Blog #2 Contribution to Learning

This week our team listed, with reasons, criteria we believed necessary to create a successful serious game.  As I contributed to the list, I discussed with team mates, how to best prioritize this list and combine commonalities among the list.  

I responded to Sara H. and shared with her my skepticism at the time involved in finding serious games to meet the objectives of the lessons I am trying to teach...trying to keep it well-balanced will be difficult.  I also let her know of my agreement in “promoting risk taking” when designing and/or choosing serious games for my classroom.  The risk taking component is a great opportunity for students to meet challenges “head on”, and develop courage through these risks.

I also let Sara L. know how much I appreciated her ideas for the criteria for serious games.  She came up with several that I had not read about or thought of.  I especially liked her ideas of creating a “storyline” and “interactivity” of the game.  The storyline is an excellent way to personally involve the student in a life-changing environment.  We all love a good story, and if we can be a part of the story as well as a part of its ending, we get involved mentally as well as

emotionally.  This type of involvement, keeps us interested in the plot and the outcome of the story.

The “interactiveness” between the game itself and the player is great, but I also suggested of equal importance, the interactiveness between the player and the other players. The peer-to-peer involvement allows students to work together, coordinate ideas, respond to human decisions, and complete common goals within the game.  

Keeping a balance between playing serious games in class and getting through the material required was a comment I made in Brandi’s initial blog.  It seems to be such a difficult conundrum to play a serious game to teach important skills to students, but still getting through the material to prepare students for the next course of study.  This seems especially true for math students.  Since math builds from year to year, it is imperative for students to be well prepared for the next year’s course.  Will serious games help to accomplish this?  Will they prevent this from happening because of the amount of time they take away from “book study”?  I’m not sure...I would hope that they can be used to prepare students for future math courses as well as be an encouraging and fun opportunity for students to learn the subject being taught.

I feel that my biggest contributions at this point of class seem to be the questions I ask of my classmates.  Since I am not really familiar with any games, let alone serious games, I ask a lot of questions to not only educate myself, but also help others to really think through the rationale behind the statements they make in blogs.