In the project assigned to us, we had to find an online educational game and create presentation with audience interaction. There were few challenges in doing the project. The first challenge was finding a suitable game to use. There were many games that I found interesting, however they had instructions that were complicated that I felt for students in 2nd-3rd grades. We found a game that we thought would be fun and educational for the grade level we selected. The game we selected is called Shot Clock. This is a math basketball game that had elements that would be appealing for young students; however, the game may not be interesting for students in 5th grade and above because of the repetitiveness of the game.
Moving forward, the next step in our project is creating a rubric for the game. We chose criteria that the student and instructor could easily grade based on playing the game myself. The game had features that were lacking such as music and redundant questions used on same level. If a student were to play this for an extended period of time, then all they would need is to recall the information because the questions repeats itself. The game may lack in these areas, but it has its strengths such as different basic math concepts to focus on. For instance, once the student’s masters the concept of addition, they can move on to subtraction or try their knowledge on multiplication.
Next, creating a rubric was not challenging at all because I am used to creating rubric to assess presentation projects. However, one challenge I faced while doing this project was choosing different technology tools that would benefit my group and myself. We chose Prezi for our presentation because it was simple to understand like PowerPoint, but it had more animated features that we could utilize for our presentation. There were a few reasons why my group and I chose Prezi. The first reason was Prezi gives an overview of the entire presentation. Prezi puts an emphasis on the beginning, middle, and end. The transitions and zoom feature assist to visually explain how the different ideas and points relate to one another. When zoom out, the audience could see the big picture that would give them an idea of the where the presentation is heading (Sutton, 2014). Collaboration is another reason that we chose Prezi. One of my group members created a Prezi presentation and she was able to share the presentation with us. It made creating the presentation easier to do. We did not need to rely on one person to create the presentation. Since Prezi could be shared, we were able to get it done faster than if one person had to complete presentation by themselves.
Another challenge that we also faced was creating a way we can utilize technology for audience interaction. It was difficult because we never used tools online to include the audience. We were in between using Kahoot or Quizizz, however another group used Kahoot and we did not want to use the same tool as them. We chose Quizizz because it was similar to Kahoot and I knew we could create an online quiz game that could include the audience. Quizizz would be a good tool utilize because it organizes the data of the players and gives feedback that may help students (Reid, 2016). I wanted to try if it would work as well as another quiz game that I was well familiar with. In my group, I was in charge of creating the game. I learned a great deal when creating the quiz game. An issue I encountered while I was on Quizizz was when I finished there was no code included. It took me a while to fix the issue and I learned that my quiz did not provide a code. It was because I was signed in as a student. I created another account, but as an instructor. When I recreated the quiz, the code was included, and I practiced the game with my group. The quiz game was executed smoothly.
In conclusion, there were some minor issues we managed to fix as a group, but the end result was better than expected. There were tools I have never used before and we as group went out of our comfort zone in creating this presentation. I enjoyed working on this project because as a future Elementary Education teacher, I could use this as a way to get my students interested in a lesson. I believe there should be some entertainment when it comes to learning because I want my students interested in learning even if they learn from an online game.
Reid, S. (2016). Why Quizizz is better than Kahoot. Retrieved from https://medium.com/@Stephen_Reid/why-quizizz-is-better-than-kahoot-9d585cb1ee3e
Sutton, C. (2014). 5 Reasons to Use Prezi Rather Than PowerPoint. Retrieved from https://www.business2community.com/tech-gadgets/5-reasons-use-prezi-rather-powerpoint-01050463
