PC games are good ......

We have finally finished our practice placement at Humpfry Skolan in Malmø. It’s been a mixed experience working at the school. We have had a good contact with the class teacher Erica, who has lived in Denmark a few years. We had a plan to teach the 6’th grade in fantasy genre and the 8’th grade in film.

The biggest challenge we had was getting classroom management to work. There was properly a feeling of us being interns and that our lessons were a chance to have fun and not pay attention.

I  have talked to the classroom teacher about this and she thinks we are doing what we can, she thought it was good that I got out and around in the room when I was talking to the students, and that it helped keeping their attention.

At the Malmø teacher training college I am taking a course in Language, Culture and Identity part 2, it is really interesting and the only problem is that we have too few hours in this course. Every time a good discussion is about to commence, the teacher has to lead us back on the schedule and start up something new. 

One of the concepts is how to learn to teach from understanding how good video and pc games work. It is quite a good theory on many points. Theories are that pc games let the user get an easy introduction into a new world, it teaches the background and how to use simple tools to operate this new world or knowledge.

 It then lets the user choose what and how he/she wants to solve a problem and after solving the problem you get to use your new knowledge to acquire more knowledge, use it time and time over and let you operate on your specific skill level.

It also talks about how text is introduced and made interesting for the user to use.  The question is how do we successfully implement the way that good pc games motivates and trains the user, into a classroom. 

Something about working with students at different levels that match their strengths and motivates them, to use text that gives background knowledge and knowledge to use in the course.  Learning new tools and keep training them in different ways and situations. Giving students different ways to solve a task and let them choose their own way and method.

There are many more good theories to be learned from this book: James Paul Gee, what video games have to teach us about learning and literacy.

Although I don’t think the book it self is particularly well written or easy to use as a textbook, there is to much “stuffing” in it and there should have been more emphasis on the points he wants to make and how to implement them into a classroom. Therefore it is the theory of the book and the thought behind it I like.