Reflection #1: The Ins and Outs of Magic Words Online Game

          In the beginning of the semester, the class was divided into specific groups to develop teamwork skills. The online educational game assignment was a three-part task that included using a child-friendly search engine to hunt for the best game, formulating a rubric with group ratings for the chosen game, and creating a presentation about the game to finally display in front of the class. With all of these tasks in front of us, my group had to learn how to work efficiently, which meant avoiding to collaborate with one another was definitely not an option. Thankfully, my group had great communication skills and refused to waste any time that should be spent on the assignment. "The ability to communicate information accurately, clearly and as intended, is a vital life skill and something that should not be overlooked" (SkillsYouNeed, n.d.). There were barely any issues with deciding on what game to present on because each member of my group had their opinions considered. In addition, we shared similar interests and goals due to the fact that the majority of us are pursuing a degree in elementary education.

Figure 1. Game Rubric & Group Evaluation

          As I mentioned earlier, one of the requirements of this assignment was to construct a rubric that contains criteria, levels of achievement, and a group evaluation (Figure 1). As a student, we fail to realize how much work and thought goes into rubrics. By the time we receive them from our teachers, we are already preoccupied with the thought of how to achieve the best scores, so the idea of how it was put together is pushed to the back of our minds. This was actually my first time creating a rubric for anything. I found that choosing which specific categories of criteria to include was the most difficult part of creating the rubric because we had to figure out what was relevant to our game. My group had a fairly easy time making the overall rubric, but I have yet to try producing one myself which I will be doing a lot of in the future. 

          The game we chose, which is called Magic Words, will be very useful in my teaching career. In our presentation, we mentioned that this game could be used for lessons in the English subject (Figure 2). As a future elementary educator, my content area involves all the foundational subjects that are being taught in first through fifth grade. Making use of online education games can be a clever and effective teaching strategy. The mention of "games" will automatically spark an interest in students because they are already convinced they are about to do something fun. Students tend to "go out of their way to play games, even a single game, for hours on end" (Starting Point, 2018). Games with an academic purpose allow teachers to help students enjoy learning, even if students are sometimes unaware of it. If I were to use this specific game, I would most likely have it as an activity or assign it as homework to practice their skills. However, Magic Words might be too advanced for younger students, so it will probably only be useful in third grade and up.

Figure 2. Game Presentation

          My group and I were very resourceful in the fact that we utilized other technology tools besides the usual email. We started off with a WhatsApp group chat, which included all the members of my team, to discuss and plan out everything and how we were going to execute this plan. Google Docs and Google Sheets played very important roles in the process of completing this assignment by giving us a place to store and organize our content. Lastly, we decided to use Canva as our presentation tool because it seemed like the best option at the time. Although the overall presentation was visually appealing, we found that there were simply too many features that required money such as the ability to include animations and transitions in the slides, so we had to improvise. I felt that the lack of these features was a definite deal-breaker and I will probably avoid using Canva for future presentations.

Figure 3. Game Screenshot

          Overall, the educational online game assignment helped me develop better teamwork skills, be more familiar with rubric templates, broaden my ideas about teaching methods, and understand there are many online tools to choose from. I am more than glad to have been a part of this experience, especially when I had the opportunity to share our game with the class. It was pretty exciting to be able to see their reactions first-hand and assist them when they were having trouble. I had a taste of what it might be like to be actual educator, and now, I cannot wait to dig in.

References

SkillsYouNeed. (n.d.). Communication Skills. Retrieved on October 17, 2019
          from https://www.skillsyouneed.com/ips/communication-skills.html
Starting Point. (2018, May 7). Why Use Games to Teach? Retrieved on October 17, 2019
          from https://serc.carleton.edu/introgeo/games/whygames.html