Literature Review - Final Paper

Here is a link to my Literature Review and Final Paper. 

Double Entry 11

All I Really Need to Know (About Creative Thinking) I Learned (By Studying How Children Learn) in Kindergarten

“I think of it as a spiraling  process in which children imagine what they want to do,  create a project based on their ideas, play with their  creations, share their ideas and creations with others,  reflect on their experiences – all of which leads them to imagine new ideas and new projects” (Resnik).

I absolutely love this quote. I am a strong believer in project based learning. Students need to be able to explore their creativity. The process described here is the process that happens in work environments, so why shouldn't we be teaching our students how to go through the steps in the educational system. I have said this many times of the course of the semester, but as an educator it is our job to prepare the students for the “real world” and teaching them to memorize facts and reproduce them on a test is not preparing them for the world they are going to enter. We need to teach our students how to think, how to create, how to share, and how to reflect. This is the process that each assignment should go through, and by the time our students are ready to graduate from high school they will have this process down pat – it will be as simple as walking or riding a bike.

Works Cited:

Resnik, M. (n.d.). All I really Need to Know (About Creative Thinking) I learned (By Studying How Children Learn) in Kindergarden. MIT Media Lab .

Resource:

When I was searching for a resource article, I decided to put the process into Google and see what search results I could find. I was surprise to find this website. It is a wiki talking about the benefits of learning using scratch in the classroom. 

Week 14 - Rough Draft 1

To see my 1st Rough Draft

Click Here

Please be aware that I have not finished reading all of my literature sources and writing about them. I am also concerned if I am creating the document in proper literature review format. I hope to have another draft up in a few days with sections about more pieces of literature.

I was able to read and summarize 5 pieces of literature I found myself and 2 pieces of literature obtained from the course content.

Week 13 - Literature Review Bibliography

I have decided to write my literature review with the focus: 

How can classrooms be transformed to motivate students they way games do?


Here are the sources that I am planning to use: 

Bibliography

Barab, Shasha, et al. "Making learning fun: Quest Atlantis, a game without guns." Education Technology Research and Development 53.1 (2005): 86-107.

Board on Children, Youth and Familities (BOCYF). Engaging Schools: Fostering High School Students' Motivation to Learn. Washington, D.C.: The National Academies Press, 2003.

Chen, Milton. "If Technology Motivates Students, Let's Use It!" Edutopia. The George Lucas Educational Foundate, 16 September 2010.

Gamification. Perf. Gabe Zichermann. Tedx. n.d.

Kafai, Yasmin B., Kylie A. Peppler and Grame M. Chiu. "High Tech Programmers in Low-Income Communities: Creating a Computer Culture in a Community Technology Center." (n.d.): 1-19.

Lee, John K. and Jeffery Probert. "Civilization III and Whole-Class Play in High School Social Studies." The Journal of Socail Studies Research 34.1 (n.d.): 1-28.

Mayo, Joel C. Motivation Through Technology in the High School Classroom. Prezi Presentation . 26 April 2011.

Peppler, Kylie A. and Yasmin B. Kafai. "Collbaboration, Computation, and Creativity: Media Arts Pratices in Urban Youth Culture." UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies (n.d.).

Reed, Daisy F. and Sheary D. Johnson. "Using Media and Models to Motivate High SChool Students." The Clearing House 65.4 (1992).

Spires, Hiller A., John K. Lee and James Lester. "The Tewenty-First Century Learner and Game-Based Learning." Meridian - Middle School Computer Technologies Journal 11.1 (2008): 1-4.

Teach Thought. "21 Simple Ideas To Improve Student Motivation." Teach Thought . 11 December 2012.

"Teacher's Tp 10 Ways to Motivate Your Students op Ten: T." Busy Teacher, 23 August 2011.

Terry, Shawn D. "Video Games Could Actually Motivate Students." CNBC, 1 October 2012.

Your Brain on Video Games. Perf. Baphne Bavelier. TED. n.d.

Double Entry #10

Learning to Play or Playing to Learn

“The proliferation of networked computers, gaming consoles such as the Sony PlayStation, Microsoft Xbox and Nintendo Gamecube and handheld devices such as the Nintendo DS and Sony PSP, have made computer gaming part of mainstream culture” (Arnesth, 2001-2006).

I decided to choose this as one of my quotes because it says so much about my current students. As I have said gaming is so popular with the 9^th graders in my school. I have even found it interesting that when students finish an assignment they are eager to play Pokémon or even an educational game on the computer. Students are all about the games. Recently in my school I had a group of students do a comparison and tally it in Microsoft Word. They did a survey around the school to determine the most popular video game character: Spyro and Crash Bandicoot. Now you need to be aware that the students did this on their own and this was not an assignment of any type. This example demonstrates how much students are involved in the gaming world and using computer outside of school. Now if students applied this dedication to their school work then we would see an increased amount of learning. Using these same skills and devices and methods will help us to inspire learning and increase achievement among our students.

“Regarding playing to learn, the emphasis is on learning, which is to say that some content or skill should be the end result of game playing. As such, knowledge and skills are treated as effects or outcomes. In regard to learning to play, on the other hand, the emphasis is on the activity of playing. As such, learning might be regarded as an integrated part of mastering an activity, in this case, gameplay” (Arnesth, 2001-2006).

I think this is a great way to explain the incorporation and the usefulness of gameplay in the curriculum. If we are allowing our students to learn necessary content while they are having fun they will be more motivated to complete the task, thus learning more. Our goal as educators is to make learning the best possible experience and by having the students participate in activities that they do on their own time will encourage them to me more actively engaged in the learning process.

“Still, according to Kirriemuir & McFarlane (2004) many teachers and parents seem to recognise that computer games might support the development of valuable skills such as strategic thinking, communication, application of numbers and group-decision making” (Arnesth, 2001-2006).

Wow, this quote is perfect; however I am not sure that it is quite accurate the many teachers and parents recognize these valuable skills, at least in my experiences. From the experiences that I have had, parents seem to think that there child wastes hours of time playing “those video games”, as most of them comment. Now while I understand that there must be a distribution between a child times playing these games and involved in other activities – many parents think that this is a waste of time, when in fact it is helping students to develop valuable skills needed to be successful in their future endeavours  Teachers are a mixed area, and honestly this deals mainly with the method of teaching and instructional style. I have many teachers in my school that still believe lecture and book work is the best method of teaching the students, many of the teachers never even turn on their projectors, then we have the teachers who are constantly trying to get in the computer lab, making use of smart phones and tablets, and using any form of technology that they can to help inspire learning in their classrooms. 

Works Cited 

Arnesth, H. C. (2001-2006). Learning to Play or Playing to Learn - A Crtical Account of the Models of Communication Informing Educational Research on Computer Gameplay. Institute for Educational Research .

Resources:

This is a video about some of the greatest computer programmers of our time. Such as Bill Gates creator of Microsoft, Mark creator of Facebook, and creators of twitter, dropbox, and many more. They are talking about how they became interested in computer programming and how you do not have to be a genus to write a program. Check it out below!!

Week 11

Double Entry #9

 High Tech Programmers in Low-Income Communities: Creating a Computer Culture in a Community Technology Center

Why should programming be part of school curriculum?

"Computer programming is integral knowledge across disciplines from the sciences to the arts, yet minorities and low-income students are notably absent in computer science-related fields" (Kafai, Peppler, & Chiu, p. 2). Computer programming and access should be placed in the high school settings because of the alarming numbers of students that do not have access to a computer outside of the school environment. Now I am aware that there are many community centers that offer this option, but what if they student cannot get transportation to that community center, then they lose out on the chance to access computers entirely. The youth of today have an interest in "videogames, music videos, cartoon animations, and interactive, design-based art, which are natural springboard into creating and programming"  (Kafai, Peppler, & Chiu, p. 2). This also makes our students more media literate by exposing them to a variety of different types of media texts such as  the combination of video, text, and images. “We argue that youth require technological fluency of how to construct new media in order to become critical consumers and producers” (Kafai, Peppler, & Chiu, p. 4).

What are the barriers to implementing programming in schools? 

Some of the barriers of implementing programming in schools is first the amount of computer access in schools. I am aware that many schools are attempting to become 1:1 ratio schools but many are not close to reaching that goal yet. I know that my school would probably average at about a 1:15 ratio. Until we can offer all student the access to computers we can not provide the programming opportunity equally to all students as of yet. Along with that is that we must insure that we have the necessary programming to offer the students, and with the increases in technology and programs it makes it very difficult to stay up to date on all devices and programs in the school system with limited amounts of funding and recent budget cuts.

How can barriers to implementing programming in schools be overcome?

There is a variety of way to attempt to influence the educational system to incorporate computer programming into the curriculum. The most important part is having studies and statistical data to back up your ideas and theories. This article has provided us with a great deal of information to use to influence other educators and educational systems to incorporate computer programming. Some of the ways also mentioned in the reading include: presenting workshops at training events for coordinators across the network; presenting workshops and showcase events for members across the network; establish a presence within the network” (Kafai, Peppler, & Chiu, p. 18). This would help to get the word out and develop a new understanding as to how computer programming could contribute to the educational curriculum.

Works Cited: 

Kafai, Y. B., Peppler, K. A., & Chiu, G. M. (n.d.). High Tech Programmers in Low-Income Communities: Creating a Computer Culture in a Community Technology Center. Los Angeles: University of Califonia.

Resource:
I found this article to be very interesting. It talks about how students as young as 8 are proficient at using the computer. This backs up the claim that many of our students are all ready using devices outside of the classroom and as the educational system is suppose to prepare students for the future we need to be using these devices to teach. 

Click her to go to the article.