"Word Invasion" Reflection

As a teacher in training in an age of technology, it is important to exercise the skills that the technology entails.  These skills include being able to locate and evaluate various resources that can help students in their learning.  The educational online game project helped me to exercise those skills.  Finding a game to evaluate was more challenging than I thought.  I went through dozens of pages trying to find a suitable game whose evaluation would benefit the class as a whole.

However, once our game, Word Invasion, was found, we discovered that the rubric was even more challenging!  We had to ask ourselves what characteristics a successful and entertaining educational game would have, and that required quite a bit of thinking.  We had never thought so deeply about the qualities of a game before.  Most of us had only ever played games, without thinking of the benefits that the games might be lending to our growth or learning.  Looking at the game through the eyes of a teacher rather than through the eyes of a player suddenly made the game a lot more complex.  Different aspects had to be taken into account, such as how well the game would hold a child's interest, or what levels of thinking were being activated as a child played the game.

I learned throughout this project that as a teacher, I must always be thinking of the ways a certain activity or resource might improve student learning.  I feel that even when I am not teaching, my mind must always be open to new ways and new resources that might help.  While I am online browsing the web recreationally, the teacher mindset should always be open.  I am learning through the classes that I am taking that teaching is a full-time job, in a sense.  Thinking of new ways to teach and to help students learn will take up hours of time outside of class, which was evident in the amount of time it took to find our game.

The game itself I found to be a useful resource, at least for practice.  Using incentives for students such as prizes for whomever gets the most points in the game is a great way to use the game in an English classroom.  It would entice the students to study and practice.  Even as an English  major, I found that I needed a refresher course in prepositions and adverbs.  In this way, the game serves as a useful assessment tool as well.  It could be modified to serve as a sort of pre- and post-test in a classroom to gauge student progress.

Overall, I believe this project was a great use of my time in Educational Technology class.  It emphasized the importance not only of using technology, but of the ability to evaluate resources found online.  This skill is invaluable in this age, when anybody and everybody can put information on the internet.  Understanding the difficulty concerned with this will help me to manage my time more efficiently when I become a teacher.