week 5 assignment #1 Examine and explain how other teachers are using games in the classrooms (particularly with ELA)

    I checked the two platform and honestly didn’t know what’s going on in the latter one, Flow lab. But when I went through Gamestart, I was impressed by the thoughtful design and adequate resources. I even found out there’s a national game for students to compete for practicing their technological skills! (National Games for Change Student Challenge ) Sponsored by several companies, I realized it’s a huge marketing happening in the US now.  Nowadays more than 90 percent of kids play video games. Among the students, there are lots of topics centering the games in their life.

   No one will deny game is addictive, but some people have started to steer the direction into meaningful and educational dimensions. Teachers who apply the game in their class understand the game is engaging, motivating and fun. Besides being an incentive, today’s games allow students to obtain more knowledge of ICTs which will become their strength for their higher education and workplace. To my surprise, the game can fit instructional objectives seamlessly, the games can be designed for trainings of storytelling, science, technology, engineering, arts, and math. 

    Gamestar Mechanic is used for 4th to 9th-grade students. It is an online game and designed for users playing it everywhere. Gamestar Mechanic includes 3 components: motivates students to play, design and share. In the initial stage, or through the whole game plot, it’s especially exciting for students to design their own scenario and story. When little designers start to play and share, they can learn by getting feedback from community. As an ELA teacher, s/he can exploit children’s interest to assign them other activities, e.g. writing down script and reflection to foster their writing and meet the lesson goal which they expect.