Cross-curricular educational tools

This week’s topic was a new area of learning for me. The pre-class videos were very helpful that helped to explain coding and computational thinking. The video Hilarious peanut butter and jam sandwich instructions was a great example that demonstrated the importance of clear and detailed communication, not only for person to person interactions but also for generative AI to work effectively.

During our first hands-on class time, I really enjoyed playing around with Code with Anna and Elsa https://studio.code.org/s/frozen/stage/1/puzzle/1 that helped to make block coding approachable and fun. I liked that it was a visual drag and drop method, allowing players to code by putting together blocks.

The introduction video tutorial was well done and very entertaining, it reminded me of a Disney commercial. However, when it came time to experiment with the moving Elsa, I was only able to move her a maximum of 2 steps before being prompted to reset. I presume if I spent more time experimenting with block coding, I may be able to have Elsa continue to ‘run’ to make interesting shapes.

For our second hands-on class time, we spent a few minutes exploring GetBadNews.com https://www.getbadnews.com/en/play. The key concept of this game is psycological inoculation and teaching players through gamification, about the importance of critical media credibility and how misinformation spreads. The format was a simple but interactive game where players were able to choose their own path which then resulted in credibility rating, followers score, and the ability to read Twitters users reaction. I think that many students would enjoy this game as it is authentic to real-world context, but it would be very important to scaffold this game with prior media literacy learning.

In summary, although there are many positive aspects of digital games to help support learning such as engagement and instant feelings of success. I plan to approach digital gamification cautiously in my future classrooms to help mitigate the impacts of adolescent screen oversaturation.

Amy