Digital Technologies – Week 9

In today’s session for Digital Technologies we were learning about games based learning:

“Digital Games-based Learning is the integration of gaming into learning experiences to increase engagement and motivation.” (Higher Education Academy website)

At the beginning of the session, we were to create a mind map which showed why game-based learning is an effective tool to use in education. My peers and I had come up with ideas such as:

  • It engages the children with their learning experiences
  • Links within the curriculum – Digital, Numeracy, Literacy, Art, Music
  • Enables skills to be developed – hand/eye co-ordination, planning etc.

As an educator, it is important to include games based learning into the planning and teaching of our pupils. With this fun and modernised way of learning and teaching, comes with a set of guidelines which should be implemented whilst teaching using games in the classroom. According to Learning and Teaching Scotland we need to be ensuring effective implementation of games, be clear about learning intentions, use appropriate games for tasks and most importantly, make clear links to experiences and outcomes within the curricular areas for each level that you are going to be teaching and carrying out.

According to Learning Teaching Scotland (2010 pg. 12) “Over the past decade, the use of digital gaming in education has prompted considerable attention in exploring how and why games might be powerful tools in the classroom. As a result of this interest, there is a considerable body of literature available on game-based learning in the classroom and the potential benefits of this for education and learning.”

It is important to highlight that there is a history behind games based learning “The link between learning and playing is longstanding and predates the digital era by thousands of years (Higher Education Academy 2015).  Theorists Jean Piaget and Leonard Vygotsky have argued that play is an important part of brain development from birth and throughout adulthood (Higher Education Academy 2015). I think that this is a very important point and that by getting a child to do things through play at an early stage in life will enable their thinking skills and hand eye coordination to develop vastly for the future, where they will be able to apply this knowledge in ways in which a pen and paper simply could not or would not provide the same kind of advantages.

I think it is important for us as educators to incorporate play into a child’s learning environment, not only to enhance their thinking skills but it helps to develop their social skills which is often easily created at a young age.

For today’s session we were to learn about and explore the Nintendo Wii to play the games based learning platform – Mario Kart.

However, through technical issues this could not be executed so we watched a game being played on YouTube. I have had experience with the Wii from a first-hand approach, as I played it when I was growing up so I already had the prior knowledge and the thought processes of how using this platform would aid a child’s learning.

I think that this is a perfect example of how creativity, problem solving and planning ahead comes in to practice for the development of a child’s learning.

We then worked with our peers to create an Interdisciplinary Learning plan (IDL). This helped to show the number of curricular areas that game-based learning can cross.

The plan was based on Mario Kart and our ideas linked to the Curriculum for Excellence were:

Literacy

For literacy, we thought that as an educator we will be able to teach the children the literacy skills which will enable them to come up with and create a description of characters, their cars and the different race courses that were to be driven on by using a range of different phrases, adjectives and a wide range of language.

Within the Curriculum for Excellence, this linked to:

“By considering the type of text I am creating I can select ideas and relevant information and organise these in a logical sequence and use words which will be interesting and/or useful to others (LIT 1-26a)” (Education Scotland 2004).

Technology

We also came up with the idea that we could introduce the use of PowerPoint for the children to introduce and show their characters to the rest of the class. They will be able to draw their characters, take digital photographs of it, upload them to a PowerPoint slide and make use of the resources given by Microsoft to describe their characters and make them look interesting to look at.

This linked in with the curricular area:

“I can explore and experiment with digital technologies and can use what I learn to support and enhance leaning in different contexts (TCH 1-01a)” (Education Scotland 2004).

I think games based learning is an excellent way to create fun, interactive activities using platforms such as the Nintendo Wii and Xbox. Their possibilities and benefits to the child are endless, with excellent links to Curriculum for Excellence experiences and outcomes, which I may not have thought would have beforehand.  As a prospering educator, I will definitely be incorporating games based learning into my education planning as I feel that it not only benefits the children’s creativity, social and coordination skills, but it also It also encourages children to work in teams to share all of their ideas together.

References

Education Scotland (2004) – Curriculum for Excellence; Experiences and Outcomes [Online] https://education.gov.scot/scottish-education-system/policy-for-scottish-education/policy-drivers/cfe-(building-from-the-statement-appendix-incl-btc1-5)/Experiences%20and%20outcomes [Accessed on 14th March 2018]

Higher Education Academy (2015) – Gamification and Games-Based Learning [Online] https://www.heacademy.ac.uk/knowledge-hub/gamification-and-games-based-learning [Accessed on 14th March 2018]

Learning, Teaching Scotland (2010) – FutureLab – The Impact of Console Games in the Classroom [Online] https://www.nfer.ac.uk/publications/FUTL25/FUTL25.pdf [Accessed on 14th March 2018)

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