Value of Online Games

Digital natives are attracted and motivated when interacting with media.  With the rapid increase of the internet, who knows of a child that doesn't like online games?  Not surprisingly, many children admitted to be addicted to online games.  This is a picture of my son's shirt (a picture says more than words).  This when we as educators need to take advantage of the situation by combining games and education, however how effective and appealing is this combination to children?



A recent study conducted by an operator of virtual education games, ITS (Intelligent Tutoring System), demonstrates this combination is a great opportunity to motivate, entertain, and improve student's performance.  The main components of an ITS are the knowledge, modelling, tutoring, and user interface domains.  In order for a game to be effective they need to have all four components.  Games are used as motivational tool they should not be used to replace instruction, but should only serve as a supplemental tool.

There are some disadvantages and one might be when students find it difficult to navigate through the game than it is to comprehend content, however great improvement demonstrate more an advantage compared to a disadvantage.  A very important note of educational games is that the greatest benefit is for those who need the most help, low performing students achieve more improvement.  Students that are good performers don't show much of an improvement, yet most importantly they don't regress.

Here is a list of some online educational games which you might want to try and make a sound judgement about them:

• http://www.learn4good.com/games/educational-learning-activities.htm
• http://www.funbrain.com/
• http://www.learningplanet.com/
• http://www.starfall.com/

After trying some of them, don't I wish this was available as an alternative to my learning 20 years ago!

See you later, virtually!

-Becky

References:

Virvou, M., Katsionis, G., & Manos, K. (2005). Combining Software Games with Education: Evaluation of its Educational Effectiveness. Educational Technology & Society, 8 (2), 54-65. Retrieved from http://www.ifets.info/journals/8_2/5.pdf

Introducing Cyberbulling

Teaching is one of the most rewarding careers... yet for many of us it takes time to reach that milestone.  Regardless if you went through an education program or not it seems teaching is not a profession in which you can "try" out first what a real classroom is until the first day they give you the keys to your classroom and that first day of school begins.  When I got the good news of me being hired five years ago, I worried about the content of the subject, instructional methods, but never imagine motivating and classroom management were going to be my top priorities before learning could take place.  I know most of you can relate to this and so my first blog I want to introduce a factor that affects student learning.  As a Instructional Technology student I want to focus more on the technology side - cyber-bullying.


Bullying is define as using physical strength or influence to force others to do things they don't want to do, name calling, making fun of, or put-downing others, so bullying take a form of physical, verbal, or mental abuse. Bullying affects children well-being, they don't feel secure and can't learn because of the fear of bullying or lack of concentration. It also promotes more violence. With the rapid increase of technology, cyber-bullying has emerge.  This negative influence takes place online when children are using social networks, email, interactive technologies, or cellphones.  Statistics found on how-to-stop-bullying.com are alarming to how many students are being affected by this trend. 

• 77% if students are being bullied
• 14% of those reacted to the abuse in some severe way, like attempt of suicide, shooting, 
• 1 out of 5 students admit to have being a bully
• 160,000 students miss school because of bullying taking place
• 100,000 students carry a gun to school
• 53% have been cyber-bullied
• 58% won't tell an adult if they are being bullied

As educators, it is important we look out for signs and disapprove this type of actions immediately.  It is encouraged to implement several techniques against bullying during instruction.  Some of these techniques include:

• Demonstrate positive behavior
• Teach social skills
• Teach courtesy skills

Here is a video of what is and how we can prevent bullying:

As you heard in this video, you can go to http://kamaron.org/Bullying-Solutions and click on Bullying Solutions to get more useful tips on how to stop this pandemic.  We want to make schools more inviting and secure students safety needs.  They will not learn if basic level needs are not met first.

See you later, virtually!

-Becky

References

Kamaron Institute. Bullying Solutions. Retrieved from http://kamaron.org/Bullying-Solutions.

(2009)How to Stop Bullying Stop the Harassment Before it Causes Permanent Damage. Retrieved from http://www.how-to-stop-bullying.com/index.html 

YouTube(2009). Stop Cyber Bullying - How. Retrieved from http://youtu.be/ck-OIP6nwLo.