2/8/22 Discussion on Prodigy

Week 3: 2/8/22

Does Prodigy Really Work?. . . My Humble Opinion as an Education Student.

Miller (2020) wrote an article discussing what aspects educators should look for when exploring and discovering new technology tools for their classrooms. Our lecture included our professor's list of broader qualities to consider. The four key qualities for evaluating a technology tool to be helpful are: Efficacy, Empathy, Motivation, and Workload. 

Efficacy —> How much a student must rely on their teacher

Empathy —> Student experience and accessibility 

Motivation –> How much autonomy will students have over their work and how much their interest they will express

Workload –> The student impact versus their previously existing workload

Efficacy: It does promote independent work, but I wonder how much they truly learn and retention

Empathy: Because some memberships cost money AND it is an online learning game, I'm unsure of how accessible it can be for all students. Again, some features you have to pay for and it requires internet connection so how accessible can it be? Do they use it only in class? How often? It could be a distraction.

Motivation: Children want to play games and want to win. This can motivate them to strive to do their best with math problems so they can reach the next level or beat their classmates. Could this cause them to be too motivated about the game aspect though? I can imagine some students would try and look up answers for the sake of winning. I can also imagine that every time a new skill is learned in the classroom, they would be begging to play the game again. 

Workload: I like the fact that there is adaptive questioning, though I wonder how individualized it can be. It seems to have a lot of data to look at in order to gauge progress and performance. 

This would definitely be for older grades when they are out of the egocentric stage of development so they are less focused on the locked membership items and less likely to demand game time every chance they get.