All I Really Need to Know (About Creative Thinking)
I Learned (By Studying How Children Learn) in Kindergartenby: Mitchel Resnick
I agree with this quote to an extent. I remember in my grade school days that these types of programs were in their early stages, still very basic. Yet for all the humdrum of the basic programming, I seem to remember we as students jumped at the chance to use these programs. Probably because they were new, but excited to use nonetheless. This brings me to the point of contention with this quote. Those tutoring softwares are only boring today because they are outdated. If it was a "new and fancy" program those technologies might not seem so constrained.1. "Too often, educational technologiesare overly constrained, such as tutoring software forteaching algebra, or simulation software for modelingplanetary motion in the solar system."
2. "Now, edutainment companies try to provide youwith both. In all of these cases, you are viewed as a passiverecipient."
The key point in this quote is that learning and fun are being presented as having the student being a passive recipient. I understand this completely. A majority of learners learn through experience and not just through passive reception of knowledge. There is a push in education today to construct lessons and classrooms into learning environments where the student constructs their own learning through project based learning.
3. "In recent years, schools have adopted more “hands-on” design activities,but the focus is usually on the creation of an artifact ratherthan critical reflection on the ideas that guided the design,or strategies for refining and improving the design, orconnections to underlying scientific concepts and relatedreal-world phenomena."
This quote brings to light a key ingredient to learning, reflection. Without self-reflection students and teachers inevitably miss parts of the project that have the potential to bring the most learning. Reflection offers the ability to learn from their mistakes, and to discover new and different options to reach their goals.
The following blog, Educational Technology and Life talks about the learning that takes place when playing games. In the blog, Mark Wagner explains that most students do not approach games with learning as an objective, thus they tend to miss alot of learning. He also speaks of Thinking Worlds, another game creation engine that sounds similar to Scratch.
I agree with your third quote, critical reflection is just as important as designing activities. Students need to reflect on the ideas and strategies used to create the design to fully understand the concept being learned.
ReplyDeleteI'm pleased you both recognize the critical role educators need to play in maximizing the learning potential of games! Some educators fear that technology will replace teachers. However, this reading in particular points to the need for teachers to be astute observers of children as they play games in order to help them making connections between their play and the concepts they need to learn to be successful in their future educational, workplace and social endeavors!
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