Week 5 DQC – EDUC 342: Child Development & New Technologies

Week 6 – Writing Socially

nhardson — Thu, 11 Feb 2016 04:33:51 +0000

I found the Curwood-Magnifico-Lammer’s article to be incredibly interesting. Particularly because my middle school years were full of online writing. I utilized a cite called “Worthy of Publishing” that provided a platform for aspiring writers to post their chapters and have others comment on them. It truly demonstrated to me the power of having an audience. I wrote because people wanted to know about my story. I got feedback and was able to read imperfect writing in order to understand what good writing looks like. It was an incredibly formative time for me as a writer.

Additionally, I found it interesting the idea of implementing this type of format in a classroom. When I was in middle school two other girls and me were all working on our own “novels.” We formed a mini community by emailing each other our work and giving feedback. We motivated each other and created our own small social network to motivate our writing. I can’t help but think utilizing peers in motivating young writers is critical and I honestly believe using a social network in order to do that is brilliant. I think that affinity groups form that type of platform naturally but I wonder if there is a way to create a platform, like “Worthy of Publishing,” targeted at youth, where completely original work could be created.

Week 5 Discussion

lgoochee — Sun, 07 Feb 2016 21:46:38 +0000

I’m a little late on my week 5 post, but I wanted to respond to the portion of the Granic article where growth mindset is referenced. I pasted the portion below my comment.

I wondered about these different domains of cognitive, motivational, emotional, and social development that they were observing regarding playing video games. It seemed like some variable that could lead in gains in one domain could lead to a deficit in another domain. In regards to where the ideas of entity vs. incremental theories of intelligence or cognitive development were presented, it seemed like they could actually work against a child’s emotional development in the sense that the mindset of constant incremental gains could keep a child always exerting effort to prove themselves. That feeling in and of itself could be emotionally exhaustive. I don’t know much about the growth mindset, so I may have misinterpreted it here.

Excerpt from Granic:

Children who are praised for their traits rather than their efforts (e.g., “Wow, you’re such a smart boy”) develop an entity theory of intelligence, which maintains that intelligence is an innate trait, something that is fixed and cannot be im- proved. In contrast, children who are praised for their effort (e.g., “You worked so hard on that puzzle!”) develop an incremental theory of intelligence; they believe intelligence is malleable, something that can be cultivated through effort and time. We propose that video games are an ideal training ground for acquiring an incremental theory of intelligence because they provide players concrete, immediate feedback regarding specific efforts players have made.

Further, research has shown that the extent to which individuals endorse an incremental versus entity theory of intelligence reliably predicts whether individuals in challenging circumstances will persist or give up, respectively (Dweck & Molden, 2005). Thus, these implicit theories of intelligence have implications for how failure is processed and dealt with. If one believes that intelligence or ability is fixed, failure induces feelings of worthlessness. But if intelligence or ability is presumed to be a mark of effortful engagement, failure signals the need to remain engaged and bolster one’s efforts. In turn, this positive attitude toward failure predicts better academic performance (e.g., Black- well, Trzesniewski, & Dweck, 2007).

Week 5 Discussion-Gaming and Mental Health

nhardson — Thu, 04 Feb 2016 07:47:36 +0000

I found the Granic reading to be incredibly interesting. Primarily the idea that video games could be used as a platform to treat mental health problems in youth. This seems like an excellent opportunity area to utilize video games as a platform for social good. Additionally, I believe it would be incredibly interesting to utilize the social nature of video gaming, as noted in the reading, for potentially creating communities around mental health and video gaming.

Furthermore, this made me think about how video games could be used in other ways to promote social good. I am particularly interested in brainstorming ways that video games could be used to instill positive values in youth. I think we often associate video games with violence but I wonder if there are ways to use video games in order to promote positive values instead.

Videogames as STEM Gatekeepers

hgamble — Thu, 04 Feb 2016 06:42:38 +0000

Williams mentioned an interesting theory that I would like to use this post to further explore. That theory is that video games can often serve as a kind of introduction to STEM disciplines for children. The Granic reading points to multiple different area’s, both cognitive and motivational, that support this theory. One finding in Granic is the improved spatial reasoning abilities demonstrated by children who play specifically shooter type video games. Spatial reasoning is one of the hardest to develop and most critical skills in STEM disciplines. Formula’s are often useless if a person does not have the physical intuition to discern where and when those formula are applicable. This is why labs are incorporated into physics and chemistry classes. Professors are not expecting students to discover something new or groundbreaking, but instead trying to imbue students with physical intuition. However, labs fail in that they are often very boring and seem like mechanical exercises which don’t inspire students to process and make connections between mathematical and physical descriptions of situations. Games can bridge this gap. I went to a talk last year by a product manager at Udacity who used to teach highschool physics. He replaced physical labs in his class with labs completed within the video game “Portal 2”. He said that his students engagement with labs was much higher after the switch. I think that this is a space in which video games could do a great service to education.

Week 5 DQC

eanders7 — Wed, 03 Feb 2016 15:48:30 +0000

After reading From Content to Context: Videogames as Designed Experience, I am intrigued by what video games may be able to offer educators. According to the authors, “it is critical that researchers examine what players actually do with games, rather than assuming that there is any one ‘game itself’ as it is meant to be played.” This implies that there is a great deal of importance behind the decisions people make when they engage with a video game, and that the decisions could have implications for understanding the user. In Measuring What Matters Most Dean Schwartz and Dylan Arena argue that using video games as assessment tools can teach educators more about how students learn and that is ultimately more important than content. Do my classmates have input (perhaps about video games they are familiar with) about how educators might glean more information about how students learn while using videogames?

I thought the authors concluded with an excellent question, “what will become of formal schools if they are last to recognize the potential of this powerful medium?’