My most positive video game memories live at Laura F's house in the late 80s/early 90s and revolve primarily around her family's Nintendo. California Games' hacky sack was my jam.
I went back to books and hanging out with my friends sans video games and never really looked back until my husband bought a Wii for our first anniversary. We tend to play it more in the winter when we start to feel cabin fever-ish and I never really think of it unless I am feeling really lazy about finding "something to do." So, in Ms. B's world, video games are the go-to when there is nothing else to do. Mr. B doesn't feel quite the same and would prefer we had a wii tourney going indefinitely.
The idea of incorporating video games into my classroom feels like foreign ground and I really don't know yet how I might approach it. I pulled up few online games from the BBC website and was excited to see and play "Church Interiors" match up game. Having devoured Ken Follet's Pillar of the Earth annually for at least 5 years in a row, I consider myself an expert (not a fact) on medieval cathedral design and construction. T
So I moved on to another game about archaeology and was also bored by that. Sigh.
Knowing that "kids these days" have instant access to games on their devices, I feel like I should get familiar with these but I just don't have the desire. Will this hold me back from connecting? I ask that question knowing the answer for myself. It might keep me from connecting but I'm okay with that; I think it's most important to acknowledge their deep interest in a game and move on. If I came across a computer/video game that I really, truly thought could enhance the classroom experience I would check it out, but I'm not holding my breath for that one.
My plan? Bake cookies for the media specialist. Regularly.
I feel the same way about video games, they are for winter nights when there is nothing interesting on tv. Recently I have been enjoying playing some sport video games with my boyfriend but when I was growing up my favorite video game was the Kennex video game. But I do not think that the games I am playing now are furthering my learning they are a good break from my learning but not helping me learn anything new.
ReplyDeleteFact: I am a winter wii table tennis pro.
DeleteI think your cookie plan is awesome! I think I might adopt it as well. My favorite and pretty much only game was Tetris (well, I did play pacman way back when, but only occasionally when we actually drove an hour to the closest town with a mall and movie theater. I don't see myself including video games in my classroom so much, but the elements of what drives kids to keep playing difficult games as presented by Gee in "Good Video games and good learning" are pretty closely connected to what I think kids need in order to learn in any class or even any sport. Things like the willingness to take risks, to step out there and try something new - not being afraid to fail, and once failing, the willingness to get back up and try again, seeing failure as part of the road to success, as something we learn from - goals, a feeling of accomplishment when you're able to move on to the next level. So video games per se? Not necessarily. But the aspects of gaming, are definitely akin to what one would want a student to be willing to do in so far as their approach to academics is concerned. Can we make it a game?
ReplyDeleteI forgot about tetris - SO ADDICTING. Maybe I will step out of my comfort zone and take a risk or two by using games in my classroom. I know I will fail a lot as a teacher but maybe if means the kids are having fun while it happens, that's ok.
DeleteSo, you see...now I want cookies. That is entirely unfair of you to have posted cookies knowing that people will be going through you blog posting comments...especially last minute when taking a break from paper writing.
ReplyDelete