘traditional’ classroom setting. The game and the learning objective must map well onto each other and both have to be tailored to fit each other.

Games which have elements of strategy planning have a wide-range of aspects and teachers have to learn how to skew it down or ‘focus’ the learning of the game such that students know that they are playing to learn and they indeed learn something from it. It all boils down to quality lesson planning in the end.

The Human Touch to teaching

I was quite impressed this week with the ICT tools introduced this week, especially Yugma, which really seems to be a step ahead of other forms of net-meeting tools, allowing you to share desktops and co-edit documents online, though there is indeed the lag factor there that makes it a bit more tedious to use perhaps.

I understand the value of such a tool perhaps if students were distanced geographically, like Casey’s group suggested if a group of students were overseas on a field trip and wanted to report back.

But to use this as a “substitute” for students who are all in Singapore meeting up to work on something together?

I’m a bit more skeptical on that. As much as I agree that this is indeed a useful tool, I feel that somehow such tools are drawing us away from a more personalized, ‘human’ kind of learning community. I remember how during school days in the past we would meet up at our friends’ homes to do group work or meet outside to do work. Those were memorable times of interaction and bonding.

Imagine in the future with ICT, we wouldn’t have to meet up for group work anymore. All our future students would be doing is using such tools and collaboratively editing while facing their computer screens. Isn’t there a crucial aspect of education being lost there?

I did enjoy the games this week. Our group tried the WII Sports and I’ve played it a lot at home too with my cousin.

There’s just something about games that make the usually academically uninterested student become so involved and engaged. I remember my brother too when he was younger. He did not like to study, but when he started playing computer games, he would go online to search for the clues and hints, go and buy guide-books so that he will master the various techniques and then practise non-stop for hours on the game console so that he could win and advance to the next level. Similarly my cousin cannot sit down to read a book or study Chinese, but ask him to learn how to play Wii Sports, especially golf – which is a more complex game that involves understanding wind-speed, direction, and strength of striking – and he becomes so involved. He can spend hours just trying to figure out how to get his stroke right.

There is something about progressing to the next level and winning in a game that makes its goal much more tangible than studying a book or a text. The trick then is how to translate this into a learning experience.

The Wii Sports experience was fun and true enough you do need some practise to get better at it. But does it translate into actual “learning” of the skills in tennis, golf etc.? The Trauma Centre game was fun and interesting too – but have we learnt much about surgery after that? There seems to be something else needed to push these games beyond their mere ‘fun’ and ‘emotional’ value towards genuine learning.

If you ask me frankly now, all I remembered from the games was the fun and laughter the group experienced together. I don’t remember much of the information from the applet game we played regarding surgery. The question is – if indeed the students are engaged, will they be engaged in the game or engaged in the learning? Will they remember the game or what they’ve learnt from it?

Just some thoughts I’ve been mulling on after listening to some friends share from their teaching experiences. Few, in fact, have reported back positively on their use of ICT in the class. One or two have told me that they felt ICT ‘distanced’ them from their students and what they needed to learn, more usefully, was how to engage with their students face to face, without powerpoint slides or any other ICT tool mediating them. Another shared that when push comes to shove, traditional methods work the best! One even went so far as to say that student-centred methods are way over-rated. That’s indeed a dose of reality in the midst of all we’re learning about engaged learning and constructivism.

Well, I do hope that when I go out to practicum and to the teaching world, that I will truly make an effort to use what I’ve learnt to make a difference in my teaching. There’s more to it than I can understand at the moment… I’m glad we’ve started on this journey of exploration here in NIE.

I was listening to EdTech Talk’s feature yesterday on Educational Gaming in the Elementary Classroom and I was exposed to another aspect of game-based in learning.

In it, the guest-speaker Ted Turner speaks of how Webkinz has been used in his own home but also in many elementary classrooms. Much like the tamagotchi and neopetz craze a few years back, Webkinz is a virtual online environment where you buy a pet and take charge of nurturing and raising up the pet. Included in the game is also a system of earning new points and managing your points so that you can buy new items and improve the living conditions of your pets.

He then speaks of how the game allows for his own kids to learn skills that us adults handle right now, Maths skills and management of money and the value of items and how games teach kids responsibility because there is some practical end towards which they must pitch their skills towards.

He speaks of how a class teacher used this for her class as a class pet, over which they all had responsibility. They would take turns from week to week to take care of the pet and they had a blog as well, where each student would share their experience of taking care of the pet.

He also shared a situation where a girl, who was very shy in class normally, but extremely conversant in how to play and take care of a Webkinz, suddenly grew in confidence when the teacher asked her to teach the class how to use the programme and to actually be the one to steer this project. This confidence in gaming then spilled into greater confidence during class itself.

There is an element there that I took away with me and started to think about.

How using games actually adds an element of responsibility for learning and I’m referring perhaps more to a game like Trauma Centre, Webkinz, any Sim game (i.e. Sim City), RPG games etc. In those games, how you use your knowledge actually has a consequence that goes beyond performance in a classroom whether it is in grades or in terms of producing a project.

For example, in Trauma Centre, the way in which you use what you know and your ‘adeptness’ with the ‘equipment’ will result in you successfully or unsuccessfully operating the patient. If you don’t do it correctly, you have to re-do it – if you do it well, you get to move on to the next stage. Similar to games like SimCity, if you plan your city well, you will actually see it growing and prospering, but if you don’t, you will have a lot of problems to deal with and things to handle. It becomes a way of taking responsibility and also seeing that applying and mastering your learning has “consequences”.

Somehow games provide a very instinctive means for children to learn very “difficult”, high-level concepts like leadership and decision-making. In a very simple game like war-craft or Webkinz, the student is actually making a lot of decisions at every step to do with time management, management of resources, assessing of situation, contingency planning etc. And I believe a key role of a teacher in game-based learning now is really to highlight and bring out the learning value of these games to a student through scaffolding and post-activity review.

I don’t know if using a Webkinz and neopet for a class would work as well in Singapore, but definitely something along that line would be good for a class project where as a class, we would come together and take joint responsibility over something. Though I can imagine many parents “screaming’ at the teacher for making their students ‘play games’, I believe the benefits would be great. So many ideas now, how to implement them is the next issue to think about…

Today we had our first focus in integrating technology session where we had two group demos, following by a chance to experiment and try out different technologies. Besides the fact that the MxL was extremely cold (we were already warned though), there was indeed a lot that I took away from the lesson. I will attempt to frame as much as I can in the KLWQ model

K: What I already KNOW

Group Demos

• In terms of the group demos, I had already tinkered with both bubbl.us and google reader on my own – one for the use of my tuition (to help my student develop concept maps on quotations and goggle reader for my own blog monitoring). I can say I was relatively familiar with both technologies and was keen on seeing how my fellow student teachers would use it in a student-centred learning approach.

Game-based Learning

• In terms of game-based learning, I only heard about it briefly from NIE’s Club Jeux. I myself have introduced one element of this when I was first relief teaching – using a simple game of boggle in the classroom to teach students how to find words and then attempt to explain some of the more difficult words they idenfity.
• My own basic understanding of game-based learning is its introduction of an element of fun, competition and collaboration into teaching.

W: What I WANT to learn

Group Demos

• What advantages bubbl.us offers as compared to traditional mind-mapping/concept-mapping using mahjong paper and markers
• What advantages does Google reader offer compared to giving students a list of links within a discussion board?
• What are the contexts in which using Google reader would be advantageous? For example, not all areas of information/discussion require constantly updated info, so how would we make the most of the “push” system of updating in lessons?

Game-based Learning

• Is game-based learning just merely motivating （the lowest in Dr. Tan’s MEET continuum)? How does it transform learning?
• Are games really useful for learning rather than checking understanding? Meaning are they useful for acquiring knowledge instead of building and estblishingwhat is already learnt?
• What kind of games are available for us to use?

L: What I LEARNED this week

Group demos

Bubbl.us 

• bubbl.us features something which traditional concept-mapping does not allow – a function of saving mindmaps and sharing, allowing others to come into jointly create a mind-map. This brings in an element of collaboration, where others can add on to what has already been done or amend it based on understanding.
• It is very flexible but contains certain limitations like no copy and pasting, no change to the fonts etc. but those can be easily worked around. Its most flexible function, I believe, is that there is no space constraint. The concept/mind-map can be extended as far as you like and altered as much as you like.
• bubbl.us can then be implemented in lessons as a concept-map that is gradually built up through the term. Perhaps before a geograpy topic on volcanoes is taught, the students are asked to do a mind-map based on their little understanding and as the weeks go by, then go back to the mind-map they have started off with and continue to add on to it. This is certainly an element that traditional mind-maps on paper cannot do. There is an element of flexibility there.
• In terms of collaborative work, the teacher can provide a general framework for a topic and invite various groups to come in to add on to it. Perhaps to be used during an e-learning week. Instead of having students present what they have learnt on a discussion board, instead they can come into bubbl.us to create a collaborative mind-map (though the technicalities for that would be quite troublesome). It is a great tool for knowledge building.
•  From what I observed today, bubbl.us would not be a good tool to use for classroom activities, as firstly opposed to a traditional mind-map on mahjong paper, only one person can edit it at a time. Instead, it functions more usefully as an outside of classroom activity which can eventually be brought back in the form of a review or feedback session.

Google reader

• Functions I never explored before: It allows readers of articles to leave comments there. We can star articles and mark them out as ‘favourites’ if we find them particularly useful. As a teacher, we can prepare a list of subscriptions for our students to import in, so it’s a much less time-consuming way for them to read thru a list of links by centrally locating them within the reader.
• We can categorize the links that we have.
• The key feature of google reader is its “push” feature. Updates from websites come to you rather than you going to the site.
• Google reader itself however does not have a platform for discussion and it is necessary to create another discussion area like an LMS or a Face to face environment. This might be a bit of a limitation, in my opinion – but not something that is impossible to work around.
• I believe therefore that this would be good if as a teacher of English or GP, I wanted my students to monitor perhaps the development of a specific event, like the Beijing Olympics. During the duration of the Olympics, news articles would definitely be flowing in. Using the reader would then be useful for students to compile any necessary articles. Perhaps if different groups were assigned different ‘areas’ of the Olympics, the ‘categorization’ function’ would be very useful. They can group articles under “Political issues”, “Social issues”, “Sports issues” etc.

 Game-based Learning

On the games themselves

• The Wii allows for an element of realism which could be used for “training”.
• The game we tried out, Trauma Center, replicates the conditions of a surgery room in terms of the stability of hand needed and the ability to “handle” different surgical tools (injections, suturing, etc.).
• Game sites like freerice.com and arcademicskillbuilders.com focused on checking understanding and testing.
• On the other hand, a site like edheads.org focused on making students learn – using the concept of simple machines in a situated context. A very interesting context in that case of saving a lobster from being boiled alive.

On game-based learning (Based on observations and experiences)

• There is a certain amount of learning and “reading” required for some games, which users might find tedious. Certainly our group found the narration and the online tutorial for Trauma Center too tedious to go through, which led to us fumbling with the game when it started.
• The motivational and ‘exciting’ element of game-based learning is certainly there. The games were exciting and much more “colourful” than any class-based lesson.
• Collaboration takes place not only in terms of learning the topic, but also mastering the technology itself – learning how to handle the game, particulary true for the Wii.
• Game-based learning definitely integrates elements of goal-based learning too.

On engaged learning approaches

• There were certainly elements of cognitive apprenticeship and knowledge building in today’s group demos.
• I’m still uncertain as to what approach was used for the game learning, perhaps because it in itself is not a complete “unit” as it spans over a few weeks. As for now, I’m tempted to see it as anchored instruction? As we go around various stations attempting to explore what “game-based learning” is about, with that as the anchor.    

Q: What QUESTIONS I still have

• How does game-based learning effectively transform learning rather than simply functioning as a tool that is exciting and motivating?
• Does the ‘excitement’ then get in the way of effective learning? It is inevitable that students will be laughing and interacting with each other much more than in a traditional setting and perhaps that is a goal. But how do we ensure effective learning still takes place?
• The logistical issues for organizing a game-based learning session are indeed many. How to provide as many terminals for students to engage in the game? Do we need all students to engage in the game? Many of the Flash games were one player games, so how do we manage that if we were doing in a group setting? What would the members not playing the games do?
• What is a role of a teacher in a game-based learning setting? After a while it seems like the student becomes completely absorbed in the games and its hard to focus the attention back. Teacher control over the lesson becomes much less.