Reflections: Session Five.

Fri, 5 Sep 2008
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  • K: What I already KNOW about this week’s topic.
    I’ve always believed that for teaching to be applicable to students in this day and age, teachers have to move rapidly away from paradigms of the past e.g. video games are bad and learn to embrace practices of the present e.g. the increasing popularity of video games and how to incorporate it into classroom teaching. I guess this article has helped to articulate some of my thoughts and has exposed me to new ideas too, such as those detailed in the ‘L’ section.

  • W: What I WANT TO LEARN.
    I’ve long recognised that video gaming does teach certain skillsets that are relevant to anyone in the ‘real’ world; I dabble in a bit of multi-player gaming myself, so I’ve encountered situations of conflict caused by a lack of communication, and I’ve also learnt the idea of scarcity and trade-offs from role-playing games, where using a game character with certain strengths also means that the character will have certain inherent weaknesses that are correlated to its strengths. Nevertheless, what I want to learn are the specific and general skillsets needed in English Literature and English Language – my teaching subjects – and games which also provide that fit. So far, I’ve thought about the idea of narrative in Warcraft, and how it might be applicable to teaching composition writing to fans of the game series. But beyond that?
  • L: What I LEARNED this week.
    I’ve learnt that I’m not alone in my beliefs with regards to the idea that “Education has been remarkably resistant to change for [the last] 100 years“! Personally I think it’s possible to move faster, in terms of embracing the technologies of tomorrow for lessons today.

    Also, I’ve realised from this:

    …the fact that they don’t think of gameplay as training is crucial. Once the experience is explicitly educational, it becomes about developing compartmentalized skills and loses its power to permeate the player’s behavior patterns and worldview. (Brown and Thomas, 2006)

    that it’d be good to start thinking about how to get students to similarly stop thinking about curriculum lessons as ‘training’, but rather, as something they enjoy, much like ‘gameplay’, in order that they may also learn at the same rate as game players.


  • Q: What QUESTIONS I still have.
    My most fundamental question is this: how do we get everyone on the same boat? That is, how does one convince others who are resolutely resistant to change that technology really is the way to go in teaching pedagogies of the future?

Will Jun Liang get some tonight?

Thu, 4 Sep 2008
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I checked my mobile phone after coming out from the shower, and was very surprised to see that I had received two text messages.

Who would text me at this hour, I wondered. (More accurately, Is it from a secret admirer! was my more hopeful but ultimately wishful thought.)

Nevertheless, I was curious so I opened the first message. To my amazement, it read:

In between two podiums. Near to (sic) the gal’s podium. -jun liang.

Huh! I exclaimed to myself, while Leon ruminated thoughtfully over math questions. Who is this Jun Liang, and why is he texting me!

My curiosity piqued, I opened the second text message, which to my amusement this time, read:

We’re at the bar next to the toilet

Because I am so intelligent and clever, I very quickly put two and two together – while Leon algebrated his math problems – and deduced that: Ah ha! It’s Wed nite/Thu morning, so Jun Liang is Mambo-ing at Zouk, and he is texting someone his location so that said someone will know where to find him.

However, I don’t know Jun Liang, and I don’t think Jun Liang knows me – I don’t have his number in my phone book, and I don’t know (m)any Jun Liangs anyway, so I suspect he typed the number out in a drunken (not violet) but very frenzied haze and sent the messages to me, the unintended recipient.

Because I am so easily amused, I laughed to myself (not out loud, mind you, because Leon was busy numerating the denominator) at the absurdity of the situation.

But because I am also very imaginative, I immediately started worrying: Oh no! What if Jun Liang (my new-found friend) intended the text message for a GIRL? And what if she doesn’t receive the messages? Will she ever be able to find him?

Quickly, because I am a quick person, I typed out this reply to Jun Liang:

You’re msging the wrong person dude! But I hope you get some tonight! Don’t be scared, just whack, if you don’t try you’ll never know!

Satisfied that I had managed to avert yet another national disaster, I walked over to Leon and very proudly told him what I had done.

However, he grunted at me and asked me to help him with his math problem.

Silence.

I hope Jun Liang gets some tonight.

P.S. If you are Jun Liang and you read this, please let me know if you got some and I will declare the next day a public holiday for everyone!

Reflections: Session Four (E-learning Week).

Mon, 1 Sep 2008
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Following on from my comment on Dr Tan’s blog, I feel very fulfilled after completing the readings and tasks, but I wonder if it is possible to split the tasks into separate weeks.

In my opinion, knowledge is infinite, so no matter how much one is able to absorb and learn (n, if the amount can be quantified in algebraic terms), there will always be a bit more information to absorb and learn – in other words, n + 1.

For the purposes of classroom lessons, however, time is finite – there are only two hours in a teaching period, and 168 hours in a week. This means that teaching and learning time must be used as effectively as possible to ensure learners learn at an optimal capacity.

Nevertheless, ‘optimal’ is always a grey area because of its inherent subjectivity; one person’s bread may well be another person’s poison, so what may be just the right amount of assignments for one person may be too little for another.

Then again, this could also mean that if a student finds the workload too ‘slack’, s/he could very well engage on independent research or learning in order to add-on to what s/he already has learnt.

Thus, Dr Tan could consider either working on my suggestion or aggregating the feedback he has received and will receive from various students in terms of the e-learning workload so as to find the right balance for everyone.

In any case, it’s a win/win situation for all 🙂

To sum up my reflections for this week, I think I better understand the need for this portion of the module: when I was younger, way back when dinosaurs roamed the earth (LOL), my secondary school was part of the pilot programme to test out IT infrastructure in Singapore schools.

Back then, the only form of Cyberwellness we had came in the guise of “DON’T TOUCH THE DAMN THING, THE DAMN THING CAN’T WORK. OKAY?” – when our teacher tried to gently explain to us that he had kindly locked our keyboards and mice using a centralised system while he went through the finer points of ourl very boring lesson package, so that we wouldn’t surf the net and be led astray by unsavoury influences.

Because it was the year 1996, and the Internet was a new and exciting thing that no one really knew much about. Thankfully, though, we weren’t led astray but nevertheless, I think there could’ve been a better way to guide us along our learning journey.

Hence, I do agree that it is necessary for teachers to be educated on the issues that arise from ICT-mediated lessons, either face-to-face or online, along with the strategies to cope with said issues if they do occur.

With that, here’s looking to tomorrow’s class, where we share with everyone why Google Reader rocks!