Reading Reflection W2:

I enjoyed reading the texts assigned to us during this week. I will address some of the points that caught my attention.

At Tipping Point for Online Learning? In Questioning the Right Assumptions by Punya Mishra, the writer touched on the accelerated decisions that occurred during the Corona pandemic and that we should deal with today's decisions with humility and wisdom. In addition, technologists must learn to think outside the box. As technologists bear a great burden in such a pandemic to avoid problems related to technology.

There is no doubt that what the writer touched on is that new technologies have winners and losers, and this reminds me of what happened during the Covid-19 crisis in my country, Saudi Arabia, where most educational institutions were not ready for this radical transformation. To be more precise, remote areas were the biggest losers during the Corona pandemic. From its lack of simple capabilities to the absence of the Internet.

Most researchers agree, through the games that have been tried, that games teach lower-level intellectual skills and improve physical skills. In addition, games play an important role in hand-eye coordination, visual processing, and learning simple facts and concepts, as indicated by Richard Van Eck in his article Digital Game-Based LEARNING It’s Not Just the Digital Natives Who Are Restless.

According to the author, teachers typically use one of three strategies to include games in the learning process: Encourage pupils to create their own video games. Instructive games should be created from scratch by educators or game developers, using commercially available (COTS) games in the classroom.

Referring to these strategies, and given my years of experience in public education, I agree with the writer that integrating this commercial strategy may be applied to any domain and learner, making it the current most time- and money-efficient of the three. However, this approach is not without some drawbacks, such as limited topics, lack of accuracy, and incomplete, as the author pointed out. Through the discussion in the previous meeting, it was addressed to focus on some essential aspects while working on integrating games in the classroom, including that these games are appropriate for the educational content, suitable for the educational stage, and meet the needs of learners.

References

Mishra, P. (2020). Tipping point for online learning? on questioning the right assumptions. ECNU Review of Education,3(4), 735-738. doi:10.1177/2096531120934492

Van Eck, R. (2006). Digital game-based learning: It's not just the digital natives who are restless. EDUCAUSE review, 41(2), 16.