My first experience with the Oregon Trail was in the fifth grade. We played that game in our free time during social studies or during stations. Before we were allowed to play my teacher sat us in a group and went over how to log in and what prompts to use during the game to navigate in it. Mrs. Miller was good about monitoring student use so we all had the opportunity to use the game during the week. I always grouped with my two best friends when it was my turn to use the game. I think this was effective for me because it game me control of what I was doing and I felt like Mrs. Miller trusted me to do my work. Some kids that weren’t as in to social studies as I was probably didn’t get the same results because they were busy messing around with that painting game, I can’t remember the name of it.
I was first introduced to where in the U.S. is Carmen San Diego when I was in sixth grade. I remember loving this part of class because I didn’t' have a computer at my house yet. Yes, I remember not having a computer call me a dinosaur if you like. Mrs. Berevotes was my teacher in sixth grade. She started off by gathering us around the computer and we played as a class, we began with where in the US is Carmen San Diego. It was our game time. It was so cool because it was new, different from jeopardy and the whole class played as one team. After a while we were allowed to play during free time in the winter. I think this game was effective for the whole class because we were all one team working to solve the mystery.
It’s crazy to think about the technology I had offered to me when I as in school and what is offered now. My husband is a school teacher and last year he was issued a small lap top along with all his students. He said a lot of people complained about the cost of them in the schools budget. When I asked him what he thought he said “I can use these every night if I want to, I don’t but I could (he was an algebra teacher). There is a website called Khan University and it gives amazing tutorials about every subject you can imagine. There were nights I would assign my kids a tutorial to watch so we could open our books in class do our lessons and everyone would be on the same page. This made teaching algebra to eighth graders a lot easier and fast paced. In turn it allowed us to get through the whole book.”
I will admit when he told me about this website I started using it to get through my geometry for elementary teachers and I couldn’t believe how much a website helped me in math. I was a big believer in classroom lessons especially in subjects like math and science given the hands on needed for these subjects. I still can’t believe how good kids have it with technology now. I am very pro student issued Ipads or lap tops after my experience last year in my geometry after how much the tutorials helped me pass that god awful class.
