During this online game assignment we had to work together as a group to search for and select a dynamic and incredibly interesting game to present on. At the beginning I was worried that we would struggle to agree on a game to do our presentation on because we were all majoring in different content areas. However, my group members and I worked really well together. We were able to communicate well with each other and help each other out. We searched for games and eventually chose the game Drop Sum.
Although Drop Sum is a game for first graders, I believe people of all ages would enjoy this game. In Drop Sum a player is asked to add blocks to equal the number in the add to box. When the player succeeds in adding those blocks to equal the number of blocks in the add to box, the blocks will be transformed into coins which will be added to his or her overall score. A player loses when his or her stacks of blocks reaches the top of the yellow box. I am 21 years old and really enjoyed this game, but there were some aspects of the game that could use some improvement.
After coming to a consensus about what game we were going to evaluate and present on, we were tasked to create a rubric that we would use to score our game. I looked up rubrics for online games. I found one that would work and as a team we read through the whole rubric and chose descriptions that would fit our game. Then we used Google Sheets to create a rubric basing our rubric off of the one we found online. Ji was a master at Google Sheets . She inputted equations within the cells so that the calculation of our data would be easier. She also worked on formatting the cells so that the layout of our rubric would be uniformed. She really helped me and Jay-ar because our Google Sheets skills were rusty.
When we finished creating our rubric, we worked individually to score the game. Our group rated this game effective. Low scores were given for interaction and higher level thinking. We believe having a way to interact with other players would really add to the game. We also believe that the game could be more challenging if the game covered all of the different learning styles.
This assignment gave us opportunities to use the different tools we have been learning about in class. We used livebinders to share the link to our google sheets that we used to collect the scores of the Drop Sum tournament as well as to share the live webpage for Drop Sum. We also used Google Forms to share the link to our livebinder. We used WhatsApp to communicate with each other. We also used Google Docs to create our script. Finally, we used Emaze for our presentation.
I am grateful for the group members that I have. We work really well with each other. When problems arise we work with each other to fix things. We get a long really well. This opportunity to evaluate and present on the game was an amazing one. I was surprised at how well we did during our presentation. Looking out at the audience I realized that they were enjoying the game as much as we did. Hearing that we set the bar high really made my day. I cannot wait to be able to work with my team on new assignments. Being able to look for a game and evaluate the game has opened the door to many tools that I can use in my elementary classroom. I cannot wait to look into more games to use in my classroom as well as more tools to use to integrate technology within my lessons. I cannot wait to become a teacher. I only hope that when I do I have a team of teachers who surround and support me like my group does. I hope to work together with my future colleagues to be more technology savvy and to equip the next generation of students with the tools they would need to succeed in a world filled with technology.
References
Drop Sum retrieved 06 October 2015 from ABCYA.Com website: http://www.abcya.com/drop_sum.htm
Educational Electronics Game Rubric retrieved 06 October 2015 from Sacramento State University website : http://www.csus.edu/indiv/k/kaym/rubric/edgamesrubric.html
