Struggling Learner Turns to Prodigy

Motivation is difficult to come by in a Mathematics classroom. Through games and technology students tend to put more effort in because they receive instant results and praise for their successes no matter how small the achievements might be. When students are always told they are not good at math they tend to start to believe it.

While teaching struggling math students in an AIS (academic intervention services) class, I discovered an interactive online game called Prodigy that gave student motivation. In Prodigy, players create wizard characters they use to maneuver through worlds to collect wands, garments, coins, pets and complete missions. In order to do these things students would have to battle wizards and the only way to land successful attacks is to answer math problems! To attack an opposing wizards students must correctly answer a math problem to land their spell. If the problem is answered incorrectly the spell will miss and then the opposing wizard will get their shot to land a spell.

The game is aligned with common core standards of mathematics for grades 1 – 8. Students have a few tutorial battles with wizards that the site uses as a baseline assessment. This way when the students first begins to play Prodigy they are not given questions that are overly difficult for their individual math skill set.

Students were extremely motivated and worked very hard to get their questions correct in order to collect pets and other items which lead to them leveling up. Even though the graphics and game play seemed gear to younger ages, the middle school students I had playing it did enjoy it a lot (even if they wouldn’t admit it because it seemed uncool). Since their accounts were created by me, the teacher, I would get e-mails once a week with data on gaps in student learning, number of minutes logged, number of questions answered, and much more. It was wonderful information to have as a teachers.

There were a couple of downfalls to the game. The fact that the math problems had no real connection to what the characters were doing in the game left some holes in the process. The questions could have been about any subject. Students were not motivated by the math but just saw it as an obstacle that they had to get through.

Also, the game falls in the category of Freemium. This means that the game was free but students could level up their characters and accrue more goods within the game if they paid money with their parent’s credit card. This feature had absolutely no effect on the math portion of the game. When students were prompted to become premium members and pay money to do so I always told them to never take that option.

Overall the game motivated struggling learners and gave them confidence as they leveled up their characters and collected more items within the game. I passed it along to colleagues and parents who also saw similar results in learning.

Adolescent Interview: Mobile Online Gaming Number 1

Interviewing two cousins of mine who are freshman in high school yielded very interesting results from what I expected to get. Both are middle class white males from the same town they both grew up in from birth. I talked to both of them together which I feel might have made them curb some of their answers as a way to try and look cool in front of the other.

Both have their own personal mobile devices and their own personal laptops at home. When asked what they use more they both agreed the cell phone. Laptops were really just from school work and occasional to go on Instagram and/or other social media sites. Most of the action takes place on the almighty cell phone.

Texting, Instagram, and Snapchat is what seems to own their social lives. Both agreed that they probably send at least 50 texts a day. All of that in between liking, commenting on, replying to, and posting pics and videos on Instagram and Snapchat.

This was really no surprise to me. When I got to asking them about gaming is when I found some interesting information.

Although both boys have PS4 game consoles that is not where they spent most of the time gaming. That also is dominated by their cell phone. Each of them had many mobile games downloaded to their phones. All of the games are similar in how they are played too.

I'll explain by how using their current favorite as an example: Madden Mobile. This game is modeled after Madden Football which is the most popular football game for any console but is now available on mobile devices. The mobile version is much different as it is set up as what is known today as a "Freemium"

You play quick 5 minute long football games where you are rewarded with money that you can use to buy better players which then allows you to play better teams leading to more money. This money is fictional but if you want to upgrade your team quicker you can pay (real money) to gain the rewards much quicker.

Both boys proudly told me about the several super bowls they have won. One of the boys says to have completed 4 full seasons so far and is on his way to finishing his 5th. They both say that in the first season it is insanely easy. "You can throw a hail mary and score on every play."

This is how these "Freemiums" get users hooked. They get rewarded for doing something that takes little to no effort. The reward keeps the user playing. While at first both boys swear they never paid any real money to better their Madden Mobile team at first, one eventually added, "Well actually I did one time, but it was only 99 cents and it was to get a really good player for my team."

This intrigued me so much afterwards that I did a random survey of 51 eighth graders at the school where a teach to find out if more kids play "Freemiums" on a mobile device. Of the 51 students 50 had their own mobile devices. Of those 50 who have a cell phone 29 said they play a mobile game at least once a day.

The sad thing about these types of games is that from everything I know about them they seem to be quite the scam. They are intentionally easy with rewards that are usually fake coins or fake money with bright colors that keeps the user wanting to play more and more.

I was very surprised to find out that these games were so popular among young teens.

Advertising In Social Media

My paper will explore the effects that advertising and marketing on social media have on society. We all see the advertisements in the margins of social media sites but there are so many different ways marketers obtain information from the consumer through these sites and then use it. Our current society is one of consumption. Students must be taught all of the ways to they are being sold to and be able to be critical of these advertisement campaigns by using well taught digital literacy.

Annotated Bibliography

Boyd, D. (2007).  Why Youth Heart Social Network Sites: The Role of Networked Publics in Teenage Social Life. Youth, Identity, and Digital Media. 119 – 142. doi: 10.1162/dmal.9780262524834.119

Finding ways to educate teens to navigate social structures that are quite unfamiliar to us because they will be faced with these same issues when they are adults, even if we try to limit their access now this is inevitable. Social network sites have complicated our lives because they have made this rapid shift in public life very visible to all whether the users likes it or not.

O’Keeffe, G. S., Clarke-Pearson, & Council of Communications and Media. (2011). The Impact of Social Media on Children, Adolescents, and Families. Pediatrics, 127, 800 – 804. doi: 10.1542/peds.2011-0054

Pediatricians are in a unique position to educate families about both the complexities of the digital world and the challenging social and health issues that online youth experience (I will argue how teachers take the same position). Parents and children must be aware of the digital footprints they leave while searching the web and in turn how advertisers and marketers use those footprints.

Paquette, Holly. (2013). Social Media as a Marketing Tool: A Literature Review. Major Papers by Master of Science Students, Paper 2. http://digitalcommons.uri.edu/tmd_major_papers/2

Getting instant information from the consumer is such an advantage when marketing products. This is done through open and clear communication with consumers. More often than not the use of social media sites helps exploit information from consumers which leads to greater brand awareness.

Shu-Chuan Chu. (2011.) Viral Advertising in Social Media. Journal of Interactive Advertising, 12, 30-43, doi: 10.1080/15252019.2011.10722189

In the growing social media age, advertising messages are communicated through a social networks in which consumers are connect with others, disclose their personal information, and can deliver relevant messages to their personal contacts using various applications and platforms. Knowing this, advertisers look to gain a more comprehensive understanding of consumers' psychological characteristics and design viral advertising campaigns around that.

Wright, E., Khanfar, N. M., Harrington, C., & Kizer, L. E. (2010). The Lasting Effects of Social Media Trends on Advertising. Journal of Business & Economics Research, 8, 73 – 80. http://www.cluteinstitute.com/ojs/index.php/JBER/article/viewFile/50/48

After spending millions of dollars on mass advertising that consumers tend to block out and ignore, marketers have re-evaluated their advertising methods and are following holistic marketing concepts that focus on customer relationship marketing and more creative, understated ads instead of in-your-face billboards and loud television segments. Social Media gives the perfect platform for advertisers to achieve this.

Tech-No?

Most that this course has taught us thus far is that the world is moving quicker and quicker into the digital age. We are surrounded by technology in our everyday lives and our dependence on it grows tremendously. Although, there are many times where technology “refusal” can be useful.

The use of technology is the classroom often times causes it to lose its “unity”, “personality”, and “spark” (Leander, 2007, p. 67). The last thing we want our students to become are zombies with the lights from a screen shining on their faces. Sometimes the technology can create an actual physical barrier between students and teachers that makes it difficult for educators to see their students’ faces (Leander, 2007, p.68). For a teacher who truly cares for their students it can often times make the biggest of difference to be down on a student’s level to look at them face to face in order listen to what they have to say.

Although I believe that these things are true, I also believe that when technology is used correctly that it can enhance the classroom experience for students. Teacher’s roles are clearer in a traditional classroom setting (Leander, 2007, p. 67). I can’t help but believe that many educators are worried about not knowing what their role is in a different setting. With the use of technology in my classroom I see kids work much better independently and collaboratively. As the teacher, I become a guide to activities which in turn lead to learning. It is so much different and very difficult. The hardest thing is planning how to use the technology the right way and knowing when to let a student figure things out for themselves and just not disturb their thinking. When listening to and reading about educators who feel the technology is a distraction or danger I can’t help but feel as if that this is their way of keeping from having to change with a new age of learning. These fears are just of the unknown (Leander, 2007, p. 62).

Multimodal Play and Remixing... It's Happening... Just Not Everywhere

There seems, to me at least, to be much overlap of ideas in reading through our materials this week that goes along with readings in past weeks. There were a few new things introduced such as multimodal play and remixing but when it comes down to it this is the continued conversation of the idea of being in a new age of digital literacy.

Out in the field of education, there are many people who have taken sides in whether traditional literacy or digital literacy are where we should focus our schooling efforts. Traditional literacy tends to put a writer as “lone creative genius” (Erstad, 2008, p. 45). This turns many students off and makes them think that they either have it or they don’t, where “it” is the implied talent needed to take on traditional literacy. In other words, literacy “implies processes of inclusion and exclusion” (Erstad, 2008, p. 41). Why would we want to exclude any of our students at all?

On the other hand, the use of digital literacy enhances engagement of adolescents in ways that move across spaces of home, community, and school (Vasudevan, DeJanes, & Schmier, 2010, p. 25). Students feel that their previous knowledge is greater appreciated as in Mr. Cardenas’s journalism class at East Side Middle School (Vasudevan et al., 2010, p. 26). There are those that feel that digital tools need not be taught in schools because students get knowledge of this from outside of school. What they do not realize is that digital literacy means more than just being able to work an electronic device.

To create an identity as a learner, a student must be able to have competence to reflect on the use of digital media in different contexts and not just how to operate the technology itself (Erstad, 2008, p 41). Kathleen Tyner describes the latter as “tool literacy” and the former as “literacies of representation” (Erstad, 2008, p. 42).  The two must be separate and understood if schools really want to improve student learning.

Although, I see personally, as all teachers do, on a regular basis that we look to continue to ignore this new “techy” way of reading and writing as we continue to push kids to meet standards set by a test. If a student can’t read and write by the standards of that test they are seen as underperforming or not meeting yearly adequate progress.

In the second chapter of our reading we see examples of success and struggle in Norway. What I took away from this is that at least it seems that this country is looking to create change within its own system of education. It feels like we are not on the same track here as a whole. 

Digital Literacy: Do We Teach it?

The idea of literacy in education with regards to what is valued and accepted is ever changing. Scholars and leaders of education alike have dug in their heels taking a stance on what they believe is best for students. As it pertains to the new digital age of literacy, a willingness to acknowledge, analyze, and take action is necessary in order for growth to occur amongst 21^st century citizens.

With all sorts of new and improved technology the creation and distribution of images, audio, and video has become a new norm. “Interpreting videos or pictures, they say, may be as important a skill as analyzing a novel or a poem,” (Rich, 2008). Some literacy experts have said that online reading skills will help children fare better when they begin looking for “digital-age jobs” (Rich 2008). The world of education must take note of this much needed preparation that youths must have for career readiness and success.

As the landscape of literacy changes the world of education must begin to take note and thus change with it. It is seen that this new job market is calling for a change in the type of citizens to be hired. Movement in the proper direction can be seen in some pockets of schooling and hopefully it will continue to spread to every child in order to ensure the proper education needed for the digital age. 

Reference

Rich, M. (2008, July 27). Literacy Debate, R U Really Reading? Retrieved from

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/27/books/27reading.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Digital Literacy and Meaning-Making

According to Bloom’s Taxonomy the highest level of learning takes place in the creation stage. In the past, people have trouble finding opportunity in get to this level, especially students. Digital literacy has allowed not only for a freedom of creativity but also a space for collaboration as well as criticality more than ever (Gillen & Barton, 2010, p. 19). “Each learner is an amalgam of diverse experiences, capabilities, and understandings affected by the entirety of their personal history including experiences of physical strengths and weaknesses” (Gillen & Barton, 2010, p. 17). It would seem that trying to harness an individual into fitting a single mold of person would encourage resistance from said individual. Reading digital media makes reading into an activity which allows the reader to change the text they are reading as it is being read (Gillen & Barton, 2010, p. 7).

Just because digital literacy has differences from traditional literacy, the two should not be seen as independent from each other. Learners still must be aware of operational, cultural, and critical dimensions involved with the technological world just as they had to in print (Literacy, 2014). Operationally speaking they must know how to make the technology work by knowing how to turn products on, what cables go where, how to troubleshoot, etc. (Literacy, 2014). That aspect is often the biggest barrier for an older generation to break through. There is a practice of meaning and authenticity that lends to a cultural dimension within digital literacy (Literacy, 2014). Then there is an aspect of critiquing others work “to read and use them against the grain, to appropriate and even redesign them” (Literacy, 2014). “The uses of educational technology have a two-fold advantage: they can promote the types of literacy traditionally encouraged in learning, as well as the digital fluency needed to prosper in the digital age” (Huffaker, 2005, p. 93)

For the purposes of living, today’s youth must have digital literacy. Although, the shift in literacy calls for wholesale educational changes which most teachers are hesitant of seeing as the “technologies themselves let alone the practices around them are seemingly in a constant state of flux” (Gillen & Barton, 2010, p. 10). These multimodal forms of literacy are a feature of daily life and teachers, most often, know less about them than their students (Literacy, 2014). The idea of going outside of what a teacher themselves learned is a scary concept but it has become necessary for future success of current students. Online content creation is only limited by the creativity of its users (Huffaker, 2005, p. 96). It is creativity though, that brings about the most learning.