Week 3 - Games, games games!

This week was about the all important topic of games! We specifically looked at children's games and after playing around for a while, I discovered that they are actually quite complex and sophisticated and I don't think that teaching has quite caught up yet. The games I played in the lab would be second nature to children today, but I think that some teachers (myself as a pre service teacher included) would have trouble with them.

The first activity we did for the day was the jumping frog activity. Using a paper frog, piece of cardboard, rubber band, sticky tape and scissors, we had to make the frog jump using only those resouces. I found the activity to be very frustrating as myself and Rachel could not figure it out! I think I have lost my creative edge so to speak but I doubt this would be a problem for students. Infact I think that this activity is something that students would thouroughly enjoy. The activity is a great way to get children discussing and thinking as well as using motor skills. A great thing I found about this activity is that it could be used for children of all ages. Older children could incorporate writing and literature skills into the activity by filing in a desgin brief.Younger children could also do this type of activity by using pictures and drawings to fill in their design brief, outlining how they made the frog jump.

Now back to the games. Online games are a great way to engage kids in ICT. Kids can learn lots from these games by making their own or by doing each others games. You can make many types of games online about endless topics and could relate it to the topic being taught in the classroom. Today we made our own games using the website www.quia.com/web  The first game I made was a quiz about horses consisting of 5 multiple choice questions. Once we were all finished we then got to play each others quizzes which was lots of fun and I found that I actually learnt a lot from them! My quiz can be found at the URL below
http://www.quia.com/quiz/2542493.html?AP_rand=770959945

After playing with all the quizzes, I used the website to created a hangman game. My theme was under the sea and instead of the traditional hangman format I chose to use the bear and balloon format. Below is a snapshot of my game. You can find this game of mine at the URL http://www.quia.com/hm/671845.html