Barry Fishman- TIE professor, based in Michigan
Coming to talk about video games.
What's good about games
Is it a new medium on par with film and music, a valuable educational tool, a form of harmless fun or a digital menace that turns children into violent zombies?" The Economist
All mediums are questioned, including the book
What's so great about JK Rowling?
Book Rhetoric: Understimulate the senses
Tragically isolating
forces you to follow a fixed linear path
Encourages passivity
Teaches "plot following" instead of "learning to lead"
Play is one of the oldest forms of learning
- Digital natives
-Kids spend 50min a day playing games
80% have games
50% have handheld
New workplace skill requirements: teacm building, rapid info acquisition, problem identification, etc...
These are all in games
Games=
Clear (learning) goals
Continuous progress monitoriing and "just right' challenge scaffolding
Lots of practice and reinforcement
Encourage exploration and inquiry
Highly motivating and goal oriented
Personlization
Infinite patience
Is learning better when it is fun?
better?
learning?
how do we measure?
Are games good for learning.
What do people learn? Shooting space aliens does not translate to good skills
Wired magazine does a Warcraft article titled "You play world of Warcraft? You're hired!"
-says that it turns into leadership skills
How do games teach people how to play them?
Why are they so motivating?
Can we create games that teach cor K-12 content? (Should we?)
What can we learn from games (and game design) that can help us think about the design of learning experiences in school?
School through the lens of Games:
Definition: A voluntary attempt to overcome unnecassary obstables, in whih the outcome is uncertain, is a game.
- "ditto" for which there is a solution or a best solution is a puzzle
-Games usually have high replay value.
Puzzles usually do not.
A voluntary attempt to overcome necassary obstacles is either activism or entrepreneurship (a "project with a purpose"
And involuntary attempt to overcom a uneccassary obstacle is abuse
For most students, school is a punishment. Involunttary, and the obstablces appear unnecassary
When traditional classroom education more or less works=School is often a puzzle. Guess what the teacher knows, and figure out the role of a student.
Puzzles can have substantial ed value. Lacking replay value though.
Solution: Redisign school to be more game like
3 ideas:
Learning from games in general
Because good games leverage great learning theory
2. Playing games in school
-But what makes a game educational
3. Making school mor game like
- Or mor accurately, improving the "game of school"
What are "educational: games?
Games are like desert for kids
School is like spinach
Kids see edutainment of a spinach sunday
not very tasty, and not very good for you either.
Carmen San diego is no good
The logical journey of the zoombeenies is good
Morivation, and what it has to do with games and learning:
Games are "hard fun"
Expectancy value theory
Choices are determined by the percieved value and how hard you have to work to get it
Values:
Intrinsic:
Insturmental: Future oreinted
Attaminmetn: Finishing a task
Attribution theory:
:Attributions are inferences about the causes of success or failur
Ability or effort?
Entity learners: Intelligence is fixed, and too hard is too hard
mastery oriented: Seek learning or, not concered about looks
Learned helplessness is a motivational problem
Who is responsible?
Ability? Luck?
Effort? Task difficulty?
Role of knowledge
The relationship of knowledge to interest is an inverted U shaped curve. Proximal zone
Competence
Students feelings of efficacy regarding their ability to succeed
Is positively related to effort, persistence, use of higher learnign strategies,
Should we teach kids how to play games?
Games teach you how to play them
Showed Incredibles games that tells you buttons
Fantasy
Exogenous:
-the fantasy depends on the skill being learned ex: math blasters
Endogenous: the fantasy and the skill depend on one another
Ex: guitar hero, rock band
Showed rock band trailer and sample
Relatedness:
The need to feel like part of a group (rock band)
Enhanced by positive interactions with peers or teachers
Enhances interest participation
Second skin trailer played:
Autonomy: No agency in schools
Vividness: Includes imager, concreteness, unexpectedness, and suspense
Graphics and music
Collaboration vs. Competition
collab:
increase feeling of relatedness
generate explanation create opporutnities for feedback
Competition
enhance learner involvment
Seductive details:
Attraction may or may not help learn more
might attract interest, but distract from content
Context matters:
Assign different perspectives
Can we use commercial video gtames to teach real content?
It's not about games, it's about learning envoronments
Why is school at best like a spinach sundae?
Why did we move away from learning through play?
How can we get back there?
Bart:
Science-
How big a mirror do you need to see your body head to toe?
The misconception is that is has to do with how far away you stand. It actually has to do with the angle.
Bart played hit the dot game: He found 16 dots. The score is submited and stats are given (it was 1 point per hit, minus 1 point per miss)
What did he learn about that? We don't know, because the website doesn't tell us what the point is.
Concord Consortium. Dr. Rose is on the Board.
They work with pda's, use censure data.
3 topics are:
Basic principles of hydraulics
Domonstration of Osmosis at different temperatures
Demonstration of how friction produces heat.
Library of Models, is the followed link
then "a microspic denonstration of friction and heat"
It runs a friction demontrator that gives a very detailed and thorough visual of why and how two surfaces rubbing together cause heat
Next is Hydrolics:
It's another simulator.
Next is Osmosis. It drives water up from the roots to the leaves.
David: Assessment
How do we assess? Games are continuous assessment instruments. One of the reasons that games are so motivating is that your constintly getting feedback on what your doing. School is traditionally summative evaluation.
When think of assessment, think of games as the best case scenario. Education, now, has mal-adaptive features, in that it doesn't give feedback.
Next week will be high stakes assessment.
Think like a Historian:
Cast's thinking HISTORY: Evaluate, Compare, develop your own viewpoint.
Writing, Creating, sharing
UDL Guidlines: Your task is to look at the guidlines and say "What's construct relevant?"
When I assign an essay, do I care how they actually do it. Painbrushes may be construct relevant. But in writing an essay, is that what we are really trying to teach them?
History example: I do care about the essay, but not how they do it.
they could use: hand, voice, single swithc, joysick, adapted keyboard
Can they get to these vehicles?
Then, if the writing itself is not construct relevant?
then spellcheckers, posters, etc... Are they thinking like a historian?
A sentence starter is embedded into the essay writer. good stuff. There is also an image cue.
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