Up early. With no keynote to do today and with the video games session already part of my muscle memory, I’m reviewing some of my notes from the Games + Learning + Society conference. I’m including some quotes here with some comments:
Instructional designers have no business designing games. For instructional designers, its hard to design something that allows for failure.
I thought that this was interesting, though I have no real experience to consider this statement. My first programming was in writing little games. In 1982, games was about all that people did with personal computers. I do remember that I had more fun writing code. I’d spend two weeks on a game, play it for about a half hour, and then start working on a new game.
“There’s probably more learning theory involved in the commercial games than the training simulations.” — Karl Royle
Again, I have nothing upon which to base any comment here, except to wonder if there is something in designing a game for the player’s sake, as opposed to making the game for the content’s sake.
Games are difficult to assess in terms of curriculum integration. It’s easier to assess a text book.
Mostly we want to teach something, and this is the bases of the assessment, the “what” that we want to teach. When we want to teach a skill, it’s the “teach” that we concentrate on. Does pedagogy ever get in the way?
Integration was more successful than we thought. Very inventive teachers.
teacher who were most successful were the onse who were experienced teachers, willing to put in the work, and to trust the kids…
This was the session by Angela McFarlane on the use of COTS (Commercial Off The Shelf) games in the UK. No surprise here, especially the part about experienced teachers. I think that the most profound part of this statement, the part that made me write this down was about trusting the kids.
learning is a process of creation — not a precess of consumption.
Old news for most of the readers of this blog. It’s constructivist.
We have to understand that education is not what “Fanfiction” is about. It’s about participation. education is a by-product. might we damage the experience if we insert pedagogy.
I added a slide to my “Video Games as Learning Engines” presentation that asks, “Can we teach with video games, or only learn?”
10 and 15 years ago, games were only capable of drill and practice, but we desired more depth. Today, games are capable of such depth, but we are interested in the memorizing of facts.
How true! Our children’s outside-the-classroom information expeirences have become far more rich and complex, while their inside-the-classroom experiences have been dumbed down — for the sake of accounting for our own ability to teach (testing).
Critical moments in game design
when someone says…
1. can I try?
2. can I save?
3. Let me show you?
— Katie Salen
Hmmm! I really like this. So might we apply it to a lesson. Critical moments in a lesson are when a learner says…
1. Can I try?
2. Can I save my work?
3. Let me show you what I’ve learned?
…schools force students into the bell curve. Many if not most gamers are, in many ways, avoiding the bell curve — defying the bell curve.
can we use these technologies to transform education in incremental ways, or do we have to blow up the paradigm, and it’s clear that we’re going to have to blow up the paradigm. — James Paul Gee
Enough said!
Implosion is imminent.
The three questions asked are extraordinary. In a nutshell, this is the learning process of children when they are learning through play. How wonderful for a teacher to hear those questions in a classroom!
Have you ever posted a list of games worth using in the classroom?