Re(2): so?

From: Martin Owen (mowen@rem.bangor.ac.uk)
Date: Wed Mar 01 2000 - 10:32:46 PST


xmca@weber.ucsd.edu writes:
>How do you balance play vs accomplishing some
>worth while goals? We'd be competing with the video arcades!

xmca@weber.ucsd.edu writes:
>How do you balance play vs accomplishing some
>worth while goals? We'd be competing with the video arcades!

Following thanksgiving we had an interesting discussion on the value of
Pokemon. As a recent visitor to the LCHC project in the Boys and Girls
Club I would like to make the following undetailed and in no way
ethnographic observations.

1) The girl using the overtly "game" genre software "Civilization" by Sid
Meir was undoubtedly using the highest level of cognitive skills apparent
in any of the activities I observed.

2) The children in the homework club were dutifully filling in blanks on
pieces of paper. They were going through the motions of calculating the
mean of three numbers (apparently picked out of no context) and writing
the result down. A very school like activity.

There are interesting questions about this kind of maths homework.

If your students can do it,why set it for homework? ( does practice make
perfect in calculation?... maybe?).

If they can not do it, why set it for homework?

I know there are many interesting and exciting ways to provide experiences
in manipulating mathematical concepts, however in the main they would be
characterised as games or worse yet... gambling.
I would add of course that the interaction between the UCSD students and
the children is as important as any of the contexts that set the
interaction.

Martin Owen



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