A Serious Game that students can play off class

I chose the game named "third world farmer".This game contains knowledge of different vocabulary, and can foster students' sense of mathematics. In this game, there are two adult farmers and their children, and they can give birth to newborns according to the players' will. There are several fields that players can plant different kinds of crops. But a player have to use the limited amount of money to buy some crops and plant them. When the crops have been planted, players have to click the button on the upper right side to let time goes by. One year goes by very quickly and the crops are ready to be collected. On the screen we can see the details about what happened during the year and the amount of money the we made by selling the crops. I played the game for sixteen times and I found that even though this game is simple, it can teach us a lot of knowledge. First of all, there may have some unfamiliar words to the learners, thus they will get to know the words by playing this game. Moreover, this game teaches us to balance the population and the annual income of a family, and teaches us to consider the situations of weather and the country's economy. Students can not only learn language through this game, but also can learn some skill of mathematics and whole-picture consideration. This was the first time I played it and my farm was in poor management and money became less and less. This game is not to easy to play and calls for some strategies.

Students will learn more than they can get n a classroom. Such as the decision making about what crops should plant and how many money should they spend, and even whether the two farmers can have another baby or not. This game is a kind of simulation game which teaches players about the knowledge of management.Thus, the objectives of playing this game can be learning new words relating to the farm work, as well as learning to manage and balance the expense and income.

For the words part, I shall use a simple quiz to assess their master of those new words, or let them  to write a report of their farms' benefits. For the management skills, I can see who earned the most amount of money after a certain period of time. And also, students have to write a reflection about what they have learned from this game.

Let Us "Escape The Room"

As i learned the term gamification, I knew that it has been defined in a number of different ways.

"Wiki defines Gamification as the infusion of game design techniques, game mechanics, and/or game style into anything. This definition is purposely broad to support the many uses of the word outside of the context of business." Games can be attractive and make students feel engaged, which can help them learn and practice. Games are primarily valuable due to the emotional responses they evoke and the experiences they engender in their players.Franciosi suggests that "both casual games and serious games can play arole in second language development. He states that arcade type or flashcard gameswould work well for practicing discrete subsets of skills because they tend to be repetitive andrequire players to practice isolated or very small sets of skills, and comewith the added benefit of a dynamic, computer-mediated interaction thatsupports flow. On the other hand, role play games, strategy gamesor simulations can be used to integrate skillsin holistic problem-solving activities." From his article we can learn that gamification in education is also rational and important. 

The game I played is named "The Ballard of Ketinetto 7 ".It is an "escape" game, which I found a little bit difficult and asked for patience and intelligence to perform. I played it for a long time but still cannot "escape". The learning objectives can be learning new words from the walkthroughs or learning how to write a walkthrough by playing escape games. Students are asked to play the game in pairs under the guidance of the walkthrough, and because the game itself is very interesting and engaging, students are easily get involved. As teachers, we can choose a game that has vocabulary which is relevant to the needs and level of the learners, and guide the learners to play the game step by step. A walkthrough is a step-by-step solution to the game, and I will use it either as a guidance when students are playing the game and meeting with some difficulties, or as a post-game review to help students learn the language in the walkthrough. Using images from the game can be great helpful because the images are vivid explanation about each step we should take. I will use images when showing learners what to do next. The simple way to assess weather the objectives have been meet is to give out a little quiz about what we learned on the class, perhaps it is a quiz about new vocabulary or new sentence structures. 

 

How Should We Use Twitter For Professional Development And Teaching

As technology developing rapidly, using lots of Internet tools for educational purpose are not unusual. In the learning of this mod, I learnt about how to use micro-blogging, namely Tweeter, to improve teaching competence.

In the article named "using Tweeter for teachers' professional development", the author mainly talked about using Tweeter for personal use. As a PLA, Tweeter act an important role in professional development. We can get suggestions, resources, answers, and supports from following others on Tweeter, and also we can give offers, encourages, and answers by writing tweets. Further more, I have learnt that there is a tool named Tweeter lists, where I can find tons of lists of people in educational field who share newest resources with the world. I can either subscribe the lists I am interested in, or follow someone inside the list to keep myself being updated about the latest news, resources, links, researches, and many more areas that I am interested in.

"The best way to get the most out of Tweeter is to use it."I learnt that lots of people stop at following and reading, but the best way that can benefits you is to really use it. Tweeter has so many functions waiting for me to exploring. As using Tweeter, I am sharing while learning, reading while writing. Not only my knowledge database can be broaden, but also the writing skill will improving over time. 

Although I am a new user of Tweeter and there are still lots of things that stay miserable about it , I believe Tweeter is a great help and resources for my own professional development.

Join a Twitter Chat

This is the first time I learnt that there is a Twitter chat for people to communicate online.I joined the group named "Education Chat" that began from 12 pm on Tuesday.To write a Tweet and join the conversation,I should add a hashtag "#edchat" for everyone else in the group to see my Tweet.I asked a question but maybe because I joined suddenly and all others were busying talking,no one replied to my question.However,I can read others' micro blogs and their conversations and discussions about a certain topic raised by someone in the chat.I saw someone asked what will happen if we let blogging be a part of CCSS. And some people thought it should be put in the CCSS. Although sometimes I can not follow their thoughts because so many people were talking, which made it a little messy, I still found the Twitter chat is a great way to sharing and learning from others, who may be the experts in your interested field. Further more, I can not only find people talking about their thoughts, but also they sharing some useful links in their Tweets for participants to read and refer. Here we can find tons of worthy and helpful information filtered by others, which is much better than you spend years finding something in the knowledge of sea online. People sharing everything they think useful for educators, talking about their thoughts regarding to a specific topic, discussing about different opinions in the Twitter chat online. Thus, as a new in this field, I definitely will learn a lot from theirs thoughts and experiences. If I keeping join chats like this, I believe it will help me significantly in improving my teaching proficiency.

Social Networking in Education

After I learned the importance of the theory of connectivism,I joined a networking community named "Classroom 2.0".And I found it significantly helpful in sharing and learning with others.

I can find lots of videos made by other members in this community.The videos are mostly about different lessons given by others.By watching these videos I believe I can learn tons of new knowledge about education.There is also a forum in which members can posting their opinions and discuss with each other,in order to sharing and learning.There are also different groups of different sub-fields,which facilitate every member coming with their own specific interested field.Members are all willing to share what they know, and there is a great amount of useful information on the website waiting for me to discover.I can learn from people who are far more expert than me in this social networking website.Further inspection is needed to utilize it to the most.

A learner is like a...

As the article named " A Learning Theory for the Digital Age"says, "Learning is a process that occurs within nebulous environments of shifting core elements – not entirely under the control of the individual."In my point of view,a learner is like a computer,which needs a "programmer" to input some programs for it to function appropriately,in order to give it the ability to resolve problems independently.Like a computer,a learner firstly needs a teacher to instruct him how to learn before they gain the ability to learn from outside world by themselves.

After reading the passage and listening to the radio,I learned a new concept--connectivism."Connectivism is the integration of principles explored by chaos, network, and complexity and self-organization theories."Like what I said above,a learner is like a computer because s/he needs teachers' instruction of how to learn on their own, and every learner needs to connect to each other as well as the overwhelming information around the world,in order to learn from cooperation,not only with other individuals, but also with organizations.As professor Siemens said in the radio "What is connectivism","we have a need to socialize and negotiate around knowledge." Definitely, today's world is a brand new one in which connections are indispensable,this is true in every field,including education.Because the amount of knowledge today is remarkably large,so we cannot continue the independent learning method any longer.Learners should alternate their primary learning theory and adjust to a new theory which is more fitful into this new digital world.Namely,connectivism. Through cooperating with others,we learn faster,much efficiently.