I have been having one of those techno nightmare nights. Looks like I lost a bunch of work on my wiki for 649. In the back of my head, I knew I should have been doing the work in Word, but no, I had to do it directly in wiki and somehow it didn't save. To steal from Mr. Vonnegut, "So it goes."
I read through Mr. Gee's article about video games and learning. I am definitely intrigued by this new paradigm he is proposing: Our content area is not a collection of facts - it's in essence a game that we do. We formulate a collection of knowledge, figure out how to apply it, and poof we have created a new game. I certainly never thought about life and education this way before. I also never credited my nephew who is a warcraft addict with doing anything other than wear his eyeballs out on the path to carpal tunnel syndrome.
But when I went on a couple edublogger's sites, why did I see? On Huffenglish.com I feasted my eyes on an amazing array of creative ideas about teaching The Crucible, developing a rubric for grading essays, former blogs about books like Sense & Sensibility, the brand new Mark Twain autobiography (he/she already had time to read it?), and on and on.
The other blog I visited, land of lolo, had the most user-unfriendly type ever on a too busy background, so I dumped out of there faster than you can say metacognitive.
But back to this game concept - the first blog was playful and full of game-like activities to discover great works and literature and have fun while doing so. Hmm, I thought. All we have to do is free our minds from all this traditional learning that was burned into our consciousness. No small feat there, but my point is that there are amazing resources out there, and we can take advantage of them.
Suddenly I'm all excited again. Perhaps I can figure out a game to help me retype all the info I lost tonight.
I'll head to bed shortly, chanting, I am not a tech weanie, I am not a tech weanie...
Wow, Joe, I am so sorry to hear about your work on your wiki site. And if you're a tech weanie, you're certainly not the only one; I've lost hours of work on papers and projects over the years in similar situations...but I guess it's all part of this technology learning experience.
ReplyDeleteSo I guess, after reading Gee, you can say that there's a method behind your nephew's madness. I bet you any money he's not even aware of it.
Life's a game. Retype your wiki info, and if in the horrible event that it doesn't save again, type it in a third time and try to beat your record of how long it takes you to retype that information. (I said that life's a game, but not necessarily a fun one at times...)
-Stephanie
Salut Joseph,
ReplyDeleteTu n'est pas de <>! Est-ce que tu as eu l'occasion de visiter des sites Internet d' Edublogger? Moi, je n'ai pas trouve des sites interssants... Bon courage!
Mindy
Joe,
ReplyDeleteI wish I knew French so I could also comment in it like Mindy does...
Oh well. I'm so sorry about your wiki. That's one of the things about technology that scares me the most (yes, even I, a tech genius, often fear technology), having created something and then having it suddenly disappear. I don't mean to get too philosophical here is blog land, but does what we create on a computer actually exist before we click print (baring any printer related malfunctions)? I can see that I'm trying this comment to you, but it's just an image on my screen, I can't touch it, can't feel it, can't smell it, and if my computer runs out of battery I can't prove it ever existed. Alright, too deep for 7:30 am.
BE a "tech weanie", Joe!
ReplyDeleteAs you saw in reading my blog, I share your excitement. I think there will be a way to replicate the learning experience in a program of some kind, game or not, that inspires motivation; essentially, I wonder if it won't walk the learner through the learning experience over and over, yet entertainingly, as needed. Perhaps a platform will be hit upon that can do this, and can be flavorized or ported to the various styles of learning. I hope so. Sorry about your data loss!
Hey non-tech-weanie! I had no idea about your wiki loss. :( Ugh! I am so sorry. Anything I can do to help? I know it's due soon, but just let me know! Also, I like what you said about freeing our minds from traditional learning. It was a little painful at first, but I am seeing so many benefits to the info we are learning! I'm especially excited to see how our views change/strengthen as we begin student teaching... See you Monday!
ReplyDeleteFree your mind, indeed! I really liked that the Gee article thought about the kinds of knowledge kids use when playing video games and how to transfer that knowledge to learning in the classroom. Video games so easily engage student and it would be great if we could engage students the same way.
ReplyDelete