Learn 4 Life

Gaming Education - How to create a culture of learning through designing real world games in education

Gaming Education

I have been looking at a lot at “Real World Gaming” and Education recently. This is a subject I have returned to again and again in the course of the last few years. Taking the idea of the culture “around” gaming I outlined in previous blogs, I thought I might explore the natural extension of those ideas into the classroom pulling together various sources and reflect on possible ways forward for teaching and learning.

Real World Gaming

In “real world” gaming the content of the game is contributed by the players, making it simply a set of tools enabling players to interact and compete with one another while on the go. Except it’s a bit more complex than that…

Recently a number of real world games linked to the geo-positions of users’ smart phones have become very popular; things like Flook, Gowalla, FourSquare rely on transparency of information about places and services.

Partly based on serendipity and partly on user input of information to gain points and badges - these “game” (verb not noun) “reality” giving users incentives to share and inform. Of course the trick is that all the heavy lifting is done by the game players who are crowdsourced and who, in effect, build the game resources for each other and, ultimately, the company running the game service. People come back to the game because it has a level of authenticity - it’s what they do in real life anyway as they go about their daily business. So it is turned into a game process whereby they receive awards and status.

Now why can’t we do that in education?

(update: One such app that was brought to my attention today is Mission:Explore and there is also GPS Mission )

Jesse Schell - gaming in education - Learning design and so much more

Look at the videos below by Jesse Schell - he talks specifically about education and how we might design a better way of doing things there with the ethos of gaming behind it - he pulls out specific qualities such as :

Beautiful
Customised
Shared
Real

and to that I would add

transparent
ongoing
iterative
rewarding

another presentation you might like to look at is:

http://e3.g4tv.com/videos/44277/dice-2010-design-outside-the-box-presentation/

where he discusses the “psychological tricks” employed by gaming or virtual world companies to get users to engage and to return to the game again and again.

Learning Design

It was Drew Buddie who first pointed out Jesse Schell’s work at TeachMeet Milton Keynes last month:

http://blip.tv/file/3907169

Drew talks at length on the process of using “learning lenses” adapted from the ideas in Schell’s book.

Negotiated Learning - co-creation of your learning journey

I was also interested to come across Neil Hopkin’s video on Negotiated Learning which reminded me very much of the ideas on Co-Creation that were espoused by Steve Rubel coming from the commercial world back in the middle noughties. There are obvious parallels there for me. I tend to look around at the corporate world and see what innovation is taking place there and how that might have some corollary with education. Certainly quite a few blue chip companies now employ the process of co-creation and extend that into the workplace as well.

Certainly the co-creation of learning using school community is a start but now imagine this in your classroom, school, district overlaying that process as another educational “skin” or “patina”.

How can you “game” the classroom?

Base your learning activities and aquisition of knowledge on collaborative working and transparency of learning. Give points for those students who make transparent their ways of working and sharing their knowledge.

Make sure those “learning” especially, the more dependent learners, that may take some time to “get it” always level up.

Design levels of expertise - so students can Pay Forward to each other knowledge and skills modelled and facilitated at first by the teacher, and then given external inducements by way of points badges and levels for collaborative working.

Of course these ideas are not new to anyone who has been through, or seen a “traditional” education involving “houses” and “teams” will recognise certain common elements as will anyone who have been through the scouting movement. But that’s where the comparison ends…

The difference here could be that the elements of teaching students to teach each other to learn through peer instruction and review could itself be gamed.

It’s not something imposed and mediated from on high but built into the very fabric of the way people could run their classes giving rewards for both the teachers and learners involved but levelling them according to - off the top of my head :

knowledge

expertise

competency

design

application

engagement

reflection

peer review

In effect, through a social gaming mechanism you build a ‘culture of learning’ that allows pupils to collaborate or to self-study in certain instances given enough initial scaffolding and modelling by the faciltator.

Not only would you use a process of learning lenses to design activities as outlined by Drew above - seredipitous triggers to get yourself to reflect in your planning but also you get the students to iterate and reflect on their learning by extrinsic rewards built into the system when they have achieved certain goals. Building in opportunities to both capture the process and use the documentation of the process as a resource would be an ideal use for ICT.

In that way you can build up a portfolio of work and a set of exemplar material to use for revision, starters, explication, modelling. The list is endless. How would you do it?

Game On?

TeachMeet Second Life 2010

This will be the first TeachMeet in Second Life, so, in theory a Global Teachmeet - see the Wiki for instructions.

On Friday May 7th at 8pm GMT there is the first Teachmeet in Second Life. This is open to all educators working in Second Life and allied Immersive Worlds from ALL sectors.

If you do not know what a “TeachMeet” is then go along to the wiki and watch the video at :

http://teachmeet.pbworks.com/TeachMeet-Second-Life

A teachmeet is where teachers gather to share good practice - they make 7 or 2 minute presentations.

I am quite happy to facilitate the evening and anyone with Machinima, slides, interactive objects or simply wishing to present please get in touch with me off list.

Eyebeams Electricteeth AKA Leon Cych

http://teachmeet.pbworks.com/TeachMeet-Second-Life

My interview/ presentation at Wise Kids conference Swansea and Bangor

Here I am on the other side of the camera for a change - that’s a novel experience - talking about Second Life to David Wilcox at the Wise Kids conference at Bangor.

You can see one of my sessions at the earlier Swansea conference here (scroll down) where I show some video of Vicki A Davies and talk about the Reaction Grid Open Sim she has been using with her students. I outline some of the ideas behind “skinning” your own virtual world and do a walkthrough of Second Life.

The UK Education Tribes and why they should join together to effect real change

Image attrib.. Technokitten - Flickr

How do you change the learning landscape?

How do you make things happen that begin to change what people do in education and in society in general?

How does change come about?

Is it all necessarily good?

How can you scope effective exemplars of learning out to a wider audience and help people to become better at doing stuff well (forget the teaching bit for the time being…)?

I’m lucky - I get to play - yes play - in several educational arenas - each one has its own tribe and each tribe is highly effective in what they are trying to do but, at times, activities are virtually invisible to the mainstream teaching force.

Some tribes don’t know about each other - some do. Most of these tribes are connected on Twitter and loosely federated for big events at certain times of the year. Others don’t even exist online but have good traditional infrastructures and local lines of communication - what we need is for them all to meet up and organise.

So who are the tribes in the UK landscape and why should they join up?

First there’s TeachMeet which constantly amazes me - how people step up to the plate and deliver what is a completely distributed but highly organised management exercise resulting in quality CPD for teachers - it  is nothing less than astonishing. No one person is in control and yet it seems to work. However most teachers still don’t know about TeachMeet - it hasn’t mainstreamed - why?

I would say that the hyperlocal links still haven’t been made and at the other end - organisations like DCSF, Teachers’ TV, Ofsted, TDA,  Becta, NSCL, SSAT et al haven’t bigged it up as yet - trying searching for TeachMeet or Barcamp on any of those sites… I do think that may be about to change though as its popularity and efficacy as a learning platform gains currency in the UK Learning Landscape.

It’s a two ends of the telescope thing - you need local educators (and I wouldn’t limit that to teachers) to emerge and - people locally to show their expertise, but you also need top down facilitation and advertising of events from several other traditional and effective channels NOT just social media.

Tom Barrett, I think, had the excellent idea of asking for sponsorship money to leaflet schools local to the TeachMeet event so that people could at least be intrigued by what it might be that was happening down the road - at least they knew “something” was happening locally - it might only be on the fringes of their radar now but if they came across references both locally and nationally then, at least, they might have some inkling - at present they have none. Simple strategies like contacting the local newspaper can be highly effective and it goes without saying that local LA’s could play their part.

Believe it or not most teachers are still not on Twitter and they don’t really care about Social Networking if it’s not of immediate concern. However, tell them there’s a social “do” that they might like to come to, down the road, they might just turn up. What might be even better is if people were given accreditation for organising an event or turning up and presenting at one - Drew Buddie has been suggesting that for years. Even better would be some kind of action research branching out of this…

The other Tribes and groups like

MirandaMod, ETRU, Amplified, TEDx, Open Source Schools are all variants or like minded communities and the same issues often apply. How do we get people out to these events to share and how can we mainstream them or at least scope them out to a wider audience and participants to effect change; to build effective learning communities where people share in the spirit of moving learning on in highly dynamic and engaging ways?

Forward thinking organisations like

VITAL

Naace

Consolarium

Futurelab

Mirandanet

NDRB

Creative Partnerships

Wise Kids

RSA

ALT

and a host of others are all looking for the same El Dorado  - why can’t all these tribes work together to try and effect some change at local level and have a nationwide infrastructure?

It does seem to me that TeachMeet is now an effective means of professional development - every time I hear new people at a TeachMeet event say - ‘That’s the best CPD I have had all year’. I think - then why don’t we build on what works and not on what doesn’t? Why isn’t this process better known - why haven’t we been reaching out beyond the electronic ghetto?

The truth is we have been hard wired to sit around a fire and tell each other stories for millennia  - so let’s revive some of that community spirit  - let’s have the courage and imagination to build such an infrastructure. Let all the Tribes join up and give it a go. What is there to lose?

How would you do it?

Amplified Education

At BETT2010 this year - one of the fringe events that was very low key but very popular (these videos separately have been viewed almost 500 times), was the Amplied Education discussion evening.

I am grateful to the 20 or so people who turned up for the round table discussions - there were at least 3 Becta ICT in Practice Award winners there that evening which might give you an idea of the quality of debate, interest and focus around the subject.

Here are the three sessions captured on film:

1) Games in Education led by Tim Rylands

2) Fun at Work PART 1 led by John Heffernan

Fun at Work PART 2

3) Digital Identity PART 1 led by David White where he kicked off with his Visitors and Residents idea,

Digital Identity PART 2

We only touched on 3 subjects from over 20 on the wallwisher site put up for the purpose :

For me the evening was fascinating and I hope to organise and film (with Drew Buddie)  further sessions looking at theory, practice, ideas across sectors not just education in the coming months. My thanks go to all the people who turned up and the participants willing to film, document and take part in these sessions. It has taken me half a week to process and upload the video (anyone got some friendly CUDN access in London (The London Metropolitan Network)they want to donate to this cause in the future? After all we are capturing a lot of useful data?)