Summer time use to be dull and boring for those of us who spent work hours on the Internet. Teachers went home, schools closed, and Net traffic slacked. That’s all changed now. Think back to a couple of weeks ago, to the National Educational Computer Conference, and the almost constant stream of blog postings that emanated from that even and from people who were responding to that conversation from points around the globe. Technorati logs 833 blog posts tagged with necc07. Google Blog Search lists 1,119. Flickr hosts 2,131 uploaded photos tagged with necc07 or with necc07 in the title or description of the photo.
This week, we have a double whammy, two amazing conferences, neither of which I will be attending, but both of which I will be watching. Alan November’s Building Learning Communities, which starts today (or by all accounts yesterday), and the Lausanne Collegiate School Laptop Institute, which started yesterday. You can follow the Laptop Institute on Hitchhikr at http://hitchhikr.com/?id=137, and BLC at http://hitchhikr.com/?id=167.
I really couldn’t help but chuckle, when Steve Dembo Twittered for someone to try to Skype him while he was on the BLC cruise. Then almost immediately Twittering again, “Stop Stop, Please Stop!” as people were pinging his Skype account from all over the world…
But that’s not what this post is about. Last week saw some pretty exhilarating mind activity at the Games + Learning + Society conference in Madison, Wisconsin. While there (literally), I had the pleasure of sitting with Jenny Levine (The Shifted Librarian), Glenn Webe (History Tech author and social studies consultant at ESSDACK), and Cynthia (don’t remember her last name), who is a professor at a university in Chicago. At the end of our lunch, I recorded a conversation we had about our reactions to the conference and especially about the upcoming ALA conference on video games in Chicago (wish I could be there). Hopefully this recorded file will survive the repairs currently being done to my Mac and will appear as a podcast sometime soon.
At the end of our conversation, I asked, “What has surprised you at this conference?” Glenn, whom I respect and who has contributed a great deal to the conversation about video games in education, expressed a disappointment that although the conference explicitly advertised itself as a games and education conference, very little was shared about integrating video games into our classrooms. We all agreed, and this issue was brought up on several occasions during sessions I attended.
However, I’d like to take another stab at this idea from a different direction (my forte). If we look at efforts to apply games to education as a bridge we are building between the island of video games and the island of today’s classrooms, I suspect that video games, as discussed at the GLS conference, have pretty much built half of that bridge. Enough evidence has been generated that video games can help students learn a variety of skills and content and how that happens.
Perhaps it is our part to close the gap, to build the rest of the bridge, to think about, talk about, and work toward restructured classrooms and learning experiences that can adaptively harness the power of video games for the sake of learning standards that are relevant to our children’s future.
This is not merely a suggestion for teachers. This challenge applies to principals, central office administration, state departments of education, school boards and superintendents, legislators, and a caring visionary national leadership — and even the students. We have to move into the 21st century, not just sit back and wait for the 21st century to recognize us.
Image Citation:
Louie, Steve. “Fremont Bridge.” The_get_up_kid’s Photostream. 16 July 2007. 16 Jul 2007 <http://flickr.com/photos/stevelouie/826713868/>.
The research base into video games in education is one that leaves me wondering. Dave you say there is ‘a lot’ out there, I was wondering if you or anyone reading would be able to sight (or is it ‘site’?) some of that research for us. I’ve found, whilst looking for research on another topic that it is often one of those cases of not finding because you’re not 100% sure what it is you’re looking for.
“This is not merely a suggestion for teachers. This challenge applies to principals, central office administration, state departments of education, school boards and superintendents, legislators, and a caring visionary national leadership — and even the students.”
AND libraries! Sorry to beat a dead horse, but I still believe that the school library is our best bet for introducing information literacy training and general assessment via video games into the school setting. In fact, I think libraries can do more than almost any other entity, inside and outside of the school.
Argh – I mean to add that I really like your bridge analogy. Can I steal it (with proper attribution) as a description of how libraries can help fill this gap? 🙂
I agree with Jenny. The library would be the best place to introduce infromation literacy via video games. The library needs to be the focus of these changes. Once the library has made the changes, the teachers can follow the leader, so to speak.
As a college librarian, I agree with Jenny on the important role that librarians can and need to play in bridging this gap. I’ve used video game strategies in my info literacy sessions to change the way it teach.
I believe that you are correct, we, as educators, need to stretch and adapt to finish that bridge.
Paul
David,
If you view the discussion of computer games as a catalyst for discussing broader educational issues, why do you then make the logical assumption that classrooms (or whatever we decide to call places where learners congregate) should “harness the power of video games?”
Perhaps video games are just recreational activities. I don’t remember calls for schools to harness the power of hiking, gardening or baseball card collecting. Sure, some educators have made great use of these hobbies within the curriculum, but it is unlikely that there were such serious deliberations via specialized conferences.
I would love to know if there were indeed vigorous debates about the curricular integration of board games during their heyday?
Did Milton Bradley keynote the Civil War-era equivalent of NECC? Did he testify before Congress about funding to study the use of “The Game of Life” in American classrooms? Were teachers guides entitled, “The Physics of Ker-Plunk,” distributed to schools?
I often ask myself the question, “What would the Parker Brothers blog?”
Incidentally, I’m still not clear on your definition of video games and if you define computer games in the same way. Other readers have requested examples as well.
In addition to my writing for The Pulse: Education’s Place for Debate and District Administration Magazine, I’ve created the blog, Stager-to-Go for those legions of readers who just can’t get enough of me.
Subscribe away!!
Gary
@Gary,
I think the problem is one of semantics. When we use the word “games” to describe the topic at hand, what we really mean is “simulations”. To tell the truth, there really is not yet a good term for what we’re describing, so “simulations” is a stand-in until such time as a better nomenclature can be found.
The idea is not to do crowd control through “dancing bananas” type games. The focus is on modeling real-world experiences, which are difficult to obtain in the classroom, by using a computer gaming environment. Spaces such as Second Life, World of Warcraft, Neverwinter Nights, etc. offer a place where students can simulate real world concepts such as economies of scale, physics laws, politics, civilization, etc. without the teacher having to abstract it in a boring classroom lecture. Kids can manipulate or “mod” these environments and teachers can do the same, applying rules to meet teaching objectives, so that the learning that is achieved is as close to the real world as we can reasonably achieve.
Educational simulations are not perfect, nor are they a panacea for what ails the public education system. But, they do provide a “bridge” (h/t to this blog’s author on that analogy) that decreases the widening gap between student interest and technological sophistication, and the 200 year-old model we continue to perpetuate, despite data spanning decades of research telling us it’s the wrong model to follow in an increasingly interconnected and technologically advanced society.