Topic 15 - I LOVE DS

I never imagined that Nintendo's DS could be used in educational ways. This past summer our design team at school had the opportunity to listed to Alan November speak in Boston. He is truly an amazing speaker and if you ever have the opportunity to listen to him, take full advantage. At this conference there were a series of breakout sessions, and one topic was Nintendo's DS.

I remember Nintendo from being a kid and I think of Super Mario and Tetris. Never in my life did I think teachers could use these in the classroom. What you may not no (or at least I didn't) was that a DS makes a little network with the other DS's around them. Student's can set up chatroom's and discuss anything from a reading reflection, a writing sample, or answer a math problem.

We are using them in my classroom for the first time tomorrow and my students are FIRED UP! As I mentioned in an earlier blog, we have started our multiplication unit. Every teacher knows what a struggle it is to get kids to memorize their facts. We are going to set up chatrooms tomorrow and have a competition to see who knows their facts!

One of the great things about this, is the kids have screen names, so only I know who comes in first and last. I get to monitor it by traveling to the various chatrooms. I am also going to have my students reflect on it when we are done to see what they thought about it.

I can think of countless ways in which we can use these in the classroom. We can do anything from spelling words to journal entries. I am so excited to start this!

I did a survey of my students to see who has a DS. 17 out of 21 of my students own a DS. Our CIT purchased 6 DS's so now each of my students have one to use. If you are interested in doing this and only a few of your students have one, it makes an excellent group project. I would love to talk about this with anyone who is interested in trying something really cool in their classroom that your kids will be crazy about!