A: Seeing students learn to program in the Stencyl game-design platform while using ObaWorld as the backbone for course delivery, assessment and peer-to-peer communication. The games they made were pretty impressive for 12 and 13 year olds, and the collaborative nature of ObaWorld brought them together that much more in and out of our face to face classroom.
Another favorite was running my What Would George Washington Do? problem based learning curriculum using Oba and some other web tools. Students were tasked with current event problems and had to create persuasive arguments (essays) with solutions to how Washington would tackle said current event. Students had the ability to peer-review each others work, rate the essays, and comment on their peers feedback.
Q & a
A: A lot of it has to come from intrinsic motivation. Their own education has to matter to them. Extrinsic motivation can only take them so far… they have to feel the joy of exploration and learning.
Good teachers help create that sense of excitement of learning and then get the heck out of the way and let the students push themselves in the various directions they may wander off into. We have to be willing to let go of control sometimes and simply aid them along the way… they need to be able to create and problem solve and nobody can contain all of the variables when that is done well!
online learning design
sol joye
Q: In a traditional face-to-face teaching environment, what motivates students the most to learn?
Q: What was your best online learning experience?
Seeing students learn to program in the Stencyl game-design platform while using ObaWorld as the backbone for course delivery, assessment and peer-to-peer communication. The games they made were pretty impressive for 12 and 13 year olds, and the collaborative nature of ObaWorld brought them together that much more in and out of our face to face classroom.
At the end they were able to take all of that feedback and create a final revision to be submitted for grading. Along the way students thought creatively, collaborated, and honed their research methods and persuasive writing skills. At the end the most well rated essays floated to the top and won the inter-class challenge! Those that really got into it had a lot of fun while being engaged in their learning!