Video, Video Games, and VR

     So, I've mentioned in the blog previously and in my class that I grew up not using social media, and the territory was very foreign to me. The same goes with video games. I am not a gamer; I didn't grow up playing video games. Therefore, once again, I was in the dark about how video games could possibly used in the classroom. Although, now I recall a day in my freshman year social studies class when we played the online game "The Oregon Trail," but that was the only time that we played a video game like that with the intended purpose to be to help us learn.

    All that being said, I feel like I didn't know the possibilities. For example, in an article titled "Video Games in the Secondary English Language Arts Classroom: A State-of-the-Art Review of the Literature" written by authors Nash and Brady and published by the International Literacy Association, they describe a case where the students had read the book "The Outsiders" by S. E. Hinton, and then used Minecraft "to recreate important scenes from the novel, create sets that demonstrated how a character embodied a theme, symbol, or motif, and analyze the social implications of the text". It's like when you hand the students paper and markers and tell them to do the same assignment, only utilizing video games to keep up with a more modern era and the students' interests.

    Another practice I knew nothing about was using virtual reality in the classroom. Personally, I do not think I have experienced virtual reality at all. Maybe I have but didn't realize it, but to my memory, I have not. I didn't know what place it could have in the classroom. In "Using Augmented and Virtual Reality in the Language Arts Classroom" by authors Marsh and Yamada-Rice, they talk about how VR was used in a classroom of six and seven year olds, and the teacher used VR as "a springboard for writing." For the most part, the kids were extremely excited to use VR. I will say, this does lead me to question at what age it is appropriate to be using VR in the classroom, and some students were scared, which is understandable since they were all around six or seven years old.

    A tip I thought was a good idea came from "'It Was Like I Was There': Inspiring Engagement through Virtual Reality" by authors Moran and Woodall. They suggested pairing tech savvy students with other students that were less so. I know that I, as a non-tech savvy student, would have appreciated being paired with someone more familiar with it than I.