My Kolb score:
AE score: 20
RO: 5
AC: 15
CE:10
Clearly, I am very much an Active Experimenter, with Abstract Conceptualization a close second. While I can generally envision concepts in my head fairly well, I learn much better by doing something a few times. Once I've had some practice, I can get it just right.
My Prensky score was 32. I tend to prefer to take my time to absorb information or to work on projects. I don't like to be rushed, and I like to develop a complete understanding of whatever I might be doing. I'm also not very good at multitasking--I struggle with focus and attention, especially if there are any surrounding distractions!
VAK: Visual learning style. I learn through watching, reading, and illustrations. I often use funny .gifs and pictures in my ESL classroom to illustrate concepts and help my students develop associations.
Bloxorz is a puzzle game in which the player uses the arrow keys to roll and flip a three-dimesional rectangle (which I learned is called a cuboid!) around a flat maze of increasing difficulty, with the ultimate goal of dropping the cuboid through a square hole without dropping it off the side of the maze. I loved playing Bloxorz, and I think I'll come back to it again to keep challenging myself. I played it through several levels--the visual puzzle aspect of the game really appealed to me. I think a game like Bloxorz would be fantastic for a student struggling with quantitative skills and spatial awareness. I imagine it could be very relevant in a geometry class as well. I would recommend this to a classroom of perhaps middle school and up? If it were an iPad game, I would definitely recommend it to schools who give free iPads to their students. It was a lot of fun and challenged me.
Conversely, I found the Map Puzzles game to be less challenging--and frankly I thought they weren't complex enough. The Map Puzzles game had few levels, and asked the player to (depending on the level) click on continents or oceans, type in the abbreviated name of the continent or oceans, or drag and drop the continents onto their outlines correctly. Perhaps it would be sufficiently challenging for a young child, but I think it has very limited application. It took me less than 2 minutes to play a level through. This is a game I would probably use over the course of a week or so, and never again for the remainder of the school year. I certainly wouldn't use it with students below a first or second-grade level. I think it could be much more effective if the information was diversified. While there are multiple "levels" to the game, I honestly felt like each level was essentially a repeat of the next. I thought the game could benefit from a lot more depth, as I really believe a seven-year-old could play through all the levels in 10-15 minutes.
Hi, Teigen
ReplyDeleteI didn't play the Map Puzzles game, so it would have been really helpful to have more information about how it played and the goals in your description. You mentioned that you are an ESL teacher. Do you think that either of these games would be appropriate in your teaching context? You also mentioned that the Map Puzzles game wasn't complex enough. Do you think that this was because it did not appeal to your learning style or because it was age/level inappropriate for you?
Also, a side note: I find your blog extremely hard to read because of the background picture. I love that you took extra time to make your blog more appealing, but I had to highlight all of the text so that I could read your post.
Hi Teigen,
ReplyDeleteI reviewed a European map game and found it user-friendly and adequately challenging. I suppose it depends on the developmental level of the students, but to me, the drag and drop offers a better solution to memorizing a map than writing in country names on a paper map. With the online map game I played, it allowed players to place the countries they got correct and then return later to the ones they missed in order to re-do them. I guess it depends on the map one chooses to practice. A map of just the continents would be easy for one of my high school students to complete, however the map of Europe would be more of a challenge.
Hi Teigen, I also loved playing Bloxorz and will, like you, probably play it again in the future. Personally, though, I don't see much use for it in the classroom. It might help with spacial acumen but I'm not really sure it would fit that well with any classes that I am familiar with.
ReplyDeleteHi, Teigen, I agree with your assessment of the Map Puzzles. To me it wasn't even a game at all, it was an "activity" - something you do to practice something but doesn't fall into my definition of game. (I probably should have mentioned this in my paper!) A game I played on the iPad/iPhone called Stack the Countries has more of an appealing game quality to it - factual information about geographical places in a quiz-format with a gravity-related fun state stacking mechanic. Hard to describe... https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/stack-the-countries/id407838198?mt=8
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