Wigging and Googling Out in The Big Escape: Hunted House

              

            
              TVOKids.com’s The Big Escape: Hunted House is an interactive and investigative educational game, which I will definitely add into my pedagogical toolbox. Implementing The Big Escape: Hunted House into my lesson plan will help me practice differentiated instruction as well as provide my students with an opportunity to learn via Internet and computer. Students need to be exposed to the educational benefits of the Internet and realize that learning can also be fun and entertaining. In order to successfully employ The Big Escape: Hunted House into my classroom, I would need to insure that my students have access to both a computer and the Internet. If my students do not to have both a computer and the Internet at home or in the classroom setting, I could schedule a day with which my class can visit the school’s computer lab.

            As an aspiring English teacher The Big Escape: Hunted House is a perfect game to teach students the basic uses of the parts of speech and its syntactical roles. The Big Escape: Hunted House requests students to investigate the interactive environment for slips of words that need to be inputted into the students' journals. I personally find this way of teaching students to be very beneficial, because it teaches both technological literacy as well as content knowledge. Secondly, students who play the game will also find it much easier to learn or review their knowledge of the parts of speech by going through each level as it progressively gets harder. The game can be utilized to engage students’ prior knowledge of the parts of speech, develop students’ efficacy with the parts of speech, or assess students’ understanding of the parts of speech. Overall, The Big Escape: Hunted House provides teachers like myself with many viable options to teach students in the most interesting and creative ways possible.

            With the aid of Wiggio.com and Google Documents, Team Delta and I were able to communicate and decide why we should select The Big Escape: Hunted House as our educational game. Wiggio is an effective tool, because it creates a space where group members can freely communicate with one another regardless of conflicting schedules. My group and I benefitted greatly from this tool, since we only met in classroom twice in a week and had no additional time beyond class hours to meet with one another. Our shared Wiggio account helped us communicate on live forums and chats, which each of us would review and respond in our own times. Alongside Wiggio, our team also benefitted from using Google Documents' sharing feature. The sharing feature made it possible for my group to successfully create our rubric entirely online, and the best part about this feature was that it allowed us to access the document anytime for further change or adjustment.

            Working in groups with tools like Wiggio and Google Documents has made learning both convenient and effective. Applying the new skills acquired from ED 271 has made group communication and participation a much more plausible and bearable activity. Team Delta and most importantly myself will definitely takeaway many important skills from this project, because it introduces the many benefits afforded by the Internet. The Internet, if searched thoroughly, can provide many useful tools for teachers such as: educational games (e.g. The Big Escape: Hunted House by TVOKids.com), website makers (Wix.com), or communication tools (Wiggio.com).  As a teacher, I will introduce these websites into my classroom so that my students can take advantage of the many useful tools the Internet can offer.

Team Delta Presentation: http://russellcrtz978.wix.com/deltaed271edugame#!about-us/mainPage