“Good” Video Games

For someone who doesn’t play video games, I’m really interested in the idea of using gaming models in education.

Maybe it’s due to poor hand-eye coordination, or maybe it’s because flashy noisy objects coming at me really fast raise my blood pressure in a way I simply don’t find fun, but I don’t like video games that involve rapid action. And I don’t find the point of SIMS-type games; after all, I’ve got actual demands on me to gather and manage resources and a “real” house to take care of.

           

Yet there was a moment in time, circa 2005, when a particular online game was something I bonded over with older son in a way that I’ve not experienced before or after.

The game was Drome Racing on the LEGO Web site. It was a strategy game. Players built cars, which the program ran through races. To be clear, it was not a driving game (a la Mario Kart). It was, in effect, a car-racing artifice for testing a hypothesis. How would a particular build perform versus various competitors in a selected racing environment?

Despite my aversion to video games (and my at-best neutral feelings toward cars/car racing), I thrived on the strategic challenge of Drome Racing. It was much like my happy discovery, in learning to play Pokemon with my son, of the hypothesis-testing aspect of deck-building.

So before the game was shut down, I explored this computer world — with all of its rules and conditions — with my son, where he picked up the language intuitively, and I found myself keeping up, in spite of my self. It would not be an overstatement to say Drome Racing marked an era in our lives.

Apparently, I’m not the only one.

A self-represented hooded ninja Minifig who goes by “edwins94” wrote on the LEGO message boards:

“I logged into my old Google Docs account … and there was the Maverick Constitution my teammates and I had drafted together three years ago … exactly as it had been left when the team disbanded two years ago.

I can't describe how I felt … scrolling through the parts that I had typed myself. It was the most truly awful feeling to feel all the great memories and know I would never experience them again. I thought about the team HQs, the MHOZ, and the good times we had together as teammates there. But I didn't just think about what racing in DRC was like, I also thought about when I was 10 years old and how different my life was back then. But DRC would never come back, the MHOZ would never reopen, and I would never be 10 years old again.

I know the game can never come back. It's old, buggy, LEGO sold the rights to it, and its only memory is a bunch of random kids posting in the forums. But … I'm still hoping that one day, maybe in 10 or 20 years or even more, LEGO will somehow put it back. It would be more than just some racing game to me. It would mean so much more.”

http://messageboards.lego.com/en-US/showpost.aspx?PostID=5794880&PageIndex=1

The impact this game had on this child’s life is what we, as educators, are aiming for.

           

Certain elements that can be translated to education are obvious. First and foremost, the game centered on inquiry and strategy, and offered quick feedback. To be successful, players needed to educate themselves (learn the variables and the rules); in other words the premise inspired motivation to learn and improve. Also, and very importantly for the education of adolescents, there was a community aspect to the game. This is a pretty simplistic investigation. But it’s enough to convince me that the idea of gaming in education is one worthy of taking apart and rebuilding — and running through the paces.

Modeling Modeling

I found it made all the difference — in my motivation — to watch a demonstration of creating a podcast. To be more explicit: watching someone else walk through the steps.

I also appreciate having step-by-step written instructions featuring screen shots. I did refer to them as I did my independent work. But I think had I only been given this instruction, I would have felt inclined to give up — which is not the same as actually giving up, because I wouldn’t have seen that as an option, but the feelings would be have been present.

It’s worthwhile to pause and reflect on this experience and its implications for teaching.

I consider myself a highly skilled reader. I’m experienced at reading “difficult” texts. I’ve got a stable of familiar strategies for confronting unfamiliar words, comprehending complex syntax, unpacking dense ideas.

Despite this, I get overwhelmed with written instructions when it addresses a subject completely new to me. In other words, it’s difficult for me to learn how to do something new from written information. Even with recipes, feeling insecure leads me to constantly check and recheck steps. This feels inefficient.

In a classroom setting, when students are facing learning how to do something new by relying on written instruction, I shudder to imagine what it must be like for students who don’t have the same reading skills and strategies, extra years of life experience (i.e., background knowledge), and perhaps even motivation to try (giving up might be a very valid option).

The last part of that, motivation, is something I’d like to explore.

Motivation is comprised of three parts:

1.     self-expectation & self-efficacy

2.     performance orientation & mastery orientation

3.     intrinsic motivation & extrinsic motivation

In learning a process, modeling can help with all of these aspects of motivation. By making a process familiar, students have a better grasp of what is expected of them and a better sense of their ability to meet these expectations, both through the opportunity to recognize strengths (“I can do that!”) and weaknesses (“I know I will need to get help for that.”). Hopefully, as students feel more secure, their intrinsic motivation will be stronger; that is, there will be less of an inclination to see giving up as an option. I will also argue that modeling may boost extrinsic motivation in that students may feel a sense of obligation to try out of respect for the person who has invested his or her own time and effort modeling the task.

This has got me thinking about situations in a middle school language-arts classroom where — using a SMART board (or an old-fashioned projector) —  I might model a task or skill to students. Here’s a few ideas:

·      Talking to the Text: I can model to students what Talking to the Text looks like.

·      Resume: I can create a profile of an example student. Having prompts filled out (interests, experience) would model to the students how I want them to compile their personal information. In class, I can then model to students the process of taking that information and formatting it into a resume.

·      Bibliographic citation: I can show students where to look in text for the information required in a citation and model formatting.

·      Editing/Proofreading: I can demonstrate how to go over one’s work for spelling, punctuation, grammar, etc.

This (short) list (I encourage you to add your own ideas) begs two questions:

           1. Can't (almost) instruction be modeled?
           2. Isn't that what teaching is, anyway?

Yes and yes!

My point is that sometimes we need to be reminded. As the adage goes for writing, so should it be for teaching: Show don’t tell.

What's DEAR to me

In “Why Don’t Students Like School,” Daniel Willingham asserts: “Do whatever you can to get kids to read.” He says this because reading “expose[s] children to more facts and to a broader vocabulary than virtually any other activity.”

He also explains how important background knowledge is for learning. He demonstrates this fact by explaining a study in which junior high school students were asked to read a story about baseball. Half the students were deemed “good” readers, the other half “poor” readers (according to standard reading tests). Some knew a lot about baseball; others knew very little. The results showed something I find astounding: Regardless of whether they were “good” or “poor” readers, the students who had knowledge of the subject area  (baseball) demonstrated better comprehension. Even the “poor” readers who had prior knowledge did better with the reading than the “good” readers who didn’t have the content knowledge!

Willingham offers an interesting cognitive science explanation of how this all works, but the take-away is not to underestimate the power of background knowledge, which is increased most easily, in Willingham’s view — and most enjoyably, I might argue — by reading.

Naturally, I’ve been thinking about that imperative, “Do whatever you can to get kids to read.”

One of the first ideas that came to me was to require students to regularly read newspaper articles and, as evidence of this, bring in articles to class, prepared to summarize or otherwise discuss them. I vaguely recall having to do this in high school (back in the era of actually clipping stories from a daily paper delivered to our home); unfortunately, I don’t recall exactly what the engagement with the articles looked like (e.g., bringing in written summaries with the clips?).

My thinking then took a detour down doubt drive due to the demise of the daily (print) paper, although I know that’s silly. Supposedly, we have access to more information — and more sources of information — than ever. So I’m sure technology (maybe even some forms I’m not currently familiar with) could come into play here.

The bottom line is: I want to do whatever it takes to get kids reading in order to build their knowledge.

All of this is a long way of getting to the point that I would be thrilled if a student brought in The New York Times article on Mayor Bloomberg’s proposed ban on “big” sizes of “sugary” drinks. It’s a great example of an article that I imagine would catch the interest of adolescents and has a lot to offer in the way of getting them thinking about current events/the world they live in.

At this point, my development of this teaching idea (requiring students to read newspapers/magazines) is emerging. I can see the need to have evidence that students are actually doing the reading, and that this might take the form of having them bring in a short summary and/or written response along with the article. It might take the form of verbally sharing a summary or an opinion with others in the classroom (pairs, small groups). I’m not really sure. And I’d like to solicit ideas from veteran teachers.

However that initial process might unfold, I could see the value of having students compile the articles they bring in regularly into a folder, from which they could draw ideas for language arts activities throughout the year (topics for further reading, research, writing). Their own self-selected “fund of knowledge.”

Let’s say, then, that a student selected the “Soda Ban” article as one that was particularly interesting. What might he do with it?

• Use this topic as the basis of practice in research methods and information gathering
• Write a letter to one of the stakeholders (the Mayor, the New York City Beverage Association) or to the editor of the Times expressing support or opposition to the proposed ban
• Design and execute a polling experiment of consumers (e.g., movie-goers) or retailers (street-cart vendors) to gather and analyze various opinions of the proposed ban and write about the findings and/or present this information orally
• Take a position in a verbal debate of the issue
• Gather examples of related events in history, explaining what the student sees that these examples have in common
• Look at literature (fiction) that speaks to identified themes (e.g., government control in individual’s lives, or representations of populations struggling with taking care of themselves)

 All of these could be valid pursuits in a language arts classroom.

And to the think of the possibilities that began with my thinking about Willigham’s imperative, an idea some elementary school teachers I know call “DEAR Time.” What is DEAR to me? Drop Everything And Read!

Authenticity

I’ve been thinking about the relevance of student work outside of the classroom: The more it has, the more motivated students may be.

Here are some times from my own education when I felt my work was important.

In elementary school — I think it was fourth grade — my teacher allowed a small group of students to skip out of the classroom here and there over a period of weeks to help younger students (Kindergartners?) learn about counting and using money by setting up and running a pretend store for them. My family’s Monopoly game was never the same. I stole the $1’s for the store — to this day, I still prefer to round up in increments of five. Anyway, this was a standout elementary experience. Why? For one, the teacher showed she trusted us to work outside of the classroom structure & routine, more or less unsupervised (likely, there was more adult facilitation of this project than I remember, but that would be another hallmark of successful teaching — when the role of the adult is in the background). Upon this foundation, the experience had immediate and visible impact: we, the older students, could see the “little” kids’ excitement.

Fast forward to high school, in an Econ class. The teacher required every student to write a consumer complaint letter. I think I wrote mine to a cosmetics company and ended up getting a refund. The particulars aren’t as important as what I learned about the role of the consumer in a capitalist system — particularly, that I mattered. I also learned something that’s proven helpful in all kinds of contexts: that in making a complaint (or in negotiating) it’s important to have a clear understanding of what you want from a situation. That was an important part of the lesson. We had to come up with and include in our letters a proposed resolution to our issue — and ask for it. In addition to the writing skills involved, these were life lessons, and they were real outside of the classroom.

In college (my second time around), I had an English class where the professor, bless him, recognized that paradox of grading students on the quality of their writing (vis-a-vis the traditional essay) even though writing was not being taught; thus, he offered a “creative” track, where students could keep something more akin to a journal. Don’t get me wrong. The writing still had to demonstrate that we were learning. In some ways, it may have been more work. But because we had some freedom as to how and what we wrote, we could make it meaningful. I, for example, knew I was heading toward teaching, so much of my journal included writing on teaching the content we were reading.

These are times that came to mind rather readily. For sure, the premise — that the more relevance student work has beyond the classroom, the better — is one I will come back to as I embark on my own teaching.

For now, it’s very clear from these short snapshots that creating authentic experiences for students involves allowing students some autonomy and connecting their learning to who they are as individuals in their communities outside the classroom, whether those roles are as near as who they are as leaders within the school or as far-reaching as who they are as members of society.