Settling In

I'm settling in...I think.

Since my venture to be a pirate didn't go as planned, I have since become a settler...Peyton Earlham to be exact.

The Settlers is an MMO game that is played online with no download.  Players start with a piece of land and go through the tutorial to fully understand how things work and how best to settle.  These first few moments of settling may seem rather trivial because it is all prompted by the tutorial, however the key to productivity is also based on how you arrange your settlement.  Different buildings, factories, residences, and storehouses all vary in importance to the new settlement and require a bit of strategy.

The tutorial provides a lot of information and help up front.  However, I have found the Discovery Principle to be more helpful because it allows for me as the player to learn as I play.  Because I have been able to explore my settlement and its development, I am able to execute the quests when they appear.  I can always refer to the FAQs or the wiki that has been created should questions arise.

I've been thinking about this principle with my ELL students.  According to ELL strategies, frontloading, or providing information at the front of a lesson to help build background, is very helpful to overall learning and retention.  When I read about the Discovery Principle, I questioned whether or not what I was doing was then right.  My students are often confused when I frontload information because it is not in context or they have never had exposure to the information.  The idea behind the Discovery Principle truly makes sense to me because it allows students to be immersed in the content with just enough information to help them understand.  These two schools of thought seem to contradict one another though.  My ELL director would argue that frontloading is still an important ELL strategy, but I'm starting to doubt that it really is when you look at how we learn...in context.

I don't have the answer really.  Maybe frontloading works for some, while it doesn't for others.  Perhaps a combination of the two is truly necessary to see results.  I'd like to further explore this with my students this year...