Week #4 Contribution to Learning

As we started developing our thoughts and discussion ideas into concrete “matter”, it was great to see them become a reality.  Sara L. got us moving in a good direction by initialing posting the rubric.  My responsibility was to follow her with teacher instructions for using the rubric when evaluating a serious game.  

I started with no idea as to the direction to go with writing instructions for using the rubric for serious game evaluation, but after some thought and “drafting”, I was able to come up with some preliminary instructions.  Although I am not happy with the instructions at this point, I do believe that I am off to a good start giving teachers some usable tool ideas to evaluate their serious games.  

As I read initial blogs from students, I am always impressed at the quality of the teachers involved in my graduate classes.  I love knowing that there are younger teachers who have the desire to continue working on their teaching skills and have the energy to do so.  A few of the comments I made to initial blogs included a resounding praise for passionate teaching.  I appreciated Dave Burgess’ and fellow classmate’s desire to find ways to be passionate for subject matter, even when you are not passionate for everything in the subject.  I suggested that even if you are struggling with being passionate about the lesson, there are still ways to make the class time enjoyable and profitable to the students by doing things that may be on quirky to your personality.

I hope I was an encouragement to Scott when applauding the inside jokes that take place in his class. In the years I have been teaching, I have seen, many times,  the student who is a social outcast and really doesn’t feel a part of what is going on in the class. But, if this student, by just being in the classroom, is able to feel a little bit of camaraderie because he/she “gets” the inside joke, sometimes this is enough for them to feel a part of class and involved.  I also, like I am sure Dave Burgess would do, encourage “weirdness” in the classroom.  The opportunity to be real with students cannot be overemphasized.  Even when our “realness” involves the eccentricity of many teachers.

Finally, I brought up the idea that “controlled chaos” is an excellent skill to learn as a teacher. I also suggested that a new teacher will almost always struggle with this concept as they usually have not figured out their place with classroom management and the idea of controlled chaos may be a skill to work on and use in the future.  My one suggestion to pretty much guarantee if the chaos is controlled, is to have the class move from chaos to orderliness when the teacher says something along the lines of, “OK class, that was great fun, now I want you all to face me, straighten up, get quiet, and listen”.  If the class does so immediately, then you are in control.  If you have to repeat yourself many times, or raise your voice several decibels, then the class is chaotic, rather than controlled.

This was a good week with lots of great information shared between students as well as from the textbook.