Classroom Incentives for Games

Classroom Incentives for Games (see the reference)

Last blog article, we talked about the components of making good learning games. Now, let’s discuss the useful incentives for learners’ involvement.

C  Candy Prizes

Rewarding learners with different kinds, colors, shapes, or various flavors of candy is a powerful allurement when they answer the correct answers in the class. The things need to be checked before employing this award in the class are to investigate learners history of food allergy and the permission from parents.

Extra Credit

This incentive is especially for playing learning games in the class. The way to count the extra points can be personally or with a whole group. The point of extra credit is to call different students to answer the task based questions for offering more opportunities of expressing and practicing in the class.

Pizza Party

Pizza parties are appropriate to reviewing the whole lesson information at the end of the lesson day. Students need to comprehend the main points of the lesson and answer the challenging questions from teachers by not missing too many mistaken answers to gain their pizza parties as their praises. This can also be used to compete with other class in school to arouse the sense of cooperation by learning.

Movie Day

This method of reward can be used for the whole class participation. The tips of choosing the movies are according to learners’ age, interests, and the mortal of the story. Students are allowed to bring snakes and drinks to share in the class.

What Makes a Good Learning Game?
Going beyond edutainment

By Simon Egenfeldt-Nielsen / February 2011

The preference article

This article discusses the factors to make games good games. The three msin factors are integration, motivation, and focus. 

When teachers are playing games in the class, they need to make sure that learning and playing are integrated into the games. 

Moreover, it is teachers’ responsibility to design the learning games intriguing and engaging. 

Furthermore, the games are required to be challenging to learners. These elements in learning games are good motivation to trigger the learners to involve the games more. 

The final component of a good learning game is focus. Players can focus on learning experience by collecting, discovering, and performing the games together.

Teachers can apply those factors as a reminder to exam their own designing games and also evaluate learners’ reaction and interaction in the class to check up how success the games are. In addition, the article states the ways to distinguish games and learning by substantives and verbs. Other facets of good games include a systematic rules for learners to follow. “When we design learning games we should therefore be very focused on how the rules in the games works, because they define the core of the game experience, and ultimately the primary learning results.” (Simon Egenfeldt-Nielsen)

    

The function of learners' social network.

 

  Teaching and Learning through Social Networks 
  When it comes to the new trend of teaching method, learning technologies are always categorized into the new current. As a “modern” teacher, it is the must to understand the value of the social networking of teaching and learning. More and more young English learners tend to chase the technology to learn English.  

  In 2007, the British Council conducted market research into how the Internet has affected the preferred learning styles of young people wanting to learn English around the world. The result shows that more than half of English learners believe applying the Internet as a learning technology is more efficient and complete. Also, the social networking including learners’ friends as well as family. They are the essential factors to assist learners of learning besides the value of the Internet.

  Sometimes, social networking refers to the group projects in the class. The collaboration among learners  might improve their abilities as well.

  Smart phones are popular among young learners, too. Teachers can take smart phones as a good path to their learning area. Not all the knowledge is from our textbooks. Learners can reach the outside world and information by their daily using smart phones. The way to learn can meet their needs and interesting.

  A firm social network represents a better academic performance of learners. The hints for teachers to notice are paying more attention on the social network of every individual, teaching learners the appropriate means to access the outside information, and developing their social skills.

 

How do we deal with KNOWLEDGE?

  Before the knowledge grew dramatically, people pursue their jobs after schooling. Also the field of knowledge was counted in a long periods. Now, knowledge evolves rapidly. Many new fields come out within few years or even few months. The recent learning trend is impressive to me. It mentions “Learning is a continual process, lasting for a lifetime. Learning and work related activities are no longer separate. In many situations, they are the same. ” I totally agree with this point in many aspects. First, gaining knowledge is accessible action with the Internet nowadays. It’s easy to be eliminated in the work places if one is not eager to refill him/herself more information and ability related to the career. Moreover, gaining knowledge is through the individual’s practical experience. By conducting more practice associated to the job, the individual can earn more to assist his or her job.

Behaviorism

• Observable behaviour is more important than understanding internal activities.
• Behaviour should be focused on simple elements: specific stimuli and responses.
• Learning is about behaviour change.

Cognitivism

·         Learning is the process of knowledge input.

• The input knowledge turns into short-term memory.
• The sort-term memory then goes into long-term recall

Constructivism

·         Learners chase to gain knowledge when they need to comprehend their experiences.

·         Learners pursue the knowledge by creating their own meaning.

·         The real-life learning is messy and complicated.

  According to the video, it asserts that the network itself is the learning. The way people connect to other people reflects the individuals’ capability to persist to leave in the same stage. People need to socialize themselves by chatting with the people around them or deploy private speech to communicate with the intimacy. Besides just talking to people around us, we can also apply the technology as the tool to keep in touch with others such as e-mail  or a phone call. The network people create around them including coworkers, family, friends or anyone as the members in the individual’s network. The value of the network makes the new information transmits easily in the network than the period without technology. Take Google reader as an example. People set up their specific reader network to gain new information form others which are in their network and the new piece of information spread in this network in a rapid speed making the new knowledge grow exponentially. I like this idea since I just started to employ the new tool such as blogger and Google reader recently.
Referneces:
Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age (George Siemens)

The Network is the learning.