II. SELECTING & DEVELOPING

SELECTING & DEVELOPING

OBJECTIVES

- To identify and align course and game objectives.

- To generate challenges and questions that will be addressed in our games.

DECIPHERING STANDARDS

"deciphering" may not be best term, but we are doing something that is natural to any curriculum and lesson planning, which is to hone into the tangible qualities that we are responsible for teaching. From here we give shape to our objectives.

Standards can be found at: http://www.p12.nysed.gov/ciai/standards.html

DECIPHERING QUESTIONS

Pictured below are questions from the New York State Grade 7 Science Regents. Any teacher situation in their subject will no doubt analyze the practice exams and old tests that their students will be taking. This part of curriculum and lesson plan development works great to develop questions for games and trivia. So let's look at the questions:

Here are clearly stated 3 questions, but to us, developing our game and preparing students, we can see there are actually a dozen questions that can necessitate quizes, tests and games alike.

The first question basically asks us why a month is a month. Sadly the question is a bit misleading and does little justice to the concepts of time, astronomy and etymology; concepts that would actually be worth comprehension. So let's now consider how many ways we can ask the same question.

I. Take it as it is written, change nothing. II. What's the maximum amount of Full Moons (New Moons) we can have in a single month? III. How many times does the moon travel around the Earth in a given year?

The second question is a fine example of how we might scaffold questions. It's important to not fear wrong answers, in fact, my students would often tell me how difficult some of my questions were, and so I would simply tell them: "if they knew everything, there would be no need to teach them." When I say that we can scaffold this, I am saying that at the beginning of the year you might want to simply ask: where is the atmosphere located? Rather than starting right off with the regents question. Once again, we want to start off simple, and too many difficult questions can shut them down entirely. The idea is to engage and learn about them.

Similarly, the next question essentially asks them (and I have managed to cut off the bottom) what is the difference between latitude and longitude. A question like this must also be scaffolded. For this one, I went a bit further and asked: "What is the Prime Meridian?" The first student answered that it is a line of latitude, and of course, they got the answer wrong, but I indicated that there was a single problem with the answer. Naturally the next student- and they will do this often, adjusted the answer to say "longitude." With each trivia question comes a teachable moment as I explained where it is located. A week later, I asked "Where is the Prime Meridian located?" Just the same as in teaching, we know that using these old tests give us no real indication of what will be on the next one, but they do give us some indication of the type of material it might cover and the tone of it.

ACTIVITY

At this point we want to start to build our educational game and tap into a bit of creativity along the way. So while you should have your list from the previous section, it's time for you to play some educational games with both fun and goals in mind. A few recommendations would be: pub trivia, educational video games that can be translated to real time, games with a small group or online play, role playing games, imaginative table top games.

CONSTRUCTING QUESTIONS

Q: "Is Super Mario a mycologist? And if yes, why?"

I used this question recently with my 7th grade, and the question itself was followed with the natural response "What is a mycologist?" I then commended them on identifying the real question, the question within the question. I could have asked simply: what's a mycologist, but then the trivia is trivial- I'm aware of the phrasing. The key here is to build associations and nurture schema, build off of what they know whenever possible.

CONSTRUCTING SIMULATIONS

We can also think of cognition as stretched across social interactions. Our cognition develops through and for social interaction (Lave, 1988). From this perspective, conceptual understandings are developed on the fly, often through social interactions such as formal and informal discussions, and other various social interactions. Through language we seek to develop shared understandings, often for the purposes of future action (Levinson, 1983; Dewey, 1938). (Squire, 2006)

GROUP DISCUSSION

Discuss with your group (or in small sub-groups) what the standards are for the class you are teaching. Highlight some of the major objectives that you will be approaching in the span of your course- it may, in fact help to divide your groups by content areas. Discuss what games or simulations utilize these qualities and how learner appropriate they may or may not be. Once again, questions will help shape the approach, but recommendations can be equally valuable at this point of the process.

SOURCES

Avedon, Elliott Morton & Sutton-Smith, Brian. Study of Games. John Wiley & Sons. New York, NY. 1971

Squire, Kurt D; Mingfong, Jan; Matthews, James; Wagler, Mark; Martin, John; Devane, Ben; Holden, Chris. Wherever You Go, There You Are: Place-Based Augmented Reality Games for Learning: The Educational Design and Use of Simulation Computer Games. University of Wisconsin Press. Madison, WI. 2007

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