Gaming and Learning

I watched this video and from it stemmed many ideas...

http://blog.ted.com/2011/01/14/gaming-to-re-engage-boys-in-learning-ali-carr-chellman-on-ted-com/

Firstly, I agree with many of the points the speaker makes.  Second, she mentions how many boys are diagnosed with ADHD compared to girls, which confirms what I have been thinking ever since I heard of the disorder: they are just being boys.  Obviously there are people who actually have ADHD but it is tough to diagnose a little boy with it because that's just how little boys are--endlessly active and energetic.

Also, a few games came to mind that can be played in school or outside of school.  One is called Machinarium and it is a computer game where you play as a robot and make your way through levels by solving problems and algorithms.  It is neat, different and addicting, and I can see a good educational use for it in 7-12 grades.  Another game I thought of was Spore: it is a game where you begin as an single celled organism and grow into a real organism where you move from the more savage creature stage to the tribal stage to the civilization stage to the space stage.  Every time the game is played it is different because gamers have to choose what their character will look like, what his demeanor will be (do you fight your neighbors or ally them?) and choose whether characters will be carnivores, herbivores or omnivores.  I can see a game like this being played at the 4-8 grade levels.

Rather than fighting this new technology why not embrace it and mold it to be educational, revolutionary and fun?

Kist 1

    Prior to reading "The Socially Networked Classroom" I had not thought about how to incorporate twitter or facebook or other social networking sites into classroom lessons.  Now, I am considering ways for students to use social networking for education rather than just after school for fun.  Perhaps after reading a play, like Macbeth, students could be assigned a character to make a facebook for; they could write short descriptions for what is known about the character and use a bit of creativity to supply the rest of the information.  I'm realizing how many possibilities there are for social networking in the classroom and am interested to hear others' ideas.
    Going along with incorporating a more modern approach to education is the idea of the multi-genre literacy presentation.  In making my presentation, I realized that books and television made up for most of my interests growing up.  Obviously, that is not the case for everyone; I'm sure music and computers had a larger influence on other people.  Before assembling this presentation I had not considered how someone's upbringing could have been heavily influenced by music and how this could be incorporated in education.  I will definitely assign my students to assemble their own multi-genre presentations in my classroom so they can have similar revelations and share what molded them.
  Additionally, I had not thought that movies could be taught like books, although I saw the importance of movies.  Why is it that English classes never teach movies to students? The only time I have seen a movie in an English class was when it was the movie version of the book or play we had just read.  I am excited to read the teaching film book to get study guides and ideas about how to teach great films in my classroom.