Friday, June 29, 2007
Day 5 Afternoon
I have a lot of new ideas for content that I will incorporate this year - especially the research I did on the chemistry changes to ocean water. I ahve foudn alot of hands on activities to go along iwth these concepts as well as ways to work with them interactively on the web. Ultimately I hope that I will be able to incorporate the game as part of my curriculum - either as an introductory exploration, a tutorial for those who need help or maybe even as an assessment at the end of the unit. If the team feature gets working this would be a great way to have competitive reviews! In any case I have a lot of new ideas for my teaching this fall!
day5 morning
how has working with this vidoe game impracted your knowledge of science and math.
Well I have most definietly learned a lot from my reasearch on coral reefs!!! The video game has taught me alot about how the "world" works and all that you have to think about to make things happen. We take our physical world for granted so when you have to make things work in an artificial world you really have to start understanding how things actually work so that you can make things do what you want. I have also had a deja vu about programming languages with the use of hte if then statements - I might actually understand the programming language if I looked at it again.
Well I have most definietly learned a lot from my reasearch on coral reefs!!! The video game has taught me alot about how the "world" works and all that you have to think about to make things happen. We take our physical world for granted so when you have to make things work in an artificial world you really have to start understanding how things actually work so that you can make things do what you want. I have also had a deja vu about programming languages with the use of hte if then statements - I might actually understand the programming language if I looked at it again.
Thursday, June 28, 2007
day 4 shutdown
Didn't get as much done as we would have liked due ot crash issues with multigamer mode but sitll a productive day - got some issues solved and some ideas worked out. We won't have a finished product tomorrow but we have about 100000X what I had at the beginning of the week and it looks GREAT!!!! Two of my guys have the software needed at home ot keep working over the summer if they want and me may well get this closer to a finished product by the endof the summer!
I think these guys have learned a lot more about video game ideas and project development that I think will serve them well with future endeavors.
I am glad to have gotten to work with these guys and hope that I can keep in touch with each of them over the blogger in the future.
I think these guys have learned a lot more about video game ideas and project development that I think will serve them well with future endeavors.
I am glad to have gotten to work with these guys and hope that I can keep in touch with each of them over the blogger in the future.
Day 4 Morning
How well do you do interacting with your students? What concerns do you have about interacting with your students?
I think this week I have done well interacting with my group. THey have been very receptive to direction and have been very open with thier ideas. The only concern I have had this week has been that maybe I'm not providing enough direction and that they are reluctant to ask questions.
WIth my own students and I sometimes have difficulty interacting with the very disengaged students. I am not sure how to get them to engage with the lesson and some of my students can get a bit ugly when challenged to do somethign they don't want to. I am fearful of conflict - especially physical conflict and am reluctant to push the envelope with students who present a negative attitude when asked to participate. However, I have found myself to be pretty good with MOST students - there are only a very few who I feel that have fallen into this latter category in the last 5 years of teaching. I will not write a student off but this semester was challenging to keep myself from just giving up on students that I just could not find any way to connect with.
I wish all my students could be as engaged and enthusiastic as my group has been this week - then the job would be easY!!!
I think this week I have done well interacting with my group. THey have been very receptive to direction and have been very open with thier ideas. The only concern I have had this week has been that maybe I'm not providing enough direction and that they are reluctant to ask questions.
WIth my own students and I sometimes have difficulty interacting with the very disengaged students. I am not sure how to get them to engage with the lesson and some of my students can get a bit ugly when challenged to do somethign they don't want to. I am fearful of conflict - especially physical conflict and am reluctant to push the envelope with students who present a negative attitude when asked to participate. However, I have found myself to be pretty good with MOST students - there are only a very few who I feel that have fallen into this latter category in the last 5 years of teaching. I will not write a student off but this semester was challenging to keep myself from just giving up on students that I just could not find any way to connect with.
I wish all my students could be as engaged and enthusiastic as my group has been this week - then the job would be easY!!!
Day 4 afternoon
How has the experience of working with studetns on designing a video game impacted how you communciate or relate to your students?
I think I have always had an effective way of communcating with my students, here and at school. The guys in my group have been really easy to work with - very excited, very motivated and hard workers. They have worked will together and acoomplished a lot this week. This has made my communcation and relations with them very easy. I think if they had been less cooperative I may have had more difficulty in communcating my ideas and needs to them.
I know that I have found myself listening more to what they think about things - obviously they are the experts - notme! I think that I need to do that more in my classroom teaching because I sometimes feel that my students ahve somehting to say but don't say it because they don't think I'll listen. This may be their own perception or a message I am inadvertently sending but either way I think this experience may help me to open up more to student ideas.
I think I have always had an effective way of communcating with my students, here and at school. The guys in my group have been really easy to work with - very excited, very motivated and hard workers. They have worked will together and acoomplished a lot this week. This has made my communcation and relations with them very easy. I think if they had been less cooperative I may have had more difficulty in communcating my ideas and needs to them.
I know that I have found myself listening more to what they think about things - obviously they are the experts - notme! I think that I need to do that more in my classroom teaching because I sometimes feel that my students ahve somehting to say but don't say it because they don't think I'll listen. This may be their own perception or a message I am inadvertently sending but either way I think this experience may help me to open up more to student ideas.
Wednesday, June 27, 2007
Day 3 shutdown
Pretty good day. Some frustrations wer ethat other students got into our game and changed things that my guys had worked hard to build. So we made progress but then we got set back. THe afternoon was not as productive because they were reluctant to put effort in if someone was going to get in and wreck it all. I think the password protection will help when it is fixed. THe coral reef is very tedious to build but Ben B. has made a lot of progress on his portion. Others worked on developing techniques for doing certain things like teleporting, dropping thigns from the sky and coordinating the movements of characters. We are going to try to get some scripts done tomorrow - the addition of sound pretty much side tracked everyone this afternoon but they needed a little fun!!!
Day 3 Afternoon
Describe your teaching.
Combinatorial is the only way I can describe my style. I try to use a variety of methods - lecture, demonstrations, labs, groups, hands on activities, field experiences, video, computer and anything else that I can find to engage and excite my students. I have found myself using WAY TOO MUCH lecture this past semester and not enjoying my teaching at all - and neither did my students! We teach in the block semester schedule with 4 classes periods of 90 minutes. We have worked hard this year on using the 10-10 or 20-20 strategy where we change activity every 10 or 20 minutes depending on the activity. THis has us doing short segments of lecture and interpsersing the activities, labs, etc. in short segment as a way of keeping student engagement high. I found this strategy difficult with my lower level students who have difficulty transitioning anyway - its great for the ADD who want to switch - but they have trouble settling back down into learn mode at each phase - this may be more of a classroom management problem but that is what frustrated me about this technique.
I wnat to work hard this summer on revamping my classes to be more combinatorial and more engaging.
Blog Addresses
Ben Bryant- benbryanthives
Ted Belles -teddybelleshifives
BenajminMills -bigboi
ROy Blemenfeld - bigboiroi111@aol.com
Augmon Price - augmonpricehifives
Sam Bartels - sambartelshifives
Combinatorial is the only way I can describe my style. I try to use a variety of methods - lecture, demonstrations, labs, groups, hands on activities, field experiences, video, computer and anything else that I can find to engage and excite my students. I have found myself using WAY TOO MUCH lecture this past semester and not enjoying my teaching at all - and neither did my students! We teach in the block semester schedule with 4 classes periods of 90 minutes. We have worked hard this year on using the 10-10 or 20-20 strategy where we change activity every 10 or 20 minutes depending on the activity. THis has us doing short segments of lecture and interpsersing the activities, labs, etc. in short segment as a way of keeping student engagement high. I found this strategy difficult with my lower level students who have difficulty transitioning anyway - its great for the ADD who want to switch - but they have trouble settling back down into learn mode at each phase - this may be more of a classroom management problem but that is what frustrated me about this technique.
I wnat to work hard this summer on revamping my classes to be more combinatorial and more engaging.
Blog Addresses
Ben Bryant- benbryanthives
Ted Belles -teddybelleshifives
BenajminMills -bigboi
ROy Blemenfeld - bigboiroi111@aol.com
Augmon Price - augmonpricehifives
Sam Bartels - sambartelshifives
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)