education

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High Score Education – Games, not school, are teaching kids to think.

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High Score Education – Games, not school, are teaching kids to think.

Although somewhat dated, this short article by James Gee touches on some important elements of gaming and learning. The education system still pushes a “memorize and test” philosophy. Gee laments that children are not learning to think, they’re learning to memorise … and good students aren’t good at thinking they’re just good at “doing school”.

This is a very valid concern. Gee believes that games are an agent of mental training. That children aren’t meant to be memorising.

Learning isn’t about memorizing isolated facts. It’s about connecting and manipulating them.

I like that. It’s a very succinct way of describing what should be our relationship with information. This is exactly what the internet can do – provide an environment where we manipulate information by mixing, sharing and remixing between collectives online.

Gee states that the secret of video gaming’s success isn’t the games themselves or the 3D graphics, but the underlying architecture of the game. Each level is incrementally more difficult, pushing the gamer further and further beyond their abilities. This is the ‘regime of competence principal’. The game is just difficult enough to simultaneously provide pleasure and frustration for the player. It’s hard enough to be challenging, but through effort the player can be rewarded by winning the game.

Games also incorporate expertise. Gamers become masters of a game, but are then forced to adapt and evolve as the game becomes more complex.

As Gee notes, kids often say that playing games doesn’t feel like learning. They’re focused on playing. Again and again, educational experts push this point. Learning must become a secondary objective to having fun. When students are focused on having fun they forget that they’re also learning.

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Assessing Higher Order Thinking in Video Games

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Assessing Higher Order Thinking in Video Games

In his paper Assessing Higher Order Thinking In Video Games, John Rice draws the conclusion that educational computer games, such as Revolution, which was developed by MIT’s Media Lab (the game itself will be discussed in a future post).

With the increased global interest in gaming, educators are looking more closely at how computer games can be used in the classroom. Teachers seem to prefer edutainment style games which offer a “drill and kill” style of repetition practice. There is a wide spectrum of games being used (some ostensibly educational, some commercial but with educational potential) and amongst those games levels of “thinking skill” are required. Some games require only lower order thinking (drill and kill) while other games are more immersive, offering the ability for players to use higher order thinking skills. Rice refers to these as cognitive virtual interactive environments (VIEs).

The benefit of cognitive VIEs is to address the higher levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy – particularly application, analysis, synthesis and evaluation. VIEs are virtual (three dimensional) environments which require extensive interaction (reading, clicking, manipulating the environment). Most often, MMORPGs are the best representation of VIEs. Games such as World of Warcraft, Sims, Civilization can be considered examples which fit the genre.

While still being ‘edutainment’ Rice has developed a series of qualifiers, in the form of a rubric, which ascertain whether a game has the elements required to challenge higher order thinking skills.

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The qualifiers, 20 in total, are scored and graded according to a viability scale.

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Rice concludes that a game which scores 15 or more is “highly probable” to encourage higher order thinking skills in users. He concludes that VIEs are a viable as educational tools as long as they can be judged as having the ability to challenge higher order thinking skills. He is particularly impressed with “Revolution” and asserts it to be a high quality educational tool.

In reading this paper I’ve drawn some interesting conclusions myself. First is a criticism of Rice’s approach. While I agree that interactive gaming (particularly virtual environments) show enormous potential as learning tools, I cannot help but be alarmed that Rice’s approach to assessing such games is too prescriptive. The rubric is neither practical nor logical within the context of gaming. Computer games, and the culture created by them, shift constantly and are subject to trends which cannot be predicted. A game like Minecraft, arguably a teaching tool with enormous potential, scores poorly on such a rubric.

The generic codes and conventions of computer games are not static. They fluctuate and with each technology leap, there will be a noticeable shift in computer game standards. The games of today were inconceivable just 5 years ago. Computer games 5 years from now are equally difficult to predict.

While it’s important to recognise the value of gaming in modern culture and education, we must resist the temptation to rigidly define game boundaries.

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More Fun Writing Than Playing: The Critical Videogame Blogosphere as Emerging Approach to Knowledge Creation

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More Fun Writing Than Playing: The Critical Videogame Blogosphere as Emerging Approach to Knowledge Creation

Blogging has risen as a powerful form of community on the internet. I’m writing a research blog at this very minute. You’re reading these words and, as such, we are both part of the research or academic or education communities. Maybe all of them, maybe a mix, maybe just one. But that’s how you found me, through your interest in research relating to education.

The blogosphere is an umbrella term for those who write blogs and consider themselves a part of the blogging community. Within that community are categories of blogs such as ‘tech blogs’  or ‘news blogs’ or ‘education blogs’.

Abraham, in talking about blogging, identifies the community mindset relating to bloggers. They have a kind of collective knowledge or extended mind which is a way of thinking beyond the individual human idea of knowledge.

This is an interesting notion. An analogy could be suggested (by me) that the way we think is becoming less individual and more collective – like a hive. The community pools its knowledge and uses that as to become a self-perceived community of experts. This community perceives itself to be creative and productive, as if providing something to the wider internet. Indeed there is an apparent relationship between expert bloggers (who are positioned as game critics) and their readers. The blog acts as an intermediary for the ideas of their authors.

The community that bloggers are part of is an imagined community; all communities (excluding small face-to-face villages) are imagined. Such communities are distinguished by the style in which they are imagined. Any perceived falsity or “genuineness” is irrelevant.

I’m mostly interested in Abraham’s notion that bloggers are a form of knowledge creation. While they might compete within their community for prestige or to become elite, game bloggers are working together to create a community. That community creates a kind of collective knowledge through a distributed network of overlapping ‘extended minds’. This is an exciting notion as it has implications on social networking and other communities such as web forums. If bloggers (working on independent blogs as part of a game blogosphere) are creating knowledge then this idea can be applied to other areas and communities – especially those with a closer and more collaborative mindset.

I also like the assertion that through the action of repetition (practice) one can become an expert without any formal acknowledgement. 

An expert is someone widely recognized as a reliable source of technique or skill whose faculty for judging or deciding rightly, justly, or wisely is accorded authority and status by their peers or the public in a specific well-distinguished domain. 

An expert isn’t a person with a PhD, it’s a person who has achieved domain-specific knowledge through the repeated act of writing about that topic over a period of time. This puts anybody with domain-specific knowledge into the realm of expert. Even more interesting is the realisation that expert no longer has to be a embodied as a person. Wikipedia, a collective resource, is recognised for being an expert source – an aggregation of many points of view. Collective knowledge. Extended minds.

When did the definition of an expert change? When did it become acceptable to cite wikipedia as a source? When did an anonymous blogger become an expert? The redefinition of expertise changes the way we see knowledge and knowledge creation,

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Teachers, Students, Digital Games: What’s the Right Mix?

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Teachers, Students, Digital Games: What’s the Right Mix?

There’s lots of buzz around computer games in education now. Various studies are being conducted to ascertain how much access kids have to computers, how often they’re being used in class and how effective games are as a learning tool. 

While more and more teachers are starting to use games in the classroom, there’s concern that tech resources aren’t being used effectively.

What’s more important is drawing a line between “educational games” and everything else. COTS computer games (according to Zichermann) are much more suited to educational purposes than education-centric games. 

Further, this kind of analysis doesn’t consider related factors such as social networking, which is a natural extension of modern gaming culture.

The shift away from an educational focus is gaining momentum. Even Prensky, known for his loathsome “digital native” theory, acknowledges the attitude that learning is becoming a background to achieving goals. This is the direction which education should be taking – how are students learning beyond classroom walls? By playing games, sharing and socialising, and being a part of a community, students are learning valuable knowledge and skills … which is secondary to having fun and hanging out.

The best learning occurs when we forget we’re learning at all.

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Does Game Based Learning Work?

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Does Game Based Learning Work? Short answer: Yes. Blunt’s analysis of three studies draws together enough empirical data to suggest that there is a correlation between gaming and test scores.

The idea of the study was simply to discover whether COTS (commercial, off-the shelf) games facilitate improved learning in a classroom environment. The results strongly suggest that there’s benefits to combining gaming and learning. Blunt used a theoretical framework which considered multiple concepts:

  • ARCS (attention, relevance, confidence, satisfaction). This model identifies four areas in which learning is broken into parts. The theory is that students require motivation as well as practical examples of how a system works (which the students can use to help their understanding).
  • Good Video Game Design. Of particular importance is the computer game’s quality. The game must have rules (restrictions and generic codes), goals & objectives, be challenging and be engaging.

Blunt conducted three separate studies at a university level. All of the subjects were business related – business, economics, management. Each subject had a corresponding COTS computer game which fit the curriculum. As a study control, the subjects that were chosen had two or more class groups. One group was allowed to play computer games as a part of the curriculum, the other class (which was learning exactly the same content) didn’t have access to a computer game – ie it was a standard class. At the end of the course, students were given standardised tests.

The results were very encouraging. The classes which included computer games had a much higher average score and more “A” level results than classes without the games. Also, classes with computer games had no students fail the course, while the other classes had a number of fails. The results also considered other matrices such as gender and ethnicity. Overall, computer games seemed to have almost no discernible affect on gender or ethnicity. The only other significant factor was age. Students under 40 years of age performed significantly better with computer games. Students over 41 didn’t benefit from using computer games in class.

Blunt concludes that his results are significant, however the problem he is trying to address is the lack of empirical data which can be used to prove a causal-comparative relationship between computer games and learning.

Simulations. We have plenty of empirical studies about simulations over the last 25 years. We know simulations work. We know simulations improve performance. We know simulations improve learning. Yet, I challenge anyone to show me a literature review of empirical studies about game- based learning. There are none. We are charging head-long into game-based learning without knowing if it works or not. We need studies. – Dr J. Cannon-Bowers

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No End to Magical Thinking When It Comes to High-Tech Schooling – Larry Cuban

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No End to Magical Thinking When It Comes to High-Tech Schooling – Larry Cuban

It irks me that so many people are positioning themselves as tech-pocolyptics … bemoaning the view that technology is the cause of our problems and that money is being wasted trying to make schools technology hubs.

Cuban’s blog, while usually interesting, takes a view that technology is being wrongly viewed as a ‘magic bullet’ to solve all of educations problems. Cuban has asserted, mistakenly, that “many fantasize” about the notion of technology replacing teachers.

Humans are, by our very nature, social creatures. The internet is redefining the way people interact, no doubt, but not isolating people like some would suggest. The internet is creating a space, a new literacy, where people can interact in larger, less structured groups.

Teachers will be replaced by devices and robots? The idea is ludicrous. It’s even more ludicrous to suggest that many fantasize about it. There will always be teachers. Perhaps we will call them mentors or guides. But they will be educators and their space will change as new technologies emerge (which is a good thing, since education has been static for over a century). So on one hand Cuban can generalise that there’s a desire for teachers to become redundant, but educators will always have a place in society – it’s just that their role might be redefined – which is long overdue.

Cuban’s critique on Mitra’s TED talk and his ambitions for cloud learning is also unwarranted. Cuban is also quick to point out the perceived failure of the OLPC (one laptop per child) program. He alludes to Mitra’s inevitable failure as well.

Failure is not a bad thing. As an eminent academic once said to me “fail early, fail often”. This is a way of learning through experimentation. OLPC was doomed to failure but that’s not the point. Mitra’s cloud schooling in India will never be a success, but that’s not important either. What’s important is that these people are pushing at the edges of learning and technology and finding ways of making it work.

Ask any scientist how often they fail compared to how often they succeed. Why are we so afraid of failure?

While I agree that education has a tendency to shoehorn technology in the classroom and hope it’s a success. But there needs to be a differentiation between the politics of “student / computer ratios” and educational innovators who are trying to find solutions in an ever shifting technology landscape. Wasting millions of dollars on interactive whiteboards (which every teacher hates) is completely different to funding experimental programs to test ideas involving new technologies.

The OLPC concept started before smart phones, before raspberri pi, before a laptop was an accessible technology. Right now it looks antiquated but the idea was revolutionary.

Cuban would prefer that taxpayers, parents and politicians be assuaged.

I’d like to finish with a quote by Mitra himself, since he was the target of Cuban’s rant.

I said schools as we know them now, they’re obsolete. I’m not saying they’re broken. It’s quite fashionable to say that the education system’s broken. It’s not broken. It’s wonderfully constructed. It’s just that we don’t need it anymore. It’s outdated.

I think this is the most important rebuttal to Cuban’s thinking. Education and politics continues to drag its heels looking for “magic bullets” perhaps, but instituting no real change. While we defer to parents and politicians for fiscal accountability, kids sit in classrooms that they hate while being bombarded with an education they loathe.

I may not be as eloquent as Mr Cuban. However it’s easy to criticise without actually offering a productive way forward. I’m tired of deferring decision making to parents and politicians who have no clue about technology and no actual interest (beyond re-election promises) in fixing problems.

The longer we allow people to hold technology back, the worse the problem gets.

‘Bottom dollar’ thinking is stifling creativity and innovation. Politics and political point scoring are wasting money. Teaching mindsets are 19th century … and children are the ones suffering.

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Open Badges

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Open Badges

If you want to ride the wave of what’s new and hip, then an emerging concept called open badges is worth checking out. Open badges have actually been around for a while but have recently garnered much attention – especially with Mozilla’s recent release of their open badges site for coding and web development.

The concept is simple, just like boy scouts receive a badge for proficiency of a skill, open badges are proficiency badges that are given by an organisation (such as Mozilla) or by peers. It’s a system where proficiency in skills can be legitimised by receiving peer recognition.

The idea is novel and has enormous potential to disrupt traditional educational institutes. Currently, the only legitimate education is through universities. However what would happen if open badges were legitimsed? What if companies started recognising open badges as ways of evaluating potential employees?

The impact of open badges is yet to be determined. However there’s a clear trend online (in social communities) where certain members are recognised as having skills. In online groups, some participants rise to the top and are acknowledged for their abilities – whether that’s organising the group, contributing, teaching others or whatever.

If we build skills by participating in social online communities, do they translate into workplace skills? Will future resumes be filled with badges instead of academic degrees?

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