Software, Apps and Gaming in the Classroom

Strategy 5: How to Use Gaming

(The Last Backpack Generation)

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Children LOVE games. Especially now in this digital age children are obsessed. My 3 year old cousin always grabs for my phone as says "games games games." I also bet everyone has that younger cousin, niece or nephew that always wants your phone and says, "Do you have games?" With this new "innate" interest in technology and games, it is important that educators bring students' lives into school to create relevance and motivation.  Educational games provide teachers with new ways to facilitate learning and students with new ways to learn.  An effective educational game will provide a platform for active learning, teach goals, rules, and how to problem solve. I believe it is important to infuse games with traditional learning to create a blend between the digital age and schools. 

Exploring Problem Solving with Software, Apps, and Games (TNLT Ch 7)

Educational software, apps, and learning games support and promote problem solving and inquiry-based learning by K–12 students.

Something that stood out to me in this chapter was coding and computational thinking. According to our textbook, "coding is the act of programming a computer using written instructions." Through coding, students learn how to control or direct what they do with a computer which is known as computational thinking is developed when students learn to code  (Maloy, Verok, Ruth-Ellen, Sharon, & Woolf, 2017, p. 161).  When students engage in coding, they envision a project, write instructions for a computer to follow, and they keep rewriting and revising the codes until their vision is on the screen. From envisioning a project, making certain actions and sequences happen by writing instructions for a computer to follow, and revising or changing those instructions as needed, students practice how to read and write code to see their creative ideas appear on screen. Coding also involves the application of math and "this broader understanding of mathematics has applications in engineering, physics, design animation and movie making, and, best of all, in using the language of code for one’s own purposes to invent and revise" (Maloy, et al., p. 161). 

This part of the chapter reminded of something done at my student teaching placement. My 7th graders were brought down to the STEM lab and participated in a "hour of code" where they coded a dance party. The teacher used the website called https://code.org/ and introduced coding and computer science to my students. During the lesson, students were extremely engaged while designing their dance party, picking out the songs, and then showing their dances to each other. I went on the website to do further research and discovered it has unit plans, resources for teachers, and individual lesson plans for elementary, middle, and high school. I feel this was an excellent resource to share with you guys regarding computer science. According to the website, Code.org provides the leading curriculum for K-12 computer science in the largest school districts in the U.S. Below is a video from the lesson my students did; it is very interesting and I high recommend you watch it: