I. TYPES of GAMES
WHY GAMES?
Games may help and encourage many learners to sustain their interest and work. Games also help the teacher to create contexts in which the language is useful and meaningful. Games are highly motivating because they are amusing and interesting. They can be used to give practice in all language skills and be used to practice many types of communication. Nothing can be more natural than learning through playing games. (Prensky, 2001a)"
". . . We can reduce the stress from learning and ensure our students’ better perception of the information flow. The curiosity about the outcomes of the game keeps students motivated, engaged and concentrated up until the end and leads to the learning without conscious efforts on behalf of a player. (Marzano, 2007)"
NOTE: A quick note about video games, while I am not including them, I am also not excluding them from this process. Successful educational video games do well to borrow from tried and true pedagogical process, and certainly our games, can pull from the same well. There is much on the topic of educational video games, some of which I have referenced, but, once again, we hope to dissect the elements of successful education games and recreate them in our classes.
OBJECTIVES:
- To analyze the different types of games that can be used in the classroom.
- To considering which disciplines they may or may not apply to.
- Discovering what your specific objectives are.
- Developing a strategy for implementing games.
Developing objectives for our games are part and parcel to the development of classroom objectives and learning plans in general, so it is perhaps most useful to consider the demands and desired outcome of the course itself, as it is from there that we can discover which type of game would best compliment our approach. Below is a diagram of the different subjects and some game types that are generally complimentary to the subject itself, that is that the skills most commonly stressed within that particular subject are matched with games that often require the development of those skills.
Let's start in physical education, mainly because, of the disciplines, it relies most heavily on games and exemplifies the need to modify such games in order to meet developmental objectives, then we will look to the different subjects and explore certain qualities.
ACTIVITY
List the main objectives of your course. What skills are expected of your students? And what existing games might help you to reach your educational goals. If you need assistance, you can consult the following charts.
PHYSICAL & COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT: GENERAL OBJECTIVES
Gallahue (2005) discusses a classification scheme that places games into four developmental levels. The levels, in ascending order, are “low-level”, “complex”, “lead-up”, and “official sports”. What we see are distinctions that can be considered in all game development. "Low-level" focuses on certain components and a calculated scaffolding of certain elements. "Complex" will seek to integrate more than one skill. For example, a squat-thrust: in the "low-level" phase we would focus on one single element, either the "squat" or the "thrust"; In the complex phase of development we will use activities that require more than one skill. "Lead-up," is also described as "modified," essentially, certain rules are changed, the basket ball hoop is lowered, training wheels are utilized, the rules have been altered to limit focus to key elements, that when mastered, and proper development has occurred, we can move on to "official sports," or a live and open competition in which the rules stand and are assumed known by all participants, and the participant receives no aid than basic strategy expressed by the coach or instructor.
These classifications can serve as a guideline for educational games in a similar fashion.
Where are your students, developmentally? Low-level? Complex? Lead-up/Modified? or Official/High Order?
This should help to hone your objectives and help in finding a game that addresses either the "parts" or developing an understanding of "the whole".
- "Low-level" in the sense that Gallahue describes begins with infancy, as physical development follows a different arc than cognitive and intellectual development. Gallahue focuses on physical development, while I am simply expanding the model- we can slice this finer if need be, and certainly there are mnay more skills worth mentioning, but this is just to get things rolling.
TYPES of EDUCATIONAL GAMES
CHART is INCOMPLETE
A. SIMULATIONS
Surveys of thousands of gamers have shown that they're more likely to play real music if they
play a music videogame. So it's an interesting relationship where the games aren't replacing
something we do in real life, they're serving as a springboard to a goal we might have in real
life, like learning to play an instrument.
-Jane McGonigal
(Game Designer)
Simulations are a type of game that takes on countless forms and can be executed in countless ways. Anything from Theater to a mock trial, a Model UN or legislature, crime-scene forensics, any conceivable literary world or even a school newspaper or video journalism. This is the cornerstone of play, and theoretically begins as early as the infant embracing a teddy bear, in which they are simulating the mother's embrace of the child in order to gain an understanding of their own sense of separation and why they are deeply comforted thereof. (D.W. Winnicott, 19XX) Simulations are natural to learning, but at later levels of intellectual development must be executed with tact and care in mind. I rather prefer Kurt Squire's (2006) description of these simulations as "Place-based augmented reality games," because it captures both the setting and the imagination while not discounting the nature of it as I've tried to express through Winnicott's theories.
With these games, it is important to develop specific roles and circumstances while you are allowing your students to explore the concept and test the limits of their augmented reality, but we must still keep in mind that the students might reach an unexpected outcome or a solution not previously conceived of, so there certainly are degrees of what may be considered a "right answer." Much like in acting, the only "wrong answers," are the ones that go against the logic of the setting, characters or otherwise plausible realm. Simulations tend to reflect a process, so they are best left to more developed students, with certain exceptions that might facilitate creativity among younger minds.
And, of course, video game based simulations are rather common and can be effective. Likewise, many of them can be translated into real-life, much in the way that real-life was translated into them.
B. RECALL
When discussing recall, we are either describing the act of accessing information from the short-term or long-term memory. (How People Think, 2010). The way we often maneuver through this is the individual's psychological ordering, or what is loosely described as schema. Since the mind is not entirely based on word and word association, or not entirely based on symbolic and physical recognitions, what we are left with is generally a mass of aesthetics, concepts and words associated with several different contexts. This became more apparent to me when working with ESL/ENL students and when we discussing electricity and magnetism, this sign: + means "plus," not "positive", and - means "minus," not "negative." IT was at first an easy distinction to provide them, as one is for mainly for math (although numbers become positive and negative) and the other for science. Then we studied sound, and volume was no longer the measurable space of an object, but also the loudness of something. The point is that recall is based on associations and the ability to access them, so to understand, or at least get a glimpse into the student's misconceptions is to be able to better teach them, and unfortunately on a written exam or multiple choice, the answer is simply deemed wrong and the recourse is to "study harder," and "try more," but the misconception is never truly remedied. So, how do we remedy this? through language and inquiry, or a gamified version of inquiry, which is essentially: trivia. This is where the crux of my study is as I have found great success in establishing a daily trivia game which gets the students thinking and rewards them for their interest in the many different topics they themselves enjoy. And when it comes to recall, this process has exposed and addressed countless misconceptions or just superficialities about countless topics. Much of the next section will focus on the development of trivia.
C. EXECUTION of SKILLS
Certain skills develop through repetition, so if there is a specific operation that the students are expected to perform, there may be a particular game that can help you achieve that.
EXAMPLE: YuGiOh! is a simple card game that requires addition, subtraction and less often multiplication and division. When discussed with students, the dozen that I observed, all cited the consistent need to perform such operations aided in their mastering of those math skills at the time when they needed to learn them.
D. MATH, LANGUAGE & LOGIC
Some of the games in this realm fall under the category of puzzles, like Sudoku, crossword puzzles and word finds. These tend to be solo games (a quality that makes them puzzles) and can be frustrating and inaccessible to those who have never been taught the methodology behind them. And, even methodology aside, it is difficult to gauge the exact zone of proximal development across more than a dozen students. So, in this respect, these games should not be required participation. I personally like to give my students a word search while I conduct inquiry, telling them that since "they are so good at multi-tasking, they can do both." Most often the word searches contain the proper vocabulary for our inquiry, so the meaning has been doubled as the words and terminology are right in front of them as we use it. I happened on this accidentally as I noticed the students weren't trying to find access the words in their long-term memory, but instead recalling them from the word-search in front of them and consciously constructing their schema (certainly without language we can have no fully developed schema).
As for mathematics, problem-based inquiry follows the steps of simulation in that you simulate a problem that requires mathematical thinking to solve. This method has been praised in some of the rapidly emerging education systems in South East Asia (Darling-Hammond, Flat World). But to sharpen skills, we can use card games which utilize the need for strategy in games like YuGiOh!, Pokemon or Magic: the Gathering. Each of these games utilize rudimentary math skills, forcing students to check their own and each others' figures for the sake of competition. Unfortunately these games do not go beyond division (and seldom even that far), so the need to integrate more high level math skills is needed to improve the educational merit of these games. that is until probability is entered into the strategy, which is so high level and theoretical that it is only ever touched on slightly through one's high school education.
GROUP DISCUSSION
In each Unit there is a "Group Discussion" section in which you are to address a specific question within your group. Keeping in mind that questions help to enhance our understanding and guide our inquiry.
What games do you learn from? And what aspects do you learn?
i.e. Jeopardy - recall. Soccer - teamwork.
A BRIEF NOTE ABOUT REWARDS & POINT SYSTEMS
One of the greatest qualities of the trivia system that I have found in my classroom is in the intrinsic reward system; every student wants to get it right, and so there is a real art to choosing the right questions for the right students and vice-versa. Getting the right answer is both validating for the individual but also socially validating- which is to say that in a behavior-based Skinnerian reward system, the student may choose between the social reward of going against the teacher in favor of the group, and so their reward is more important than something extrinsic; punishment systems seem to be losing traction in many schools for a variety of reasons, in my school I would say that the punishment is a better alternative to staying in class as class often seems like the biggest punishment of all.
So, let's model life, and introduce them to an economic system. When the class agrees that there is a currency system, and the currency is information, then he/she who controls the currency controls the subjects. Rewards should be in the form of currency or points, that is: you can save your currency, or you can trade it in immediately for instant gratification. Most of my students went for instant gratification while only a few held on to their winnings. All of the students who showed discipline and saved are aiming for bigger paydays, while the others are regrettably trying to save up for the better prizes at this point- so is life.
It might seem that I am advocating a certain gamification of education, but I will say that this is nothing new, instead it is just tailored so instead of being a system of bribery and extortion, it is a system of free market idealism by which the intelligent or the inquisitive are rewarded- a sad myth that is often taken from us far too early.
In this system you are the Federal Reserve, the Monarch, and the Monopoly man all at the same time, so the most important thing for you to understand is your own real budget and the value you hope to assign to the questions. If the points are too hard to earn, then the students will not participate, and if they are too easy, you will go broke from buying all the promised kids junk. So, have a system, and I recommend a system that allows you to give points liberally, rewarding answers that are half right, or upping the point total, or giving them out on a whim for a random act of good behavior. Students love to argue and they love to challenge authority, so I provide them with the option to prove me wrong for double the points- many has challenged an none have proven me wrong, but each time they have done the research, so it's a win no matter what.
Do not deduct for wrong answers. Such a thing is antithetical to really all pedagogical doctrine.
NAVIGATE
I. TYPES of GAMES I._TYPES_of_GAMES#NAVIGATE
II. SELECTING & DEVELOPING II._SELECTING_&_DEVELOPING
III. ASSESSING & ALTERING III._ASSESSING_&_ALTERING
IV. SELF-REFLECTION & REPEAT IV._SELF-REFLECTION_&_REPEAT
SOURCES
Gallahue, David; Ozmun, John & Goodway, Jaqueline. Understanding Motor Development: Infants, Children, Adolescents, Adults (Sixth Edition). McGraw Hill College. Boston, MA. 2006.
Marzano, Robert J. The Art and Science of Teaching: A Comprehensive Framework for Effective Instruction. Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. Alexandria, Virginia. 2007
McGonigal, Jane "Gaming Can Make a Better World." (Video) TED Talks - February 2010. http://www.ted.com/talks/jane_mcgonigal_gaming_can_make_a_better_world
Swain, David P; David L. Gallahue, and Frances Cleland Donnelly (2003). Developmental Physical Education for Today's Children. Human Kinetics. Macmillan Library Reference. New York, NY. 1987. pp. 571–573.
Winnicott, D.W. Home is Where We Start From. WW Norton Company. New York, NY. 1986. p. 50.
http://minds-in-bloom.com/2014/10/teaching-heredity-in-elementary-schoo.html