This week’s guest speaker, Heidi James, spoke about Minecraft and how she uses it in the classroom. This is a part of education that I feel the most disconnected from, so I have a lot to learn. Heidi painted a great picture of what Minecraft can do for students’ engagement in school and I am curious to learn more. At this time I spend too much time on the computer so I will play around in Minecraft at another time. One other quiz tool that I have used is Mentimeter and which is a fun interactive tool. I am sensitive that students will already be spending a lot of time on a screen and I hope to find a good balance.

I did sign up for a Coursera course to see how their system is set up. Brainscape, Credly, OpenBadges, IF-AT and TopHat are all bookmarked for future use.

I am thankful for the many resources listed in this week’s lecture. Apps used for game-based learning such as Prodigy, IXL, Sumdog, Teach Your Monster to Read and World of WarCraft in school will come in handy when creating lesson plans. I had never heard of Lets Face It, very cool that UVIC has developed a face recognition tool for people living with autism to learn about facial expressions.

Lastly, the Gamification and Game-Based learning article (found here) was very helpful in understanding the benefits to all learners and develop soft-skills through play. I am curious to see how this is integrated into schools and the resources available to support students in game-based learning.