Exploring and Integrating Technology in Classrooms

Word Out Game Reflection

            This assignment challenged us as future educators by helping us become aware of the difficulties in finding useful resources when it comes to teaching. We were assigned to groups where our group consisted of Special Education, Secondary English Education, and two Elementary Education Majors. Our goal was to find an educational game that fit all of our majors, creating a rubric for the game and figuring out a way to present our game incorporating an unfamiliar presentation tool. It was easy to agree on what kind of game would fit all of our majors. Reading was our main focus in finding an educational game.

            Exploring all the online educational games available was entertaining and we had no difficulties finding our game, Word Out. The similarity of Word Out to Tetris was what caught our eyes. It was equally simple and difficult. Simple because of the effortless of playing the game simply using arrow keys to maneuver the descending letters to form words vertically or horizontally.  Forming the words however, that was the difficulty of it because of the random letters that is given to form words. It suits the ages of seven and up fitting the perfect age group among our majors. It can help improve vocabulary skills and learning new words. Finding a presentation tool seemed easy because we found several that were eye catching and first settled on Sway. While working with Sway, we found it to be difficult to put what we wanted. Things such as placing specific pictures into specific places of a slide pushed us to using another tool. We found Wix to be a beautiful choice, until we heard half of the class have already chosen this tool. To familiarize the class with other tools, we wanted something different and chose Haiku Deck. It was a more modern, business like presentation tool compared to Powerpoint.

Creating a rubric to rate our game was difficult because we didn’t know where to begin. As students, we are used to receiving rubrics that making one from scratch seemed out of our basic skills. As we continued to get familiar with Word Out, we were able to answer the Five W’s of Who, What, Where, When, Why to create our rubric adding to it by what we felt needed to be known about an online educational game before offering it to other teachers’ use.  As a Secondary English Education Major, Word Out can be greatly beneficial to my students when there is passing time to increase their vocabulary skills. The game being difficult when forming words will challenge students and even helping them create words they didn’t know existed and can later look up the meaning of them. It is also a great game to have students work together to come up with words.

Though students are greatly exposed to the online world, it’s not always a good thing. I believe that with the social media craze around us, vocabulary and grammar skills are decreasing because of the shortcuts given for words or “autocorrect” embedded in our technology systems. According to Association of American Educators, “In recognizing the importance of writing well, education advocates are stressing the need to keep grammar lessons interesting and current” (Alix). Word Out may not be a very reliable game in improving grammar skills, but it greatly benefits improving vocabulary skills while keeping learning interesting and current.  Word Out is not an entirely effective game to use, but it’s a simple, fast one to throw into a lesson. Edutopia however encourages “applications that promote and strengthen a variety of skill sets for students, not just one or two” (Mercinek) so Word Out is too simple and should not be relied to completely improve vocabulary skills.

Working with my group was effortless. No difficulties came up working with every single one of them. We all cooperated with what we needed to do. We made time out of class to meet and if someone was not able to meet in person we turned to using online communicating resources such as Whatsapp and Facetime and worked effectively.

References

            Alix (2012, March 06). Grammar in the Social Age of Social Media. Retrieved from http://www.aaeteachers.org/index.php/blog/677-grammar-in-the-age-of-social-media

Marcinek, Andrew (2014, March 11). Technology and Teaching: Finding a Balance. Retrieved from http://www.edutopia.org/blog/technology-and-teaching-finding-balance-andrew-marcinek