Playing Games for Education!

Author: Carla (Page 3 of 4)

Following an exercise plan

October 27, 2020 / / 0 Comments

I had been rowing for a few weeks when I decided that I should try something more structured than the 30 mins (10 min intervals with a 2 min rest) of rowing at a moderate pace of 23 strokes per minute (spm). I started using one of the workout routines from concept2.com to add more interest into the workout because it had started to become pretty boring. Having some set times and spm to aim for throughout the workout added some dynamics that helped keep me focused and engaged while rowing.

 

Here is a sample of one of the routines from the concept2 website

  • 3 minutes at 20 strokes per minute (spm), comfortable effort; 1 minute rest.
  • 3 minutes at 22 spm, harder effort; 1 minute rest.
  • 3 minutes at 24 spm, comfortable effort; 1 minute rest.
  • 3 minutes at 24 spm, harder effort; 1 minute rest.
  • 10 minutes steady state rowing at your choice of power and stroke rate. Make note of what pace you settle on, because you will use it in your next workout.

I liked how the site gave 5 workouts to do and repeat. It also has you track the resistance you use and your stroke rate which I hadn’t been doing at first. I knew I was going faster than when I first started but writing it down has been a good exercise to see exactly how or when I am improving. 

 

Stretching is your friend.

 

I have found that doing some dynamic stretching before and after rowing has helped me avoid pain or injury so far. But I will say that my hands still hurt after most sessions so I’ll have to try and relax my grip somehow. I also do some stretching in my rests between rowing intervals which I think has been helpful. I also sometimes jump on the rowing machine for 5-10 mins to give myself a brain break during the day. I can definitely see the benefit of these small sessions to help get resettled with better focus.

 

I’ve been thinking about doing some follow along rowing video workouts but that will have to wait until I’ve done a few rounds of the exercise plan I’m working on.

 

Until next time!

It was broken. The. Whole. Time.

October 26, 2020 / / 0 Comments

Friday Oct 16 I got an email from my 306 prof suggesting I bring my guitar to one of the music supply stores to have them restring it for me. I was able to borrow a vehicle so I could make the trip between my morning class and my music class. I walked in the store and went to the first employee I saw and explained to them that I was new to playing the guitar and wanted help restringing the high E string. 

That is when the employee took one look at the guitar and told me it wasn’t just the string that was broken. They took the guitar from me to have a closer look at it. Since their back was turned to me I couldn’t really see what they were doing other than loosening the strings with some kind of tool, and then inspecting the area where the neck joins the body of the guitar. 

 

 

 

Then they turned towards me to explain that two of the screws that hold the neck to the body of the guitar were not working. The employee suspected that since there was a different tension on the string when I was tuning the guitar compared to the tension when pressing on the fretboard and that was the reason my string snapped. Looking at the guitar I could see exactly what they were talking about and I was surprised that I hadn’t noticed earlier. However, now I was stuck with a broken guitar instead of a broken string. I didn’t have time to do much else at the store and since I was borrowing the guitar from someone I didn’t leave it at the store to get repaired. So despite my efforts I had a five string guitar for the class.

 

After my class I was able to chat with my prof about the situation. It was then that they suggested that my frustrations with playing the guitar might stem from using a defective instrument. Which would make sense given that the neck of the guitar wobbles quite a bit. It could explain why I thought the sounds I was producing were off despite having just tuned the guitar. At that point we made a plan for me to get an instrument from MERR and stop by their office for some coaching.

 

I had mixed feelings about switching instruments at that point but I didn’t have much of a choice because I definitely couldn’t keep using the guitar I have. I picked up a rental acoustic guitar from MERR and went to see my prof. It was great to have some in person feedback on tuning, hand placement/shape, and general tips on ways to practice. 

 

After that I started feeling much better about my guitar learning journey. Yes I had spent time playing an instrument that wasn’t working properly but the chords and strumming are the same and transferring that to an acoustic guitar has been okay despite the size (a big part of my reluctance to start with the acoustic). Even with the rollercoaster of emotions I was finally seeing some improvement and have been steadily working towards my midterm goals.

Until next time! 

Digging Deeper and Deeper

October 25, 2020 / / 0 Comments

I have been playing this game for a while now and I think I am starting to see how people sit and play for hours and hours and not even notice the time pass. Since I have many assignments, classes, work, and general life going on most of my time is scheduled and that includes time working on this free inquiry. Alarms and timers on my phone have been a life saver in this Covid-19 world where most of my time is spent inside at a desk. I have been feeling more at home in my little Minecraft world and after spending a bunch of time digging and pickaxing my way to iron and diamonds I resurfaced to go to my home base so I could drop off a few things. On my way up the mine shaft I had dug I heard the strangest noises. Confused, I started looking around expecting to see an enemy trying to attack me. But there was nothing so I figured I’d have a deeper look once I finished my trip ‘home’. When I went back to investigate the noises were in the same spot so I figured I should start busting down some walls and figure out what was going on.

 

And then, I found the zombies.

 

It was strange but so is this game so I cleared the zombies away and walked into the room they were stuck or hiding in. That is when I saw it.

Usually when I find something unfamiliar in this game I do a quick search for what it is before messing with it. Turns out this thing is a zombie spawner and its great for leveling, which is good I guess! The rest of the session I spent enlarging the room so the zombie spawner could do its thing and I’ll go back later for all the sweet low effort experience points. 

 

Until next time!

Sixth Week Class Reflection

October 25, 2020 / / 0 Comments

Part of our to-do list for class this week was to watch some videos taken at the Pacific School of Innovation and Inquiry (PSII). I was really interested in hearing about a school in Victoria that focused on inquiry based learning and teaching critical thinking. Hearing Jeff Hopkins talk about the way that students interact with other students and teachers at the school seemed so forign to me. It’s hard for me to think about running a class at an inquiry based school while trying to make sure students hit the milestones set out for them. The material got me wondering how teachers find themselves teaching at this sort of school. Maybe they have experience with inquiry learning, or teaching or maybe they see traditional classrooms not working and want to be part of the transition to a better system. Are the current teachers at inquiry schools the early adopters of the new way we educate Canadians or is this one step of many in education reform? 

We are almost a third of the way through this term and I feel like my days are flying by. With the time moving so quickly I am happy to be recording my journey in writing. I think this will be a great resource later when I am trying to remember some content that we have covered.

Until next time! 

Music Blog #1

October 24, 2020 / / 0 Comments

In my EDCI 306 class each person is tasked with learning a new instrument. For beginners the professor suggested to try the recorder, ukulele, or guitar. I tried playing a friends acoustic guitar and it felt really large and clumsy for me so I tried strumming my partner’s electric guitar and that felt a bit easier to handle. I decided to email my prof to see if I would be able to use the electric guitar instead, after I got the green light from them I was ready to go!
First I started looking at chord charts and lists of songs for beginner players. I also started playing the guitar using the game Rocksmith which was a bit overwhelming but had some great lessons on tuning, chords, picking/strumming, shifting and basic things like how to hold or sit with your guitar. I was really excited to learn guitar so it was easy to fit in the 10-20 mins each day for the first week, then things started to fall apart a little.

After the first week or so I was becoming more and more frustrated with my guitar practice. I was sure that I had tuned the guitar well, or well enough for my purpose, but when I went to play a chord or tried shifting it just didn’t sound good. I would start my practice sessions by going through my chord chart trying to place my fingers on the right frets and strumming a few times before switching to another chord. I liked to end my practice time by trying the “play a song” mode in Rocksmith. I would only be playing a small amount of the notes in the song, but it seemed like a fun way to get familiar with the instrument. While the “play a song” was supposed to be a fun ending I would often get really frustrated because the game would often tell me I was using the wrong fret so I would make adjustments within the fret and would still be missing chords or notes in a song. The combination of having the beginning of my practice time with the chords and shifting sounding off, and the Rocksmith game telling me I wasn’t playing notes/chords properly really started to wear on me. Eventually I started to dread playing the guitar and was feeling pretty hopeless about the goals I had set for myself.

 

One fateful Thursday night I was practicing because I knew I was going to be meeting with some fellow students who were also learning the guitar the next day. As I was strumming I heard, and felt, something weird. Next I felt a combination of confusion directly followed by horrible realization, as my stomach dropped to the floor as I saw that I had just broken the high E string on the guitar. So it was 11 pm, my guitar was useless, and I needed it for a 1 pm class the next day. After taking some time to decide if this just sounded like a made up excuse I elected to email my prof to let them know what had happened. I was a little worried that this would come across as a “the dog ate my homework” situation but I was feeling so discouraged that sending the email seemed like the only thing left to do.

 

My next post I’ll be writing about the email I got on Friday morning, and the turn my musicianship journey has taken.

 

Until next time!

Fifth week reflection and Minecraft update

October 24, 2020 / / 0 Comments

Fifth week reflection and Minecraft update

 

There was no class in week five because of the long weekend so I took this time to start exploring some streaming software. I have been involved with the charity Extra Life for the past few years by helping my partner set up their in the person event. The two of us have typically been part of a bigger team that run various games for the 24 charity marathon but like most things this year it is going to be a bit different. This year instead of auctioning off seats at the game table and having a sort of revolving door of players there will only be 7 people playing for the entire 24 hours. In previous years we have streamed the 24 event with an extremely simple set up of one webcam and two microphones because all participants were in the same room. However, this year five people will be in different locations and two will be in the same room. The two people in the same room will each have their own camera and audio feed. To bring this all together I decided to use OBS as our streaming software since it is easy to connect it to Twitch, where the game will be streamed, and OSB has robust features with, what I hope will be, easy to manage menus. I have no experience using OBS but from the tutorials I have looked at it should be a great solution for the stream. 

 

For Minecraft this week I spent most of my time mining and trying to find iron, gold, diamonds, or any other materials hidden in the earth. I decided to just start digging down in a random spot and ended up finding a few pockets of usable materials. Eventually I hit an area where I couldn’t break any more of the blocks, no matter which pickaxe I tried to use on the blocks. I suppose I hit the lowest layer? 

 

As this is a short update I’ll leave it here for now.

 

Until next time!

PE Blog #1

October 23, 2020 / / 0 Comments

Learning to row

 

Since the pandemic restrictions were put in place last spring I have been spending much more time at home and, mostly, sitting at a desk or computer. So when I found out that my 310 class would have us try out a new recreation activity I was pretty excited to have more motivation to get moving. One of my housemates got a rowing machine in the summer and since it is in a common area they told all of us we could use it if we wanted to try it out. I had initially been hesitant to use the rowing machine, but I figured that this was the perfect excuse to try it out. 

 

Before I started on the rowing machine I checked out a few videos on proper form and techniques, my housemate also gave me a few helpful tips to get me started. They also warned me about starting out too fast. Originally I had thought I could sort of jump in and go for 30 mins but they suggested to start with 10 mins the first time and work my way up from there and am I happy I did. I normally get exercise by biking so my legs had no issues with the rowing but my upper body was a whole other story. After my first 10 mins I felt pretty good, but later that night there was some pain in my back and arms. The next day I felt good so I went for another 10 mins and continued doing just 10 mins the first week and managed to get 4 days on the rower.

 

I had some back and arm pains but nothing that didn’t feel better in one or two days.

 

Until next time!

Finding my Minecraft home

October 10, 2020 / / 0 Comments

Making Progress

 

Okay, I have spent a bit more time in this game and this was the first week where I wanted to keep playing after my scheduled time was up. Because of the open world concept that this game has I was finding it hard to really focus on anything. I also found the day-night cycles annoying because I felt the need to run back ‘home’ every time the sun went down. Oh yeah, I found a home!

 

My Town (it’s a ghost town)

I found an abandoned village at the end of my last session and I was genuinely (a little) excited. I didn’t know that you can set a respawn point at a bed when you sleep in it, so that was great. Now when I die I don’t just appear in a random spot, somewhat close to all the loot I dropped, on the map. I cleared the spiderwebs out of one of the buildings and added doors so I could stay safe during the dangerous night mode in the game. This probably took me way longer than it should have but thats what I get for watching a single how to video on this convoluted game.

 

This feels familiar, sort of.

During this Minecraft session I started finding a bit more enjoyment in the crafting side of the game. I

Cooking some food in Minecraft

am building up an array of materials and am able to remember where I can find certain materials in the game. In fact, the crafting side of the game reminded me of the game Stardew Valley. Which got me wondering because I enjoyed playing Stardew Valley so why wasn’t that same enjoyment coming through in Minecraft? There is even a day/night cycle, a part of Minecraft that I have been frustrated by, in Stardew Valley so what gives? Then I realized that I stopped playing Stardew Valley after I had completed the storylines in the game. So maybe that is the problem, although I’ve spent hours in loot-grind cycles in other games. It could be the open world, no obvious goals that makes it seem a little pointless to me. 

Wait, is Minecraft “free inquiry” in game form?!

 

Okay I’ll have to unpack that idea on my own for a little bit. Next time I’ll be talking about venturing away from my new found home and delving deep into the earth around me, after all it is called MINEcraft.

 

Until next time!

« Older posts Newer posts »

© 2026 Playing Games for Education!

Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑