Summary of Week 2

This week I learned to have an effective game students and anyone else playing the game need to be motivated. Students should be self-motivated and have a purpose. It shouldn’t be from a teacher directed motivation the whole time.  There needs to be modeling and explanation on how long the game will take so the student can understand how much effort they need to give and motivate themselves. To be successful students need to be challenged. When the game is very challenging this can cause students to turn away or not be interested in the game.

            In Thomas’s blog, he explained how Donkey Kong was challenging for him right on the ledge of frustration and almost making him quit.  This is the level challenging games should have. It keeps the players interested, but doesn’t create so much frustration to where the player decides to leave the game.

This week, I had the same situation. During our Google Hangout meeting, I had a difficult time downloading the voice plugin program. My computer said it was downloaded, but every time I went to connect to the meeting, I would have to download google plug in again. I finally was able to connect to the meeting, but then had a difficult time opening the minecraft folder due to using a PC and not a MAC. I ended up using two computers, one so I could listen to the google hangout and the other to access minecraft.

My goal this week is to work with IT and make sure my computer can connect to google hangout for next week.  This situation was extremely frustrating and challenging to the point where I almost quit. The idea of being able to connect to the meeting and here the information about minecraft, kept me going. I set a goal for myself and kept going until I achieved it.

I have never played minecraft, so after the meeting I spent another hour exploring minecraft. It wasn’t until my husband reminded me; we didn’t have dinner yet, so I decided to stop for the evening. The game was fascinating. I enjoyed learning about the game as I played. There where signs and explanations on how to move your player and build. The game has some difficulty and a few challenges, but not enough to turn me away from the game.

This week I read my peers blogs and gave feedback on their thoughts from this week. Most of the time, I agreed with their idea of motivation and having games flow – be created with enough challenges. I also connected with my k-12 MOOC team. We explained our knowledge and experience with the book “The Giver.” It is important to know the story line and how the structure is built in the book when building a game. We collaborated on how we wanted to design the game. We thought the students could build it and create an explanation using information sited from the book. A lot of us have never read the book, so we are all in the process of reading the book right now. We gave our thoughts on what time and day would work best to meet. I talked to a few students at my school about mine craft. Another co-worker and I heard about a first grader’s experience with the game. It was amazing to me, a first grader who is still learning how to log in to the school computers, could play mine craft. I love this about technology. It doesn’t matter what age you are, anyone can access it and be successful.