New Media & New Literacies

 Hello! My name is Sara and this is my self-assessment for our New Media and New Literacies course. At first, I was worried about taking on two classes on top of teaching. Fortunately, it was manageable and this was the course I enjoyed completing the most! A project I enjoyed working on was interviewing my cousin about her use of technology. It was interesting to read everybody's interviews as well and see similar responses.  As the semester has gone on, I feel like my APA citation has improved. At the beginning it was brought to my attention that you need to cite the author of the chapter and the editors of the book. I was able to keep that in the back of my mind when completing other assignments. Another strength of mine was discussing how to incorporate student interests into the classroom. I work in a private school that utilizes emergent curriculum. Each topic I have taught this year in science has been based off of student interests, for example the human body, weather,...

 My original goal was to find a game that I had played when in school, but my memory is bad and I couldn't think of one or find any. I do remember, vaguely, playing the Oregon Trail game in middle school. But I decided to go a different route and find a new game that I could potentially utilize in my science room. It is a space astronaut game from National Geographic Kids. The levels are the different planets in our solar system. After getting enough tickets the player can unlock the next planet. After each level, students can learn facts about the different planets. The player has to maneuver the astronaut around various obstacles and collect stars and hearts/life. Some of the levels did get hard as the obstacles started to move. According to Gee (2013), "a good game feels highly challenging, but ultimately 'doable'" (pp. 316). This means that the student should be able to experience success and failure during the game. Gee refers to this as "pleasurable fru...