jwang's blog

What

After talking to the teacher and observing in class, I think the level of students in the class can be very different. How comfortable they are with technology can also be quite different. Several students brought their own laptop to class. When the teacher asked them to work on the assignment, some students started coding right away while others spent most of the time reading instructions.

So what

This is almost inevitable for the school since there is only one class about Java and students who want to learn computer science do not have much choice. The teacher said that in order not to leave any student behind, he purposefully slowed down a little and made the class a little easier. But is this necessary a good thing? How about the students who are more advanced?

Now what

Is it better to divide the class into different levels or should it stay the way it is and encourage the students help each other to improve? The more advanced students can show their classmates who are struggling how to do it. I think sometimes it is also important for the teacher to prepare something for the advanced students.

  Before playing Minecraft on computer, I thought it would easy. I tried the ipad version one or two months ago and quickly lost interest when I was just puting a block here and there. I guess I played it wrong. But anyways, before downloading the game on my computer, I was still skeptical why the simple game can be so popular. I thought it's just like building something with random blocks in different colors. I was wrong. It was so difficult that I couldn't survive the night. I was killed in explosions and by spiders and zombies. I think my experience would be much happier if someone who has played it before would explain what I should do in the game for me when I don't want to read all those online. Overall, I think the game can be interesting if you know how to play it. Maybe I should try to play it again tomorrow.

  I do belief the gaming experience is transferable. The transferable part is probably not a specific skill to make something since people will never have to make ,for example, a pickaxe outside of the game. I don't know how the multiplayer minecraft game works. But other multiplayer games, especially multiplayer online games requires and improves teamwork and communication skills if the players play in team. That kind of skills can be transfered  to other games and outside of the game as well.

      Before reading Clark’s book and writing the paper, I considered technology and the human body as two things clearly separated. However after reading that even the language we are using is technology, I find a little confusing to define the relationship of human and technology. Instead of simply stating that human invented and is controlling technology, I’m thinking that technology has also become an inseparable part of human and defines what human are.

         I also like the idea that instead of hoping the computers would do everything for us and  worrying about computers defeating human in the future, we should work with computers to solve problems that we are unable to do our own. This reminds me of the program I learned last year in my intro to computer science class. I saw fascinating works designed by human and realized by computer. It is almost impossible to finish such a work only by human or by computer. I think technology is becoming our shoes, helping us to run faster and jump higher.