Summary 5: Puzzle, Quiz & Sports Games

Title:  Puzzle, Quiz, & Sports Games

My current learning style based on Kolb’s Learning Styles quick activity is very much AE, Active Experimentation. When taking Kolb’s Learning Styles quick activity I scored a 20 in the AE category. I believe that being in this category of learning style does not only outline the type of learner that I am but definitely shows how I have taken my learning style and made it into a career. Since I teach FACS, Family and Consumer Sciences (Home Ec), everything that I teach is hands on and a large part of what students are doing is learning through doing the task at hand. The best example of what this would look like in my classroom could be seen through a various array of classes in which students in a foods class would be cooking and “actively experimenting” with foods, a sewing class would be “actively experimenting” in making garments, and a child development class would be “actively experimenting” by working with computerized babies. I work with active experimenting and hands on learning daily and have found that it is a form of learning that is able to reach a vast majority of students.

Based on Prensky’s list I scored myself at a 37, with the majority of my answers leaning more towards the fives than the number ones. Prensky believes that today’s learners lean more toward the ones. I could go on describing why I am at the further end of the spectrum but because I am an educator and work with students routinely I feel I can pose episodes to support Prensky’s idea of today’s learners being more prone to the one end. The question on Presky’s list brings out the most obvious reason why today’s learners would tend to lean to the low end of the rating scale in relation to twitch speed versus conventional speed. With the vast forms of technology available today kids expect things to be instant and only take a minimal amount of time. This also ties directly to instant gratification, because kids are so used to the quick technology and feedback they do not understand the concept of delayed gratification and not being able to see fast results. I believe that I greatly differed from the outlook of today’s learner because I was raised very differently than most of today’s learners.

Based on the VAK learning styles I am most definitely a visual learner. Discovering I am a visual learner based on the VAK learning styles directly connects to my AE, Active Experimenting, I discovered through Kolb’s learning styles. The VAK learning styles continue to define the fact that I am a “seeing and doing” type of learner. I will choose visual learning style for this week’s game list.

The two games that I choose to play were 1.) Map Games and 2.) Vocabulary.co.il. I really liked both of these games and found them to be fun and engaging. I also chose these two games because they pose a best and least scenario for my classroom use. Map games were my least fit for my classroom because I would find it very difficult to justify its use in my classroom. Vocabulary.co.il was my best fit because anything dealing with reading skills would help the ELL students that are in my classes, help the special education students, and also be beneficial to the other students in my classroom with their reading skills.

      Map Games was a game dealing with the placement of states and capitals in the United States. The game, depending on which selection you chose, would give you either a state or a capital and you had to click and drag it to the correct place on the map. The game allowed for you to retry if you messed up and the challenge existed in the amount of time it took you to complete the game. The game also presented challenge levels by offering to place the grid of the United States on the map so that you could know where the states went. Due to this fact I believe the game could go from almost a puzzle type game to a quiz game if the outlines were not present.

Vocabulary.co.il was a fun interactive game that I really enjoyed playing. The game involved trying to put words together that were near each other in a jumbled up box type formation. As you tried to match the letters, four or more, together the blocks would keep building on the top. This game also allowed you to correct moves, or in other words you were not penalized for wrong moves that I observed. You moved up in levels throughout the game and my only complaint about the game is that it would move you up a level in the middle of the game without letting you finish the level you were on first.

The components that I feel make Map Games weak for the type of learner that I have outlined is because it deals with one concept, mapping of the United States.    There is no way to identify whether the prior knowledge, that would have had to of taken place for the child/student to interact at the level of the game, took place in hands on approach. A student could not use the hands on approach with this game in order to teach themselves, they would have to have some other form of learning involved prior to help build the foundation to play this game. We do not know what type of learning was demonstrated through administering the prior knowledge.

The components that I feel make Vocabulary.co.il a strong game for the type of learner I have described is because working with vocabulary is something that is daily and the hands on approach of having the material evidence of a book in your hand and learning and reading all kinds of different words is a great form of hand on learning. This confines of this game do not exist, many words exist to be used and tried throughout the game. This game is also great because for the hands on learner it not only provides reading development and vocabulary development but also spelling.

I believe that my best-fit and least-fit criteria, as somewhat discussed previously, comes down to the constraints of the game. A hand on learner learns through their own experimentation. In playing the Map Game the game is based on one area and does not leave much room for exploration whereas the Vocabulary game lets students explore a large variety of means through spelling, reading, and vocabulary.