Week 5 Reflection

This week the videos showed more ways on how to incorporate technology into the classroom.  James Paul Gee talked about video games and how the kids are actually using problem-solving skills to play them and how they are constantly being assessed while playing the game.  Many of the kids are also using collaboration to play the games along with learning language on demand.  My own children would absolutely love to have something like that in school!

The Pitler text talked about reinforcing effort and gave examples of ways to show students that success is connected to the amount of effort applied.  Using technology this way is something I had not thought about.  It’s always frustrating to have a few students that do just the bare minimum, just enough to skate by.  I’m going to try effort rubric that was shown on p. 59 and put together a spreadsheet similar to the one on p. 61.  The Pitler book has been very useful because the ideas are not complicated which is what, I think, scares many people away from using technology in the first place. 

Edutopia.org (nd). Big thinkers: James Paul Gee on grading with games. Retrieved from http://www.edutopia.org/digital-generation-james-gee-video

Pitler, H., Hubbell, E., & Kuhn, M. (2012). Using technology with classroom instruction that works. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, 57-72.