Games in Classrooms? or Classrooms in Games?

This is going to be a long one!

 31 44738570 E56A6Ddc1BOur local news paper announced, this morning, that a video game company will be establishing a game design studio in Raleigh, and it got me thinking.
Until recently, video games have been seen, by education, as something that students do aside from learning, outside of the education experience — for fun. A few things have happened that are causing us to rethink video games. The writings of James Paul Gee, Marc Prensky, John Beck, and many others are treating games for what they are, learning experiences — learning engines. There has also been an increased awareness of the enormous impact that video games are having on culture, and what a ubiquitous part of childhood it has become.

To no small degree, the fact that many, if not most, of today’s younger teachers have grown up playing video games. So, one of the emerging topics at this year’s National Educational Computing Conference (NECC) was video games. It is not a brand new topic, and it is certainly not causing the stampede that podcasting did last year. But I think that this is important, probably more important in the long view than blogging, podcasting, or the other concepts du jour.

I think that the principal reason why we are being slow to jump on this bandwagon is that we do not yet grasp what it all means. Most teachers have almost now experience with video games. I am, by no means, an authority. I lost interest after Pong, and I am not extensively familiar with all the writings that are available.

However, I have watched and been a part of the whole technology integration thing, and I fear that we are going to go the same path in efforts to improve teaching and learning through video games that we have with computers in general — by integrating video games into the classroom — rather than the other way around.

Once again, I am not a video game player. But I have paid attention, through my children, friends (who are players), and many of the writings, and I believe that the key to using games in our classrooms is not the game, but the experiences of playing the game that make it so compelling. If we can identify and understand those experiences, which are probably pretty fundamental, and then integrate those experiences into our learning environments, then we may hit on something profound in terms of preparing children for their future.

So here are a few of the fundamental experiences of video gaming that I’ve been thinking about:

Responsiveness:

I suspect that this is a signature component of most video game experiences and also a core characteristic of being young today. this is dramatically different from my childhood, decades ago. Video games, as well as IM, social networks, and even the way that they are treated in the store, are far far far more responsive than my childhood experience. Within video games, every decision, action, collaboration, acquired feature or asset…everything is responded to in some way. Children and teens, today, are accustomed to being responded to. Those from my generation fear that pampered children will be spoiled, and this is probably a justified concern. Still, these responsive information landscapes, where they play, are intensely instructional. They are learning engines.

So how do we adapt our classrooms, instructional practices, and procedures, so that they respond to student learning, rather than merely facilitate teacher presentation? Something we need to be talking about.

Convert-able and Convers-able Rewards:

We reward student work and successful learning with grades. However, grades hold value mostly to their parents, to teachers, and, increasingly, to the government. In video games, students work to increase their level.

What is it about a level that has value? Two things come to mind. First of all, it’s something that they talk about. I often overhear conversations between video gaming youngsters where they are announcing the levels they have achieved in different games. They will then share strategies and short cuts that they discovered or invented in order to achieve their level. Secondly, the level influences the gaming experience. When a student moves to a new level, the game environment frequently changes dramatically. Perhaps you move from a dank cavern to a beautiful shoreline, or the surface of another planet.

Of course you aren’t going to change the wall paper of your classroom, as students achieve a new level in the classroom. But somethings can change. For instance, students get access to new materials in the classroom, a new part of the classroom web site, new formatting features in their blog, access to new software, the ability to use the whiteboard at any time, work in teams in a new way, etc. I think that we simply need to pay a lot of attention to our students, and figure out what is interesting to them.

Personal Investment:

One of the lessons learned by video game developers was that players will return to a game that they have invested in. Many of today’s games require players to generate currency. It might be health points, powers, or an inventory of tools or weapons. It may also be currency, money that can be traded for goods and services within the play of the game. As an aside, there has been much discussion of the real-world trade in digital assets, where people invest their time and effort in acquiring game currency, and then sell it to buyers on eBay.

So students already invest an enormous amount of their time and effort in the classrooms. How do we make that investment sticky, something that compels them to work toward learning. I think that the learning has to be something that is valuable to the students, not just grades. They must be constructing something through their learning, that they can point to, that has value to others, that enhances their identity, and is something that they can and want to talk about to others.

Identity Building:

One of the interesting aspects of many new video games is the players ability to customize their presence. One game that I have played with some regularity is called 1080, a snow boarding game. It’s simple, you play against gravity. I can handle that. But the player can choose his board, its decoration, his/her clothing (and gender), name, and other aspects. In the car racing games I’ve watched, players can customize their vehicles to an amazing degree of specialization.

So how do we help students create an identity in the classroom with respect to the purposes of the room. I could see individual students emerging with expertise in certain aspects of the subject, or procedures in the classroom. If, years later you and class members could identify most of the students in the classroom within the context of what was being taught and learned, then we are building identity. It goes way beyond being the class clown, but thinking about the student as being really good a diagramming sentences, and classmates use to regularly go to him for help.

Dependability:

There is a sense in most video games that the answer to the question or solution to the problem is always there. It is simply a matter of finding or reasoning through the answer or solution. A classroom should work the same way, with a ubiquitous sense that the answer is always close by, that it merely means turning over the right stone, and knowing the stone is a matter of logic and prior knowledge.

Sorry for the long post. But I hope that this sparks some conversation.

2¢ worth…

Image Citation:
DrDemento, “SNK Fighting Game.” DrDemento’s Photostream. 19 Sep 2005. 9 Aug 2006 <http://flickr.com/photos/shellac/44738570/>.

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10 thoughts on “Games in Classrooms? or Classrooms in Games?”

  1. Games are engaging, no doubt. Especially when you put them on a computer. Even better, when they’re networked. The problem with them in school is at least three-fold with the main sticking points being relevance to the educational mission, accountability, and access.

    Your question, So how do we adapt our classrooms, instructional practices, and procedures, so that they respond to student learning… could be addressed in the context of any instructional method, but with games we have to rely on the educational philosophy of game designers and policy makers. Too often, I’ve seen games that function the same as worksheets. These are not the types of games we need, but they are all too often the types of games we’ve been given, because they conform to the traditional transmission-style vision for schooling. We need to arrive at consensus for the aim of education before we work out the problems we have with putting electronic games in the classroom.

  2. “To understand what’s really happening on the Internet, you have to get down beneath the commercial hype and hoopla, which — though it gets 90 percent of the press — is actually a late arrival. From the beginning, something very different has been brewing online. It has to do with living, with livelihood, with craft, connection, and community. This isn’t some form of smarmy New Age mysticism, either. It’s tough and gritty and it’s just beginning to find its voice, its own direction. But it’s also difficult to describe; as the song says, “It’s like trying to tell a stranger about rock and roll.” And it’s next to impossible to understand unless you’ve experienced it for yourself. You have to live in the Net for a while.” – Cluetrain Manifesto

    World of Warcraft. Eitrigg server. We Know is the guild. Send Javert a /w. Consider it your “stretch” excercise of 2006-2007. Learn Web 3.0.

  3. The problem with this line of inquiry is that games are not naive learning environments, they are self-consciously designed learning environments, based on long-standing principles developed in the real world. The approach you\’re advocating is like studying the delta blues by listening to the Rolling Stones. Not an entirely bad idea, but unnecessarily indirect.

  4. Miguel,

    This is an impressive conversation — a little scary, but the complexity of your son’s explanations is most impressive.

    I think it’s important for children to talk about this stuff. This reminds me a lot of the conversations that I overheard my children having with their gaming friends.

  5. I was reminded of the Harry Potter movies, when Mr Snape looks down his nose at Hermione and declares “10 points from Gryffindor” and the scores on the wall (looked like a cricket scoreboard) flutter round as some ghostly umpire was omnipresently monitoring the words of all the tutors and totting up scores in real time. (Sorry I know I should have chosen a rewarding example not a punishing one.)

    Surely that could be possible now? Handheld terminals that allow us to assess kids on the spot,and for different type of achievments to be worth different points all adding up to a up numeric points total for each child or group to be displayed on a classroom display.

    Now that would be fun way to tick off your assessment points.

    http://richardradio.com/wordpress/?p=127

  6. I think it is a matter of getting past what “we think” about a methodology and actually observe what is happening in the mind of the student. Are they learning? What are they learning? Are they engaged? Is this part of the knowledge base that they need to have to be an effective member of society?

    By any means necessary must become the battle cry of teachers. We will educate by any means necessary!

    We will leave behind our preconceived notions! We will go into territory where we do not feel comfortable! We will go where our students congregate and interact! We will do what it takes to reach the most disconnected and connected generation in history.

    Education is a perpetual crisis that always leaves us one generation from anarchy! Teaching must be done by ethical, wise, people of character who have education of their topic as their aim and any means necessary as their methodology.

    My boring keyboarding class became much more exciting when I typed the lessons into text files and imported them into mavis beacon. The kids play games as they are learning to type! Engaging! Exciting!

    Are we sitting around and playing games! Yes! Are we learning! Yes!

    I’ve had quite enough of the stuffy academic critic who frowns over their half glasses at those of us engaging children and reply with a “Hump! If they are having fun, they can’t be learning!”

    I reply, “You can force a child’s body to sit in a chair, but you can not require them to engage their mind!”

    I am in the teaching, mind engagement business! Video games are engaging! They need to be harnessed for top flight, excellent, meaningful, EDUCATION!

    Great post, David!

  7. One of my favorite research sites is by Sanford and Blair at the U of Alberta:
    boys and literacy. Here is an excerpt:

    Boys are often disadvantaged in academic literacy as a result of current curricular emphases, teacher text and topic choices, and lack of availability and acceptability of texts that match their interests and needs. The changing nature of literacy and the role of technology and boys’ underachievement in literacy may not readily translate to electronic technologies outside of school. Many of the boys in our study have a great deal of expertise and interest in numerous forms of digital literacies, often much greater than their teachers. These literacies very often inform and transform the strategies and discourses they use in school.

    The article ends with the idea that although boys are so-called “behind” in school literacies, they may indeed be ahead in the literacies of home and work. Interesting. We should look at these “literacies” including gaming, more closely.

  8. I think mature educators are so convinced traditional methods influenced by the trendy modification of the month teaching directives are what teaching in the classroom entails. We are loosing ground on helping another generation of low to middle academically performing students by not using the tech they have trained themselves to learn from on a regualr basis. Gaming software that support curriculum requirements can engaging minds that we regularly don’t reach in the traditional classroom setting. If we as educators don’t promote and buy educational gaming software the gaming companies have no incentives to improve on whats out there now.

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