What I Learned from Gaming

I would like to start off my saying I am not a gamer...or should I say was not a gamer.  That all changed two weeks ago.  For an assignment, I was asked to play Kingdom Rush and analyze how it compares to the process of learning, especially for students.  At first I was a little unsure of the assignment, but I kept an open-mind during the process.  The results surprised me. 

First, I was surprised at the overall learning experience of the game.  In Kingdom Rush, you build towers and place knights/wizards along the road to kill the "bad guys" so they cannot pass.  As with any learning experience, you have a phase of frustration.  I was SOOO frustrated at time, especially when it took multiple times to pass a level.  However, I used my failures as a learning opportunity to prepare me for the next battle.  This directly correlates with classroom experiences.  Students get frustrated when they don't understand material, but its using those mistakes to better prepare you for your future learning experiences.     

Another surprise I had was experiencing flow, which is the state of mind when you loose track of time because you are so involved and engaged with the task at hand.  One night I started playing Kingdom Rush with the intent of stopping about 45 minutes later.  However, when I looked at my clock, almost two hours had passed.  Relating this to students, if they can reach "flow" in their studies, they will be so engaged they don't even realize it.  Through this gaming assignment, I am going to look deeper into educational games, like Minecraft Edu, and possibly implement it second semester.  

Successfully completing each level took problem solving and critical thinking.  Each level was progressively more challenging and it required me to think strategically.  When I did not successfully pass a level, I had to determine what was wrong with my knight and tower placements and if I needed a different combination of each.            

At the time of this posting, I am on level 15.

Finally, I was generally excited and encouraged to continue on the quest when I passed a level.  After I passed a level, I wanted to continue leveling up.  This is another reason I want to investigate gaming in education.  Wouldn't it be amazing if students wanted to "level up" in the classroom?!

Kingdom Rush has been an extremely fun and addicting game to play.  When I was first given the assignment, I intended to complete only the minimum hours required.  However, I completed those hours in the first day and have continued to play in my spare time.

Are you gaming in your classroom?  If so, what are you using?  Has it been effective?

App Smashing

This week, I experimented with App Smashing.  App Smashing is the process of taking multiple apps and using them together to create a final project.

I used several apps to create this project.  First, I located pictures previously uploaded to my Facebook account and then saved them to my camera roll.  Next, those pictures on my camera roll were used to create picture collages in PicCollage.  After saving the collages to my camera roll, I was ready to use Tellagmi to share my story.  I created an avatar and recorded the audio of my story.  Using the collages made earlier in PicCollage, I inserted the collages as my background in Tellagmi.  Once I recorded the audio with my avatar and background, I saved the video clip to my camera roll.  The next step was to piece the seven video clips together.  For this task, I imported all the video clips into iMovie.  I arranged the clips in the correct order and trimmed some of the clips to the desired length.  After completing that step, I then saved the finished iMovie to my camera roll.  The final step in this app smashing project, was to upload it to YouTube.    

This was a fun learning process for me.  I can't wait to have my junior high technology classes experiment with app smashing in the future.

If you are App Smashing in your classroom, what are you doing?  What are your favorite apps or combination of apps to use?