Food Chain Game

Introduction

         The objective of the educational online game assignment was to work as a group to evaluate an online game based on its educational content and effectiveness for student learning. Our group consisted of five respective members: Francesca Aguon, Angela Chong, Savannah Unpingco, Querida Maritita, and myself. Our first hurdle was to find a game that we all wanted to present on. As a group, we were overwhelmed by the amount of online educational games that were available on the Internet for students, parents, and teachers.

Choosing Our Game

          After much exploration on the Internet for an online educational game, we had chosen a game from Sheppard Software, called, "The Food Chain Game." The game teaches the player about food chains with the use of graphics, diagrams, audio, and short animations that demonstrate how energy is taken from plants and other animals. The game has seven levels, each gradually increasing the difficulty with more components added to the food chain. The game includes several living organisms in the food chain, such as plants, fishes, birds, lizards, and humans. We liked this game because it catered to visual, audio, and kinesthetic learners. In class, we felt that many of the students talked about games that boosted students' mathematical skills. So, we wanted to choose a game outside of the mathematical content to showcase games in other subjects. As a group, we felt like this game would be intriguing for students who like science or require something more visually appealing and fun to participate in science activities and learning.

Creating our Rubric

          Through careful observation, our group initially had difficulty in creating a rubric to rate the game that we had chosen. Our group members haven't had much experience with drafting rubrics. And so, it was difficult for us to figure out the criteria we would be grading and how to categorize these characteristics as unsatisfactory, satisfactory, or that the game met its target requirements. Thankfully, we had a class session dedicated to editing our rubric as a group. And so, it had made it easier for us to observe the game further to discuss in detail on how we can modify our rubric to showcase its effectiveness in student learning. The criteria listed below include visual graphics, navigation, design and layout, diagram, inclusion of learning styles (auditory, visual, and kinesthetic), along with the game's objectives, instructions, goals, feedback, and subject.

Ways to use the game

          The game can be used either as a warm-up or a formative assessment of a lesson. The game is best suited for second or third grade science classes, regarding lessons based on food chains. The game also includes five tabs that build the player's background knowledge before allowing the individual to play the game. The game introduces food chain with paragraphs that talk about producers and consumers, food chains, bigger food chains, decomposers, and photosynthesis before allowing the player to play the game. The game gradually becomes more challenging every time a player completes a food chain. According to an article written by Guseva and Solomonovich (2016), "the well-known concise definition of ZPD as “the distance between the actual developmental level determined by individual problem solving and the level of development as determined through problem solving under guidance or in collaboration with more capable peers” appeared in Vygotsky’s first English translation (Vygotsky, 1978:86). This builds the students' zone of proximal development, having the students start from building knowledge, perform activities on their own, and then completing more challenging tasks with guidance.

Adapting the game into a lesson

          In our group presentation, we used the food chain as our way to activate background knowledge before introducing the activity. However, as a professional teacher, I would prepare fill-in-the-blank worksheets for the students to complete as the students read the links individually. I would then have all the students pair off or go into groups of 4 or 5 to participate in a Kahoot! Activity. Then I would have the students return to the link to start their game. The students will be given a graphic organizer to fill out, naming the producer, the first consumer, second consumer, etc. in their respective food chains. According to Struble (2007), the study showed that graphic organizers in particular were tools that allowed both teachers to examine their students’ thinking and learning on the topic which the class was studying. Graphic organizers are vital tools that allows students to explain what they envision in their head, which is why it is my preferred tool for majority of my lessons. However, this game has allowed me to expand to other preferred learning styles, such as auditorial and kinesthetic.

Technological Tools

          In order to compose our group presentation, we used WhatsApp as a primary source of communication. It was the most convenient for our group because we all had smartphones that could connect to the Internet. WhatsApp is a free app that allows users to communicate through texts, audio call, and video call. As a group, we used WhatsApp to communicate through text and to send graphics that relate to our project. For our group presentation, we used Prezi. Prezi is a free website that allows users to create presentations beyond switching between slides, giving creators more freedom to expand on their creative ideas. Prezi was really convenient because we were all able to edit the presentation at the same time without any complications regarding how many were online. We also used Kahoot! to complement our presentation to assess what our classmates understood from our presentation. Kahoot! engaged the students to participate and compete in an assessment about our game. And finally, we used Google Docs and Google Sheets to take notes on our game and to create our rubric for our group project.

Conclusion

          Overall, this group presentation taught me the importance of group work, communication, effort, and learning how to use new technological tools. Our society has a wide variety of online tools that can be used to our advantage. The Internet has so many resources offered at the tip of our fingertips; however, it is important to identify credible resources from sites that aren't qualitative. However, I also learned that there are several main components in group work that can't be reached online, such as communication and understanding that can be built when we were all face to face. Regardless, I feel that technological tools are complementary to our everyday obstacles such as contradicting time schedules, meeting arrangements, and creating presentations beyond paper and posters.

References

Guseva, L.G., & Solomonovich, M. (2016). Implementing the Zone of Proximal 
          Development: From the Pedagogical Experiment to the Development of the 
          Education System of Leonoid Zankov. Retrieved 
          from: https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1146704.pdf

Struble, J. (2007). Using graphic organizers as formative assessment. Science
          Scope, 30, 69-71