Final thoughts

The experience of gaming in this class has definitely been an interesting one. I have enjoyed reading everyone’s blogs and, in a way, wish I had picked a different game. I’m not sure I got into Diner Dash as much as I should have. I think part of the problem was that I didn’t devote enough time to playing the game. However, I found that when I did play, I was easily frustrated when I couldn’t beat a level. This lead to me giving up for the evening. I think that if I was more successful and didn’t have to play each level a few times, I would have been happier and continued to play for longer periods of time. Also, I first thought that I could multitask and play while watching TV but as the levels got harder I found they needed my full attention. Being much more into TV then gaming, I would stop playing the game so I could concentrate on the TV show I was watching. I guess overall, Diner Dash did no hold my interest as I had hoped it would. This could be because I’m not really a gamer, or I didn’t give the game enough time.

In relating this gaming experience to that of learning, I think it is similar because it really shows how important it is to spark the learner’s interest. Since I was not fully interested in the game I was playing, I decided to push it aside more than I decided to play it. If a student is given lots of work they aren’t interested in they will be much more reluctant to do it than if they are given something they can really get into and like. Recently, I did a short lesson on persuasive writing. Some of my students were already not looking forward to the follow up activity thinking it would be a lot of writing. Instead, I paired them up and had them work on developing a commercial, telling them this was a form of persuasive writing. They were so excited to come up with their “product” that they didn’t even care about the short paragraph they have to write in order to “sell” their product to their classmates.

Aside from taking the students’ interests into account, this class has taught me to take a different approach to teaching. Having us play a game taught us about learning in a different way. It might seem odd at first to have graduate students playing video games, but it was certainly a roundabout way to get us thinking about the learning process. I know that a lot of students get frustrated with schoolwork the way I did with the game. Having strategies to deal with the frustration and work through the challenges are extremely helpful. Making learning fun and keeping it motivating will help students want to learn and enjoy what they are doing.