This week I viewed two different videos pertaining to drawing. Ole Qvist-Sørensen’s TED Talk Graham Shaw’s TED Talk video Both of these videos touched on the fear that people have surrounding their ability to be able to draw.  In my opinion this is almost a self-conscious feeling that is a common trait among adults.  While […]

  This video walks you through my experience learning Minecraft and engaging with the MinecraftEdu educators. Thank you for viewing! Tagged: #ILT5320 #Minecraft #MinecraftEdu #games4ed

Easter Sunday provided a perfect opportunity to learn a new game.  As I was walking out of my car on Sunday, I was worried that I still had not blogged about playing a new game.  I was pleasantly surprised when I saw “Pop the Pig” sitting in the living room.  Before lunch I was able […]

Scholarly Critique #6        According to Rani Kanthan and Jenna-Lynn Senger, “the ultimate success of digital games as a medium for learning will depend on their adoption and implementation by teachers. (p. 141 2011)” The article I selected this week was based on my desire to read about how games and learning ties […]

As the weeks fly by, I am finally feeling like I am settling into my affinity space.  I cannot believe how much my opinion of Minecraft/MinecraftEdu has changed over the course of a few months.  At this point, my main interactions have been attending my weekly #MinecraftEdu chats and the occasional #games4ed involvement.  Also, the […]

  Learning Reflection:  How ethics comes into play in the classroom. For anyone who may not have read the Ward Game, here is a link to a Vimeo movie that describes it. I have never considered how dramatic the use of gaming in school could affect students attitudes.  As a last ditch effort to get […]

This week’s readings had me thinking about my affinity space and my where my learning through games really began. I participated in another #MinecraftEDU chat, this past Wednesday.  This weeks theme was Learning Center Communities or LCC’s.  I had no idea what these were so I educated myself on this before the chat.  Libraries (according […]

Based on the Tweet on my Instructor’s post, I attended a #games4ed Tweet chat last night.  I didn’t find out this chat was going on until about 20 minutes before it began.  ** In my head I was telling myself that I wasn’t going to go blindly into another Tweet chat without preparing.  Too late. […]

Scholarly Critique #5 After learning about ethics and motivation in this week’s readings, I wanted to dig a bit deeper into gamer motivation.  From an outsiders perspective, it appears there are countless reasons why a person would want to participate in game play online.  The article I chose to write about is titled Motivations for Play […]

Engaging in Minecraft:  From excited to feeling out of my league. For me, Minecraft has been a steep learning curve.  Right off the bat I was completely clueless how to play.  I suppose I was under the assumption that I could jump head first and play.  I downloaded the game on my Mac from Amazon […]

Yesterday was my first Tweet chat.  What did I do to prepare for this you ask?  I googled what to do in a tweet chat.  That didn’t get me very far.  I was confused how I could read all of the comments from people using a similar hashtag.   Then I remembered Tweetdeck had that […]

Sit back, relax and enjoy this puzzle #MonumentValley #ILT5320

Scholarly Critique #4 “Much of the literature thus far has spoken to GBL’s (Game Based Learning) potential, rather than to its demonstrable effects, often making grandiose claims unsupported by the evidence (Crocco, Offenholley, and Hernandez, 2016 p. 406).” I selected this article because it because it has a direct impact in the environment I work […]

Learning Reflection: Cycle 3 This months readings and game play have opened my eyes to the benefits of game based learning. I read an article that discussed the different ways that females and males learn when playing games. Not surprisingly, boys have a preference for action and fighting games where girls enjoy playing more virtual life […]

Affinity Space: Initial Observations After hours of searching and dealing with constant frustration, I have found an affinity space I feel excited to engage with.  MINECRAFT To be honest, my knowledge of Minecraft is that it is a game full of block people.  I assume it is similar to Sims.  There is no limit to the […]

  Scholarly Article 2:  Caution Angry Gamers? I found this article to be extremely relevant to the age old question, “does video games cause aggressive behaviors in children?”  Although my scholarly article this week was not specifically addressing learning something from games, I felt this mirrored the same basic concepts.  This article was published in […]

What is the value of the CARP principles? Contrast: This is when you make things you want emphasized STAND OUT. This draws more attention to specific area’s or words.  A few examples of this are changing color, font, or line thickness in images. Alignment: Lining up margins or columns can help group various items.  These […]

The game I played was “Go” an originally Chinese strategy game that is played throughout Asia and worldwide. This is a board game played by two players. The board itself has a matrix carved into it the pieces, oblate spheroids, are placed on the parts of the board where these carved lines intersect. In Go, […]

I selected this article because I personally do not think that I would ever equate peace to games. To me games are always a competition (not to say there are not peaceful competitions). This article sought to examine the use of games in exploring the achievement of peace. The ideas of using games compared to […]

Title of the webinar:  Resumes that rock Date, start and end time of the webinar:  January 20, 2017, 9am-11am Number of participants who attended this webinar:  There was no indication of the number of participants (none that I was aware of) URL of the webinar announcement or description: Link to a the future one on […]

I first became interested in this article because of my previous experience with games. I have 3 brothers and 2 sisters, it was interesting seeing our preferences in video game. When it comes down to a person’s gender, there are differences in what females and males prefer, which may play into how much learning is actually occurring. The […]

When deciding what courses to take towards my Masters program, seeing the title “Games and Learning,” the choice was all too easy.  I have always enjoyed games growing up.  I could sit for hours (back when I had the time) and put puzzles together. I grew up in a big family, 8 to be exact. […]

I wanted to respond to the article about Carly McKinney posting half nude pictures on Twitter.  It is clearly completely inappropriate to post pictures like that when you are a teacher.  Obviously Carla knows this and wanted to exercise her freedom of speech rights.  I can see why parents and coworkers would see this as […]

I work at Employee Services for the University of Colorado. I see and speak to many diverse individuals on a daily basis.  I came up with creating a Networked Learning Space (NLS) that caters to new employees in higher education.  There is always room for improvement in regards to updating resumes or polishing one’s interview […]

For my second “hot topic” post, I found an article about something that recently happened at work.  Because of all the stress and craziness at my place of work, they decided to hand out coloring books and colored pencils to all the workers.  Most people I work with shrugged it off and never even opened […]

The first of two hot topics I am posting this week can be found on my Twitter post below. https://twitter.com/Annie_Melzer/status/707576660673978369 The topic is about social and environmental action becoming popular with young people. The article was posted on UK Independent news.  I read this news blog everyday and never even considered following them on Twitter.  This post sparked my attention […]

I have reviewed several social media websites and provided my collective experiences about them below. LinkedIn is a website I have always thought about using. I am not a very social media driven individual and the thought of putting down my entire job history for the world to see is a bit daunting, I can […]

Technology is rewiring our brains in many different ways. Technology makes us adapt in a quick way.  We are forced to make decisions or problem solve to get a desired result.  Regardless if we fail OR achieve what we wanted, we learned something.  The most recent example I can think of is dragging and dropping […]

Tumblr: https://www.tumblr.com When choosing which website to review, I must admit I clicked on multiple websites to look for the one I thought would be easy to learn in a short amount of time.  Tumblr is colorful website that is immediately engaging and easy to use.  It is a social networking website that is similar […]