As someone who enjoys video games of all sorts, the beginning of this class intrigued me. We opened with a video of how Minecraft can encourage different areas of learning. First example was a recreation of the school for new students who were online during COVID and the second was expressing the importance for student learning socially and growing their online presence in a safe and regulated way. After this, we put it on hold and began figuring out the zoom issues for Tina. Joanna made the point of what would we do if this was our classroom and there was a waiting period. As we are university adults, we sat pretty quiet and just worked on our things. Obviously grade 4s would not, however my Link2Practice 7/8 split may. About half the class is really into silent reading currently and will happily read any chance they have. The other half is a little more energetic and chat away a lot during transition periods. If I were their teacher, I would likely try to navigate a silent activity time with minimal chatting. For those conversationalists, I would probably give out a quiet partner game, maybe something to do with cards or dice, or I could give out colouring sheets maybe?
Tina has classrooms within her classroom to explore what they actually want to learn. This is done with google classrooms and allows students to choose what they want, while keeping classroom numbers up enough to receive funding. I liked how she acknowledged the change in teaching and pedagogy since making this shift to more so online, stating that the biggest change is that she does not get to stand at the front of the classroom to instruct anymore. Tina brought up Unplugged Coding, which I had never heard of before. It seems that it would be following instructions, physical and written. Regardless, this would be most useful in elementary classrooms, likely without an actual lab to use or easy access to computers. Another thing I liked was her attitude about google classroom. The flexibility mentioned sounds amazing and very beneficial. An example used was assignment availability. As the instructor, Tina can alter the visibility of different student assignments. A student that benefits working at their own pace and has a high drive could have access to the entire course all at once to work through compared to a student who benefits from due dates may only access two assignments at a time. This is also for students who may get anxiety or overwhelmed.
Finally, we were instructed to go on Hour of Code and find a game to review. I did not find a game, but I did find a really neat intro to coding lesson plan. It says to a max of grade five and a minimum of pre-reading level. I personally do not think that the lesson plan fit a pre-reading level, but would be happy trying it with maybe grade 4+. The instruction is pretty simple, however it does require a computer to do the coding, so that may be limiting. Overall, the lesson plan is very interesting and would be useful as an introduction or recap for the younger ones, or even older students just beginning entirely.