Posts published in February, 2016

Week 7 DQC

In Breaking the Symbol Barrier Devlin compares math to piano music. Music is merely represented on paper, while it is experienced when someone plays a piano. The instrument is engaging and provides immediate feedback to the learner. Math is similarly represented on paper with symbols but experienced through mathematical thinking. Devlin argues that Everyday Math can… Read more Week 7 DQC

Week 7 response

This week’s readings emphasized the important difference between thoughtful, well-designed learning games and ineffective games. I figured that Zhang was talking about Coolmath before she even named it because of that site’s reputation for shallow math games. I hope that Zhang’s study is not understood to mean that math games are ineffective. Berkowitz et al… Read more Week 7 response

Week 6 Discussion

I want to comment on the Curwood, Magnifico, Lammers piece, “Writing in the Wild: Writers’ motivation in fan-based affinity spaces.” Overall, I greatly enjoyed this piece, especially in relation to my user interviewing and testing. My child gave me the feedback that she wanted the writing kit to shift in perspective. Instead of being her journal, she wanted… Read more Week 6 Discussion

Week 7: The Importance of Clear Representation

The fact that tablets allow for more efficient representation of math seems to be nothing short of revolutionary. I really liked how the speaker built his argument by showing us how math was done before the printing press, it was able to make the contrast between what we grew up learning and the potential of… Read more Week 7: The Importance of Clear Representation

Week 7: Math

The Zhang article made me wonder how students’ interactions with online math games have changed in the age of YouTube. From Ashley’s talk last week, we learned that kids are no longer using Google to search for content. In the article, from November 2012-October 2013, 6% of traffic to coolmath-games came from social media sites including… Read more Week 7: Math

Week 6

How can what we know about the demographics of those who already engage in online affinity spaces shape the ways in which educators engage all students? In other words, could targeted exposure among students that are not the typical users by teachers create more interest in partaking in these kinds of literacy practices?

Week 6 Discussion

The authors of Writing in the Wild posit that writing in online affinity spaces “motivate young people to write through self-directed and interest-based opportunities to share their work with an authentic audience” (p. 678). While I agree that there are many opportunities for informal learning in these affinity spaces, I worry that we are not seeing the… Read more Week 6 Discussion

Week 6

The reading on fan-based spaces struck a particular cord with me because not only was I regular visitor on neopets in my middle school days but an active contributor to the Harry Potter fanfiction websites in my high school days. It was interesting to view something that I just did for fun analyzed in an… Read more Week 6

Week 6 Discussion

“Writing in the Wild” came to powerful conclusions yet caused me to question the application in practice. Currwood et al. argue that contemporary affinity spaces include a passionate, public audience for content. However, this caused me to question the negative and perhaps unwarranted criticism that could arise from this passionate public audience. Sheena mentions that she… Read more Week 6 Discussion

Week 6 Reading

The Curwood reading brought up really interesting points regarding the effect of fan-fiction on writing skills. I think there is a lot of benefit to fan-fiction communities as it provides users with a location to discuss lore, be inspired by other pieces of fan-fiction, and share ideas. All these – especially in the context of… Read more Week 6 Reading