So I am mashing week 3 and 4 because it has been a full 2 weeks.

I like games. I play a lot of games. I find the grand idea of games a little too broad and therefore I have felt a little lost on this one. So, when I am lost or confused I do what many of us do, I procrastinate. Hence no blog entries last week.

I do actually play a lot of games. We have friends over at least monthly (or travel to someone’s house) and there are often board/card/role-playing games involved. The last game day was Settlers of Catan. I have Cards Against Humanity (awesome game for a group, but not classroom appropriate) on the dining room credenza right now. So I obviously like games… but I am still feeling lost.

I have been surfing the Google chat board every couple of days. I don’t think I am alone on feeling just a bit lost here. What do we mean by games? How do we work them into our classroom in a way that complements the lesson and adds to student growth? How do we do it in a way that our administration thinks of positively?

Back when I taught middle school, I had an intervention class. Intervention can be tough because you have to overcome the students feelings of being in a “dummy” class. Kids can be very into labels and intervention class is a doozy (it doesn’t matter if you call it that or something fun and exciting, kids look around at their peers and what they are doing and label it all by themselves). Games were my way of getting kids involved and on-task in that class. We had Speech Wednesdays where you had to talk about some random, peer-generated topic for two minutes. If you said “um” or “like” (or other filler sounds/words) the listener would drop a penny in a metal bucket. The students had a serious love hate relationship with that bucket. We did vocab Fridays and played a prefix/suffix game I had bought at a teacher store (think Candyland style board with prefixes and suffixes). So, I have used games previously. Intervention classes though are generally either laid back (as there aren’t standards your hitting, but rather skills you are working on) or scripted in my experience.

I did play the folding story that Kevin Hodgson posted on the Google homepage last week (I wasn’t a total slacker, just more of a lurker). That had me instantly hooked. I typed a quick paragraph and was (still am in fact) immediately frustrated that I couldn’t read everything -proving the value of quick feedback. I also liked everyone’s quick caption of the twinkling ocean photo from Scott Glass, but I didn’t create one myself.

Is it just that I don’t feel like a game creator? I am still working on it…. Let me know if you have it all figured out. 😉

 

So memes are easy to do but hard to think up. For my first meme I came up with…

Fry Squint, but it isn’t very original or interesting. Plus, I had to make it twice as it disappeared into the either-net the first time.  SO, my first attempt I labeled boring. I continued to ponder memes for another day.  Maybe it is just me, but I seem to have my best (relative term) ideas at awkward moments.

aand it’s gone (This is actually the third meme I created).

Furthermore, I find myself empathizing with my students. They think they turn in an A+ and I give them a C. I am finding that I have the format but not the genre.

3rd World Kid I have the right phrasing, but this isn’t really social commentary. Maybe unhelpful teacher? What do you think? Someone else out there nailed it though. I am pretty sure Willy is talking to me about my Third World Kid meme here.

But you have to have your goal in mind and keep trying, right? I am taking this moment to share my goal meme. This isn’t made by me, but one I hijacked into my lessons when teaching Scarlett Pimpernel this year. I found this on Meme Generator earlier and used it in a PowerPoint. Which perhaps brings out another point. When using a tool like Meme Generator (which is often essentially anonymous) how does one cite?

Anyways, back on track… I guess it goes back to the idea that writing is re-writing.

(Found on https://blogs.montclair.edu/cwe/2014/03/15/simple-memes-for-complex-writers/)

 

Alrighty! I finally made a little time for my own writing. I have found SO many new blogs and resources. I can’t think of the last time I was at my computer this long for my own pleasure.

I have especially been boning up on Twitter, which is pretty new for me. I think I finally get the hashtag (check out http://gizmodo.com/justin-timberlake-show-us-how-dumb-we-sound-when-we-use-1382465357 and http://gizmodo.com/5869538/how-the-hashtag-is-ruining-the-english-language). Use it to group into conversations, but don’t use it on Facebook.

I also found out about TvsZ (where Twitter can infect you with zombie-itis). I think I will be taking the Zombie leap so that I can keep up with Twitterdom. (Thanks- Karen Young)

I was completely inspired by someone’s Zenga. I tried to find it to link it here, but it has disappeared into the CLMOOC depths. It had swing music and rocked the gifs. Combine that with someone’s article (see, this is why I need to be blogging twice a week, so I have all these sites) on introductions and I made a slightly off topic introduction on Mrs. Schroeder. http://zeega.com/166510 which was a ton of fun and rather addicting.

I leave you with this Haiku:

CLMOOC is so much

My tabs are tired and full.

Teachers teaching me.