Game-based learning and the long tradition of learning through play are finding new followers across primary and secondary education each year. The advent of mobile technologies is inspiring new ways of thinking about the use of technology in the classroom, causing teachers and educators to experiment the Montessori method and the Reggio Emilia approach, which foster self-guided learning in supportive environments. Combined with an exploratory, game-based curriculum, these hands-on approaches to learning are part of the much longer story about how people learn.
Inspiring educators through examples of game-based learning and digital games in the classroom is not difficult. Teachers like to be inspired. We feel good after watching Ken Robinson, Sugata Mitra, or Jane McGonigal vividly describe the merits of creativity, individualized learning, and play in their educational TED talks. But, when those 18 minutes are done, what do educators do with that enthusiasm? The first step to incorporating games, technology and the wonderful world of digital things into learning is not about inspiring teachers to use technology in the classroom, but guiding them to resources that will help them understand how to implement it in meaningful ways.
Curating digital resources, therefore, must be an important part of this transformation if teachers are expected to implement modern, play-based pedagogies. Authentic curation goes beyond the current lists we see pushed out on blogs everywhere that offer the Top 10 education websites - or worse yet “100 great apps for your classroom”-type offerings. This sort of curation is not useful to today's classroom teachers who are too busy to wade through list upon list of links to “useful” tools. These lists make integrating play-based technologies seems as easy as downloading the latest edugame for tablets and saying, “Hey students – Let’s do this amazing thing with our computers today!”
via www.nmc.org
From NMC blog: Curating the Way We Teach with Games
Comments