Learning through Gaming!?

Hello, all! This week for my Digital and Social Media class we have to play a game! Sounds like a weird/fun assignment, right!? I agree, it was fun, and it does have applications to what we are discussing in the class. We were to play the game Kingdom Rush and use our experience to relate it to learning.  Here is a little bit of my experience with this game:

I started play Tuesday night after class, and was really excited to start this game.  I didn't really know what it was all about or what we would have to do in the game, but I figured I would figure it out as I went along. Thankfully, they have some tutorials and initial information when you first start the game, so I found those to be really helpful.  As you go along during the battle, some more information pops up, too.  This was helpful, too, but I also found it to be a little stressful at the same time.  Some of the new enemies that it would pop up to say were being introduced weren't able to be killed by certain towers and methods that I had set up.  I would have to quick build a new tower, or use some of my reinforcements or upgrades that I had to be able to defeat them.  I also had difficulty figuring out how to build the towers or use the reinforcements at first.  I tapped on the flag to build the tower, but then thought, "now what?" It took me a few minutes to figure out that I had to tap it again to actually build it.  The same thing happened with the reinforcements.  The tutorial showed me how to do it the first time, but then I had forgotten how to do it the next time I went to use them.  I noticed that I would forget that I could use the reinforcements, the reign of fire, or any other upgrades and extras I had, so I would forget how to actually use them.  I think this definitely relates to learning as far as having the correct tools to complete the job.  We as teachers try to provide our students with as many tools as necessary to solve a problem or complete the task, but students often forget about these tools, or haven't used them often enough to remember how to use them.  Sometimes it takes a bit of trial and error, too, to figure some things out.  Like the tower building...nobody showed me how to do it, but after a bit of experimentation, I figured it out.  This happens a lot in learning.  I "failed" to build the tower or use the upgrades, but after that failure came success with the experimentation.  Failing leads to learning.

I am also very competitive and a perfectionist, so as I was playing, I wanted to get those 3 stars on every level.  I had the sound of the game off, but I left the vibration on so it would vibrate whenever one of the enemies had made it past the line.  When I felt this vibration, I felt let down. I knew letting one or two go would be ok, but if I felt any more, I would either start that level over, or I wouldn't have the drive to complete the level at my best because I knew I would want to do it over to get the 3 stars.  When talking about learning, the vibration is kind of like a formative assessment.  If no vibration is felt, I knew I was doing ok. I sometimes wasn't able to watch the line to see if any of them were going through because I was looking at another part of the map to build a tower or get some reinforcement to a certain area because there were so many enemies.  That vibration helped to know how I was performing. A lot of times, students will give up when too much "vibration" or negative feedback is given, which is kind of what I did when I would lose my drive to do my best, but ultimately I ended up doing it over to do better.  We need to encourage our students that the feedback is meant to help them and to not give up because of a "poor" performance, but to keep trying!  The stars can also be equated to grades.  The three stars is the highest, which would equate to an A.  Some people are satisfied with 1 or 2 stars and just passing the level (a B or C to pass the class), but, like I said, I'm a perfectionist so I wanted that third star, or that "A".  If I didn't get the three stars right away, I would replay the level and change my strategy so that I wouldn't let any enemies through that gate.  This could be thought of as retaking a test.  I didn't do as well as I wanted to, but I learned from my first experience and did something different and better on my second try.

I talked about gaming and "flow" in my last post, and I can say that I was in flow for at least the first time that I played the game.  I was so interested in how the game was played and figuring out the strategy part of it that I looked up at the clock and over an hour had already passed and it was time for me to go to bed! However, after the first experience with the game, I didn't really experience flow.  It got to be a little difficult for me, and I would get frustrated because I couldn't figure out how to stop some of the enemies.  When I got frustrated, I had to put the phone down and try again later.  I was stuck on one level for quite some time, and after our conversation about looking for help last week, I ended up looking for advice online. I even asked some of my gamer students, but they haven't played this game before so they were no help haha.  I usually try not to search for help in games, but if I'm stuck on something for a while, I want to know how to get past it.  I think this relates to learning as well.  I don't really see it as "cheating" as more of getting help.  I encourage my students to go out and find tutorials on how to solve certain problems if they are not understanding how I am teaching it.  I also know that the answers from some of the worksheets that I use are also online.  I don't mind them looking up the answers, as long as they show the work on how to get to that answer and can demonstrate they know how to do it.  I think this is the same for gaming.  I looked up how to do it, but ultimately still had to put that into practice and do it myself.

Learning something new always takes time.  Most of the time, it takes a lot of hard work, dedication, and failing.  This is what happened to me during this gaming experience. I failed a lot and had to have the dedication not to give up and keep trying.  Like I said in my very first blog post, I'm trying to instill this type of growth mindset in my students more this year.  Even though they might not get the results they wanted the first time, they still need to keep trying and work hard to figure out what to do in order to get the results they want.  I think I might even tell my students about my gaming experience and talk to them about how they think gaming relates to learning.  There are many parallels, and if they can fail and keep going in a game situation, they can do the same thing in the classroom!

Are any of you gamers?  If so, have you ever thought of how gaming relates to learning? I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Flow in the Classroom

This week and next week in our Using Digital and Social Media in Education class, we are discussing gaming in the classroom.  I used to be much more of a gamer than I am now.  I wasn't much into the World of Warcraft or anything like that, but I did enjoy playing video games with my dad and brother when I was growing up.  My husband and I have three different gaming systems at home now, but we unfortunately don't get a lot of time to play them.  I remember playing Crash Bandicoot and Mario growing up (and now on the Wii), and even Roller Coaster Tycoon on the computer, and being engrossed in the game for what could have been for hours. Time seemed to fly, and I always wanted to do that "one more level," or get passed that spot I was having difficulties with.  As I learned in my readings this week, this experience was called Flow.

I have heard and read about the concept of Flow before. A few years ago, I read "Drive" by Daniel Pink and he discussed Flow in there, too.  According to authors like Daniel Pink and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Flow is "when a person is completely involved in what he or she is doing, when the concentration is very high, when the person knows moment by moment what the next steps should be." (Edutopia interview with Csikszentmihalyi) This would be an ideal situation in education, but we don't really see this a lot in schools, unless it's maybe in a music or art class.  Most kids don't really get that Flow experience during a traditional math class. As I said before, I experienced Flow while gaming, and one idea that many have suggested to get students into the state of Flow is to introduce gaming into the classroom.

I see the perks of gaming in the classroom, and I also see the downsides to it as well. One of the benefits would be the immediate feedback.  In a game, you know if you're doing the right thing or not immediately.  This would be good in the classroom so that students know if they are correct or not right away instead of having to wait to get a graded assignment back. This is why games like Kahoot are so popular. It is a game, but also provides immediate feedback.  If you were to introduce a true gaming system in a class, however, a lot of students are not gamers, so it might be difficult for them to be excited about this way of learning. I've seen this with one of my colleagues' classes. She has tried to introduce Classcraft in one of her science classes, but the students weren't really buying into it and getting excited about it.  I think it might depend on the students and their personalities for how well gaming would work in the classroom.

Gaming and Flow are all about motivation. Flow would be more of an intrinsic motivator, while gaming is more extrinsic (at least to start) then could move into the intrinsic motivator if you experience Flow within the gaming.  Either way, it's motivation, and that is why gaming is becoming more popular in the classroom.  It's a way to motivate students to learn.  Some students may not be comfortable with the complete gaming experience, but I think introducing some of the parts of gaming into the classroom, like the badge system/"leveling up," could be a good motivator for some students.

What are your thoughts about gaming in the classroom and the Flow experience?

My PLN

Today, ladies and gentlemen, we will be talking about my Personal Learning Network (PLN).  Before my Digital and Social Media class, I had never really thought about my PLN, how big it was/was not, or how to expand it even more. As I began this project, I didn't really know where or how to start, or how I wanted it to look.  After looking at a few examples from The Big List of PLE Diagrams, I found a few that I liked, and created my own using some ideas from those examples.  As I started to create mine, more and more ideas of resources that I use kept popping into my head! Before I knew it, I had a huge diagram! It was cool to see how many resources I actually use in order to create lessons, gain new ideas, and just network with other teachers! Below is the link to my PLN map.

Melinda's PLN created on spiderscribe.net

As you can see, my PLN became pretty large with a lot of nodes branching out.  The way I did my PLN also just includes resources. If I would have included individual people within some of these resources, it would have been even larger! However, there is still more branching out and growing to do!

One way that I plan on expanding my PLN is to get involved with some more Tweetchats. I participated in the #iaedchat a few weeks ago, but have unfortunately not been able to join in on the conversation since then. I would like to keep up with that, plus find one or two specifically for math that I could join and get some ideas for my math classes through there.  I also really enjoy scrolling through my feed to find what other teachers who I follow have posted. I have gotten some really great ideas from them and have retweeted some things too, so that I can reference them again later.  As I get more involved in the Tweetchats, there will be more people who I can follow, gain ideas from, and have conversations with.

Another way that I plan on growing my PLN is to keep blogging! Like I said in my first post, I created a blog for an undergrad class, but I only did the minimum number of posts, and I never kept it up after that. I did create this blog for my Digital and Social Media class, but I am actually liking the experience this time, and want to keep it up after this class is done.  It is another way for me to share information with other teachers. I plan on sharing my blog posts on Facebook and Twitter so that more people can see them, and maybe I'll get some more followers and commenters on my blog! I get a lot of ideas from other peoples' blogs, so maybe someone could get an idea from me!

Outside of the technology world, I would also like to be more active when I go to teaching conferences.  I am a pretty shy person when I don't know people, so I tend to stay to myself or stick with the people who I went to the conference with.  In order to grow my personal learning network, I need to be more willing to ask questions and talk to other teachers at these conferences to gain new ideas and perspectives. We could also exchange contact information, or follow each other on Twitter so we can share some of those ideas quicker and easier.

Have I inspired you to create your own map of your PLN? Give it a try!

My Online Presence

This week for class our assignment is to Google ourselves! I have done this in the past, but new things have popped up since I did it last, so here is what I found:

There is another Melinda Tremmel, who is a clinical nurse coordinator in St. Louis.  Her LinkedIn page is the first link that comes up.  The second link that comes up is the one that intrigues me and surprised me a little bit! It says "Melinda Tremmel mug" from the Globe Gazette, the local newspaper.  I saw the "mug" part of it and automatically thought "mug shot," but I've never been arrested or anything like that so I was a bit concerned! I clicked on it, and it took me to an article that the paper wrote about the new teachers who came into the West Hancock district a few years ago. I obviously don't like the name that they called the photo, but the link takes you to a good article. A lot of other things that I found related to my wedding last year. There are a few photos from our engagement session and wedding that pop up from Facebook or the article from the "Celebrations" page of the newspaper, and also our wedding website from theknot.com shows up as well.  Since we are not in the wedding process anymore, I deleted my account from that website, which also deleted our wedding website. It will take a few days for the deletion to take effect, but after that, I wonder if some of those engagement pictures that were on there won't show up anymore on the Google search?  Along with all of these, the other links that show up are related to the people I know (people from my cohort show up in the pictures, so does my brother-in-law, and so do people who are related to newspaper articles that my name is mentioned in such as the girls golf photo taken last year when I was the coach), or people with either Melinda as their first name or Tremmel/Trammel as their last name. Other than the "mug" link, nothing really surprised me or stood out to me as "bad".

In order to protect myself and keep my online presence positive, I created a Google alert to alert me if my name is mentioned anywhere online. I've heard about this, but have never done it myself. I think it is a good idea! I also created an About.me landing page. Using this page, I updated my profiles on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn (which I always had, but never really used until now). Screenshots of what my updated profiles look like on these sites are below.
     

I also looked at the "10 Ways to Build Your Online Identity" article and used some of those suggestions to keep myself safe and build my online presence as well.  For example, I purchased my own domain name mtremmel.com through GoDaddy.  I have it linked to this blog, so if anyone types in mtremmel.com they will come here!  Also, if you are a member of the NEA, they have a great collaboration website for teachers at mynea360.org.  They have many groups to join, and one that I've joined and contributed to was Secondary Math 6-12.  They layout of these groups is similar to Facebook or Twitter, but teachers in similar areas are in the group and can collaborate together and share ideas!  I also wrote a couple of reviews for books that I've read and/or purchased about the education field on Amazon.  These positive posts and interactions online will eventually show up on my Google search later on and are proactive measures to keep my online presence positive.

Many of our students don't know the importance of creating and maintaining a professional web presence. It is very important to keep this image for getting jobs and references in the future. I plan on sharing this blog post and the ideas in it with my students to show them that even after you have a stable job, it is still important to keep that presence professional. I'm sure they have already, but they can Google themselves to see if anything negative comes up.  Usually, this is the first thing that employers do when looking for people to interview.  If there is anything negative that comes up (pictures or other things that they have posted), it would be a good idea to clean them up now! Creating your own domain name also guards and protects from online identity theft as well as being a good place to keep everything in one spot on your personal website. There are many other ways to protect yourself online, and I plan on sharing these with my students and future children.  What other things have you done to build your web presence and protect yourself online?