Last week I got carried away with my fatigue to rush for assignments, hence I allowed myself to do a substandard reflection and I forgot to reflect on the educational gaming session by Dr Ashley Tan.
So this week, I'll reflect a summary of week 5 and 6 worth of educational gaming and the different stations.
On week 5, we only managed to play one game station which was station 2, the station on the Wii game, Trauma Centre. Like the name suggested, the game is as traumatising as it sounds. Not that it's a bad thing to be traumatised by the game, but during the course of playing the game, we learn that it is generally alright to make mistakes and even fail the round. It is because we can always have the option to replay the same round to learn from our previous round of mistakes. Also we were grouped in 6, and the people who started the game first became our learning targets. This is especially encouraging to students because it will allow them to know that it is okay to fail, as long as you take away some learning curves from the game and subconsciously understand the value of Resilience. This is a definite boon in educational gaming.
Week 6, we got to have a go at two game stations, which were station 3 (List of educational online games, but not one art CS related) and station 4 (Wii sports). At station 3 we tried the CSI game after all of us were like avoiding hardcore science and maths related games and we figured, CSI should be quite alright since some of us are CSI show addicts. The starting was bad cause the graphics took like 10mins to load and when we finally got to the game, it was really. . . excruciatingly boring. Okay, big no no for my kids. (Anyway, not my CS related) Station 4, Wii sports was exhilarating! We were so engrossed in playing that we only noticed that we were playing and full stop. Nothing was learned and it was just enjoyable. Aftermath, we all had a great workout.
So, after the two weeks' worth of reflection on Educational Gaming, I find I benefit most from Dr. Ashley Tan's lesson and debrief after the game session. Like what Dr Ashley Tan said, it is often that local educational system, students are afraid to fail. The fear of failing stems from the trauma of tests, exams and grades. The fear often wipes away their value of Resilience or rather, most of the time they already have this preconceived idea of failing means Doomsday. They would get this idea from as young as 3 years old because nowadays parents would send them for early childhood brain development (a.k.a tuition) as young as 3 years old. (I was a part time tutor for a tuition centre before and I have kids ranging from 3 years old to 13 years old)
So, with the introduction of Educational Gaming, we would see an effect of students enjoying the classroom learning as they would temporarily let down their guard (against the feeling of failing that actively make them wish to disengage from classroom, so they think that the lower expectations in work means lesser disappointments in results they get back). This is a boon as students may enjoy the curriculum better than the time when they have to face boring routine of classroom teaching. This way, we will "regain" their confidence in interactive teaching. The value of Resilience can be integrated in them seamlessly through the subtle message of re-attempting in Life's various tests and obstacles when they can play the same round in the game (if they failed that particular round). Another boon.
One very potentially possible bane is that students may get the misconception that our lessons can be easily understood through the various online games and may lost interest in coming to school because they would think that there is no added value in coming to school to learn from us. I think this would be possible if the teacher is unable to tell his/her class clearly that the games they play will only aid them to understand the subject slightly better but not the bulk of what they can learn or should be learning. (Though I feel not ALL teachers are capable of drawing the fine line between using Technology to aid and not to replace our conventional teaching method, though either way we would essentially still teach the students some skills to a certain extent.)
For Art, maybe the theory based lessons, I would use interesting videos to aid my lessons. But skills wise, unless it is a defined soft skill lesson (like Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator), I would prefer hands-on and physical labour work to be the core of my lessons.
For Art Teachers, this is one video I was recommended by my colleague for the topic on lines:
http://www.teachertube.com/viewVideo.php?video_id=147571
I personally like to show them this when its on Lines and Negative Space:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8fl3OokqWk
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