Session 10

This course ICT for engaged learning has truly engage me every single lesson. I still remember that I was stressed at the beginning of this course because of the overwhelming information in each 2 hour session. However, I find that coming to class every Friday at 8.30am is really worth it! I find this course truly beneficial for a non-IT savvy person like me.

Our course instructor Prof Ashley has put in a lot of effort to make each and every lesson an "engaged" lesson. He cleared my misconception of engaged learning does not mean fun learning. By the end of this course, I've realized that Prof had actually planned each and every lesson so attentively, hoping that we could pick up some of his engaging lessons, in an informal way, even without noticing it. For example, he introduced us the usage of PbWiki right at the start of the course and allow us to be familiarize with ICT tools such as doing a weekly blogging. He introduced us the various pedagogies approach and let us explore and discuss lesson ideas.

All of his lessons were designed in such a way that, firstly engaged us to our prior knowledge, his role was as a facilitator by giving minimal instructions and appropriate scaffolds, he monitors our progress, provided us opportunities to do group discussions and collaborations, coached us how to critique other people's work politely and lastly made us reflect what have we learnt from every lesson by introducing the KWLQ framework.

The most interesting part of this course is when Prof introduced learning through gaming and the James Paul Gee's 36 learning principles of games. I never thought that gaming also had a positive impact on students and that can be incorporated into lessons because I've not realized that the students out there in schools are a much more technology integrated generation. Using the traditional teaching method in classrooms might not be beneficial for them as in contrast was for my time.... long long time ago...

I've learned that for future generations to come, we will be teaching the digital natives generation and like it or not, we as educators really need to wake up and change our teaching approaches, just like what Prof Ashley said " We need to step out of our own comfort zone, in order to reach out to them!"

I've always ask my friends from other tutorial groups what they have been learning when my tutor was trying to expose us into games. Most of my other friends mentioned that their tutor just showed them how to use tools like Excel, and when I told them my tutor allowed us to play games, most of them were skeptical towards gaming and they expressed that I might be wasting my time in class. I was sad for them in the sense that they are missing something BIG from this course, but I can't blame them for their ignorance. Perhaps MOE should conduct more classes on educational gaming as well as the awareness of the digital natives to MASS prepare teachers with the adequate knowledge.

The list of ICT tools that I think are cool and I might use it in future:
1. Prezi (tried using, a bit complicated, will try next time)
2. Comic life/makebeliefs comic
3. mindmeister/ bubbl.us
4. google docs (very popular when doing group work)
5. dabbleboard
6. skype
7. second life
8. PbWiki

I will try to use all the strategies and ICT tools that I've learnt through this course appropriately in future.

Learning in the 21st Century

Based on the Intelligent Nation 2015 (iN2015) video , I was very amazed of what our environment will become. But I still have doubts, in the year 2015, which is only 6 years from now (2009), will technology have such huge impact to humans?

From the video, I find that the transformation in technology is very beneficial to the education sector where students seem to be more motivated to learn almost anything and everywhere through their hand held devices. I find that children has more flexibility in learning in the sense that they are able to learn at their own pace and what is relevant and meaningful to them. The hand held device that each student will own is an extremely a powerful tool that provides clear and accurate feedback to the students whenever they are in doubt. I do really hope that this situation will really happen in the future because there will be more student-centred activity in the classrooms and learning will be more engaging and fun especially for dry and abstract topics.

And I also like the fact that technology in the medical area is so advanced that there will be a heart-beat detector attached to wrist and will prompt warnings or feedbacks when senses danger.

However for the rest of the envisions, I find them very scary because perhaps I am not mentally prepared to be so dependant on technology to the extent that I will need to use sunglasses for various functions of communication such as book tickets and make invoice payments. It all sounds scary as if I will be in an alien world!

After visiting classroom of the future (COTF) last monday, I feel that MOE should really provided students with those hand held devices, simply because it is very interactive! As for the classrooms of the future, I realized that the teacher student ratio will be reduced and hence more teacher-student interaction will be available. I am also fascinated that the future classrooms equipped with full internet wireless condition where students will sit in a very comfortable air-conditioned environment for lessons. I just hoped that I was born later to get all those privileges!

Based on some readings, the digital natives craves for interactivty therefore the traditional teaching approach will be phased out sooner or later. The learning process of the digital natives is completely different to us due to the advancement of technology. It's just like a cycle, humans invent technology, technology changes the future generations of mankind (the digital natives), and now we as teachers need to change our teaching style to accommodate this evolution.

Second Life

Our ICT class entered another phase (3rd Phase to be exact)!

What is Second Life? Another chance of life? Well, sort of like that! Watch the video below and you will get the picture!



What I knew before this is that the virtual worlds made games possible. But I never knew that virtual worlds also do provide for us, humans to have another form of life (particularly the ideal life we want and not being able to have it in the reality world), the second life.

All you need to do is to just create an account and login to choose your avatar ! You may consider changing your appearance, be a microbe or giant, change gender, whatever you can do in real life, it is always possible to do in the virtual second life!

From the video clip, second life provides the opportunity for people from different locations all over the world to interact. One of the educational uses of this second life is to be able to attend lectures in second life at our own comfort zone. I think it is convenient in the sense that we don't have to travel far to classes and yet able attend lectures, through the lecture theater created in second life. However I felt that there is always a risk doing so, because what happens if the internet suddenly disconnects? I don't think the lecturer would love to wait for us to be connected again to continue his class. From this, we need to have a very stable internet connection!

For me, when my group was using the avatar of second life, at first we were so excited and enjoyed ourselves to this new virtual world! However, we realized that it was not easy controlling the movements of the avatar because I think the respond was a bit slow. After about 15 minutes, I felt a bit bored maybe due to the respond of the avatar or might be we had no goal roaming around the virtual world.

As prof mentioned, second life is not yet widely used (at least here in Asia), but will be the next "big" thing in future. Using second life would require the schools to upgrade their computers with a better bandwidth. Second life is very useful for areas that are hard to be carried out in the real world due to limitations such as time constrains, to save cost, for subjects that needs visualization such as Geography, Biology, Chemistry, Art etc.

Educational Gaming Part 3

Educational Gaming part 3 was the last session on using gaming as an educational tool, highlights that we need to step out of our comfort zone of teaching and try to integrate gaming into lessons for engaged learning. Students from the 21st century, also known as digital natives might not very receptive towards the traditional teaching method. Therefore it is up to the teachers to wake up and embrace this reality!

From the past 3 weeks of the educational gaming session, the games played in the MxL was of course based on one of the Gee's 36 learning principles on gaming. This man was trying to convey the message that teachers need to use the strategies in the elements of gaming, modify and integrate it into lessons. Why do students love gaming yet hate studying? If a teacher is able to identify the motivation force or strategy that captures the student's interest in gaming and use it to integrate into lessons, I think learning will be fun and engaging with less barriers.

However, I personally feel that it is not that hard to identify the key elements that attract students to play games according to Gee's principles, but it is difficcult to integrate gaming into lessons because based on our educational system, the environment still does not provide sufficient flexibility and resources.

Based on today's lesson, educational gaming benefits students in terms of 3 main areas such as cognitively, affectively and in pscyhomotor. The last gaming station visited was www.mcvideogame.com where I feel that it enhances our cognitive skills because as we played, we strategize and multi-task and use the limited resources provided to make the best out of the situation. As explained by Prof, when we play games, we tend to pick up skills that we do not even notice, so gaming benefits students subconciously. From this, I remembered a module that I took in NUS, Consumer Behaviour which focuses on the psyhcological core of the human mind. One of the topic was about we as humans are able to perceive information better at subconcious level, which explains why we tend to 'like' certain products over the same product line. Now it comes clear to me why the selection of content of the games played is important because if students are exposed to violent games too much, they might subconciuosly pick up negative elements, which explains why they behave in a certain manner. Since subconcious plays such a vital role in learning and predicting our choices, maybe somehow teachers can manipulate this strategy in teaching.

After the 3 sessions of educational gaming, I came to realize that gaming has a lot more benefits than I can imagine. Other than adding excitement to lessons, it promotes collaboration and enhances the problem-solving skills of students. Students can learn faster and better when playing Role-playing games because they are able to put themselves into the character's shoes and so the teacher can cultivate positive values among students. Some students might have a challenge managing their time if they somehow become addicted to gaming and here parents need to come in to monitor their kids.

Educational Gaming Part 2

Well, this week I've played the Nintendo Wii (sports/fit). There was this bowling game and how do we play it? Play it as if we are really in the bowling area! So cool! If I have a Wii at home, I can just practice anytime I want without going out of my house! Then we played a boxing game and another game that is testing on our balancing. So, I found out that the similarity across the 3 games was that it requires physical action as if we were playing the real game in a virtual world!
So i think that, this Nintendo Wii (sports/fit) might more be suitable for athletes for practice purpose to enhance their psychomotor skills and coordination! Well for people me who is lazy to go out to enjoy sports, Nintendo Wii gives me the opportunity to exercise at my own comfort zone. Of course there are also other benefits from this such as to inculcate the never-say-die attitude because we get to try all over again after game over!

Next we proceeded to station 5 where I've learnt that there are actually 36 Gee's learning principles of games! That's a lot but my group was focusing on the 9th principle: self-knowledge principle. Self-knowledge refers to one's particular mental state, including beliefs, desires and sensation. This principle is emphasizing on people learn more about themselves and their current potential capacities. For example, before attending today's lesson, all these while I thought that I could not play bowling well, but after the game session, I've discovered that I was able to score!

The article, How to choose and use appropriate computer games in the classroom, facinated me because I've always wanted to know what type of game is considered as educational and that has a balance of some aspects of fun and some aspects of engage learning. Because to me, students tend to be blinded by "fun" while gaming and end up learning nothing. From the article, countries such as the UK actually maintain a standard of the contents of games by filtering out what is considered as unsuitable using the PEGI scheme. Games are actually classified into different genres ranging from action adventure, management games, role playing games to world buiding games. So for educational gaming, it is important to note that content of the game must match the requirements of the curriculum of subject and the objective of the intended lessons. The game itself must be able to deliver a few functions to the players such as promoting team collaboration and has a few elements of the Gee's learning principle of games. Other issues that can be considered is the length of time taken to become familiar with the basic control of the game impact the time needed to address certain learning strategies. I also feel that games should have access to different levels of complexity and scenarios to test how far we can go.