This week we looked at the topic of interactive gaming and how it is involved in student’s lives and further into our classrooms. We also furthered our discussion surrounding the topic of inclusion and how we can work with admin, the district, teachers, parents, and the student to navigate the best options for student success.

To begin, some of the tech that may be found in a classroom include iPad, Nintendo Switches, Audiobooks, Laptops, Talking Calculators, Reading Pens, Speech to Text and more. Knowing how to operate these apps is important for teachers. Sometimes it isn’t about how a student may learn, but what kind of access they have to resources in order to learn. The important thing is to identify what type of results you are looking for: content, questions, goals, and outcomes.

Onto gaming – it can be a dividing topic where some teachers are all for it and others may be against it. The characteristics of gamification include: rewards (badges, points), visual appeal (real life characters), progression in difficulty, feedback, and limitations. We talked about some popular games like Minecraft, Twitch, the Metaverse, TopHat and a bit about Virtual Reality. I learned a lot about the benefits of gaming and how they can be integrated into each subject of school. I think gaming is important because each student can find out what they like and don’t like and all levels of skill are incorporated.

I’m really familiar with Kahoot, Google, and GimKit but I hadn’t heard of Twitch or TopHat before. I think I’m going to spend some time exploring these games and see how I could use them in the future!

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