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I’ve been working in Chatham, New Jersey, today, for their Education Foundation. The organization has invested a lot of money in the schools, including a cyber center in the high school, a section of the cafeteria where students can lounge and have access to laptops for surfing and working together — social learning.
I’ve been doing my thing about video games as learning engines for parent groups and teachers. My presentation is followed by Deborah Evans, who is a self-professed gamer. What impresses me is that she is almost my age. She started with a Commodore 64, on which she and her kids played Zork. She said she would never forget that Christmas.
After that, her children started using educational games to master math facts. But things got interesting again when they discovered SIM City. Deborah went on to adventure games but is now entrenched in World of Warcraft. She makes the point, as she shows a typical WOW scr
People with a British Accent are so smart!
Eric Yates, the district’s K-6 tech integrationist, then talked about his experience of brinking Nintendo DSes into his elementary classroom. He got the idea, when he first ran across Brain Age. The Education Foundation invested in ten DSes and Erik has learned a lot about using them in elementary classes. One of the best features of the DS, he says, is that it is wireless, and multiple devices can communicate with each other.
He is basically using them as a learning center. As groups are doing differentiated activities, one of the options is using the DS and math software.
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I have always been hopeful that gaming would take hold in education since my junior high days in the late 70s. Unfortunately, a lot of time has passed since then and well, I can’t wait anymore! I am now an educational technology specialist for a school district and I have spent a large part of my school year researching and playing games with students. We just play! I look for appropriate things that the community won’t get in an uproar over, and I listen to the young people as they share wonderful experiences and adventures that they have each day. They love to hear about the first time I played Pong at the Country Burger (They had great sea burgers!) and want to know about the Atari 2600 that my sister got for Christmas and that still works but my Mom won’t let us play it and I’m 43 years old! She says it is a collectors item. All of this is about doing. That is where I am at on all of this technology as I have been doing it my entire life. I wrote a recent post on digital immigrants and natives, reflecting on where I fit into the picture and I am native since the day I was born in 1965. I am a digital explorer as I coin it, and have paved the way for the digital immigrants and natives. My blog has suffered this school year because I am doing, doing, doing! It seems there is so much analyzing, and discussion, and talk that it drives me crazy! The time is now to do! Quest Atlantis has been highly intriguing for me since last spring, and I have finally taken the time to get going on the training and will have my “class” after this Thursday; then, we will play, and share, and learn and we won’t wait. We can’t wait any longer! Thanks for your insights David. Your blog was my first immersion into instructional technology on the web. Now, round up about 60 middle school kids and game like you’ve never gamed before! Come to Quest Atlantis and we’ll show you around sometime. We can do some science experiments, solve math problems, build houses, fly airplanes, and stack cows. Let’s do it!
Great post David!
This whole area of games for learning needs a whole lot more discussion and sharing.
Parents are terrified that the games will take over the lives of students and they will no longer write, walk, compose or “smell the roses”.
I love what Neil says above about just doing but here in Hong Kong it is not so easy as the country is textbook, blackboard and examination focussed.
We are trying to change it though! Thanks for the links and, just so you know, some people with Aussie accents can sound smart too 🙂
Paul, you are absolutely right about the Aussie accents. I use to think that any access, other than southern, sounded intelligent. Then I listened to a recorded interview with William Faulkner, and learned that a southern accent could sound brilliant.
There was some push-back at the sessions in New Jersey, parents who afraid of the same things, that video games were taking over their children’s lives, that the were addictive. There is reason to be concerned and parents should always be concerned. However, in watching my own children, what often looked like addition, was actually a willingness, and eagerness to invest themselves into reaching a certain level in a game. When they did, they dropped the game and went outside and played for a couple of weeks — no video games.
Again, we should be concerned, we should talk with our children, and as much as possible, be a part of that world. Video games should be a family thing, and for younger parents this is possible.
As for the textbooks, blackboards, and testing. We’re all fighting that one. I keep wondering and suggesting that we might learn, during an economic downturn, that going digital may be cheaper than continuing to base education on 15th century technology.
Thanks Paul! And by the way, I won an award for one of the photos I took outside the subway station, while waiting for you in Hong Kong. [http://xrl.in/1k6y]
This is wonderful! Bring it in the classroom! I can see so many benefits. My daughter is in a gifted classroom. Wii, DS, would be great for enhancing curriculum. I use my daughter’s DS as a learning tool on a regular basis. She gets rewarded for playing certain games. Win win situation.
I can also see this being a blessing to kids who otherwise couldn’t afford a DS experience. So many kids in our country come to school for safety, fun, love, acceptance because home is not so great. This would take school to another level for them!
Audrey, I agree with what you are saying here, but to a limited degree. There are some games and gaming systems that will work in the classroom, but for much of it, I think that our goal should be to bring the conversation into the classroom. To allow kids to play games for their own reasons, but to try to draw out the learning that goes on, but drawing out the conversations.
And the rich get richer…
When generalizing some sort of theory based on this example, be sure to control for the incredible wealth of this district. I’m confident that they are untouched by the mean-spirited high-stakes testing and accountability nonsense destroying all sorts of creativity and playfulness down river from leafy suburbs, such as Chatham.
I remain perplexed by adult fascination with gaming and its magical, but elusive educational properties.
A sense of history is warranted. Electronic gaming and learning is not a new topic of discussion. Check out these headlines from 1990:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,970211,00.html
http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-9162655.html
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/tt/1990/may16/23174.html
http://www.edweek.org/login.html?source=http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/1990/05/30/09420029.h09.html&destination=http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/1990/05/30/09420029.h09.html&levelId=2100
After an investment of millions and several years, Nintendo came away from the experience empty-handed. While one can learn about learning by observing children playing games AND children can learn a great deal by programming their own games, the leap to making games that “teach” anything relevant and connected to the curriculum remains the holy grail.
Your blog, http://davidwarlick.com/2cents/?p=1614, contains links to Sylvia Martinez’s K12 Online session on education and games. I recommend that your readers seriously consider Sylvia’s work on this subject.
What the organization has done and what the students are able to do as a result remind me of a video I have watched talking about how the ICTs have changed our teaching and learning more than ever before. ICT activities make learning faster and more personalized; help kids to learn faster, get higher scores and develop 21st century skills… Are these our assumptions or the true potentials that ICT can bring to education? And more importantly, are these enough? When ICT activities stand between students and teachers to replace some part, if not most part of, student-teacher interactions, what we instructors need to think may not be what ICT can do but what ICT can undo. We may have to remember that the nicest features of ICT can cause problems.
I love the idea of video games as part of instruction and have seen more and more teachers using them, especially online games. I believe that they absolutely belong in every teacher’s toolkit.
But I agree with David – without extended conversation tied to game play, they can quickly lose their value. As with any kind of simulation, debriefing is the key to extending the learning. We need to be very careful not to use games and simulations as a way to avoid our own responsibility to facilitate thinking.
(And, yes, I still have the detailed maps, neatly drawn with colored pencils, created during my Zork days. And, yes, I still borrow my son’s iPod Touch so I can play the original Adventure Cave that I made him load.)
glennw
And the rich get richer…
When generalizing some sort of theory based on this example, be sure to control for the incredible wealth of this district. I’m confident that they are untouched by the mean-spirited high-stakes testing and accountability nonsense destroying all sorts of creativity and playfulness down river from leafy suburbs, such as Chatham.
I remain perplexed by adult fascination with gaming and its magical, but elusive educational properties.
A sense of history is warranted. Electronic gaming and learning is not a new topic of discussion. Check out these headlines from 1990:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,970211,00.html
http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-9162655.html
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/tt/1990/may16/23174.html
http://www.edweek.org/login.html?source=http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/1990/05/30/09420029.h09.html&destination=http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/1990/05/30/09420029.h09.html&levelId=2100
After an investment of millions and several years, Nintendo came away from the experience empty-handed. While one can learn about learning by observing children playing games AND children can learn a great deal by programming their own games, the leap to making games that “teach” anything relevant and connected to the curriculum remains the holy grail.
Your blog, http://davidwarlick.com/2cents/?p=1614, contains links to Sylvia Martinez’s K12 Online session on education and games. I recommend that your readers seriously consider Sylvia’s work on this subject.
Also, which math software are you talking about for the DS? I strongly suggest that the “best” math software available for the DS is a 21st Century version of Math Blaster. That’s at best “arithmetic” software, has little to do with mathematics AND doesn’t TEACH anything. At best drill and practice software quizzes users on PRIOR KNOWLEDGE.
Brain Age is not educational software unless you believe that education is about tricks and puzzles.
We have been doing lots of work with computer games based technology at my school. This includes the use of the Nintendo DS for improving attainment in mathematics. We also have a pilot project in our modern language department where we are looking at the effect of the DS and ‘My French Coach’ on attainment in Modern Languages. Our most interesting project that has just been recognized by the UK Microsoft Innovative Teachers Forum has been the use of Guitar Hero and x-boxes as a context for learning and social intergration between primary (elementary) and secondary (high) school. We’ve also got Dancemats in PE linked to a project with Herriot Watt University, Edinburgh to look at the effects of Dancemats in girls PE. Come to think of it – we are doing quite a lot!