Reaction to the Games Played

The Darfur is Dying game seemed a bit too easy, honestly. Making it harder to survive or manage would have probably made the point much better. Overall a good message, though. Showing bad conditions in the camp, showing the day to day struggle for something as simple as water, both of these drive home the horrible situation people face in Darfur.

Ayiti, in contrast, was incredibly hard to manage. After several rounds, I found absolutely no way of keeping everyone alive. If kids were to get that frustrated over a game, it would be something even more to realize that people live with those hard decisions every dya.

Funbrain is a fun little site. A lot of simple, single concept games. This would be great to let kids practice stuff for tests and quizzes.

Gamequarium is about the same thing as Funbrain, just with worse web design. I appreciated the inclusion of themes based on kid's books, which would make it much easier to get children entertained by the games

Funderstanding Roller Coaster is definitely pretty fun, and something that would be great for kids to collaborate on. The inclusion of mass, friction, and gravity are all great to show kids how they interact.

Video Games: A Waste of Time?

Video games are useful as a stress relieving activity. They can also be used for educational purposes, although most educational video games are very boring. If you could integrate education into more polished, fun games then you'd have the best of both worlds.

Podcast

Creating my podcast, I became more familiar with music creation applications. Using Garage Band, by the end of the process, had become fairly easy. I believe I am at the point where I could work on improving my music, recording quality, etc. because I have the basics down. And by making my own, I realized a few different applications that I could use it for. What I chose was a news recap for the classroom. Something that breaks current & relevant news stories down for students.

The only advice I would give to teacher podcasts is don't be overly ambitious. Let your podcast be a supplementary tool, something that is fun for the students. Don't make it the crowning centerpiece of your lessons, that's asking for dissapointment and problems.

Podcast Entry

I will not attempt to use podcasting in my future classroom. It requires students to own computers and an internet connection, and some students simply cannot afford that. Aside from that, I believe a full podcast lesson would be large in size and require a high-speed internet connection.

Offering it as a supplementary resource is just giving students with computers and internet connections an advantage, in addition to those they already have.

Wiki Entry

Wiki's are an excellent way to bring real collaboration to your classroom for homework and long-term projects. It is well documented that children benefit from group work, and this is just another way to bring group work to the students learning.

It is also a great way to put class summaries (what we did today, what you have to do for homework) so children can get caught up easily if they miss a day of class.

I would use a wiki in my classroom, as I plan to teach 5th grade. At that grade, they will be familiar enough to know how to visit a webpage and have basic typing skills. That's really all that's needed for a wiki.