DR. DAN PEZZULO
  • Home
  • Experience
  • Education
  • Contact
  • Think About It...

A Game is NOT the Teacher - YOU ARE!

10/26/2016

0 Comments

 
Picture
Good games can provide immersive experiences for students. Like novels, films, plays, and other media, games can be high-quality materials a teacher uses to enable students to access the curriculum. Classrooms with high-functioning game-based learning are not ones in which the teacher hands a game to students to play. Nor do the teachers "gamify" their rooms, turning them into a game. Instead, effective game-based classrooms involve each of these components. Students are provided with learning experiences driven by play.

The following are three approaches to bringing game-based learning to your classroom. They’re not distinct from one another - so try mixing two or all three.
​
1. Games as Shared Experience

In 2015, Benjamin Stokes compared the experience of playing games to taking a class on a field trip. With a field trip, you first let students know what to expect and then give them freedom to explore an out-of-school location. Back in the classroom, you facilitate connections to the curriculum.  Games, like field trips, provide meaning for students. You can put students in Minecraft and have them build structures. When night comes and creepers attack, only the students who stayed in fortified structures survive. After play, discuss the difficulties of setting up a colony in a hostile environment, like Jamestown. Students understand the dangers of settling new worlds because they have experienced them.

Read More
0 Comments

STUPID-phones! - "consider the costs"

10/13/2016

0 Comments

 
Picture
As smartphones and tablets blur lines between work, home and social lives, parents are grappling to balance it all, a new small study suggests. Parents' use of mobile technology around young children may be causing internal tension, conflicts and negative interactions with their kids, suggests the qualitative study in the Journal of Developmental & Behavioral Pediatrics.  It's a challenge both parents and health care providers should tune in to.

"Parents are constantly feeling like they are in more than one place at once while parenting. They're still 'at work.' They're keeping up socially. All while trying to cook dinner and attend to their kids," says lead author Jenny Radesky, M.D., a child behavior expert and pediatrician at University of Michigan C.S. Mott Children's Hospital who conducted the study with colleagues from Boston Medical Center.

"It's much harder to toggle between mom or dad brain and other aspects of life because the boundaries have all blurred together. We wanted to understand how this was affecting parents emotionally. We found that parents are struggling to balance family time and the desire to be present at home with technology-based expectations like responding to work and other demands."
​

The study involved in-depth interviews with 35 caregivers, which included moms, dads and grandmothers.
Participants consistently expressed an internal struggle between multitasking mobile technology use, work and children, information overload and emotional tensions around disrupting family routines, such as meal time. As one mom in a focus group described it, "the whole world is in your lap."


Read More
0 Comments
    Disclaimer: This website is for informational and educational purposes.   
    ​
    Any and all blog content represents a synthesis of empirical information found on the internet, of my own personal opinions,  and my professional experiences. Nothing posted reflects or should be considered professional advice. Interaction with me via the blog does not constitute a professional or therapeutic relationship. For professional and customized advice, you should seek the services of a licensed mental healthcare professional.
    I do not assume liability for any portion or content of material on the blog and accept no liability for damage or injury resulting from your decision to interact with the website.

    Archives

    August 2022
    August 2020
    September 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    October 2017
    September 2017
    May 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    October 2016
    September 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    March 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015

    Categories

    All
    Care & Treatment
    College
    Diagnoses & Disabilities
    Education & Teaching
    Health & Mental Health
    Neuroscience
    Parenting
    Technology
    Transitional Services

© Copyright 2023    Dr. Dan Pezzulo 
Lancaster, PA 17601
  • Home
  • Experience
  • Education
  • Contact
  • Think About It...