EDUC 6814 Introduction

Hello everyone I am Sarah. 

Where you are from and what do you do.

I am from Buckhannon, West Virginia and I am a Teacher at Buckhannon-Upshur High School. I have been teaching Business Education at BUHS since 2011. I teach the information concentration which includes: digital imaging I and II, desktop publishing, business computer applications, and web design. I enjoy the classes I teach so much, I tell everyone I get to play and learn everyday at my job :)

What do you want to get out of the class.

This year I became the FBLA advisor for my school, and I have some students that are interested in entering a competitive event that involves game design. I hope to help give them some input for this year and really take it to the next level by next year. BUHS is also considering including Game Design in their curriculum and offering the Game Design Cluster - which I hope that I could teach after this class. 

Are you a Gamer? What Games do you play? Why do you like playing games?

I enjoy the old school games such as mario, spyro, tetris and crash. I find these games to be challenging and fun at the same time - I have many students that feel the same way. I enjoy having a release allowing my mind to keep working but to feel like I am just having fun. 

What is your position on kids and video games? (ie time wasters, socially isolating, moral corrupting, new ways of learning, conflicted)

I allow my students to play educational games in my class. I feel that these games help to inspire learning and creativity among the students. I like video games, My only negative comment about video games would be the violence some of them contain that in fact teach our students very bad morals and ethics. 

 Link to a video, podcast, online article or blog posting that is related to the effects of video games on children's learning, sociability or character development and explain why you have selected to resource.

I found a video James Paul Gee on Learning. This video is great. It addresses educators and talks about how we percieve that games are not education but they are in fact using physics and a great deal of complex thinking processes. When a gamer becomes interested in a game they then begin to access it on the internet and research it while having social interaction. In turn the gamer begins to develop a deeper understand in a since as some one studying a specific topic for a research article. 

I have experienced this hands on with students I currently have. My students are looking into spyro and crash and they have done a survey to compare the advantages and disadvantages of each game - they have totaled a comparison of the more liked game and then compared the characters to find the most appealing game. They initiated this on their own as a "curios and fun" activity. They have document all response and calculated the responses using Microsoft Excel. I think this is amazing that the students are doing this on their own - imagine what they could do in a class where this kind of learning was encouraged. 

List three major world events that happen during the year you were born. (I couldn't decide on January)

1. Jan 8th - Hewlett-Packard introduces HP-28S Advanced Scientific Calculator
2. Jan 13th - Supreme Court rules (5-3) public school officials have broad powers to censor school newspapers, plays & other expressive activities
3. First transatlantic fibre optic cable laid able to carry 40,000 telephone calls simultaneously
4. Stephen Hawking Publishes " A Brief History Of Time "
5. The first major computer virus infects computers connected to the Internet.
6. Who Framed Roger Rabbit and Beetlejuice first played and was a hit film. (ironically this is a movie that both my husband and I both like and we were both born in 1988).