Week 3 - 6/16/2017

The article I read this week was incredible and spoke to concerns I have daily in teaching. The article was titled, “Classroom Gaming Should Be Engaging, Tied to Curriculum—and Not Require Teachers to Code”.

There are so many teachers who have technology in their classrooms and are missing out on incredible benefits from it. I do not completely blame them for this though. There are opportunities for professional development to take place on such topics, and there just is not enough time for technology when it comes to some school’s agendas. Some school’s might not have the staff to provide the professional development, as well. On the other end of that, I have sat through fantastic professional development sessions that have the potential to encourage and educate teachers on more effective and useful ways to incorporate the technology and only a portion of the staff are actually engaged.

What Not To Do:

-Do not choose games that are only loosely connected to the curriculum. These may not provide any instruction and end up being more work for the teacher.

-Choose games that can be implemented to support instruction taking place.

-Make sure the educational games being used are not focused more on the design and graphics. This is not the priority of educational games! Games should be visually appealing, but more importantly educational and beneficial.

Making Games Relevant and Accessible:

-The games chosen need to have a natural fit into the lesson or class period. Games shouldn’t need weeks of play time to accomplish a goal, complete a level, or master a skill. Realistically, that is not how it works in the classroom.

For a month, 900 middle school science games were launched to measure the engagement, efficiency, and benefits of them. The teachers noticed a remarkable difference in the students engagement level as well as success in the material being taught.

This is a table directly from the article. The staff voted and these are the five top picks for science games among the teachers. All of the listed games are free!

Game	Learning Objective	Activity
EcoKingdoms: Growth of Populations	Life Sciences: Factors Influencing Growth of Individuals and Populations	As a park manager you will make choices that impact the number of visitors in the park, the plants, animals and park funds.
Evoluti.io	Life Sciences: Reconstructing Evolutionary History Using Fossils	Game players explore evolution firsthand.
Lightventure	Physical Sciences: Wave Model of Light	Features campers who change light beams from emitters to receivers.
Walter’s Travels	Earth and Space Sciences: Eclipses and Seasons	Takes you through a quest to gain knowledge about the solar system and eclipses. A longtime favorite of the Legends staff.
What’s Your Reaction	Physical Sciences: Newton’s Third Law	Players meet the historic scientist Isaac Newton and help him get to a party.

Moral of the story: If you use gaming in your classroom, which I highly recommend, make sure it fits in your class period, directly aligns to your standards and objectives, and focuses on the student’s success not the design or graphics.