Here I will post reflections about various types of games that I will be exploring.
Narrative Games – Gameplay and reflection while playing the game Zork I.
Action Games – Reflection and gameplay.
Other Games – Reflection on other types of games such as card games, board games and games of chance.
My thoughts after watching the documentary “All Work All Play” which gives insight into the world of esports gaming.
Resources:
https://decider.com/2016/05/05/why-you-should-watch-all-work-all-play/
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4654328/
http://www.imdb.com/video/imdb/vi827831065?playlistId=tt4654328&ref_=tt_ov_vi
The Tech Integrator
More Youtube Games on Silvergames.com!
You’ve probably seen You Tube videos embedded onto a website or done so yourself. There are some online games that provide you the embed code to be able to embed that game into your site or blog. Here is an example above.
1. Find a game that is embeddable online (I searched for “embed name of game” in Google).
2. Copy the embed code and paste into your site (make sure you are on the “HTML” editing option).
3. Play with the game to ensure that it works.
This might be a good option if you have younger students and have specific games you want them to play without veering off into unknown places on the internet.
The Tech Integrator
I recently had a chance to complete a quest in the virtual world Second Life. In this quest, we walked through a hospital while hearing the “voices” in our head providing us “guidance”. It was an interesting experience and the goal was to teach students about the hallucinations that people with schizophrenia experience. This would be a good activity to use in a health or psychology class for college students to learn about this topic in a safe simulation in the form of a virtual world or virtual reality experience. My reflection on the experience is below.
Case study on a virtual reality version of this experience: http://learningandteaching-navitas.com/the-psychosis-experience-virtual-reality-psychology-education/
The quest I experienced was created by Amanda Hatherly, professor at Santa Fe Community College. http://w2.sfcc.edu/files/inside/Inside_SFCC_SUM2015_WEB.pdf
The Tech Integrator
Here is my representation of a “Mash-up” of two learning theories, Gagne’s Nine Events of Instruction and Garner’s Seven Levers of Change.
Good instruction and good games contain elements of both of these theories. Gagne’s events typically show up as elements of one larger “event”. These events include: gaining attention, informing learners of the objective, stimulating recall of prior learning, providing learning guidance, eliciting performance, providing feedback and enhancing retention and transfer. Gardner’s seven levers of change that fit in with instructional technology include: reasoning, resonance, representational rediscription and resistances.
The game I am looking to design will include elements from both of these theories. There is a specific learning objective, players will be provided feedback and hopefully enhance their retention of the learning and transfer that learning to the next task. They will have to use reasoning in deciding which side to take the point of view of. They will encounter resistances in the form of enemies and classmates who may disagree with their opinion. They will experience resonance and make a connection between the learning content in the context of a game that looks like one they may have played in the past. They will also represent their thinking and learning in the next segment of this lesson.
Becker, Katrin. (2005). How Are Games Educational? Learning Theories Embodied in Games..
What are your thoughts about these learning theories and how well they mesh together? What elements of these theories do you recognize and are part of the game you are designing? #GameLab
The Tech Integrator