The Journey to Argument Wars

      Technology in education can enhance learning in today's times. We are surrounded by so many tools that make learning fun. I was fortunate enough to have an assignment that gave light to that statement. My ED271 class was split up into groups and were assigned to find an online educational game that would best serve learning. At first, I thought this assignment would be useless. Why would a game help someone learn? I was always under the influence that learning should be from reading, writing, or applying material, but never from playing a game. I gave it a chance and consulted with my group. My group composed of two secondary education majors and one elementary major. That left us with a problem of finding a game that we all agreed on although our age groups were completely different. Despite that obstacle, we overlooked it and began the search.

     Meanwhile, every group was assigned to make a rubric for our game. Once again, I doubted the importance of a rubric, but with further research, I was proved wrong. According to Brookhart (2013), "Rubrics are important because they clarify for students the qualities their work should have" (chp. 1). I realized that rubrics can be considered cheat sheets for students. They have access to the guideline of what excellent work should be. From that, I was excited to create a rubric that represented the game we were about to find. My group used Google Docs to compose our rubric. It was really convenient to have an online tool where we could all work on it together at once. Google docs eliminates the need to meet face to face which is difficult considering everyone has other obligations to attend to. So we used this online tool and worked on the rubric together.

      Finally, after some time, my group found a game that we all agreed was the best online educational game ever. "Argument Wars" is a game which taught material mostly from social studies. The objective of the game is to debate in a courtroom on a well known case and try to win against your opponent. It is highly interactive with feedback from your opponent and the judge. My group found it so fun that we all played it in our free time. How often can you say that you were playing an educational game during your leisure time? This game made me say that to many people. It was awesome to use because it takes a boring subject and turns it into a competitive game that people would enjoy playing. It would apply perfectly for a middle school and high school social studies class. I would assign my students to play the game and beat your opponent. The proof would be the cool certificate you get at the end when you win the game. I know that this would be an assignment that all the students would love playing considering online gaming is a big hit today.

      Our online educational game was now official and we were all set to get started on the presentation. The hardest part about putting it together was finding a online presentation site to use. There are a huge list of them and we were baffled. At first, we chose Prezi because it was a group decision. After creating the material to apply on Prezi, we changed our mind and chose Emaze because we wanted to be different. I thought that was innovative that we can choose from a number of great websites. From there we applied the information onto Emaze and the presentation was set in stone. Meanwhile, another obstacle occurred. One of my group members was unable to make the presentation date due to the fact she had to be off island. My group responded perfectly. Since we are in a technology based class, let us use technology to fix this problem. We had the missing member record her part and applied it onto the presentation. This would be a huge problem ten years ago, but today's technology tools made it so easy to solve.

       Some people think technology should stay out of the classroom but I think it should stay inside and keep allowing students to utilize it for it's advantages.  Often times kids get tired of reading from a social studies textbook that can possibly make them sleep. According to Honeycutt (2013), " When technology is integrated into school lessons, learners are more likely to be interested in, focused on, and excited about the subjects they are studying." It is very crucial to figure out ways for my students to be engaged in the material I will be teaching. It's even more important that they have fun while they learn because I believe you cannot learn if you are not having fun in the process. Argument Wars is all about making learning fun from technology.

References

 Brookhart, S. (2013). How to Create and Use Rubrics for Formative Assessment and Grading. Retrieved from http://www.ascd.org/publications/books/112001/chapters/What-Are-Rubrics-and-Why-Are-They-Important%C2%A2.aspx

Huneycutt, T. (2013). Technology in the Classroom: The Benefits of Blended Learning. Retrieved October 7, 2015, from http://www.nms.org/Blog/TabId/58/PostId/188/technology-in-the-classroom-the-benefits-of-b