A reflection for 5.8.4 Semayobe Sulaiman_ Podcast about instructions to learners of Geography in High School

5.7.4 Reflection about the Game-Based teaching and Learning

·         Games are so interesting to both teachers and students. Learners get excited over games and it helps them to retain the content that they had previously learned-learners just synchronize the content with the icons or symbols of the game on the computer screen.

·         A computer game-based learning unit consist of both beginner level and more robust or advanced level. A game can be played either individually or collaboratively in groups but it is better for teachers to tailor their lessons to beginner levels of computer based games in learning.

·         The teacher sets his lesson plans based on a computer game play in class where he challenges students to complete tasks that will prepare them to master the learnt content.

·         Learners may be trying to figure out where and how to create their own game or how to play the existing one set by the teacher.

·         Apart from Kahoot, Facebook has more games like investigating a crime scene and many others. For example students may be given a task of calculating times from interviews that suspects gave in order to see which suspect is most likely to have committed the crime. These are engaging, game activities to have students learn and/or practice using content.

·         These standards for the computer games usually cut across one-two disciplines, or just in a single discipline. So the teacher should make sure that he delineates only the Objectives that suit his subject under study at that time. This keeps kids engaged in different purposes for learning and makes the lesson lively.

·         Instead of pre-teaching, the teacher teaches the material or facilitates the learning of material as students are engaged in the computer game activities. The overall theme and mission is presented to the students, along with the computer game in order to create engagement to learners and then accomplish the lesson. During this computer game based lesson, revision or addition skills may also need to be taught, but again, there is a need to learn those skills and content.

·         Games pose many challenges to both teachers and students but the main challenge however is a combination of pride and panic on the side of a given teacher who has no strong mastery of the Game.

It is quite challenging that some teachers fail to create or set the computer game; but if not so, then the Internet is intermittent with some computer games like Kahoot.

·         It is also challenging to work upon each student in a class when not all computers are not connected to the Internet. But the end result is that Game based teaching and learning would be the best way to go in this Century for any teacher.

·         Computer Game-Based Learning demands a mastery of the content/ subject matter. In order to complete the game, students will need to learn content and skills to do play it.

Feel free to drop a comment.

Reflection 5.6.4 The potential of social media as a communication tool for learning.

      Access to mobile telephony is not yet universal in my school. Access to smartphones remains low, although this may change as some parents can afford to buy it for their children.

      The lack of awareness among my fellow teachers about the positive educational value that mobile phones and social media can add, and a generalized conservatism toward the use of mobile phones by my young learners at school, also serves as an inhibiting factor.

      Students/ juveniles are fond of using their mobile phones to send ‘bullying’ messages to other students, cheat on tests using SMS messaging, and access pornographic materials and sex chat rooms. These reasons are likely to influence my fellow teachers’ perceptions of mobile phone use by their students and have led many educators at my school to support the banning of mobile phones from schools.

      Mobile learning and use of social media in learning has not yet been institutionalized or mainstreamed within the Ugandan national teacher development systems.

      At the University level, mobile phones and use of social media are not integrated into teacher education programs offered by teacher-training institutions. So teachers take it as a gimmick in the school society.

      Mobile learning is also not incorporated into subsequent phases of teacher development for in-service teachers at my school. Presently, the inclusion of mobile phones in teacher training and development depends solely on project-based interventions like CCTI (Commonwealth Certificate for Technology Integration) or the ingenuity of individual teachers.

Learners need to be sensitized about digital citizenship because they all attest that pornography-nude pictures and nasty information is everywhere on the Internet and that they even share it.

§  They need to be sensitized about digital foot print and the illegal behavior they indulge in without their consent for example plagiarism.

My learners do not site more societal dangers of face-book and twitter but rather they mention their own hardships from those platforms like: Delay to do homework, spending all their little off-pocket for buying Internet bundles, and addiction to Internet usage vis a vis other daily chores.

     There is a need to combat conservatism among my fellow teachers about technology in general, the use of social media and mobile phones in particular by students at school.

§   Projects like SEMA in Kenya with the cascade model can be adapted; it relies on newly trained teachers like me to support and train their colleagues to integrate mobile phones into their teaching.

§  Policies should be put or developed by the ministry of education or the National Curriculum Development Center in Uganda to include clear guidelines on the use of mobile learning for teachers, including acceptable use policies accompanied by working practices that demonstrate how such policies might be implemented in support of mobile learning in schools and use of social media by learners and teachers at school.

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