#8: Gamification, Digital Divide, and PowerPoint for Information Dissemination Project!!

For elementary education, I believe gamification is the technological advancement that holds the biggest promise for education. With gamification, game elements can be added to instructional material to "increase motivation and interactivity, encourage creativity, and deepen understanding of content" (Teaching and Learning with Technology 288). I think those three things are key to getting an enriching education and gamification is the best way to go about that, especially with elementary students. Kids love games and to tie that to education makes learning fun and more interactive for them. My favorite game the book mentioned that I may want to use in my classroom is called the World Peace Game. "This multilevel board game creates an environment in which students representing different countries must achieve world peace despite conflicting views with minimum military intervention" (Teaching and Learning with Technology 288). The book further states this allows students to gain "critical thinking skills" along with "a global political perspective" which are key elements for anyone living in the modern world today.

I stand with being really sensitive to the digital divide. Especially as a teacher, I want to treat all my students fairly and give them all equal opportunity and access to a high quality education. Even if only a few of my students are on the less fortunate side of the divide, where they have poorer access to computers, internet access, etc. I want to implement most of the technology we use together in class, that way students can learn how to properly and effectively use it. As far as homework goes, I would rather assign hard copies of assignments, unless I know all of my students have equal access to the technology they need for it.

I honestly had a lot of fun making my PowerPoint for the PowerPoint for Information Dissemination Assignment. I did my PowerPoint on Marine Life and I loved adding in all the cool pictures of animals and editing them with animations. Before this assignment, I had no clue all of the features PowerPoint has to offer!! I loved learning how to crop out the background of pictures; I learned how to keep the pieces I wanted in it and crop the pieces I didn't want out of the picture completely. I want to use PowerPoint as a photo editor from now on!!