Thursday, September 17, 2009
PLN #2
While reading through classmates' blogs, I came across Ryan Huch's post about a blog questioning the musical validity of Guitar Hero (and similar video games) and whether or not we as teachers can latch on to the fever-like nature of modern games for educational purposes. I myself have wondered if we can adapt current "musical" video games in order to retain students' attention while still sneaking valid educational tidbits in there. Ideally, someone would create a video game that was designed specifically for music education yet still retained some of the widespread appeal that the mainstream video games enjoy. I remain convinced that the synergy of video games and educational concepts is one of the most promising pedagogical strategies on the horizon.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Did you add this site to your PLN? This seems more like a comment on Ryan's PLN. The goal of the PLN is to expand our own professional development resources and have the ability to share with colleagues.
ReplyDeleteAn important part of music education is constantly keeping students engaged and wanting to learn, which requires a knowledge of current culture and generational appeal. Utilizing pedagogical 'games' where kids don't even realize how much they are learning is a great idea regarding today's youth, though I think it still needs to go through much continued study and exploration before we can really make something that is effective.
ReplyDeleteWhen I brought SmartMusic into my band room in 2002-2003, the students didn't like it. They realized the window of acceptability for performance tests would be very concrete and more narrow because of the unforgiving nature of the technology we were using. In 2007, however, well after the advent of Guitar Hero and Rock Band, my Indiana students absolutely loved SmartMusic so much, they named it Band Hero and would challenge each other regularly. It's funny what perspective can do for a student!
ReplyDelete