Can you see the crocodiles in these two photos?
They really are there! There's a young crocodile in the first photo and an adult croc in the second photo.This isn't a test of your ability to pick details out of a couple of photos. It is to demonstrate that sometimes animals are pretty good at disguise.
Which is my lead-in to talking about how there are things in education that may also be disguised, appearing differently on first observation than they do if we look more closely at the details.
Games are one such creature. Increasingly, educators are considering games (a term that can carry many different meanings) as potential learning tools. There's also increasing research into gaming as a way to learn and it looks pretty supportive of the whole idea.
Recently in my ETAP 526 course, we took a look at several different types of game-like learning tools. I took some time to look at an electronic version of drill and practice software, a college course that was a simulation/game, and another simulation environment that required a level of interactivity.
If you're not "into" gaming, then you probably have never heard of Typing of the Dead. Based on a well-known shoot-em game called House of the Dead II, this has the participant shoot zombies by typing in words that appear on the screen.
The trial version (free) gives you pretty good practice, but if you are a hard-core student of the keyboard, you might want to go for the full paid version. I found it heart-pounding as the zombies approached brandishing all sorts of weapons and bad breath. I also found out how REALLY BAD my typing is! I'm sure I've been hacked to death for misspelling togehter (see I did it again!).
Check out these two YouTube videos to see what I'm talking about:
More later on the other simulations I talked about above.
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