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"content": "\u003cp class=\"p1\">\u003cem>From \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/The-Game-Believes-You-Digital/dp/1137279575\">The Game Believes in You\u003c/a> by Greg Toppo. Copyright (c) 2015 by the authors and reprinted by permission of Palgrave Macmillan, a division of St. Martin's Press, LLC.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">North Lakes Academy inhabits one of those big, brutalist, vertical concrete-block buildings that, from the outside, could be just about anything: an office building, a tire warehouse, a forlorn selfstorage facility. The tiny windows give away nothing. North Lakes sits on a lonely back road in Forest Lake, one of those far-flung Minneapolis suburbs that boasts plenty of retail—it’s sandwiched between a Target and a WalMart—but sits so impossibly far from the city, and so close to open wilderness, that calling it a suburb seems an overreach. It pulls students from nearly twenty-five surrounding towns. In the fall of 2008, Eric Nelson found himself teaching there.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">He was miserable. A Minnesota native who grew up in a family of teachers—he jokes, “I couldn’t escape it”—Nelson majored in history at the University of Wisconsin and returned to Minnesota to earn his master’s degree in education. While he earned his degree, he was student-teaching, and like virtually every new teacher who ever lived, he’d begun his career with a hazy Sound of Music idea that everyone surely loved learning as much as he did, and that his students would hang on to his every word. “I was kind of shocked, when I started teaching, at how zombified ninth graders were,” he said. “They just sort of looked through me.” But he knew that among his students were several dedicated gamers, and they had learned how to work hard and overcome obstacles in the games they loved. Kids love video games, he said, “because they can just hit the reset button. That’s how a lot of life should work— you make new mistakes instead of repeating the same ones over and over again.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2015/04/game-believes-in-you.jpeg\">\u003cimg class=\"alignright size-thumbnail wp-image-40366\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2015/04/game-believes-in-you-400x608.jpeg\" alt=\"game believes in you\" width=\"400\" height=\"608\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2015/04/game-believes-in-you-400x608.jpeg 400w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2015/04/game-believes-in-you-800x1216.jpeg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2015/04/game-believes-in-you-1440x2189.jpeg 1440w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2015/04/game-believes-in-you-1180x1794.jpeg 1180w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2015/04/game-believes-in-you-960x1459.jpeg 960w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\">\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">At the time, Nelson was trying to figure out how to engage his students in world affairs, foreign policy, and the role of the United States in the world. The students had come of age in the wake of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, which shocked most Americans’ geopolitical sensibilities awake. Yet to these heartland kids, the rest of the world still seemed remote.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">Late one night in 2009, in the throes of a self-described “existential crisis” as he struggled to prepare for a morning class, Nelson took a break from fretting long enough to check his fantasy football team. He had been playing since 2004—his teams were back-to-back Super Bowl champions in 2005 and 2006—so he knew the game intimately. Both years he’d picked up a running back who had started the season slowly but “got hot” by the end and lifted his team to the playoffs. In just a few years, Nelson had begun to understand the NFL from the inside out, how a team worked and how the pieces fit together. “I was watching games differently,” he said. As he researched whether to start Jay Cutler or Drew Brees at quarterback the following Sunday, Nelson’s mood improved and his mindset shifted. Simply by thinking like a gamer, he realized, he was making a dull task into something enjoyable.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">Digital technology made the task easy: rather than sifting through a week’s worth of newspaper clippings for the players’ standings and statistics, he could simply look online. At a glance, he saw where each player stood. Then it came to him: what if he wasn’t swapping Cutler and Brees, but China and Brazil? Just as fantasy football team owners draft, cut, and trade players based on their performance, his students could do the same with countries.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">[contextly_sidebar id=\"cqLyfgXx0rjRLYEKeUpIAaSiMLVC8pDh\"]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">He’d replace passing yards and points per game with political crises and popular uprisings. Since he was struggling to get students interested in international developments, each country’s ability to fight its way into the news of the day would make it more valuable. Students could draft teams of countries—it didn’t matter if they were related—and compete for the newsiest cluster. Lackluster countries would quickly sink to the bottom and get traded, but if an earthquake or military coup struck, say, Indonesia, the student who was following the news most closely could snatch it up before anyone else found out. Nelson dubbed the game \u003ca href=\"http://www.fantasygeopolitics.com/\">Fantasy Geopolitics\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">Forget for a moment that his game was an adaptation of an abstraction. He brought it to a ninth-grade civics class in September 2009, and students immediately clung to countries with funny-sounding names. Djibouti was in great demand, but as soon as kids found it didn’t make news, they traded it. On the other hand, Mali may have seemed like just another unremarkable West African country at first, but when revolution came, the student who was paying attention picked it up unnoticed and pulled ahead. Soon everyone was paying attention. In December 2010, students began to notice that the kids who held Tunisia, then Libya, Egypt, and Yemen all began scoring points. The Arab Spring had arrived, and suddenly it meant something.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">“It’s kind of like a way to nerd out without having to do it outside of school,” said Alissa Gmyrek, a senior who first played the game as a freshman. “You definitely have to research a lot.” During the World Cup last year, she picked Brazil and Argentina. “Latin America was really booming at that time,” she said. She noticed that political protests were roiling Venezuela, so she picked it too.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">As the game caught on, Nelson began automating it, moving from a simple Google spreadsheet to a full-blown news tracker keyed to mentions in the New York Times. He created a “hall of fame” for the highest-scoring players, and soon realized that it was populated almost entirely by girls. “They do quiet research, they pick up the countries quietly,” he said. “They just kind of quietly paid attention, made those changes and crushed their competition.” At the end of the semester, the winner got a T-shirt that read, “Kickin’ Djibouti,” and everyone got the joke, said Gmyrek. Ask most high school seniors to stick a pin in Djibouti on a map of the world and they’d be lost. Gmyrek not only knows where the tiny North African country is—in the Gulf of Aden, opposite Yemen— but that it is “kind of a strategic place for the U.S. to have a base in.” Still, she said, “it never scores a lot of points, I guess. It’s just a tiny, tiny country.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_40365\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 400px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2015/04/toppo-headshot.jpeg\">\u003cimg class=\"size-thumbnail wp-image-40365\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2015/04/toppo-headshot-400x485.jpeg\" alt=\"Greg Toppo \" width=\"400\" height=\"485\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2015/04/toppo-headshot-400x485.jpeg 400w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2015/04/toppo-headshot-800x970.jpeg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2015/04/toppo-headshot-1440x1746.jpeg 1440w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2015/04/toppo-headshot-1180x1430.jpeg 1180w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2015/04/toppo-headshot-960x1164.jpeg 960w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2015/04/toppo-headshot.jpeg 1498w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Greg Toppo \u003ccite>(Jack Gruber, USA TODAY staff, courtesy of Palgrave Macmillan.)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">What happened outside of class was more surprising. Without Nelson’s urging or even his knowledge, students created a Facebook page that synthesized the international news they were following. They created a daily “White House brief,” a concise summary of what was happening worldwide. And they invited him to join a discussion group. “They were having these conversations on social media that I wanted to have in my classroom.” Even kids who lost interest after the game ended still benefited. As part of the game, Nelson encouraged students to add international newsfeeds to their personal Facebook pages. When the season ended, they went back to their old habits of reading about “Miley Cyrus and all the other crap,” Nelson said, but their pages were shot through with news from around the world. “This sort of made my students the teachers,” he said. “Once we kicked off the game and they got into it, they were sort of coming into my classroom saying, ‘Hey Nelson, have you heard about what’s happening in Syria?’ and telling their classmates about these things too. It became a different kind of experience, and I became a little obsolete by choice, which I loved.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">\u003cem>Greg Toppo is USA Today's national education and demographics writer. He is the author of \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/The-Game-Believes-You-Digital/dp/1137279575\">The Game Believes in You: How Digital Play Can Make Our Kids Smarter\u003c/a>. You can follow him at \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/gtoppo\">@gtoppo\u003c/a>. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp class=\"p1\">\u003cem>From \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/The-Game-Believes-You-Digital/dp/1137279575\">The Game Believes in You\u003c/a> by Greg Toppo. Copyright (c) 2015 by the authors and reprinted by permission of Palgrave Macmillan, a division of St. Martin's Press, LLC.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">North Lakes Academy inhabits one of those big, brutalist, vertical concrete-block buildings that, from the outside, could be just about anything: an office building, a tire warehouse, a forlorn selfstorage facility. The tiny windows give away nothing. North Lakes sits on a lonely back road in Forest Lake, one of those far-flung Minneapolis suburbs that boasts plenty of retail—it’s sandwiched between a Target and a WalMart—but sits so impossibly far from the city, and so close to open wilderness, that calling it a suburb seems an overreach. It pulls students from nearly twenty-five surrounding towns. In the fall of 2008, Eric Nelson found himself teaching there.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">He was miserable. A Minnesota native who grew up in a family of teachers—he jokes, “I couldn’t escape it”—Nelson majored in history at the University of Wisconsin and returned to Minnesota to earn his master’s degree in education. While he earned his degree, he was student-teaching, and like virtually every new teacher who ever lived, he’d begun his career with a hazy Sound of Music idea that everyone surely loved learning as much as he did, and that his students would hang on to his every word. “I was kind of shocked, when I started teaching, at how zombified ninth graders were,” he said. “They just sort of looked through me.” But he knew that among his students were several dedicated gamers, and they had learned how to work hard and overcome obstacles in the games they loved. Kids love video games, he said, “because they can just hit the reset button. That’s how a lot of life should work— you make new mistakes instead of repeating the same ones over and over again.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2015/04/game-believes-in-you.jpeg\">\u003cimg class=\"alignright size-thumbnail wp-image-40366\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2015/04/game-believes-in-you-400x608.jpeg\" alt=\"game believes in you\" width=\"400\" height=\"608\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2015/04/game-believes-in-you-400x608.jpeg 400w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2015/04/game-believes-in-you-800x1216.jpeg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2015/04/game-believes-in-you-1440x2189.jpeg 1440w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2015/04/game-believes-in-you-1180x1794.jpeg 1180w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2015/04/game-believes-in-you-960x1459.jpeg 960w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\">\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">At the time, Nelson was trying to figure out how to engage his students in world affairs, foreign policy, and the role of the United States in the world. The students had come of age in the wake of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, which shocked most Americans’ geopolitical sensibilities awake. Yet to these heartland kids, the rest of the world still seemed remote.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">Late one night in 2009, in the throes of a self-described “existential crisis” as he struggled to prepare for a morning class, Nelson took a break from fretting long enough to check his fantasy football team. He had been playing since 2004—his teams were back-to-back Super Bowl champions in 2005 and 2006—so he knew the game intimately. Both years he’d picked up a running back who had started the season slowly but “got hot” by the end and lifted his team to the playoffs. In just a few years, Nelson had begun to understand the NFL from the inside out, how a team worked and how the pieces fit together. “I was watching games differently,” he said. As he researched whether to start Jay Cutler or Drew Brees at quarterback the following Sunday, Nelson’s mood improved and his mindset shifted. Simply by thinking like a gamer, he realized, he was making a dull task into something enjoyable.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">Digital technology made the task easy: rather than sifting through a week’s worth of newspaper clippings for the players’ standings and statistics, he could simply look online. At a glance, he saw where each player stood. Then it came to him: what if he wasn’t swapping Cutler and Brees, but China and Brazil? Just as fantasy football team owners draft, cut, and trade players based on their performance, his students could do the same with countries.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">He’d replace passing yards and points per game with political crises and popular uprisings. Since he was struggling to get students interested in international developments, each country’s ability to fight its way into the news of the day would make it more valuable. Students could draft teams of countries—it didn’t matter if they were related—and compete for the newsiest cluster. Lackluster countries would quickly sink to the bottom and get traded, but if an earthquake or military coup struck, say, Indonesia, the student who was following the news most closely could snatch it up before anyone else found out. Nelson dubbed the game \u003ca href=\"http://www.fantasygeopolitics.com/\">Fantasy Geopolitics\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">Forget for a moment that his game was an adaptation of an abstraction. He brought it to a ninth-grade civics class in September 2009, and students immediately clung to countries with funny-sounding names. Djibouti was in great demand, but as soon as kids found it didn’t make news, they traded it. On the other hand, Mali may have seemed like just another unremarkable West African country at first, but when revolution came, the student who was paying attention picked it up unnoticed and pulled ahead. Soon everyone was paying attention. In December 2010, students began to notice that the kids who held Tunisia, then Libya, Egypt, and Yemen all began scoring points. The Arab Spring had arrived, and suddenly it meant something.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">“It’s kind of like a way to nerd out without having to do it outside of school,” said Alissa Gmyrek, a senior who first played the game as a freshman. “You definitely have to research a lot.” During the World Cup last year, she picked Brazil and Argentina. “Latin America was really booming at that time,” she said. She noticed that political protests were roiling Venezuela, so she picked it too.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">As the game caught on, Nelson began automating it, moving from a simple Google spreadsheet to a full-blown news tracker keyed to mentions in the New York Times. He created a “hall of fame” for the highest-scoring players, and soon realized that it was populated almost entirely by girls. “They do quiet research, they pick up the countries quietly,” he said. “They just kind of quietly paid attention, made those changes and crushed their competition.” At the end of the semester, the winner got a T-shirt that read, “Kickin’ Djibouti,” and everyone got the joke, said Gmyrek. Ask most high school seniors to stick a pin in Djibouti on a map of the world and they’d be lost. Gmyrek not only knows where the tiny North African country is—in the Gulf of Aden, opposite Yemen— but that it is “kind of a strategic place for the U.S. to have a base in.” Still, she said, “it never scores a lot of points, I guess. It’s just a tiny, tiny country.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_40365\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 400px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2015/04/toppo-headshot.jpeg\">\u003cimg class=\"size-thumbnail wp-image-40365\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2015/04/toppo-headshot-400x485.jpeg\" alt=\"Greg Toppo \" width=\"400\" height=\"485\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2015/04/toppo-headshot-400x485.jpeg 400w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2015/04/toppo-headshot-800x970.jpeg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2015/04/toppo-headshot-1440x1746.jpeg 1440w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2015/04/toppo-headshot-1180x1430.jpeg 1180w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2015/04/toppo-headshot-960x1164.jpeg 960w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2015/04/toppo-headshot.jpeg 1498w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Greg Toppo \u003ccite>(Jack Gruber, USA TODAY staff, courtesy of Palgrave Macmillan.)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">What happened outside of class was more surprising. Without Nelson’s urging or even his knowledge, students created a Facebook page that synthesized the international news they were following. They created a daily “White House brief,” a concise summary of what was happening worldwide. And they invited him to join a discussion group. “They were having these conversations on social media that I wanted to have in my classroom.” Even kids who lost interest after the game ended still benefited. As part of the game, Nelson encouraged students to add international newsfeeds to their personal Facebook pages. When the season ended, they went back to their old habits of reading about “Miley Cyrus and all the other crap,” Nelson said, but their pages were shot through with news from around the world. “This sort of made my students the teachers,” he said. “Once we kicked off the game and they got into it, they were sort of coming into my classroom saying, ‘Hey Nelson, have you heard about what’s happening in Syria?’ and telling their classmates about these things too. It became a different kind of experience, and I became a little obsolete by choice, which I loved.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">\u003cem>Greg Toppo is USA Today's national education and demographics writer. He is the author of \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/The-Game-Believes-You-Digital/dp/1137279575\">The Game Believes in You: How Digital Play Can Make Our Kids Smarter\u003c/a>. You can follow him at \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/gtoppo\">@gtoppo\u003c/a>. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"disqusTitle": "Some Struggles Teachers Face Using Games in the Classroom ",
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"headTitle": "MindShift | KQED News",
"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_38531\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/11/Maze-istock.gif\">\u003cimg src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/11/Maze-istock-640x360.gif\" alt=\"iStock\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" class=\"size-large wp-image-38531\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">iStock\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp class=\"dropcap-serif\">Teachers have long known that making content more playful can be a great way to engage students and add diversity to classroom activities. As technology becomes an ever more significant part of modern classrooms, it makes sense that teachers are using video games for everything from teaching content, to keeping tabs on learning progress, and for skills practice. In a recent survey, the Joan Ganz Cooney Center found that 74 percent of K-8 \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/06/surprising-insights-how-teachers-use-games-in-the-classroom/\" target=\"_blank\">teachers surveyed\u003c/a> use digital games for instruction in some way and 55 percent use them weekly.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While digital games are becoming more common, many teachers still use them primarily as supplemental material or as a reward when the “real work” has been accomplished, not as the main instructional tool. Many teachers are still skeptical that students will learn mandated content from digital games well enough to prove mastery on state exams.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>TIME IS THE BIGGEST BARRIER\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Tony Mai experimented with some digital games in his middle school English Language Arts classroom as part of a pilot project at \u003ca href=\"http://www.mckinleyis259.org\" target=\"_blank\">William McKinley IS 259, \u003c/a> a junior high school in New York City. His principal chose him to participate because he’s comfortable with technology and likes to play video games himself. The game, \u003ca href=\"http://www.classroominc.org/tsn2\" target=\"_blank\">The Sports Network 2\u003c/a>, required students to take on the roles of employees at a media company trying to market a product to a younger audience.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\"> “Localized leadership allows me to use games during intervention time, but it’s not something that’s supported broadly.”\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>In addition to the virtual gameplay, students had to do offline research on solutions they could use within the game. The Sports Network 2 is aligned with Common Core ELA standards but places the skills within the context of real-life tasks. “They had to read fake email and highlight important things on screen,” Mai said. “I saw improvement with students’ ability to figure out difficult vocabulary words using context clues.” He also said students stayed more motivated.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still, playing the game took precious time and Mai slowly started to fall behind the other eighth-grade ELA teachers on the mandated curriculum. “It does take someone who’s willing to make sure the rest of the curriculum is covered while using these games in the classroom,” Mai said. Teachers are under a lot of pressure to make sure they cover a jampacked curriculum, and that can make any game feel like one more thing to do, something extra or supplemental.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“At the end of the day, if the teachers know that their curriculum already addresses all the other standards, then they won’t feel there’s a need for the game in the classroom,” Mai said. That’s why he thinks games that have robust data tracking and clear corollaries to standards will get the most teacher buy-in. “Teachers want to be able to see the gains that students are making on a specific skill and be able to link it to a specific question or part of the game,” Mai said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The immersive quality of the game deeply engaged students and showed them how the skills they were learning applied to the real world, Mai said. But it was those same game qualities that made him worry that he wasn’t covering the basics. The more that a game maps exactly to the standards, the less game-like it becomes, he acknowledged, and the more it resembles educational software, not a game.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Concerns about time and explicit instructional standards being met are mirrored in the Cooney Center report. “Few teachers are using learning games of the immersive variety, the kind that lend themselves to deep exploration and participation in the types of activities that set digital games apart from more didactic forms of instruction,” writes Lori Takeuchi in the report’s executive summary. “Most teachers instead report using short-form games that students can finish within a single class period. While lack of time is a likely explanation, teachers may also find shorter-form games to be easier to map to curriculum standards.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>ADMINISTRATIVE SUPPORT\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Heather Robertson teaches English language learners (ELL) in a K-5 school in Wisconsin.\u003cbr>\nThe district has great access to technology — they’ve gone one-to-one with Chromebooks, but the devices are mainly used for what Robertson calls “worksheets on a computer.” She'd like those setting policies and vision in schools to recognize that while online testing may have brought the devices into schools, they can be used for far more than that. “We’re so focused on our testing and we’re not going deep in our learning,” Robertson said. “We’re just really trying to get through the surface of it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[contextly_sidebar id=\"2wMxdajS31bIJqdtCmgTjDJCBtWzXWdq\"]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Robertson used to teach in a less conventional district in Madison where she had more freedom to explore different teaching strategies. “The most exciting thing is that research around ELLs shows that concrete experiences are the best way for them to learn,” Robertson said. But how can teachers give students concrete experiences of abstract ideas like government? Robertson has used the \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2012/10/video-games-that-bring-civics-class-to-life/\" target=\"_blank\">digital game iCivics\u003c/a> to help give students that virtual experience.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Games like that allow kids to interact in an almost concrete way that is very powerful,” she said. “They take on the role of the characters and understand it in a much deeper way than they would otherwise.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2013/11/teaching-empathy-through-digital-game-play/\" target=\"_blank\">virtual experience, paired with conversation\u003c/a>, can be very powerful for students who are having trouble accessing the content. “I believe what English language learners need more than anything is a lot of talking and interaction,” Robertson said. “Game-playing is actually a key component of that.” She treats games a bit like she would a text, scaffolding learning around gameplay, and using students’ excitement about the game to connect more meaningfully. Kids play the game for a while and then stop and talk about it with Robertson.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I think [games are] best when paired with reflective conversation,” Robertson said. “It’s developing the awareness of what you’re doing. The only way to really develop metacognition is to have a conversation with someone who can ask Socratic questions.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Robertson still uses games in her classroom, because she has support from her principal, but she doesn't feel that same commitment from the district leadership. “Localized leadership allows me to use games during intervention time, but it’s not something that’s supported broadly,\" Richardson said. Despite the barriers, she pushes on with the practice because she has experienced how motivated struggling learners can be by games and how much that inspires her.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But without support it’s getting harder to hold onto that conviction. For example, this year Robertson put \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2012/05/teachers-transform-commercial-video-game-for-class-use/\" target=\"_blank\">MinecraftEDU\u003c/a> on her supplies list and got it approved by her principal, only to have the request held up at the district level. Another time, Robertson was invited to help develop a game-based assessment by World-Class Instructional Design and Assessement (WIDA), an assessment consortium focused on English Language Learner growth. “Which seems to me like an incredible learning experience, but I was told no because I’d already used my three professional development days,\" Robertson said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s these experiences that make Robertson understand why so many teachers are reluctant to step out of line or try something new. Most teacher professional development focuses on the subjects that are tested -- reading, writing and math -- not tools like digital games that could provide a more engaging way of teaching those things. And teachers don’t have a lot of extra time to experiment and play with unfamiliar games, let alone find quality games that suit their needs. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There are \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2013/07/for-overwhelmed-educators-new-site-rates-ed-tech-tools/\" target=\"_blank\">some good game-rating sites\u003c/a> now available, but too few teachers know about them. And, when districts are actively encouraging teachers to focus on prescribed curriculum, there’s little incentive to put in the time to play around and test out more immersive games.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The obstacles to widespread teacher adoption of games as the primary means of instruction are many, but despite the struggles, many teachers do use digital games creatively to push students to think critically. Those early-adopting teachers will be the ones to inspire and teach their colleagues about what works and where the pitfalls lie as this trend grows.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_38531\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/11/Maze-istock.gif\">\u003cimg src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/11/Maze-istock-640x360.gif\" alt=\"iStock\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" class=\"size-large wp-image-38531\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">iStock\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp class=\"dropcap-serif\">Teachers have long known that making content more playful can be a great way to engage students and add diversity to classroom activities. As technology becomes an ever more significant part of modern classrooms, it makes sense that teachers are using video games for everything from teaching content, to keeping tabs on learning progress, and for skills practice. In a recent survey, the Joan Ganz Cooney Center found that 74 percent of K-8 \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/06/surprising-insights-how-teachers-use-games-in-the-classroom/\" target=\"_blank\">teachers surveyed\u003c/a> use digital games for instruction in some way and 55 percent use them weekly.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While digital games are becoming more common, many teachers still use them primarily as supplemental material or as a reward when the “real work” has been accomplished, not as the main instructional tool. Many teachers are still skeptical that students will learn mandated content from digital games well enough to prove mastery on state exams.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>TIME IS THE BIGGEST BARRIER\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Tony Mai experimented with some digital games in his middle school English Language Arts classroom as part of a pilot project at \u003ca href=\"http://www.mckinleyis259.org\" target=\"_blank\">William McKinley IS 259, \u003c/a> a junior high school in New York City. His principal chose him to participate because he’s comfortable with technology and likes to play video games himself. The game, \u003ca href=\"http://www.classroominc.org/tsn2\" target=\"_blank\">The Sports Network 2\u003c/a>, required students to take on the roles of employees at a media company trying to market a product to a younger audience.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\"> “Localized leadership allows me to use games during intervention time, but it’s not something that’s supported broadly.”\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>In addition to the virtual gameplay, students had to do offline research on solutions they could use within the game. The Sports Network 2 is aligned with Common Core ELA standards but places the skills within the context of real-life tasks. “They had to read fake email and highlight important things on screen,” Mai said. “I saw improvement with students’ ability to figure out difficult vocabulary words using context clues.” He also said students stayed more motivated.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still, playing the game took precious time and Mai slowly started to fall behind the other eighth-grade ELA teachers on the mandated curriculum. “It does take someone who’s willing to make sure the rest of the curriculum is covered while using these games in the classroom,” Mai said. Teachers are under a lot of pressure to make sure they cover a jampacked curriculum, and that can make any game feel like one more thing to do, something extra or supplemental.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“At the end of the day, if the teachers know that their curriculum already addresses all the other standards, then they won’t feel there’s a need for the game in the classroom,” Mai said. That’s why he thinks games that have robust data tracking and clear corollaries to standards will get the most teacher buy-in. “Teachers want to be able to see the gains that students are making on a specific skill and be able to link it to a specific question or part of the game,” Mai said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The immersive quality of the game deeply engaged students and showed them how the skills they were learning applied to the real world, Mai said. But it was those same game qualities that made him worry that he wasn’t covering the basics. The more that a game maps exactly to the standards, the less game-like it becomes, he acknowledged, and the more it resembles educational software, not a game.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Concerns about time and explicit instructional standards being met are mirrored in the Cooney Center report. “Few teachers are using learning games of the immersive variety, the kind that lend themselves to deep exploration and participation in the types of activities that set digital games apart from more didactic forms of instruction,” writes Lori Takeuchi in the report’s executive summary. “Most teachers instead report using short-form games that students can finish within a single class period. While lack of time is a likely explanation, teachers may also find shorter-form games to be easier to map to curriculum standards.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>ADMINISTRATIVE SUPPORT\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Heather Robertson teaches English language learners (ELL) in a K-5 school in Wisconsin.\u003cbr>\nThe district has great access to technology — they’ve gone one-to-one with Chromebooks, but the devices are mainly used for what Robertson calls “worksheets on a computer.” She'd like those setting policies and vision in schools to recognize that while online testing may have brought the devices into schools, they can be used for far more than that. “We’re so focused on our testing and we’re not going deep in our learning,” Robertson said. “We’re just really trying to get through the surface of it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Robertson used to teach in a less conventional district in Madison where she had more freedom to explore different teaching strategies. “The most exciting thing is that research around ELLs shows that concrete experiences are the best way for them to learn,” Robertson said. But how can teachers give students concrete experiences of abstract ideas like government? Robertson has used the \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2012/10/video-games-that-bring-civics-class-to-life/\" target=\"_blank\">digital game iCivics\u003c/a> to help give students that virtual experience.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Games like that allow kids to interact in an almost concrete way that is very powerful,” she said. “They take on the role of the characters and understand it in a much deeper way than they would otherwise.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2013/11/teaching-empathy-through-digital-game-play/\" target=\"_blank\">virtual experience, paired with conversation\u003c/a>, can be very powerful for students who are having trouble accessing the content. “I believe what English language learners need more than anything is a lot of talking and interaction,” Robertson said. “Game-playing is actually a key component of that.” She treats games a bit like she would a text, scaffolding learning around gameplay, and using students’ excitement about the game to connect more meaningfully. Kids play the game for a while and then stop and talk about it with Robertson.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I think [games are] best when paired with reflective conversation,” Robertson said. “It’s developing the awareness of what you’re doing. The only way to really develop metacognition is to have a conversation with someone who can ask Socratic questions.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Robertson still uses games in her classroom, because she has support from her principal, but she doesn't feel that same commitment from the district leadership. “Localized leadership allows me to use games during intervention time, but it’s not something that’s supported broadly,\" Richardson said. Despite the barriers, she pushes on with the practice because she has experienced how motivated struggling learners can be by games and how much that inspires her.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But without support it’s getting harder to hold onto that conviction. For example, this year Robertson put \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2012/05/teachers-transform-commercial-video-game-for-class-use/\" target=\"_blank\">MinecraftEDU\u003c/a> on her supplies list and got it approved by her principal, only to have the request held up at the district level. Another time, Robertson was invited to help develop a game-based assessment by World-Class Instructional Design and Assessement (WIDA), an assessment consortium focused on English Language Learner growth. “Which seems to me like an incredible learning experience, but I was told no because I’d already used my three professional development days,\" Robertson said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s these experiences that make Robertson understand why so many teachers are reluctant to step out of line or try something new. Most teacher professional development focuses on the subjects that are tested -- reading, writing and math -- not tools like digital games that could provide a more engaging way of teaching those things. And teachers don’t have a lot of extra time to experiment and play with unfamiliar games, let alone find quality games that suit their needs. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There are \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2013/07/for-overwhelmed-educators-new-site-rates-ed-tech-tools/\" target=\"_blank\">some good game-rating sites\u003c/a> now available, but too few teachers know about them. And, when districts are actively encouraging teachers to focus on prescribed curriculum, there’s little incentive to put in the time to play around and test out more immersive games.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The obstacles to widespread teacher adoption of games as the primary means of instruction are many, but despite the struggles, many teachers do use digital games creatively to push students to think critically. Those early-adopting teachers will be the ones to inspire and teach their colleagues about what works and where the pitfalls lie as this trend grows.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>How can games unlock a rich world of learning? This is the big question at the heart of the growing games and learning movement that’s gaining momentum in education. \u003ca href=\"http://www.kqed.org/assets/pdf/news/MindShift-GuidetoDigitalGamesandLearning.pdf\">\u003cstrong>The MindShift Guide to Digital Games and Learning [PDF]\u003c/strong>\u003c/a> explains key ideas in game-based learning, pedagogy, implementation, and assessment. This guide makes sense of the available research and provides suggestions for practical use.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The MindShift Guide to Digital Games and Learning started as a \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/series/guide-to-games-and-learning/\">series of blog posts\u003c/a> written by Jordan Shapiro with support from the \u003ca href=\"http://www.joanganzcooneycenter.org/\">Joan Ganz Cooney Center\u003c/a> at Sesame Workshop and the \u003ca href=\"http://www.gamesandlearning.org/\">Games and Learning Publishing Council\u003c/a>. We’ve brought together what we felt would be the most relevant highlights of Jordan’s reporting to create a dynamic, in-depth guide that answers many of the most pressing questions that educators, parents, and life-long learners have raised around using digital games for learning. While we had educators in mind when developing this guide, any lifelong learner can use it to develop a sense of how to navigate the games space in an informed and meaningful way.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://www.kqed.org/assets/pdf/news/MindShift-GuidetoDigitalGamesandLearning.pdf\">\u003cimg class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-38461\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/11/MindShift-Guide-to-Digital-Games-and-Learning-Cover-300x388.gif\" alt=\"MindShift-Guide-to-Digital-Games-and-Learning-Cover\" width=\"300\" height=\"388\">\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Here's a preview of the table of contents:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Introduction: Getting in the Game (Page 4)\u003c/strong>\u003cbr>\nAn overview of games in the classroom from Katie Salen Tekinbaş, executive director of the Institute of Play.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>What the Research Says About Gaming and Screen Time (Page 6)\u003c/strong>\u003cbr>\nMuch of the research around digital games and screen time is evolving. Pediatricians, academics, educators, and researchers are working to find answers to how games and technology affect learners of all ages.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>How to Start Using Digital Games for Learning (Page 14)\u003c/strong>\u003cbr>\nSince each learning environment is unique, here are some steps to assessing your resources before committing to a particular game or platform. See how some educators are using digital games in the classroom and how they find support.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>How to Choose a Digital Learning Game (Page 19)\u003c/strong>\u003cbr>\nThe sheer volume of games classified as educational can be overwhelming. This section gives you a starting point for game selection by providing an understanding of the types of games available in the marketplace and how to go about selecting them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Overcoming Obstacles for Using Digital Games in the Classroom (Page 27)\u003c/strong>\u003cbr>\nAs game use in the classroom continues to grow, barriers to deployment also need to be addressed. A recent survey of teachers outlines exactly which obstacles get in the way of successful implementation; solutions to those concerns are outlined in this section.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>How Teachers Are Using Games in the Classroom (Page 30)\u003c/strong>\u003cbr>\nExamples of how teachers use games are embedded throughout the guide (including video examples), but this section takes an in-depth look at how some teachers are using games in the classroom and their real-life struggles and victories.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>How can games unlock a rich world of learning? This is the big question at the heart of the growing games and learning movement that’s gaining momentum in education. \u003ca href=\"http://www.kqed.org/assets/pdf/news/MindShift-GuidetoDigitalGamesandLearning.pdf\">\u003cstrong>The MindShift Guide to Digital Games and Learning [PDF]\u003c/strong>\u003c/a> explains key ideas in game-based learning, pedagogy, implementation, and assessment. This guide makes sense of the available research and provides suggestions for practical use.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The MindShift Guide to Digital Games and Learning started as a \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/series/guide-to-games-and-learning/\">series of blog posts\u003c/a> written by Jordan Shapiro with support from the \u003ca href=\"http://www.joanganzcooneycenter.org/\">Joan Ganz Cooney Center\u003c/a> at Sesame Workshop and the \u003ca href=\"http://www.gamesandlearning.org/\">Games and Learning Publishing Council\u003c/a>. We’ve brought together what we felt would be the most relevant highlights of Jordan’s reporting to create a dynamic, in-depth guide that answers many of the most pressing questions that educators, parents, and life-long learners have raised around using digital games for learning. While we had educators in mind when developing this guide, any lifelong learner can use it to develop a sense of how to navigate the games space in an informed and meaningful way.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://www.kqed.org/assets/pdf/news/MindShift-GuidetoDigitalGamesandLearning.pdf\">\u003cimg class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-38461\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/11/MindShift-Guide-to-Digital-Games-and-Learning-Cover-300x388.gif\" alt=\"MindShift-Guide-to-Digital-Games-and-Learning-Cover\" width=\"300\" height=\"388\">\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Here's a preview of the table of contents:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Introduction: Getting in the Game (Page 4)\u003c/strong>\u003cbr>\nAn overview of games in the classroom from Katie Salen Tekinbaş, executive director of the Institute of Play.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>What the Research Says About Gaming and Screen Time (Page 6)\u003c/strong>\u003cbr>\nMuch of the research around digital games and screen time is evolving. Pediatricians, academics, educators, and researchers are working to find answers to how games and technology affect learners of all ages.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>How to Start Using Digital Games for Learning (Page 14)\u003c/strong>\u003cbr>\nSince each learning environment is unique, here are some steps to assessing your resources before committing to a particular game or platform. See how some educators are using digital games in the classroom and how they find support.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>How to Choose a Digital Learning Game (Page 19)\u003c/strong>\u003cbr>\nThe sheer volume of games classified as educational can be overwhelming. This section gives you a starting point for game selection by providing an understanding of the types of games available in the marketplace and how to go about selecting them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Overcoming Obstacles for Using Digital Games in the Classroom (Page 27)\u003c/strong>\u003cbr>\nAs game use in the classroom continues to grow, barriers to deployment also need to be addressed. A recent survey of teachers outlines exactly which obstacles get in the way of successful implementation; solutions to those concerns are outlined in this section.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>How Teachers Are Using Games in the Classroom (Page 30)\u003c/strong>\u003cbr>\nExamples of how teachers use games are embedded throughout the guide (including video examples), but this section takes an in-depth look at how some teachers are using games in the classroom and their real-life struggles and victories.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_37734\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/08/games-obstacles.jpg\">\u003cimg src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/08/games-obstacles.jpg\" alt=\"Brad Flickinger/Flickr\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" class=\"size-full wp-image-37734\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/08/games-obstacles.jpg 640w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/08/games-obstacles-400x225.jpg 400w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/08/games-obstacles-320x180.jpg 320w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Brad Flickinger/Flickr\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp class=\"dropcap-serif\">It's not unusual for educators to use analog games in the classroom, but as more classrooms gain access to technology, digital games are also making a strong showing. A recent \u003ca href=\"http://www.joanganzcooneycenter.org/publication/level-up-learning-a-national-survey-on-teaching-with-digital-games/\">Joan Ganz Cooney Center survey\u003c/a> of 694 K-8 teachers found that 74 percent of those surveyed use digital games in the classroom, up from 50 percent two years ago. Many of the teachers finding the most success are good at creatively connecting the game back to the curriculum, while allowing it to maintain the qualities of a good game. These teachers are often more comfortable with games themselves, playing for fun in their spare time, and are thus more likely to see valuable classroom connections. It’s one thing to have empirical evidence that digital games are growing in popularity and another to get an in-depth look at how and \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/06/benefits-of-gaming-what-research-shows/\" target=\"_blank\">why teachers see them as a valuable use of precious class time\u003c/a>. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>INTRODUCING GLOBAL HISTORY\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Zack Gilbert teaches a course called \"Ancient Civilizations\" at a middle school in Normal, Illinois. He’s been using game simulations in his classroom since 1995, but when he started playing the commercial game \"Civilization IV\" for fun he immediately \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/07/how-teachers-can-use-video-games-in-the-humanities-classroom/\" target=\"_blank\">recognized its potential\u003c/a> to get sixth-graders hooked on history.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Especially for ancient civilizations, you want to make it as exciting as you can,” Gilbert said. “This is their first real taste of history for the world; most kids have no concept of what the history is in other countries.” When playing the game, students build up their own civilizations in different time periods, making choices in five categories: government, legal, labor, economy and religion.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It gives the kids a visual,” Gilbert said. “They’re actually acting out and making decisions on things that people who lived thousands of years ago would have had to make.” He acknowledges that games like \"Civilization IV\" aren't appropriate for class use all the time and he doesn’t use them exhaustively. However, getting kids excited about the high stakes that historical figures faced is a great jumping-off point for writing assignments, discussions and interactive learning.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">Struggling learners often come out of their shells and prove they can deliver some of the most innovative solutions. Succeeding in one area of class helps them gain confidence for other tasks, like writing and group projects.\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>“When they’re building their first city, they have to look at the terrain around them. They have to look at the resources to see if this is a good place to build,” Gilbert said. Students often make mistakes in the game, and Gilbert has to restrain himself from trying to correct them immediately, instead letting them figure out where they went wrong. Students often build their cities on flood plains and watch as their citizens get sick and die. That experience prompts them to try a different approach next time. They now understand viscerally the devastation that choice would have brought to ancient civilizations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/05/how-games-based-learning-teaches-problem-solving-in-context/\" target=\"_blank\">all starts connecting\u003c/a>,” Gilbert said. “When you get into the game it all connects to the state standards.” For example, if students build monuments in the game, they’re using math skills but also thinking about the artistic relevance of such a symbol. “You as the teacher need to know what your goal is for them, and then set them up so they can succeed,” Gilbert said. “If you have a good enough game, they’re going to gain more knowledge than you expect.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sandbox games are Gilbert’s favorites -- there are lots of ways to win or lose, and students get to show off their creativity and critical thinking. He also thinks commercial games are some of the best tools because of their rich graphics and strong game mechanics. \"Civilization IV\" is sometimes criticized for not being historically accurate, but Gilbert sees that flaw as a teachable moment. “You can turn the things that might not be necessarily correct into learning experiences,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Gilbert points out that the hardest part of any teacher’s job is reaching a variety of learners, all at different stages of development and academic skill. He’s noticed that while not all his students love playing video games for class, struggling learners often come out of their shells and prove they can deliver some of the most innovative solutions. Succeeding in one area of class helps them gain confidence for other tasks, like writing and group projects.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This anecdotal observation bears out in the Cooney Center research, which found that 55 percent of teachers who use digital games report they are a good tool for motivating low-performing students. Teachers see that motivation translating into academic performance. too: 78 percent of teachers using digital games saw improved performance on curricular subjects due to gameplay, and 71 percent saw improvement in extracurricular subjects.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Like many other teachers, Gilbert says it can be hard to integrate games into the curriculum when the focus is overwhelmingly on standards and state tests. “Things are becoming more regimented in the classroom,” he said. He understands that many teachers don’t have time to rework their whole curriculum to include games, especially if they themselves aren’t comfortable with digital gameplay.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>GAMIFYING CLASS\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Students in Caryn Swark’s Grade 6 class (she teaches in Alberta, Canada) come to school and immediately find themselves immersed in a fictional world where the king has been kidnapped and they must rescue him. Students have avatars and “level up” throughout the year as they master different skills. This gamified environment is part of the class DNA, so it’s no surprise that Swark is also using digital games to help students engage and connect with the material she’s teaching.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There’s a lot of games that are basically worksheets in disguise,” Swark said. “I try to avoid those games as much as possible. They’re not really games and kids aren’t stupid.” Like Gilbert, Swark believes there are lots of educational merits to some commercial games, especially if teachers think expansively about how to build on game narratives and skills.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Swark uses Nintendo DS games like \"\u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professor_Layton_and_the_Curious_Village\" target=\"_blank\">Professor Layton and the Curious Village\u003c/a>,\" a game that is basically like reading a novel embedded with math problems and puzzles. The first time she played it, Swark was struck by how similar some of the puzzles were to things she had asked students on worksheets. When kids play the game, they are doing lots of reading and math, but they like it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Similarly, \"\u003ca href=\"https://www.prodigygame.com/USA/\" target=\"_blank\">Prodigy\u003c/a>,\" a commercial math computer game, is built around a wizarding world where students do battle by solving math problems. Swark wishes the math were a little more integrated, but students still find the game fun and engaging.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[contextly_sidebar id=\"zulTEeon8xg6R0Ol2bdivxOsLsl6uWu9\"]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Instead of thinking about a checklist of curricular needs that I have to meet, I think about how this fits into what I need,” Swark said. She has found that not only are kids more interested in what they’re learning through gameplay, but they stick with tricky problems longer, work together better and are more open to trying over and over again. The stakes are lower when a student fails within the game, and she doesn’t see any of the test anxiety that has begun to plague her students.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Framing things in terms of gameplay helps get through blocks for kids who get to Grade 6 and are already convinced that they can’t learn,” Swark said. She’s seen her weaker students gravitate toward gameplay and make significant gains. Games are one part of her yearlong goals to break students of the notion that they will fail even when they try.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As a female teacher and a “gamer,” Swark has often found bringing games into the classroom helps her connect more to her male students. And students who are alienated socially have become popular because of their abilities to help others in games like \"Minecraft.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Swark got inspired to try games in her classroom after reading Lee Sheldon’s book, \u003cem>The Multiplayer Classroom: Designing Coursework as a Game\u003c/em>, and jumped in feet first. She’s built on her success and retooled her failures, just as she’s asking her students to do with their schoolwork. Parents and administrators have been more supportive than she expected -- she’s even suggested parents expose their struggling readers to fan fiction to get them reading.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But not all teachers work in such supportive environments. In those cases, or when an educator is more hesitant, Swark recommends teachers check out game-rating sites like \"\u003ca href=\"http://www.graphite.org/\" target=\"_blank\">Graphite\u003c/a>,\" run by the nonprofit Common Sense Media, to choose games that clearly align with the grade and standards they teach. She also says it’s easier to start with overtly educational games and work up to the more open-ended games. Lastly, she says there’s a lot to learn from other educators.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There’s a lot of people online who are doing this stuff,” Swark said. “They’re making lesson plans involving games, and you can find those. And then you don’t have to spend the time playing a video game for hours.”\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_37734\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/08/games-obstacles.jpg\">\u003cimg src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/08/games-obstacles.jpg\" alt=\"Brad Flickinger/Flickr\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" class=\"size-full wp-image-37734\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/08/games-obstacles.jpg 640w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/08/games-obstacles-400x225.jpg 400w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/08/games-obstacles-320x180.jpg 320w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Brad Flickinger/Flickr\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp class=\"dropcap-serif\">It's not unusual for educators to use analog games in the classroom, but as more classrooms gain access to technology, digital games are also making a strong showing. A recent \u003ca href=\"http://www.joanganzcooneycenter.org/publication/level-up-learning-a-national-survey-on-teaching-with-digital-games/\">Joan Ganz Cooney Center survey\u003c/a> of 694 K-8 teachers found that 74 percent of those surveyed use digital games in the classroom, up from 50 percent two years ago. Many of the teachers finding the most success are good at creatively connecting the game back to the curriculum, while allowing it to maintain the qualities of a good game. These teachers are often more comfortable with games themselves, playing for fun in their spare time, and are thus more likely to see valuable classroom connections. It’s one thing to have empirical evidence that digital games are growing in popularity and another to get an in-depth look at how and \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/06/benefits-of-gaming-what-research-shows/\" target=\"_blank\">why teachers see them as a valuable use of precious class time\u003c/a>. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>INTRODUCING GLOBAL HISTORY\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Zack Gilbert teaches a course called \"Ancient Civilizations\" at a middle school in Normal, Illinois. He’s been using game simulations in his classroom since 1995, but when he started playing the commercial game \"Civilization IV\" for fun he immediately \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/07/how-teachers-can-use-video-games-in-the-humanities-classroom/\" target=\"_blank\">recognized its potential\u003c/a> to get sixth-graders hooked on history.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Especially for ancient civilizations, you want to make it as exciting as you can,” Gilbert said. “This is their first real taste of history for the world; most kids have no concept of what the history is in other countries.” When playing the game, students build up their own civilizations in different time periods, making choices in five categories: government, legal, labor, economy and religion.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It gives the kids a visual,” Gilbert said. “They’re actually acting out and making decisions on things that people who lived thousands of years ago would have had to make.” He acknowledges that games like \"Civilization IV\" aren't appropriate for class use all the time and he doesn’t use them exhaustively. However, getting kids excited about the high stakes that historical figures faced is a great jumping-off point for writing assignments, discussions and interactive learning.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">Struggling learners often come out of their shells and prove they can deliver some of the most innovative solutions. Succeeding in one area of class helps them gain confidence for other tasks, like writing and group projects.\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>“When they’re building their first city, they have to look at the terrain around them. They have to look at the resources to see if this is a good place to build,” Gilbert said. Students often make mistakes in the game, and Gilbert has to restrain himself from trying to correct them immediately, instead letting them figure out where they went wrong. Students often build their cities on flood plains and watch as their citizens get sick and die. That experience prompts them to try a different approach next time. They now understand viscerally the devastation that choice would have brought to ancient civilizations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/05/how-games-based-learning-teaches-problem-solving-in-context/\" target=\"_blank\">all starts connecting\u003c/a>,” Gilbert said. “When you get into the game it all connects to the state standards.” For example, if students build monuments in the game, they’re using math skills but also thinking about the artistic relevance of such a symbol. “You as the teacher need to know what your goal is for them, and then set them up so they can succeed,” Gilbert said. “If you have a good enough game, they’re going to gain more knowledge than you expect.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sandbox games are Gilbert’s favorites -- there are lots of ways to win or lose, and students get to show off their creativity and critical thinking. He also thinks commercial games are some of the best tools because of their rich graphics and strong game mechanics. \"Civilization IV\" is sometimes criticized for not being historically accurate, but Gilbert sees that flaw as a teachable moment. “You can turn the things that might not be necessarily correct into learning experiences,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Gilbert points out that the hardest part of any teacher’s job is reaching a variety of learners, all at different stages of development and academic skill. He’s noticed that while not all his students love playing video games for class, struggling learners often come out of their shells and prove they can deliver some of the most innovative solutions. Succeeding in one area of class helps them gain confidence for other tasks, like writing and group projects.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This anecdotal observation bears out in the Cooney Center research, which found that 55 percent of teachers who use digital games report they are a good tool for motivating low-performing students. Teachers see that motivation translating into academic performance. too: 78 percent of teachers using digital games saw improved performance on curricular subjects due to gameplay, and 71 percent saw improvement in extracurricular subjects.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Like many other teachers, Gilbert says it can be hard to integrate games into the curriculum when the focus is overwhelmingly on standards and state tests. “Things are becoming more regimented in the classroom,” he said. He understands that many teachers don’t have time to rework their whole curriculum to include games, especially if they themselves aren’t comfortable with digital gameplay.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>GAMIFYING CLASS\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Students in Caryn Swark’s Grade 6 class (she teaches in Alberta, Canada) come to school and immediately find themselves immersed in a fictional world where the king has been kidnapped and they must rescue him. Students have avatars and “level up” throughout the year as they master different skills. This gamified environment is part of the class DNA, so it’s no surprise that Swark is also using digital games to help students engage and connect with the material she’s teaching.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There’s a lot of games that are basically worksheets in disguise,” Swark said. “I try to avoid those games as much as possible. They’re not really games and kids aren’t stupid.” Like Gilbert, Swark believes there are lots of educational merits to some commercial games, especially if teachers think expansively about how to build on game narratives and skills.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Swark uses Nintendo DS games like \"\u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professor_Layton_and_the_Curious_Village\" target=\"_blank\">Professor Layton and the Curious Village\u003c/a>,\" a game that is basically like reading a novel embedded with math problems and puzzles. The first time she played it, Swark was struck by how similar some of the puzzles were to things she had asked students on worksheets. When kids play the game, they are doing lots of reading and math, but they like it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Similarly, \"\u003ca href=\"https://www.prodigygame.com/USA/\" target=\"_blank\">Prodigy\u003c/a>,\" a commercial math computer game, is built around a wizarding world where students do battle by solving math problems. Swark wishes the math were a little more integrated, but students still find the game fun and engaging.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Instead of thinking about a checklist of curricular needs that I have to meet, I think about how this fits into what I need,” Swark said. She has found that not only are kids more interested in what they’re learning through gameplay, but they stick with tricky problems longer, work together better and are more open to trying over and over again. The stakes are lower when a student fails within the game, and she doesn’t see any of the test anxiety that has begun to plague her students.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Framing things in terms of gameplay helps get through blocks for kids who get to Grade 6 and are already convinced that they can’t learn,” Swark said. She’s seen her weaker students gravitate toward gameplay and make significant gains. Games are one part of her yearlong goals to break students of the notion that they will fail even when they try.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As a female teacher and a “gamer,” Swark has often found bringing games into the classroom helps her connect more to her male students. And students who are alienated socially have become popular because of their abilities to help others in games like \"Minecraft.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Swark got inspired to try games in her classroom after reading Lee Sheldon’s book, \u003cem>The Multiplayer Classroom: Designing Coursework as a Game\u003c/em>, and jumped in feet first. She’s built on her success and retooled her failures, just as she’s asking her students to do with their schoolwork. Parents and administrators have been more supportive than she expected -- she’s even suggested parents expose their struggling readers to fan fiction to get them reading.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But not all teachers work in such supportive environments. In those cases, or when an educator is more hesitant, Swark recommends teachers check out game-rating sites like \"\u003ca href=\"http://www.graphite.org/\" target=\"_blank\">Graphite\u003c/a>,\" run by the nonprofit Common Sense Media, to choose games that clearly align with the grade and standards they teach. She also says it’s easier to start with overtly educational games and work up to the more open-ended games. Lastly, she says there’s a lot to learn from other educators.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"disqusTitle": "Games in the Classroom: Overcoming the Obstacles",
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"headTitle": "The MindShift Guide to Digital Games and Learning | MindShift | KQED News",
"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_37734\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"https://www.flickr.com/photos/56155476@N08/5667864872\">\u003cimg class=\"wp-image-37734 size-full\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/08/games-obstacles.jpg\" alt=\"Brad Flickinger/Flickr\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/08/games-obstacles.jpg 640w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/08/games-obstacles-400x225.jpg 400w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/08/games-obstacles-320x180.jpg 320w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Brad Flickinger/Flickr\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Part #20 of \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/series/guide-to-games-and-learning/\" target=\"_blank\">MindShift's Guide to Games and Learning Series\u003c/a>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"dropcap-serif\">Even for educators who are excited about using games in the classroom, questions inevitably come up around the very real obstacles to implementation, and strategies for overcoming them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A \u003ca href=\"http://www.gamesandlearning.org/2014/06/09/teachers-on-using-games-in-class/\">recent survey\u003c/a> from the Games and Learning Publishing Council asked 700 teachers to identify and rank the major barriers to using games in the classroom. Here are the top 10 obstacles they list and ideas about how to overcome each one.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>1. Insufficient Time\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Forty-five percent of teachers surveyed reported that insufficient time is a barrier to implementing game-based teaching strategies. But this concern presumes that video games would take time \u003ci>away\u003c/i> from instruction. It’s a matter of changing tactics and presumptions: games can be integrated into everyday curricula because they enable teachers to \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/05/how-games-based-learning-teaches-problem-solving-in-context/\">present academic concepts in a contextualized, experiential way\u003c/a>. Imagine games like activities or projects that can either reinforce or introduce new concepts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>2. Cost\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Forty-four percent of teachers surveyed reported that cost is prohibitive. It’s all too true that teachers lack the financial resources they need and often use their own money to purchase supplies. There's not much that can be done to ameliorate this obstacle, though for motivated teachers, resources like \u003ca href=\"http://www.donorschoose.org/teachers\">Donors Choose\u003c/a> and other crowd-sourced fundraising sites can certainly provide some options. The majority of tablet games are fairly cheap, ranging from $1 to $10. Many are also free, such as \u003ca href=\"http://motionmathgames.com/questimate/\">Questimate!\u003c/a>, a game that introduces students to estimation skills. The cost of using any kind of new tool in school can be prohibitive, but for educators who want to make it happen, trying free games is a great first step.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[contextly_sidebar id=\"0XMqDMAOLONQtLvX9u1aYZTcBvbBJ4vd\"]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>3. Lack of Tech Resources\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Thirty-five percent of teachers surveyed reported that they lack the technology resources to introduce game-based teaching strategies. This obstacle might have more to do with perception than reality. Though some tech corporations may push the notion that one-to-one device-to-student ratio is necessary, that's not necessarily the case. Teachers can go a long way with learning games using just a few devices. Students can play the game in groups, collaborating and working together. Follow it up with a group writing project to describe how the game impacted their thinking about the subject matter. Have one group play the game while the others do non-digital activities. Rotate your students from one project to another.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>4. Hard To Find Games That Fit Curriculum\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Thirty-four percent of teachers surveyed reported that it’s hard to find games that fit the current curriculum. Check out \u003ca href=\"http://www.graphite.org/\">Graphite\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"http://playfullearning.com/\">Playful Learning\u003c/a>, and \u003ca href=\"http://educade.org/\">Educade\u003c/a> for ideas. All three of these sites allow you to filter information about games by traditional subject areas and by grade level. Remember that the best way to use games is as a supplemental reinforcement for your traditional teaching. Don’t look for games that will teach your curriculum. Instead, look for games that might approach the same subject area from a different perspective.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>5. Emphasis On Standardized Test Scores\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Twenty-nine percent of teachers surveyed reported that an emphasis on standardized tests makes using learning games difficult. Game-design companies have been addressing this by attempting to align games with standards. Filament Games, for example, offers many learning games and each one includes a \"standards map.\" Check out their \u003ca href=\"https://d2kx2fvqbvh3da.cloudfront.net/sites/default/files/product-info-downloads/PLEx%20Life%20Scince%20Standards%20Correlations_3.pdf\">PLEX Life Science suite\u003c/a> of games and how they map to various sets of science standards. These are fun, playful games that don’t \"teach to the test,\" but do align directly with state standards.\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/04/MindShiftGames-140x1401.png\">\u003cimg class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-35359\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/04/MindShiftGames-140x1401.png\" alt=\"MindShiftGames\" width=\"140\" height=\"140\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/04/MindShiftGames-140x1401.png 140w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/04/MindShiftGames-140x1401-32x32.png 32w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/04/MindShiftGames-140x1401-64x64.png 64w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/04/MindShiftGames-140x1401-96x96.png 96w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/04/MindShiftGames-140x1401-128x128.png 128w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 140px) 100vw, 140px\">\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>6. Not Sure Where To Find Quality Games\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Twenty-seven percent of teachers surveyed reported that they don’t know where to find quality games. The big app stores don’t help much either; they want to sell games and apps more than they want to help students. See the sites listed above (number 4). All three of these sites offer sophisticated ways to filter search results and find specific games. Also, read \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/08/how-to-choose-a-learning-game/\">How To Choose A Learning Game\u003c/a> for more ideas.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>7. Not Sure How To Integrate Games Into Instruction\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Twenty-three percent of teachers surveyed reported that they're not sure how to integrate games into instruction -- thus the need for this guide! You'll find ways to implement game-based learning, and understand the theoretical, pedagogical, and practical uses. In this guide, we show how to apply games to \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/06/digital-games-and-the-future-of-math-class-a-conversation-with-keith-devlin/\">math\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/07/how-teachers-can-use-video-games-in-the-humanities-classroom/\">humanities education,\u003c/a> as well as how games can facilitate \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/05/math-science-history-games-break-boundaries-between-subjects-interdisciplinary-learning/\">interdisciplinary learning.\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>8. Unfamiliar With Technology\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Seventeen percent of teachers surveyed reported that they’re unfamiliar with technology. That’s okay. Most of the writing about game-based learning focuses on digital media, but the truth is that you don’t necessarily need devices. At the Quest To Learn School in New York City, \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/07/what-happens-when-school-design-looks-like-game-design/\">game design is a way of thinking, a paradigm\u003c/a>. A great deal of their curriculum uses paper-based games rather than digital games. Check out their \u003ca href=\"http://www.instituteofplay.org/work/projects/print-play-games-2/\">print and play\u003c/a> games. There's also the great \u003ca href=\"http://www.instituteofplay.org/work/projects/print-play-games-2/socratic-smackdown/\">Socratic Smackdown,\u003c/a> which is makes it easier to add games to your classroom without technology.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>9. Lack Of Administrative Support\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fourteen percent of teachers surveyed reported that lack of administrative support when it comes to games in the classroom. But with more and more data to support the use of games, teachers can use the new research to convince administrators. For example, an \u003ca href=\"http://www.sri.com/work/projects/glasslab-research\">SRI research\u003c/a> showed that students on the median \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/06/games-in-the-classroom-what-the-research-says/\">score 12 percent better on standardized tests\u003c/a>. This kind of research can help you make a strong case for using games for learning with your administrator.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>10. Lack Of Parental Support\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nine percent of teachers surveyed reported a lack of parental support for games in the classroom. That's clearly not the majority of parents' perspectives as evidenced by the small percentage; what’s more, a Cooney Center report, \u003ca href=\"http://www.joanganzcooneycenter.org/publication/learning-at-home/\"> Learning at Home: Families’ Educational Media Use in America\u003c/a>, showed that more than half (57 percent) of parents say their children have learned \"a lot\" from educational media. Still, teachers may have to account for their use of games for learning, and in those cases, start slowly. Demonstrate to parents (as you may have done with administrators) why you're using these tactics with evidence to back it up, and you'll prove over time how well it's working.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_37734\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"https://www.flickr.com/photos/56155476@N08/5667864872\">\u003cimg class=\"wp-image-37734 size-full\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/08/games-obstacles.jpg\" alt=\"Brad Flickinger/Flickr\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/08/games-obstacles.jpg 640w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/08/games-obstacles-400x225.jpg 400w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/08/games-obstacles-320x180.jpg 320w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Brad Flickinger/Flickr\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Part #20 of \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/series/guide-to-games-and-learning/\" target=\"_blank\">MindShift's Guide to Games and Learning Series\u003c/a>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"dropcap-serif\">Even for educators who are excited about using games in the classroom, questions inevitably come up around the very real obstacles to implementation, and strategies for overcoming them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A \u003ca href=\"http://www.gamesandlearning.org/2014/06/09/teachers-on-using-games-in-class/\">recent survey\u003c/a> from the Games and Learning Publishing Council asked 700 teachers to identify and rank the major barriers to using games in the classroom. Here are the top 10 obstacles they list and ideas about how to overcome each one.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>1. Insufficient Time\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Forty-five percent of teachers surveyed reported that insufficient time is a barrier to implementing game-based teaching strategies. But this concern presumes that video games would take time \u003ci>away\u003c/i> from instruction. It’s a matter of changing tactics and presumptions: games can be integrated into everyday curricula because they enable teachers to \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/05/how-games-based-learning-teaches-problem-solving-in-context/\">present academic concepts in a contextualized, experiential way\u003c/a>. Imagine games like activities or projects that can either reinforce or introduce new concepts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>2. Cost\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Forty-four percent of teachers surveyed reported that cost is prohibitive. It’s all too true that teachers lack the financial resources they need and often use their own money to purchase supplies. There's not much that can be done to ameliorate this obstacle, though for motivated teachers, resources like \u003ca href=\"http://www.donorschoose.org/teachers\">Donors Choose\u003c/a> and other crowd-sourced fundraising sites can certainly provide some options. The majority of tablet games are fairly cheap, ranging from $1 to $10. Many are also free, such as \u003ca href=\"http://motionmathgames.com/questimate/\">Questimate!\u003c/a>, a game that introduces students to estimation skills. The cost of using any kind of new tool in school can be prohibitive, but for educators who want to make it happen, trying free games is a great first step.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>3. Lack of Tech Resources\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Thirty-five percent of teachers surveyed reported that they lack the technology resources to introduce game-based teaching strategies. This obstacle might have more to do with perception than reality. Though some tech corporations may push the notion that one-to-one device-to-student ratio is necessary, that's not necessarily the case. Teachers can go a long way with learning games using just a few devices. Students can play the game in groups, collaborating and working together. Follow it up with a group writing project to describe how the game impacted their thinking about the subject matter. Have one group play the game while the others do non-digital activities. Rotate your students from one project to another.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>4. Hard To Find Games That Fit Curriculum\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Thirty-four percent of teachers surveyed reported that it’s hard to find games that fit the current curriculum. Check out \u003ca href=\"http://www.graphite.org/\">Graphite\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"http://playfullearning.com/\">Playful Learning\u003c/a>, and \u003ca href=\"http://educade.org/\">Educade\u003c/a> for ideas. All three of these sites allow you to filter information about games by traditional subject areas and by grade level. Remember that the best way to use games is as a supplemental reinforcement for your traditional teaching. Don’t look for games that will teach your curriculum. Instead, look for games that might approach the same subject area from a different perspective.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>5. Emphasis On Standardized Test Scores\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Twenty-nine percent of teachers surveyed reported that an emphasis on standardized tests makes using learning games difficult. Game-design companies have been addressing this by attempting to align games with standards. Filament Games, for example, offers many learning games and each one includes a \"standards map.\" Check out their \u003ca href=\"https://d2kx2fvqbvh3da.cloudfront.net/sites/default/files/product-info-downloads/PLEx%20Life%20Scince%20Standards%20Correlations_3.pdf\">PLEX Life Science suite\u003c/a> of games and how they map to various sets of science standards. These are fun, playful games that don’t \"teach to the test,\" but do align directly with state standards.\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/04/MindShiftGames-140x1401.png\">\u003cimg class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-35359\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/04/MindShiftGames-140x1401.png\" alt=\"MindShiftGames\" width=\"140\" height=\"140\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/04/MindShiftGames-140x1401.png 140w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/04/MindShiftGames-140x1401-32x32.png 32w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/04/MindShiftGames-140x1401-64x64.png 64w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/04/MindShiftGames-140x1401-96x96.png 96w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/04/MindShiftGames-140x1401-128x128.png 128w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 140px) 100vw, 140px\">\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>6. Not Sure Where To Find Quality Games\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Twenty-seven percent of teachers surveyed reported that they don’t know where to find quality games. The big app stores don’t help much either; they want to sell games and apps more than they want to help students. See the sites listed above (number 4). All three of these sites offer sophisticated ways to filter search results and find specific games. Also, read \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/08/how-to-choose-a-learning-game/\">How To Choose A Learning Game\u003c/a> for more ideas.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>7. Not Sure How To Integrate Games Into Instruction\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Twenty-three percent of teachers surveyed reported that they're not sure how to integrate games into instruction -- thus the need for this guide! You'll find ways to implement game-based learning, and understand the theoretical, pedagogical, and practical uses. In this guide, we show how to apply games to \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/06/digital-games-and-the-future-of-math-class-a-conversation-with-keith-devlin/\">math\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/07/how-teachers-can-use-video-games-in-the-humanities-classroom/\">humanities education,\u003c/a> as well as how games can facilitate \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/05/math-science-history-games-break-boundaries-between-subjects-interdisciplinary-learning/\">interdisciplinary learning.\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>8. Unfamiliar With Technology\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Seventeen percent of teachers surveyed reported that they’re unfamiliar with technology. That’s okay. Most of the writing about game-based learning focuses on digital media, but the truth is that you don’t necessarily need devices. At the Quest To Learn School in New York City, \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/07/what-happens-when-school-design-looks-like-game-design/\">game design is a way of thinking, a paradigm\u003c/a>. A great deal of their curriculum uses paper-based games rather than digital games. Check out their \u003ca href=\"http://www.instituteofplay.org/work/projects/print-play-games-2/\">print and play\u003c/a> games. There's also the great \u003ca href=\"http://www.instituteofplay.org/work/projects/print-play-games-2/socratic-smackdown/\">Socratic Smackdown,\u003c/a> which is makes it easier to add games to your classroom without technology.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>9. Lack Of Administrative Support\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fourteen percent of teachers surveyed reported that lack of administrative support when it comes to games in the classroom. But with more and more data to support the use of games, teachers can use the new research to convince administrators. For example, an \u003ca href=\"http://www.sri.com/work/projects/glasslab-research\">SRI research\u003c/a> showed that students on the median \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/06/games-in-the-classroom-what-the-research-says/\">score 12 percent better on standardized tests\u003c/a>. This kind of research can help you make a strong case for using games for learning with your administrator.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>10. Lack Of Parental Support\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nine percent of teachers surveyed reported a lack of parental support for games in the classroom. That's clearly not the majority of parents' perspectives as evidenced by the small percentage; what’s more, a Cooney Center report, \u003ca href=\"http://www.joanganzcooneycenter.org/publication/learning-at-home/\"> Learning at Home: Families’ Educational Media Use in America\u003c/a>, showed that more than half (57 percent) of parents say their children have learned \"a lot\" from educational media. Still, teachers may have to account for their use of games for learning, and in those cases, start slowly. Demonstrate to parents (as you may have done with administrators) why you're using these tactics with evidence to back it up, and you'll prove over time how well it's working.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"headTitle": "The MindShift Guide to Digital Games and Learning | MindShift | KQED News",
"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_37352\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/08/the-raven.jpg\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-37352\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/08/the-raven.jpg\" alt=\"Amplify's digital offering includes a dramatic reading of Edgar Allan Poe's \" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/08/the-raven.jpg 640w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/08/the-raven-400x225.jpg 400w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/08/the-raven-320x180.jpg 320w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Amplify's digital offering includes a dramatic reading of Edgar Allen Poe's \"The Raven\" with animation.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Part 16 of \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/series/guide-to-games-and-learning/\" target=\"_blank\">MindShift's Guide to Games and Learning\u003c/a>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"dropcap-serif\">The textbook is a problem that consistently plagues classrooms. At best, textbooks are innocuous, offering simple summaries of a very broad subject area. At worst, they oversimplify things, providing less information than an encyclopedia article without enough nuance or context to make it meaningful.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One \u003ca href=\"http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/40387551?uid=3739864&uid=2134&uid=2483481863&uid=2&uid=70&uid=3&uid=2483481853&uid=3739256&uid=60&sid=21104585359203\">study\u003c/a> showed that when students read textbooks, they tend to retain “absurd” details, but fail to “grasp the main point.” Susan M. Hubbuch writes, “The trouble with too many textbooks is that they are badly written” and “badly organized.” What’s more, they give students the wrong impression about knowledge. Typical subject areas -- physics, geography, algebra -- are all dynamic. “They are constantly being critiqued by members of the field, and all are open to change.” The traditional textbook approach, however, gives students the impression that knowledge is constructed of static ideas, facts, and definitions. [Watch \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vq_XBP3NrBo\" target=\"_blank\">this scene in Dead Poets Society \u003c/a>that perfectly captures this quandary.]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Teachers have always struggled with mediating the tension between the need for stable content and desire to support our students as they become creative and flexible thinking individuals. How can we keep things open-ended without doing a disservice to children? How do we encourage students to remain invested in learning ways of knowing that will always be questionable and uncertain? The very purpose of an education is to teach fluid critical thinking skills, to maintain analytical perspectives about the world, to teach people that problems can never be solved with certainty. But sometimes the way we teach contradicts our intentions. Sometimes we forget that \u003ci>what\u003c/i> we teach and \u003ci>how\u003c/i> we teach it will always be inseparable. And textbooks, unfortunately, seem to structure learning in a way that’s antithetical to our intended outcomes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/04/MindShiftGames.png\">\u003cimg class=\"alignright wp-image-35200 size-thumbnail\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/04/MindShiftGames-140x140.png\" alt=\"MindShiftGames\" width=\"140\" height=\"140\">\u003c/a>Just as we need to move away from a \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2013/11/subverting-the-system-student-and-teacher-as-equals/\" target=\"_blank\">top-down model of teaching\u003c/a>, we also need to move away from the textbook. In an ideal world, all learning would happen through direct engagement with primary texts. But unfortunately, not everyone can be a historian, perusing through documents and artifacts to piece together an account of the past. Nor can everyone read Euclid and Pythagoras in the original Greek. Some summarizing, briefing, and encapsulating will always be necessary. But is the problematic textbook really the only way?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Many ed-tech entrepreneurs are currently attempting to address this problem with games and electronic media. It's probably an oversimplification to say they're attempting to update the textbook because to understand precisely what they are trying to do, we need to step outside of our habitual way of thinking about school and learning.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Game-based learning and electronic media enable us to blur the boundaries that separate the delivery of content, drilling for practice, and assessment. And in an educational atmosphere where those boundaries dissolve, the textbook becomes obsolete. Certainly, there is still academic content, but that content suddenly becomes interactive. The texts can be more easily and immediately tied directly into a broad set of activities and projects. Video and other multimedia content can be integrated right into the text -- perhaps videos of teachers--enabling the kind of\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2013/05/flipped-classroom-2-0-mastery-levelcomptenecy-learning-with-videos/\" target=\"_blank\"> flipped instruction\u003c/a> that is rapidly becoming popular.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One company that is really pushing a new approach is \u003ca href=\"http://www.amplify.com/\" target=\"_blank\">Amplify Learning\u003c/a>. They call their tablet-based platform a \"digital curriculum.\" In time for fall 2014, they released ELA programming for sixth, seventh, and eighth grade students that includes more than 300 books and \"academic lessons authored by world-class intellectuals.\" Amplify has always focused on the content, and in addition to comprehensive interactive reading and writing activities, they also include some pretty dramatic and animated readings of classic texts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdgPQZ8yyTE&w=640&h=360]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the time of release, Amplify CEO Joel Klein said, “This is not some old wine in a new bottle, like a digitized textbook with a few animations. We’ve brought together world-class instructional materials, rich multimedia and a powerful analytics engine that will transform the way teachers teach and students learn.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What’s most intriguing is the way Amplify curriculum integrates games. They're designing a suite of tablet-based games that are not envisioned as part of the formal curriculum, but rather as opportunities for additional student directed playful learning.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One such game is meant to let students experience the process of \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HC5IP4flhes&list=UUboDxOGL7HIGSOBYcadIw4Q\" target=\"_blank\">metabolism\u003c/a> from the inside. It’s a fun game, where players need to manage their resources carefully in order to win. Students need to understand how each resource plays a part in the metabolic system. The game teaches basic biological literacy. Amplify is also making some other impressive biology, environmental science, math and literacy games.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[contextly_sidebar id=\"OzNvsI4JYSOzuapWsW6deFHw72njYoX3\"]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"The goal of our games is to both help recapture lost learning time—both after school and during holidays—and engage kids in ELA, math and science in ways that weren't possible until now,\" Klein said in an interview. When I asked him if he thought electronic media would detract from more traditional forms of text-based learning he said, \"Our goal is to encourage more reading and more writing. I think that if we can help middle school children develop a love for reading books, the positive impacts of that will be felt across their entire educational career.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The game \u003ci>Lexica \u003c/i>is a great example of Amplify’s approach to games. \u003ci>Lexica\u003c/i> is a literacy game that Greg Toppo \u003ca href=\"http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/gaming/2013/06/18/lexica-game-classic-books/2431337/\">covered beautifully in USA Today\u003c/a>. Toppo describes \u003ci>Lexica\u003c/i> as “a massive role-playing game for young teens that invites them to interact with characters from great novels and read the books outside of class if they want to get ahead in the game.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Players free classic book characters that have been trapped in an imaginary library by an evil empire. By reading the books, students learn what kinds of powers the characters can offer them. They are motivated to save the characters and to do so they need to read the books.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Lexica\u003c/em> is so comprehensive that the sheer scale of complexity overwhelms. There are even mini games that, like everything in \u003ci>Lexica\u003c/i>, require familiarity with the characters and plots of classic books.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Many teachers have concerns about Amplify’s corporate origins and connections to News Corp mogul Rupert Murdoch. Questions about private for-profit curriculum development and the conflation of media and education demand a lot of consideration. And Amplify is not the only company we should approach with caution. But for the purposes of this post, it is the quality and ingenuity of the curriculum that interests us, the way the company's curriculum designers are rethinking not only the textbook, but also educational content delivery in general.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Other companies are developing games that are imagined to be played all semester long. These are often multiplayer games that classes play together. For example, \u003ca href=\"http://muzzylane.com/project/mh_practice\">Muzzy Lane\u003c/a> has developed a series of games that provide an immersive experience for students. There is one, in particular, called \u003ca href=\"http://www.mhpractice.com/products/GinA\" target=\"_blank\">\u003ci>Government In Action \u003c/i>\u003c/a>that’s designed to allow students to “role play a member of Congress as a way of exploring American Government.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Students sponsor bills, trade in influence, awareness, and approval. The game simulates meeting with lobbyists, donors, and volunteers. The object is to get reelected to office. It is a strategy game that requires students to become familiar with the mechanics and processes of U.S. government.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When a role-playing game like this supplements typical classroom content, students see how their new knowledge manifests as better in-game performance. They learn how the government of the United States works through the experience of digital simulation rather than through memorizing textbook blurbs and taking quizzes. The knowledge is contextualized and the motivation is intrinsic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For middle school students, there are games like \u003ca href=\"http://playhistoria.com/about/\">\u003ci>Historia\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>. \u003c/i>This game started as a paper-based role playing game in which students “work in teams to lead fictional civilizations that compete alongside (and sometimes against) the great empires of the past.” Now it's being developed into a tablet, or PC based game that uses new ed-tech. One of the great things about \u003ci>Historia \u003c/i>is that, like a textbook, it forms the skeleton of a full curriculum. However, it also requires traditional teaching and ordinary research skills. Students use the information from book-based learning, handouts, videos, and other academic materials as if it were a collection of \"power-ups\" meant to give them the strength they need to succeed in the game.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The thing about interactive electronic media is that it allows us to rethink the way we interact with information. The internet has already changed the way we think about media and now it is time to let it redefine the way we think about content in general. Academia was about participatory knowledge construction long before buzzwords like “crowd-sourced” entered our mainstream vernacular. But many of our academic conventions, like the textbook, have neglected to preserve the spirit of collaboration. Even worse, these methods of teaching have taught generations of young people that facts are fixed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Video games are one method of interacting with content in context that can change students’ approach to knowledge. Games can help them to understand that all ideas are located in some dynamic stage of ongoing iteration. And games can help to teach our students the value of a cooperative (or multiplayer) construction of truth.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_37352\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/08/the-raven.jpg\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-37352\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/08/the-raven.jpg\" alt=\"Amplify's digital offering includes a dramatic reading of Edgar Allan Poe's \" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/08/the-raven.jpg 640w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/08/the-raven-400x225.jpg 400w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/08/the-raven-320x180.jpg 320w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Amplify's digital offering includes a dramatic reading of Edgar Allen Poe's \"The Raven\" with animation.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Part 16 of \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/series/guide-to-games-and-learning/\" target=\"_blank\">MindShift's Guide to Games and Learning\u003c/a>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"dropcap-serif\">The textbook is a problem that consistently plagues classrooms. At best, textbooks are innocuous, offering simple summaries of a very broad subject area. At worst, they oversimplify things, providing less information than an encyclopedia article without enough nuance or context to make it meaningful.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One \u003ca href=\"http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/40387551?uid=3739864&uid=2134&uid=2483481863&uid=2&uid=70&uid=3&uid=2483481853&uid=3739256&uid=60&sid=21104585359203\">study\u003c/a> showed that when students read textbooks, they tend to retain “absurd” details, but fail to “grasp the main point.” Susan M. Hubbuch writes, “The trouble with too many textbooks is that they are badly written” and “badly organized.” What’s more, they give students the wrong impression about knowledge. Typical subject areas -- physics, geography, algebra -- are all dynamic. “They are constantly being critiqued by members of the field, and all are open to change.” The traditional textbook approach, however, gives students the impression that knowledge is constructed of static ideas, facts, and definitions. [Watch \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vq_XBP3NrBo\" target=\"_blank\">this scene in Dead Poets Society \u003c/a>that perfectly captures this quandary.]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Teachers have always struggled with mediating the tension between the need for stable content and desire to support our students as they become creative and flexible thinking individuals. How can we keep things open-ended without doing a disservice to children? How do we encourage students to remain invested in learning ways of knowing that will always be questionable and uncertain? The very purpose of an education is to teach fluid critical thinking skills, to maintain analytical perspectives about the world, to teach people that problems can never be solved with certainty. But sometimes the way we teach contradicts our intentions. Sometimes we forget that \u003ci>what\u003c/i> we teach and \u003ci>how\u003c/i> we teach it will always be inseparable. And textbooks, unfortunately, seem to structure learning in a way that’s antithetical to our intended outcomes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/04/MindShiftGames.png\">\u003cimg class=\"alignright wp-image-35200 size-thumbnail\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/04/MindShiftGames-140x140.png\" alt=\"MindShiftGames\" width=\"140\" height=\"140\">\u003c/a>Just as we need to move away from a \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2013/11/subverting-the-system-student-and-teacher-as-equals/\" target=\"_blank\">top-down model of teaching\u003c/a>, we also need to move away from the textbook. In an ideal world, all learning would happen through direct engagement with primary texts. But unfortunately, not everyone can be a historian, perusing through documents and artifacts to piece together an account of the past. Nor can everyone read Euclid and Pythagoras in the original Greek. Some summarizing, briefing, and encapsulating will always be necessary. But is the problematic textbook really the only way?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Many ed-tech entrepreneurs are currently attempting to address this problem with games and electronic media. It's probably an oversimplification to say they're attempting to update the textbook because to understand precisely what they are trying to do, we need to step outside of our habitual way of thinking about school and learning.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Game-based learning and electronic media enable us to blur the boundaries that separate the delivery of content, drilling for practice, and assessment. And in an educational atmosphere where those boundaries dissolve, the textbook becomes obsolete. Certainly, there is still academic content, but that content suddenly becomes interactive. The texts can be more easily and immediately tied directly into a broad set of activities and projects. Video and other multimedia content can be integrated right into the text -- perhaps videos of teachers--enabling the kind of\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2013/05/flipped-classroom-2-0-mastery-levelcomptenecy-learning-with-videos/\" target=\"_blank\"> flipped instruction\u003c/a> that is rapidly becoming popular.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One company that is really pushing a new approach is \u003ca href=\"http://www.amplify.com/\" target=\"_blank\">Amplify Learning\u003c/a>. They call their tablet-based platform a \"digital curriculum.\" In time for fall 2014, they released ELA programming for sixth, seventh, and eighth grade students that includes more than 300 books and \"academic lessons authored by world-class intellectuals.\" Amplify has always focused on the content, and in addition to comprehensive interactive reading and writing activities, they also include some pretty dramatic and animated readings of classic texts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/gdgPQZ8yyTE'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/gdgPQZ8yyTE'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the time of release, Amplify CEO Joel Klein said, “This is not some old wine in a new bottle, like a digitized textbook with a few animations. We’ve brought together world-class instructional materials, rich multimedia and a powerful analytics engine that will transform the way teachers teach and students learn.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What’s most intriguing is the way Amplify curriculum integrates games. They're designing a suite of tablet-based games that are not envisioned as part of the formal curriculum, but rather as opportunities for additional student directed playful learning.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One such game is meant to let students experience the process of \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HC5IP4flhes&list=UUboDxOGL7HIGSOBYcadIw4Q\" target=\"_blank\">metabolism\u003c/a> from the inside. It’s a fun game, where players need to manage their resources carefully in order to win. Students need to understand how each resource plays a part in the metabolic system. The game teaches basic biological literacy. Amplify is also making some other impressive biology, environmental science, math and literacy games.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"The goal of our games is to both help recapture lost learning time—both after school and during holidays—and engage kids in ELA, math and science in ways that weren't possible until now,\" Klein said in an interview. When I asked him if he thought electronic media would detract from more traditional forms of text-based learning he said, \"Our goal is to encourage more reading and more writing. I think that if we can help middle school children develop a love for reading books, the positive impacts of that will be felt across their entire educational career.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The game \u003ci>Lexica \u003c/i>is a great example of Amplify’s approach to games. \u003ci>Lexica\u003c/i> is a literacy game that Greg Toppo \u003ca href=\"http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/gaming/2013/06/18/lexica-game-classic-books/2431337/\">covered beautifully in USA Today\u003c/a>. Toppo describes \u003ci>Lexica\u003c/i> as “a massive role-playing game for young teens that invites them to interact with characters from great novels and read the books outside of class if they want to get ahead in the game.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Players free classic book characters that have been trapped in an imaginary library by an evil empire. By reading the books, students learn what kinds of powers the characters can offer them. They are motivated to save the characters and to do so they need to read the books.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Lexica\u003c/em> is so comprehensive that the sheer scale of complexity overwhelms. There are even mini games that, like everything in \u003ci>Lexica\u003c/i>, require familiarity with the characters and plots of classic books.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Many teachers have concerns about Amplify’s corporate origins and connections to News Corp mogul Rupert Murdoch. Questions about private for-profit curriculum development and the conflation of media and education demand a lot of consideration. And Amplify is not the only company we should approach with caution. But for the purposes of this post, it is the quality and ingenuity of the curriculum that interests us, the way the company's curriculum designers are rethinking not only the textbook, but also educational content delivery in general.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Other companies are developing games that are imagined to be played all semester long. These are often multiplayer games that classes play together. For example, \u003ca href=\"http://muzzylane.com/project/mh_practice\">Muzzy Lane\u003c/a> has developed a series of games that provide an immersive experience for students. There is one, in particular, called \u003ca href=\"http://www.mhpractice.com/products/GinA\" target=\"_blank\">\u003ci>Government In Action \u003c/i>\u003c/a>that’s designed to allow students to “role play a member of Congress as a way of exploring American Government.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Students sponsor bills, trade in influence, awareness, and approval. The game simulates meeting with lobbyists, donors, and volunteers. The object is to get reelected to office. It is a strategy game that requires students to become familiar with the mechanics and processes of U.S. government.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When a role-playing game like this supplements typical classroom content, students see how their new knowledge manifests as better in-game performance. They learn how the government of the United States works through the experience of digital simulation rather than through memorizing textbook blurbs and taking quizzes. The knowledge is contextualized and the motivation is intrinsic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For middle school students, there are games like \u003ca href=\"http://playhistoria.com/about/\">\u003ci>Historia\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>. \u003c/i>This game started as a paper-based role playing game in which students “work in teams to lead fictional civilizations that compete alongside (and sometimes against) the great empires of the past.” Now it's being developed into a tablet, or PC based game that uses new ed-tech. One of the great things about \u003ci>Historia \u003c/i>is that, like a textbook, it forms the skeleton of a full curriculum. However, it also requires traditional teaching and ordinary research skills. Students use the information from book-based learning, handouts, videos, and other academic materials as if it were a collection of \"power-ups\" meant to give them the strength they need to succeed in the game.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The thing about interactive electronic media is that it allows us to rethink the way we interact with information. The internet has already changed the way we think about media and now it is time to let it redefine the way we think about content in general. Academia was about participatory knowledge construction long before buzzwords like “crowd-sourced” entered our mainstream vernacular. But many of our academic conventions, like the textbook, have neglected to preserve the spirit of collaboration. Even worse, these methods of teaching have taught generations of young people that facts are fixed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Video games are one method of interacting with content in context that can change students’ approach to knowledge. Games can help them to understand that all ideas are located in some dynamic stage of ongoing iteration. And games can help to teach our students the value of a cooperative (or multiplayer) construction of truth.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_37279\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/08/posterlet2-e6ddbc7791828b57ffcd00a8958fee46a13f6f91-e1407528764883.jpg\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-37279\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/08/posterlet2-e6ddbc7791828b57ffcd00a8958fee46a13f6f91-e1407528764883.jpg\" alt=\"A screenshot from the Posterlet game: choosing negative or positive feedback.\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/08/posterlet2-e6ddbc7791828b57ffcd00a8958fee46a13f6f91-e1407528764883.jpg 640w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/08/posterlet2-e6ddbc7791828b57ffcd00a8958fee46a13f6f91-e1407528764883-400x225.jpg 400w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/08/posterlet2-e6ddbc7791828b57ffcd00a8958fee46a13f6f91-e1407528764883-320x180.jpg 320w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A screenshot from the Posterlet game: choosing negative or positive feedback.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp class=\"dropcap-serif\">Imagine you're playing a computer game that asks you to design a poster for the school fair. You're fiddling with fonts, changing background colors and deciding what activity to feature: Will a basketball toss appeal to more people than a pie bake-off?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then, animal characters — maybe a panda or an ostrich — offer feedback on your design. You can choose whether to hear a compliment or a complaint: \"The words are overlapping too much,\" or, \"I like that you put in the dates.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">\"They're not just measures of what the student already knows, but attempts to measure whether they are prepared to continue learning when they're no longer told exactly what to do.\"\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>You can use their critiques as guides to help you revise your poster. Finally, you get to see how many tickets your poster sold.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This little Web-based game isn't just a game. It's a test, too.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"In our assessments we make little fun games, and to do well at the games you need to learn something,\" says Dan Schwartz, the director of the \u003ca href=\"http://aaalab.stanford.edu/\">AAA Lab at Stanford University\u003c/a>. \"So they're not just measures of what the student already knows, but attempts to measure whether they are prepared to continue learning when they're no longer told exactly what to do.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Schwartz is among a new breed of researchers who are applying the mechanics of games to the science of psychometrics — the measurement of the mind.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Right now, he's working on a series of video games called Choicelets. They're designed to evaluate students on factors that traditional tests can't assess. He wants to measure how students learn, how they make decisions and how they respond to feedback.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>A Test Or A Learning Encounter?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Most kids like video games — a lot more than they like taking tests.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the purpose of making tests more like games isn't just to add a spoonful of sugar to the medicine.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Scholars like \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/07/games-can-advance-education-a-conversation-with-james-paul-gee/\" target=\"_blank\">James Paul Gee\u003c/a> believe video games actually come much closer to capturing the learning process in action than traditional fill-in-the-bubble tests.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[contextly_sidebar id=\"AEMyggVrb11GysQCIi4T20XLCX9mVZWB\"]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Gee, a professor of education at Arizona State University, is considered the godfather of game-based assessment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"Is a video game a test or a learning encounter? It's both,\" he said. In fact, in a video game, \"you're always being tested — you can't get out of a level until you finish it.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Gee and other experts explain that classic video games, like Mario Brothers or Tetris, are designed to adapt as the player gets better. Each level moves faster, or presents harder obstacles.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The game tugs you along, held in a \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2012/04/whats-the-secret-sauce-to-a-great-educational-game/\" target=\"_blank\">state of \"flow\" \u003c/a>between anxiety (when things get too hard) and boredom (when they're too easy).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And, the researchers point out, at the same time you're playing a game, the game can record your actions. When it's over, the software can create a report: not just a record of right and wrong answers, but all the steps you took to get there.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Schwartz's \u003ca href=\"http://aaalab.stanford.edu/papers/Measuring_What_Matters_Most.pdf\">theory of assessment\u003c/a> focuses on choice. He argues that the ultimate goal of education is to create independent thinkers who make good decisions. And so we need assessments that test how students think, not what they happen to know at a given moment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For example, the real point of the school-fair game, called Posterlet, is not to test how good students are at graphic design.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Instead, the crux of the game comes when students choose to hear comments on their work. Seeking negative feedback, it turns out, is the best way to improve the design of your posters quickly. It's also a healthy strategy for doing well in school and in life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In Photolet, another game from Schwartz's lab, players pretend to take photos of animals. Then they edit, crop and filter the shots.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On the surface, the game is about photography skills like focus and composition. Underneath, it emphasizes another concept: making several versions of your work and then self-editing to choose the best.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One of Schwartz's experiments took place recently at \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/02/what-will-it-take-for-ipads-to-upend-teaching-and-learning/\" target=\"_blank\">Hillview Middle School\u003c/a> in Menlo Park, Calif. \"We took over their sixth grade and taught design thinking for five weeks,\" he says. Design thinking includes using empathy and fact-finding to understand people's needs, generate prototype solutions to problems and test them out.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Schwartz's study showed that students were able to apply the concepts they learned in social studies or science class to improve their performance on Posterlet or Photolet.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Larra Olson, who teaches humanities at Hillview, says her students loved playing the games. \"They were completely engaged,\" she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Olson said the project left her \"totally open\" to the potential of games as assessments, especially as an alternative to the traditional emphasis on grades and multiple-choice tests.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"I think you have to figure out the structure of the game so you're not 'leading the witness,' \" she said. \"But I think they're very powerful.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">\u003cem>Copyright 2014 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.\u003cimg src=\"http://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Tests+That+Look+Like+Video+Games&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\" alt=\"\">\u003c/em>\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_37279\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/08/posterlet2-e6ddbc7791828b57ffcd00a8958fee46a13f6f91-e1407528764883.jpg\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-37279\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/08/posterlet2-e6ddbc7791828b57ffcd00a8958fee46a13f6f91-e1407528764883.jpg\" alt=\"A screenshot from the Posterlet game: choosing negative or positive feedback.\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/08/posterlet2-e6ddbc7791828b57ffcd00a8958fee46a13f6f91-e1407528764883.jpg 640w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/08/posterlet2-e6ddbc7791828b57ffcd00a8958fee46a13f6f91-e1407528764883-400x225.jpg 400w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/08/posterlet2-e6ddbc7791828b57ffcd00a8958fee46a13f6f91-e1407528764883-320x180.jpg 320w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A screenshot from the Posterlet game: choosing negative or positive feedback.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp class=\"dropcap-serif\">Imagine you're playing a computer game that asks you to design a poster for the school fair. You're fiddling with fonts, changing background colors and deciding what activity to feature: Will a basketball toss appeal to more people than a pie bake-off?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then, animal characters — maybe a panda or an ostrich — offer feedback on your design. You can choose whether to hear a compliment or a complaint: \"The words are overlapping too much,\" or, \"I like that you put in the dates.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">\"They're not just measures of what the student already knows, but attempts to measure whether they are prepared to continue learning when they're no longer told exactly what to do.\"\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>You can use their critiques as guides to help you revise your poster. Finally, you get to see how many tickets your poster sold.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This little Web-based game isn't just a game. It's a test, too.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"In our assessments we make little fun games, and to do well at the games you need to learn something,\" says Dan Schwartz, the director of the \u003ca href=\"http://aaalab.stanford.edu/\">AAA Lab at Stanford University\u003c/a>. \"So they're not just measures of what the student already knows, but attempts to measure whether they are prepared to continue learning when they're no longer told exactly what to do.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Schwartz is among a new breed of researchers who are applying the mechanics of games to the science of psychometrics — the measurement of the mind.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Right now, he's working on a series of video games called Choicelets. They're designed to evaluate students on factors that traditional tests can't assess. He wants to measure how students learn, how they make decisions and how they respond to feedback.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>A Test Or A Learning Encounter?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Most kids like video games — a lot more than they like taking tests.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the purpose of making tests more like games isn't just to add a spoonful of sugar to the medicine.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Scholars like \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/07/games-can-advance-education-a-conversation-with-james-paul-gee/\" target=\"_blank\">James Paul Gee\u003c/a> believe video games actually come much closer to capturing the learning process in action than traditional fill-in-the-bubble tests.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Gee, a professor of education at Arizona State University, is considered the godfather of game-based assessment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"Is a video game a test or a learning encounter? It's both,\" he said. In fact, in a video game, \"you're always being tested — you can't get out of a level until you finish it.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Gee and other experts explain that classic video games, like Mario Brothers or Tetris, are designed to adapt as the player gets better. Each level moves faster, or presents harder obstacles.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The game tugs you along, held in a \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2012/04/whats-the-secret-sauce-to-a-great-educational-game/\" target=\"_blank\">state of \"flow\" \u003c/a>between anxiety (when things get too hard) and boredom (when they're too easy).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And, the researchers point out, at the same time you're playing a game, the game can record your actions. When it's over, the software can create a report: not just a record of right and wrong answers, but all the steps you took to get there.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Schwartz's \u003ca href=\"http://aaalab.stanford.edu/papers/Measuring_What_Matters_Most.pdf\">theory of assessment\u003c/a> focuses on choice. He argues that the ultimate goal of education is to create independent thinkers who make good decisions. And so we need assessments that test how students think, not what they happen to know at a given moment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For example, the real point of the school-fair game, called Posterlet, is not to test how good students are at graphic design.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Instead, the crux of the game comes when students choose to hear comments on their work. Seeking negative feedback, it turns out, is the best way to improve the design of your posters quickly. It's also a healthy strategy for doing well in school and in life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In Photolet, another game from Schwartz's lab, players pretend to take photos of animals. Then they edit, crop and filter the shots.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On the surface, the game is about photography skills like focus and composition. Underneath, it emphasizes another concept: making several versions of your work and then self-editing to choose the best.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One of Schwartz's experiments took place recently at \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/02/what-will-it-take-for-ipads-to-upend-teaching-and-learning/\" target=\"_blank\">Hillview Middle School\u003c/a> in Menlo Park, Calif. \"We took over their sixth grade and taught design thinking for five weeks,\" he says. Design thinking includes using empathy and fact-finding to understand people's needs, generate prototype solutions to problems and test them out.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Schwartz's study showed that students were able to apply the concepts they learned in social studies or science class to improve their performance on Posterlet or Photolet.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Larra Olson, who teaches humanities at Hillview, says her students loved playing the games. \"They were completely engaged,\" she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Olson said the project left her \"totally open\" to the potential of games as assessments, especially as an alternative to the traditional emphasis on grades and multiple-choice tests.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"I think you have to figure out the structure of the game so you're not 'leading the witness,' \" she said. \"But I think they're very powerful.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">\u003cem>Copyright 2014 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.\u003cimg src=\"http://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Tests+That+Look+Like+Video+Games&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\" alt=\"\">\u003c/em>\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"headTitle": "The MindShift Guide to Digital Games and Learning | MindShift | KQED News",
"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_37270\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-37270\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/08/6813669931_fb9abae43f_z-e1407474609262.jpg\" alt=\"Laurie Sullivan\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/08/6813669931_fb9abae43f_z-e1407474609262.jpg 640w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/08/6813669931_fb9abae43f_z-e1407474609262-400x225.jpg 400w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/08/6813669931_fb9abae43f_z-e1407474609262-320x180.jpg 320w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Laurie Sullivan\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Part 15 of \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/series/guide-to-games-and-learning/\" target=\"_blank\">MindShift’s Guide to Games and Learning\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"dropcap-serif\">Most people agree that implementing game-based learning makes sense for older students, but what about really young kids? Do screens have a place in early childhood education? How young is \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2011/03/screen-time-for-kids-is-it-learning-or-a-brain-drain/\" target=\"_blank\">too young for screen time\u003c/a>? If you have small children, you know that this is a hot topic among new parents. Some moms and dads believe that screen time will ruin their children. Others see tablets as an exceptional parenting gadget, a tool that can teach, distract, and educate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The American Academy Of Pediatrics (AAP) \u003ca href=\"http://www.aap.org/en-us/advocacy-and-policy/aap-health-initiatives/Pages/Media-and-Children.aspx\">recommends\u003c/a> that children younger than two years old have no screen time at all. Infants probably get more than enough screen time already, just being pushed in a stroller through the electronics aisle at Target or peaking over their parents’ shoulders. For older kids, AAP suggests one to two hours per day of electronic media. In addition, the AAP encourages parents to “establish ‘screen-free’ zones at home by making sure there are no televisions, computers or video games in children's bedrooms, and by turning off the TV during dinner.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But reducing the issue to an on/off switch oversimplifies things. When we understand the question of electronic media in such a polarized way, we are caught in the same way of thinking that can make screen time problematic. Tablets become like junk food, imagined as a temptation that children gravitate to but need to be protected from. On the contrary, it is only when electronic media is used to occupy children -- like a babysitter that provides parents or teachers with an hour or two of peace and quiet -- that justifying its use becomes more complicated.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Videos can often carry the same baggage. We sometimes think that the motivation for showing the class a movie is that the teacher’s too busy to properly plan for the day. Or maybe when the teacher needs an extra hour for grading and preparation, a documentary can keep the students occupied. Of course, this is not always the case. There are certainly good pedagogical reasons to use video content in class.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg class=\"size-thumbnail wp-image-35200 alignright\" style=\"border: 0\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/04/MindShiftGames-140x140.png\" alt=\"MindShiftGames\" width=\"140\" height=\"140\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Likewise, there are good pedagogical reasons to use video games and other electronic media in early childhood education. It is not about employing ed-tech for its own sake -- as if gadgets automatically make things more innovative or somehow better -- but rather about using tools that engage students toward specific learning objectives. Simply avoiding apps because of some nostalgia for a bygone era may cause educators to miss valuable early academic opportunities. The real question is not whether or not technology belongs in early childhood education, but rather, how can we leverage the efficiency of digital tools to best serve young learners.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It needs to happen carefully. Although the iOS and Android app stores are both full of content labeled as educational, it is not all good content. Let us look specifically at early literacy. Many apps drill and practice letter recognition and sounds, but few are grounded in good pedagogical practices. \u003ca href=\"http://www.slate.com/authors.lisa_guernsey.html\">Lisa Guernsey\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"http://www.slate.com/authors.michael_levine.html\">Michael Levine\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2012/12/13/kids_apps_and_ebooks_can_t_teach_them_to_read_without_parent_and_teacher.html\">wrote in Slate:\u003c/a> “Most of the top-selling reading apps appear to teach only the most basic of literacy skills. They lean toward easy-to-teach tasks, such as identifying the ABCs, but don’t address higher-level competencies that young children also need to become strong readers, such as developing vocabulary and understanding words in a narrative.” Just adding the alphabet to popular games like \u003ci>Angry Birds\u003c/i> or \u003ci>Temple Run\u003c/i> might make parents more willing to whip out their credit cards, but it won’t necessarily teach their children how to read. Good early childhood literacy options tend to blur the distinction between \"game\" and \"app,\" often looking more like apps than like traditional video games.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>Seeding Reading: Investing in Children’s Literacy in a Digital Age \u003c/i>is a \u003ca href=\"http://www.joanganzcooneycenter.org/2014/06/23/introducing-seeding-reading-investing-in-childrens-literacy-in-a-digital-age/\">new series\u003c/a> from \u003ca href=\"http://www.newamerica.org/\">New America\u003c/a>’s \u003ca href=\"http://education.newamerica.net/dashboard/\">Education Policy Program\u003c/a> and the \u003ca href=\"http://www.joanganzcooneycenter.org/\">Joan Ganz Cooney Center \u003c/a>at Sesame Workshop. The series (which has only just begun) looks at “early education and parenting initiatives that are harnessing new technologies.” It will also scrutinize “the marketplace of digital ‘reading’ products.” And bring information and analysis about “research that may illuminate how communications technologies and digital media are affecting the learning of reading, the act of reading, and the reading brain, in both good ways and bad.” This will become a valuable resource for early childhood educators that want to explore using games and apps in their classroom.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[contextly_sidebar id=\"SOnSuylJQtxvNmP7s3kgdbYIlNYYATwg\"]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the meantime, there are already some great apps out there. \u003ca href=\"https://learnwithhomer.com/\">Learn With Homer\u003c/a>, for example, is an iPad app created by Stephanie Dua, a well-known education reformer. It provides a comprehensive contextualized literacy curriculum. “I know there’s a lot of great research on how to teach children to read,” says Dua. “But when my own daughter wanted to learn, I couldn’t find any suitable materials for parents. That’s when \u003ca href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pt1ddPqafnU&feature=share&list=UUc22ePreVTXl7k29goQj1SQ\">\u003ci>Learn with Homer\u003c/i>\u003c/a> was born. It brings the best early learning techniques together in one app.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Learn With Homer does some of the same things a good kindergarten or pre-school teacher would. It is interdisciplinary in that it “combines learning to read with learning to understand the world.” What does that mean? Kids are not only learning what the letter “A” sounds like and that “alligator” starts with “A,” but also taking virtual “field trips” to the zoo, where they learn about alligators. They also draw pictures, record their own voice discussing the subject matter, listen to stories, and play mini games that emphasize the letters, sounds, and ideas.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In addition, there are less comprehensive options: apps and games that can supplement the great non-digital learning that’s already happening in early childhood education. For example, \u003ca href=\"http://www.forbes.com/sites/jordanshapiro/2014/08/06/your-five-year-old-can-learn-to-code-with-an-ipad-app/\">ScratchJr\u003c/a> is an iPad app from MIT’s Media Lab that lets 5-7 year-olds create games and stories using a simple drag and drop interface that is designed to provide the foundation for learning computer coding. Most of us consider coding to be part of computer science, but it is also a form of expression. It reminds us that \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/05/math-science-history-games-break-boundaries-between-subjects-interdisciplinary-learning/\">the distinction between STEM and ELA\u003c/a> is an arbitrary and often superficial one. Mitchel Resnick, head of MIT Media Labs Lifelong Kindergarten Research Group and one of the creators of Scratch and ScratchJr, \u003ca href=\"http://www.forbes.com/sites/jordanshapiro/2014/08/06/your-five-year-old-can-learn-to-code-with-an-ipad-app/\" target=\"_blank\">says\u003c/a>, “When people learn to write, they can share their ideas with the rest of the world. So too with coding.” Good kindergarten teachers understand that for young students, literacy is as much about creating a love of formal self-expression and articulation as it is about learning to write letters on lined paper. Both are necessary.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://kindoma.com/\">Kindoma \u003c/a>is another interesting app. It combines video conferencing, screen sharing, and reading into a single app. It was design with grandparents or traveling parents in mind. The idea was that you do not need to be right next to the child in order to both enjoy reading together. But there could also be many great classroom applications for this app. Imagine a fantastic twist on penpals. Kindergarten teachers could partner with other classrooms in other parts of the city, other states, even on opposite sides of the country. Students could have online reading buddies through Kindoma. Creative teachers will imagine tons of innovative ways to use this platform.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There are plenty of games aimed at younger kids that can be part of a balanced approach to technology in early childhood education. Check out games by \u003ca href=\"http://tocaboca.com/games/\">Toca Boca\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"http://www.launchpadtoys.com/toontastic/\">Toontastic\u003c/a>, or \u003ca href=\"http://motionmathgames.com/\">Motion Math\u003c/a>. Imagine ways to let these games supplement and enhance your well-worn curriculum.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It's especially important in a digitally connected world where everything is always on that we start teaching children the importance of text, language, and expression as early as possible. With so many options for stimulation and entertainment, it is all too easy to imagine a generation of children that grow up believing that YouTube videos replace books. One is not an alternative to the other; they are two different types of communication.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Using games and apps not only offers engaging opportunities for young students to acquire important academic skills, it also teaches those students to associate screens with refined cognitive skills. It reinforces the idea that screens are more than just distraction machines. Early education should provide a foundation for critical thinking, including thinking critically about technology and digital media.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>The \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/series/guide-to-games-and-learning/\" target=\"_blank\">MindShift Guide to Games and Learning\u003c/a> is made possible through the generous support of the \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/05/math-science-history-games-break-boundaries-between-subjects-interdisciplinary-learning/www.joanganzcooneycenter.org/\" target=\"_blank\">Joan Ganz Cooney Center\u003c/a> and is a project of the \u003ca href=\"http://www.joanganzcooneycenter.org/initiative/games-and-learning-publishing-council-analyzing-a-rising-sector/\" target=\"_blank\">Games and Learning Publishing Council\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_37270\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-37270\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/08/6813669931_fb9abae43f_z-e1407474609262.jpg\" alt=\"Laurie Sullivan\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/08/6813669931_fb9abae43f_z-e1407474609262.jpg 640w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/08/6813669931_fb9abae43f_z-e1407474609262-400x225.jpg 400w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/08/6813669931_fb9abae43f_z-e1407474609262-320x180.jpg 320w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Laurie Sullivan\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Part 15 of \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/series/guide-to-games-and-learning/\" target=\"_blank\">MindShift’s Guide to Games and Learning\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"dropcap-serif\">Most people agree that implementing game-based learning makes sense for older students, but what about really young kids? Do screens have a place in early childhood education? How young is \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2011/03/screen-time-for-kids-is-it-learning-or-a-brain-drain/\" target=\"_blank\">too young for screen time\u003c/a>? If you have small children, you know that this is a hot topic among new parents. Some moms and dads believe that screen time will ruin their children. Others see tablets as an exceptional parenting gadget, a tool that can teach, distract, and educate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The American Academy Of Pediatrics (AAP) \u003ca href=\"http://www.aap.org/en-us/advocacy-and-policy/aap-health-initiatives/Pages/Media-and-Children.aspx\">recommends\u003c/a> that children younger than two years old have no screen time at all. Infants probably get more than enough screen time already, just being pushed in a stroller through the electronics aisle at Target or peaking over their parents’ shoulders. For older kids, AAP suggests one to two hours per day of electronic media. In addition, the AAP encourages parents to “establish ‘screen-free’ zones at home by making sure there are no televisions, computers or video games in children's bedrooms, and by turning off the TV during dinner.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But reducing the issue to an on/off switch oversimplifies things. When we understand the question of electronic media in such a polarized way, we are caught in the same way of thinking that can make screen time problematic. Tablets become like junk food, imagined as a temptation that children gravitate to but need to be protected from. On the contrary, it is only when electronic media is used to occupy children -- like a babysitter that provides parents or teachers with an hour or two of peace and quiet -- that justifying its use becomes more complicated.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Videos can often carry the same baggage. We sometimes think that the motivation for showing the class a movie is that the teacher’s too busy to properly plan for the day. Or maybe when the teacher needs an extra hour for grading and preparation, a documentary can keep the students occupied. Of course, this is not always the case. There are certainly good pedagogical reasons to use video content in class.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg class=\"size-thumbnail wp-image-35200 alignright\" style=\"border: 0\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/04/MindShiftGames-140x140.png\" alt=\"MindShiftGames\" width=\"140\" height=\"140\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Likewise, there are good pedagogical reasons to use video games and other electronic media in early childhood education. It is not about employing ed-tech for its own sake -- as if gadgets automatically make things more innovative or somehow better -- but rather about using tools that engage students toward specific learning objectives. Simply avoiding apps because of some nostalgia for a bygone era may cause educators to miss valuable early academic opportunities. The real question is not whether or not technology belongs in early childhood education, but rather, how can we leverage the efficiency of digital tools to best serve young learners.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It needs to happen carefully. Although the iOS and Android app stores are both full of content labeled as educational, it is not all good content. Let us look specifically at early literacy. Many apps drill and practice letter recognition and sounds, but few are grounded in good pedagogical practices. \u003ca href=\"http://www.slate.com/authors.lisa_guernsey.html\">Lisa Guernsey\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"http://www.slate.com/authors.michael_levine.html\">Michael Levine\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2012/12/13/kids_apps_and_ebooks_can_t_teach_them_to_read_without_parent_and_teacher.html\">wrote in Slate:\u003c/a> “Most of the top-selling reading apps appear to teach only the most basic of literacy skills. They lean toward easy-to-teach tasks, such as identifying the ABCs, but don’t address higher-level competencies that young children also need to become strong readers, such as developing vocabulary and understanding words in a narrative.” Just adding the alphabet to popular games like \u003ci>Angry Birds\u003c/i> or \u003ci>Temple Run\u003c/i> might make parents more willing to whip out their credit cards, but it won’t necessarily teach their children how to read. Good early childhood literacy options tend to blur the distinction between \"game\" and \"app,\" often looking more like apps than like traditional video games.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>Seeding Reading: Investing in Children’s Literacy in a Digital Age \u003c/i>is a \u003ca href=\"http://www.joanganzcooneycenter.org/2014/06/23/introducing-seeding-reading-investing-in-childrens-literacy-in-a-digital-age/\">new series\u003c/a> from \u003ca href=\"http://www.newamerica.org/\">New America\u003c/a>’s \u003ca href=\"http://education.newamerica.net/dashboard/\">Education Policy Program\u003c/a> and the \u003ca href=\"http://www.joanganzcooneycenter.org/\">Joan Ganz Cooney Center \u003c/a>at Sesame Workshop. The series (which has only just begun) looks at “early education and parenting initiatives that are harnessing new technologies.” It will also scrutinize “the marketplace of digital ‘reading’ products.” And bring information and analysis about “research that may illuminate how communications technologies and digital media are affecting the learning of reading, the act of reading, and the reading brain, in both good ways and bad.” This will become a valuable resource for early childhood educators that want to explore using games and apps in their classroom.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the meantime, there are already some great apps out there. \u003ca href=\"https://learnwithhomer.com/\">Learn With Homer\u003c/a>, for example, is an iPad app created by Stephanie Dua, a well-known education reformer. It provides a comprehensive contextualized literacy curriculum. “I know there’s a lot of great research on how to teach children to read,” says Dua. “But when my own daughter wanted to learn, I couldn’t find any suitable materials for parents. That’s when \u003ca href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pt1ddPqafnU&feature=share&list=UUc22ePreVTXl7k29goQj1SQ\">\u003ci>Learn with Homer\u003c/i>\u003c/a> was born. It brings the best early learning techniques together in one app.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Learn With Homer does some of the same things a good kindergarten or pre-school teacher would. It is interdisciplinary in that it “combines learning to read with learning to understand the world.” What does that mean? Kids are not only learning what the letter “A” sounds like and that “alligator” starts with “A,” but also taking virtual “field trips” to the zoo, where they learn about alligators. They also draw pictures, record their own voice discussing the subject matter, listen to stories, and play mini games that emphasize the letters, sounds, and ideas.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In addition, there are less comprehensive options: apps and games that can supplement the great non-digital learning that’s already happening in early childhood education. For example, \u003ca href=\"http://www.forbes.com/sites/jordanshapiro/2014/08/06/your-five-year-old-can-learn-to-code-with-an-ipad-app/\">ScratchJr\u003c/a> is an iPad app from MIT’s Media Lab that lets 5-7 year-olds create games and stories using a simple drag and drop interface that is designed to provide the foundation for learning computer coding. Most of us consider coding to be part of computer science, but it is also a form of expression. It reminds us that \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/05/math-science-history-games-break-boundaries-between-subjects-interdisciplinary-learning/\">the distinction between STEM and ELA\u003c/a> is an arbitrary and often superficial one. Mitchel Resnick, head of MIT Media Labs Lifelong Kindergarten Research Group and one of the creators of Scratch and ScratchJr, \u003ca href=\"http://www.forbes.com/sites/jordanshapiro/2014/08/06/your-five-year-old-can-learn-to-code-with-an-ipad-app/\" target=\"_blank\">says\u003c/a>, “When people learn to write, they can share their ideas with the rest of the world. So too with coding.” Good kindergarten teachers understand that for young students, literacy is as much about creating a love of formal self-expression and articulation as it is about learning to write letters on lined paper. Both are necessary.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://kindoma.com/\">Kindoma \u003c/a>is another interesting app. It combines video conferencing, screen sharing, and reading into a single app. It was design with grandparents or traveling parents in mind. The idea was that you do not need to be right next to the child in order to both enjoy reading together. But there could also be many great classroom applications for this app. Imagine a fantastic twist on penpals. Kindergarten teachers could partner with other classrooms in other parts of the city, other states, even on opposite sides of the country. Students could have online reading buddies through Kindoma. Creative teachers will imagine tons of innovative ways to use this platform.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There are plenty of games aimed at younger kids that can be part of a balanced approach to technology in early childhood education. Check out games by \u003ca href=\"http://tocaboca.com/games/\">Toca Boca\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"http://www.launchpadtoys.com/toontastic/\">Toontastic\u003c/a>, or \u003ca href=\"http://motionmathgames.com/\">Motion Math\u003c/a>. Imagine ways to let these games supplement and enhance your well-worn curriculum.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It's especially important in a digitally connected world where everything is always on that we start teaching children the importance of text, language, and expression as early as possible. With so many options for stimulation and entertainment, it is all too easy to imagine a generation of children that grow up believing that YouTube videos replace books. One is not an alternative to the other; they are two different types of communication.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Using games and apps not only offers engaging opportunities for young students to acquire important academic skills, it also teaches those students to associate screens with refined cognitive skills. It reinforces the idea that screens are more than just distraction machines. Early education should provide a foundation for critical thinking, including thinking critically about technology and digital media.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>The \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/series/guide-to-games-and-learning/\" target=\"_blank\">MindShift Guide to Games and Learning\u003c/a> is made possible through the generous support of the \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/05/math-science-history-games-break-boundaries-between-subjects-interdisciplinary-learning/www.joanganzcooneycenter.org/\" target=\"_blank\">Joan Ganz Cooney Center\u003c/a> and is a project of the \u003ca href=\"http://www.joanganzcooneycenter.org/initiative/games-and-learning-publishing-council-analyzing-a-rising-sector/\" target=\"_blank\">Games and Learning Publishing Council\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"disqusTitle": "Welcome to Epic, A School Where Students Are Heroes On a Quest",
"title": "Welcome to Epic, A School Where Students Are Heroes On a Quest",
"headTitle": "MindShift | KQED News",
"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_37111\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-37111\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/08/062714_OaklandKQED01-e1407026268220.jpg\" alt='A \"tinkering\" day for students of Epic Charter school.' width=\"640\" height=\"360\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/08/062714_OaklandKQED01-e1407026268220.jpg 640w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/08/062714_OaklandKQED01-e1407026268220-400x225.jpg 400w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/08/062714_OaklandKQED01-e1407026268220-320x180.jpg 320w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A \"tinkering\" day for students of Epic Charter school.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp class=\"dropcap-serif\">Students starting in sixth grade at \u003ca href=\"http://efcps.org/epic/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Epic charter school\u003c/a> in Oakland, California will begin their first step on a hero’s journey. Over the course of three years, students will tackle complex quests, earn points, level up to more difficult tasks up until the time they graduate eighth grade.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The school opens August 25 in the Fruitvale neighborhood, a tough part of town known for its high crime rate. It's part of the \u003ca href=\"http://efcps.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Education For Change\u003c/a> charter management organization, which has seven other schools in the neighborhood. But Epic is different from its sister schools -- the whole school is one big game.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You're always in the game at Epic,” said Michael Hatcher, the school’s principal. “There's never a point where the game is not being played. And that's what we love.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The broad outline looks something like this: students are working to create their own definition of what it means to be a hero over three years of middle school. Those years are broken down into nine* trimesters, each with a different theme, and projects to complete related to those themes. The first trimester of every year will involve students examining man’s relationship to man. The second trimester will involve a challenge connected to man’s relationship to technology and the third trimester will be man’s relationship to nature.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">\"You're always in the game at Epic. There's never a point where the game is not being played. And that's what we love.\"\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>For example, in the first trimester a student’s heroic journey might involve trying to help Winston Smith, a character from George Orwell’s famous novel \u003cem>1984\u003c/em>, stop media manipulation and people’s perceptions of reality. The second semester might involve saving history from the impacts of a time travel machine that has just been invented. And the third trimester could find students facing a world where nature runs unchecked by man or technology and kids must learn to survive.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In all of these narratives, students are the protagonists, working their way through tasks, challenges and projects to build standards-based skills. They’re working together to solve this big, complex problem, and at the same time they're learning the content and skill mandated by the state of California.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Epic isn't exactly the first school of its kind. Game-based schools are popping up all over the country, including \u003ca href=\"http://www.instituteofplay.org/work/projects/quest-schools/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Quest to Learn in New York and Chicago\u003c/a>, and the\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/07/a-school-that-ditches-all-the-rules-but-not-the-rigor-game-based-school-playmaker/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"> Playmaker School in Los Angeles\u003c/a>. And the idea of using games as the platform and structure for learning has been catching on in classrooms across the country (read more in \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/series/guide-to-games-and-learning/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">MindShift's Guide to Games and Learning\u003c/a>.) What makes Epic singular is that entering the school immediately puts students inside one big holistic game, a thread that follows them until they graduate, and it revolves around a crucial social and emotional element.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hatcher created this particular construct for the school -- the hero's journey -- for a lot of reasons, but mostly as a means to get the kids from the neighborhood to see themselves differently.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Students in adolescence start telling the story of themselves; who am I, what do I do, and there's this narrative out there that people tell them about who they are,” Hatcher said. In Oakland, often the expectation is that African American and Latino students won’t succeed. Epic educators are challenging that narrative by giving students the chance to become the superheroes of their community. Hatcher wants his students to feel they can control their lives despite the random violence happening in the neighborhoods where they live.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>SCHOOL STRUCTURE\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In sixth grade and in its first year, school life at Epic will look fairly traditional as students get used to a new system. Educators at the school are hoping to help kids build the skills they need to eventually direct their own learning as they progress through the school. They call it, “norming the space” -- helping students understand the new kind of school they’ve entered. As they demonstrate responsibility and emotional maturity, students will get badges. Teachers can create competitions for badges on the fly, to help correct behavior they think is going off course. For example, if there are interpersonal issues, a teacher might ask all the students to compete for a compassion badge. When they can prove they're ready for more independence, students will be “released” into a more flexible model in which no traditional classes exist.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In flex time, teachers create digital playlists of basic content that students can access any time to show that they're developing certain skills. Teachers will also create projects that ask students to connect what they've learned with cognitive skills like synthesizing, analysis and evaluation. Throughout this time teachers can pull small groups and students will be able to ask questions. In the vision put forward by Epic educators, a fully realized student will set and achieve goals she’s defined, move at her own pace and and be responsible for staying on task.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>The students of Epic Charter School in Oakland:\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[gallery ids=\"37114,37115,37116,37117,37118,37119\"]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I know that sounds really idealistic,” said Epic teacher Reina Cabezas. “But that's where I want my kids to go. That's the vision I have as a teacher, that we're collaborators and that I don't have to pull you up to a group because you're growing into that self-directed person that is going to tell me, ‘I need help.’”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To create the sense of belonging that the Epic team feels is so crucial to a strong learning culture, students are grouped into “houses,” like in Harry Potter. Each student is on his or her own individual hero’s journey to finish middle school, but houses are integral to many of the games that are part of everything at the school. For example, houses might compete at lunch time over who can produce the least waste. Or, members of different houses might have to solve challenges focused on building their social and emotional skills, a core part of the curriculum.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>A DAY AT EPIC\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A typical day in sixth grade includes three blocks of time, 100 minutes in each block, dedicated to humanities, math/science, and engineering/design. The different houses rotate through those three blocks each day. During those chunks of time, some students could be working on computers to hone skills using programs like \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/08/in-the-bustling-interactive-classroom-a-place-for-digital-games/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">ST Math\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"http://www.readingplus.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Reading Plus\u003c/a>, others might be immersed in a project to demonstrate their knowledge. The teacher will constantly be working with students in small groups or individually. During each block of time all students will have an opportunity to use technology to practice their skills, work independently and be either challenged or supported by their teacher.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[contextly_sidebar id=\"iqANtCUUftNLBqwYtjfHUGgIJn6Fjsj4\"]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I think teachers are better at intervening with kids than tech,” Hatcher said. “So if the kid really needs help, the teacher's the person you want with him. If a kid really wants to be challenged, the teacher's the one to do it.” On the flip side, software programs can make practicing basic skills more convenient and efficient. Hatcher says the technology’s role is to plug knowledge gaps so students can spend time with teachers talking about big ideas.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As students work their way through projects in the different subject areas they’ll be earning points and badges to mark their learning. The assessment system at Epic is entirely based on the gaming concept of “leveling up,” or moving on to a more difficult task once the student is ready. Students don’t receive grades, they just move on to a more challenging concept when they’ve mastered something.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Throughout this process teachers are present to measure what students are learning against a rubric and help recognize if a child needs more support staying on task. Performance on individual skills will be transparent to students, teachers and parents alike, so a student’s progress shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone by the end of the year. And, instead of a report card, students will be asked to sit down with a teacher and a parent and explain what they’ve learned, where they excel and what needs more work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_37121\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003cimg class=\"wp-image-37121 size-full\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/08/EpicLeaders-e1407027753708.jpg\" alt=\"Epic's founding staff at the soon-to-be-completed site, from left: Michael Hatcher, principal; Reina Cabezas, teacher; Francis Abbatantuono, math coach.\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/08/EpicLeaders-e1407027753708.jpg 640w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/08/EpicLeaders-e1407027753708-400x300.jpg 400w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/08/EpicLeaders-e1407027753708-320x240.jpg 320w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Epic's founding staff at the soon-to-be-completed site, from left: Michael Hatcher, principal; Reina Cabezas, teacher; Francis Abbatantuono, director of personalized learning. (Tina Barseghian/MindShift)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>BUILDING INTRINSIC MOTIVATION\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One goal of Epic is to help students become self-directed, motivated learners. Most incoming students will be coming from traditional schools where they were told what to do and when. Epic’s teaching staff is expecting that it may be tough at the outset to help build up students’ intrinsic motivation to learn. They hope that through the continuous game play and competition, students will soon value their personal growth over any extrinsic motivator like badges or points.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Children at this age often times don't really know what they want and what they like,” said Francis Abbatantuono, the school’s director of personalized learning. “At first they're going for this badge, they're going for their house to gain points, but eventually it becomes, ‘Oh, I really like reading.’” He compared it to his own experience as a young boy participating in library reading challenges. He was drawn to the challenge because he could win a prize for reading a set number of books, but at the end of the competition he’d learned he loved to read.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It becomes part of who they are and then it doesn't really matter,” Abbatantuono said. “And they'll get the badge but they're not doing it for the badge anymore.” Hatcher sees this method of building motivation as an act of faith in students and their ability to be independent problem-solvers. “If we are very diligent about knowing who they are as people, and put challenges in front of them that they can solve autonomously, then it becomes intrinsic,” Hatcher said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>GUIDES ALONG THE WAY\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A core part of the Epic model includes young teaching assistant figures called “guides” in the Epic nomenclature. Most of them come from the same neighborhoods as the kids and are paying special attention to students’ social and emotional growth, helping them stay on track academically and taking note of what’s going on at home. These staffers are almost like older siblings, supportive figures students that follow a group of students all they way from sixth grade through graduation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You have to make a goal,” Hatcher said. “You have to have somebody helping you keep track of your goal.” Guides will visit students’ homes, check in with families, bring teachers into the community, and generally look out for the well-being of the child. To help students set their own goals, Epic teachers have translated the Common Core standards into student friendly language and laid them out on a gameboard. From the outset students know exactly what they are responsible for mastering and can play their “game” the way they want.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Why not tell them everything they're going to learn at the beginning of the year and as they learn it, they can check it off,” Hatcher said. “And then they can say, 'Later on we're going to be learning this.'” In his view there’s no reason to keep students in the dark about what’s on the horizon, and being transparent is a great way to give them ownership.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>THE PERVASIVE GAME\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One of the most interesting features about Epic, and the thing that really gets Hatcher and his colleagues excited, is the game they’ve baked into the school itself. “There is a game that is built into the school that you can choose to, or choose not to engage in,” Hatcher said. “It has to do with puzzles hidden in different places on campus.”\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">\"You go to other schools, the kids get to wander, do what they want, hang out, kick it, play, talk. You come to a public school, and they're like, you need to sit in this quadrant of this sector for five minutes and if you don't you get in trouble.”\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>This game doesn’t serve an educational purpose, the Epic team just thinks it's really cool and they’re hoping it will get kids excited to come to school everyday. Students will start to discover that something doesn’t quite add up about Epic and will need to solve puzzles, investigate gaps in logic and maybe even build some tools in engineering class to help solve the mystery. Participation isn’t required, but kids who figure out the puzzle could graduate as “superheroes.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>SCHOOL DESIGN\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The school building is cavernous, with lots of open space to facilitate exploration and collaboration within grades. Although Epic is trying to do away with the idea of grade levels, following more of a student-directed competency model, the building is divided into three hubs that roughly correlate to sixth, seventh and eighth grade. Each has its own maker space that students will use as part of their engineering and design classes, but also to create independent work, complete 3D printers and laser cutters.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The different class “houses” will even have their own \u003ca href=\"https://www.etsy.com/%E2%80%8E\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Etsy\u003c/a> stores where they can sell the products they’ve designed and made in the maker spaces. Houses can win points through games to spend at one another’s stores.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>All of the novel elements about the school are built in to help students identify as designers, builders, creators -- not just consumers. Hatcher and his team have visited many other schools as they gathered ideas, and found that at affluent private schools, students didn’t just have better access to cutting edge technologies and progressive teaching tactics -- they were also given autonomy and respect.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"You go to other schools, the kids get to wander, do what they want, hang out, kick it, play, talk,” Hatcher said. “You come to a public school, and they're like, you need to sit in this quadrant of this sector for five minutes and if you don't you get in trouble.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He wants Epic to be a place where students know they are trusted to make decisions about things big and small, partners in the learning experience.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>*An original version of this story stated Epic has 12 trimesters. There are only nine. We regret the error.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>-- With reporting by Tina Barseghian; images by Amanda Lucier for MindShift.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_37111\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-37111\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/08/062714_OaklandKQED01-e1407026268220.jpg\" alt='A \"tinkering\" day for students of Epic Charter school.' width=\"640\" height=\"360\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/08/062714_OaklandKQED01-e1407026268220.jpg 640w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/08/062714_OaklandKQED01-e1407026268220-400x225.jpg 400w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/08/062714_OaklandKQED01-e1407026268220-320x180.jpg 320w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A \"tinkering\" day for students of Epic Charter school.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp class=\"dropcap-serif\">Students starting in sixth grade at \u003ca href=\"http://efcps.org/epic/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Epic charter school\u003c/a> in Oakland, California will begin their first step on a hero’s journey. Over the course of three years, students will tackle complex quests, earn points, level up to more difficult tasks up until the time they graduate eighth grade.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The school opens August 25 in the Fruitvale neighborhood, a tough part of town known for its high crime rate. It's part of the \u003ca href=\"http://efcps.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Education For Change\u003c/a> charter management organization, which has seven other schools in the neighborhood. But Epic is different from its sister schools -- the whole school is one big game.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You're always in the game at Epic,” said Michael Hatcher, the school’s principal. “There's never a point where the game is not being played. And that's what we love.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The broad outline looks something like this: students are working to create their own definition of what it means to be a hero over three years of middle school. Those years are broken down into nine* trimesters, each with a different theme, and projects to complete related to those themes. The first trimester of every year will involve students examining man’s relationship to man. The second trimester will involve a challenge connected to man’s relationship to technology and the third trimester will be man’s relationship to nature.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">\"You're always in the game at Epic. There's never a point where the game is not being played. And that's what we love.\"\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>For example, in the first trimester a student’s heroic journey might involve trying to help Winston Smith, a character from George Orwell’s famous novel \u003cem>1984\u003c/em>, stop media manipulation and people’s perceptions of reality. The second semester might involve saving history from the impacts of a time travel machine that has just been invented. And the third trimester could find students facing a world where nature runs unchecked by man or technology and kids must learn to survive.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In all of these narratives, students are the protagonists, working their way through tasks, challenges and projects to build standards-based skills. They’re working together to solve this big, complex problem, and at the same time they're learning the content and skill mandated by the state of California.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Epic isn't exactly the first school of its kind. Game-based schools are popping up all over the country, including \u003ca href=\"http://www.instituteofplay.org/work/projects/quest-schools/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Quest to Learn in New York and Chicago\u003c/a>, and the\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/07/a-school-that-ditches-all-the-rules-but-not-the-rigor-game-based-school-playmaker/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"> Playmaker School in Los Angeles\u003c/a>. And the idea of using games as the platform and structure for learning has been catching on in classrooms across the country (read more in \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/series/guide-to-games-and-learning/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">MindShift's Guide to Games and Learning\u003c/a>.) What makes Epic singular is that entering the school immediately puts students inside one big holistic game, a thread that follows them until they graduate, and it revolves around a crucial social and emotional element.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hatcher created this particular construct for the school -- the hero's journey -- for a lot of reasons, but mostly as a means to get the kids from the neighborhood to see themselves differently.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Students in adolescence start telling the story of themselves; who am I, what do I do, and there's this narrative out there that people tell them about who they are,” Hatcher said. In Oakland, often the expectation is that African American and Latino students won’t succeed. Epic educators are challenging that narrative by giving students the chance to become the superheroes of their community. Hatcher wants his students to feel they can control their lives despite the random violence happening in the neighborhoods where they live.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>SCHOOL STRUCTURE\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In sixth grade and in its first year, school life at Epic will look fairly traditional as students get used to a new system. Educators at the school are hoping to help kids build the skills they need to eventually direct their own learning as they progress through the school. They call it, “norming the space” -- helping students understand the new kind of school they’ve entered. As they demonstrate responsibility and emotional maturity, students will get badges. Teachers can create competitions for badges on the fly, to help correct behavior they think is going off course. For example, if there are interpersonal issues, a teacher might ask all the students to compete for a compassion badge. When they can prove they're ready for more independence, students will be “released” into a more flexible model in which no traditional classes exist.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In flex time, teachers create digital playlists of basic content that students can access any time to show that they're developing certain skills. Teachers will also create projects that ask students to connect what they've learned with cognitive skills like synthesizing, analysis and evaluation. Throughout this time teachers can pull small groups and students will be able to ask questions. In the vision put forward by Epic educators, a fully realized student will set and achieve goals she’s defined, move at her own pace and and be responsible for staying on task.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>The students of Epic Charter School in Oakland:\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I know that sounds really idealistic,” said Epic teacher Reina Cabezas. “But that's where I want my kids to go. That's the vision I have as a teacher, that we're collaborators and that I don't have to pull you up to a group because you're growing into that self-directed person that is going to tell me, ‘I need help.’”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To create the sense of belonging that the Epic team feels is so crucial to a strong learning culture, students are grouped into “houses,” like in Harry Potter. Each student is on his or her own individual hero’s journey to finish middle school, but houses are integral to many of the games that are part of everything at the school. For example, houses might compete at lunch time over who can produce the least waste. Or, members of different houses might have to solve challenges focused on building their social and emotional skills, a core part of the curriculum.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>A DAY AT EPIC\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A typical day in sixth grade includes three blocks of time, 100 minutes in each block, dedicated to humanities, math/science, and engineering/design. The different houses rotate through those three blocks each day. During those chunks of time, some students could be working on computers to hone skills using programs like \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/08/in-the-bustling-interactive-classroom-a-place-for-digital-games/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">ST Math\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"http://www.readingplus.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Reading Plus\u003c/a>, others might be immersed in a project to demonstrate their knowledge. The teacher will constantly be working with students in small groups or individually. During each block of time all students will have an opportunity to use technology to practice their skills, work independently and be either challenged or supported by their teacher.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I think teachers are better at intervening with kids than tech,” Hatcher said. “So if the kid really needs help, the teacher's the person you want with him. If a kid really wants to be challenged, the teacher's the one to do it.” On the flip side, software programs can make practicing basic skills more convenient and efficient. Hatcher says the technology’s role is to plug knowledge gaps so students can spend time with teachers talking about big ideas.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As students work their way through projects in the different subject areas they’ll be earning points and badges to mark their learning. The assessment system at Epic is entirely based on the gaming concept of “leveling up,” or moving on to a more difficult task once the student is ready. Students don’t receive grades, they just move on to a more challenging concept when they’ve mastered something.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Throughout this process teachers are present to measure what students are learning against a rubric and help recognize if a child needs more support staying on task. Performance on individual skills will be transparent to students, teachers and parents alike, so a student’s progress shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone by the end of the year. And, instead of a report card, students will be asked to sit down with a teacher and a parent and explain what they’ve learned, where they excel and what needs more work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_37121\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003cimg class=\"wp-image-37121 size-full\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/08/EpicLeaders-e1407027753708.jpg\" alt=\"Epic's founding staff at the soon-to-be-completed site, from left: Michael Hatcher, principal; Reina Cabezas, teacher; Francis Abbatantuono, math coach.\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/08/EpicLeaders-e1407027753708.jpg 640w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/08/EpicLeaders-e1407027753708-400x300.jpg 400w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/08/EpicLeaders-e1407027753708-320x240.jpg 320w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Epic's founding staff at the soon-to-be-completed site, from left: Michael Hatcher, principal; Reina Cabezas, teacher; Francis Abbatantuono, director of personalized learning. (Tina Barseghian/MindShift)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>BUILDING INTRINSIC MOTIVATION\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One goal of Epic is to help students become self-directed, motivated learners. Most incoming students will be coming from traditional schools where they were told what to do and when. Epic’s teaching staff is expecting that it may be tough at the outset to help build up students’ intrinsic motivation to learn. They hope that through the continuous game play and competition, students will soon value their personal growth over any extrinsic motivator like badges or points.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Children at this age often times don't really know what they want and what they like,” said Francis Abbatantuono, the school’s director of personalized learning. “At first they're going for this badge, they're going for their house to gain points, but eventually it becomes, ‘Oh, I really like reading.’” He compared it to his own experience as a young boy participating in library reading challenges. He was drawn to the challenge because he could win a prize for reading a set number of books, but at the end of the competition he’d learned he loved to read.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It becomes part of who they are and then it doesn't really matter,” Abbatantuono said. “And they'll get the badge but they're not doing it for the badge anymore.” Hatcher sees this method of building motivation as an act of faith in students and their ability to be independent problem-solvers. “If we are very diligent about knowing who they are as people, and put challenges in front of them that they can solve autonomously, then it becomes intrinsic,” Hatcher said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>GUIDES ALONG THE WAY\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A core part of the Epic model includes young teaching assistant figures called “guides” in the Epic nomenclature. Most of them come from the same neighborhoods as the kids and are paying special attention to students’ social and emotional growth, helping them stay on track academically and taking note of what’s going on at home. These staffers are almost like older siblings, supportive figures students that follow a group of students all they way from sixth grade through graduation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You have to make a goal,” Hatcher said. “You have to have somebody helping you keep track of your goal.” Guides will visit students’ homes, check in with families, bring teachers into the community, and generally look out for the well-being of the child. To help students set their own goals, Epic teachers have translated the Common Core standards into student friendly language and laid them out on a gameboard. From the outset students know exactly what they are responsible for mastering and can play their “game” the way they want.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Why not tell them everything they're going to learn at the beginning of the year and as they learn it, they can check it off,” Hatcher said. “And then they can say, 'Later on we're going to be learning this.'” In his view there’s no reason to keep students in the dark about what’s on the horizon, and being transparent is a great way to give them ownership.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>THE PERVASIVE GAME\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One of the most interesting features about Epic, and the thing that really gets Hatcher and his colleagues excited, is the game they’ve baked into the school itself. “There is a game that is built into the school that you can choose to, or choose not to engage in,” Hatcher said. “It has to do with puzzles hidden in different places on campus.”\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">\"You go to other schools, the kids get to wander, do what they want, hang out, kick it, play, talk. You come to a public school, and they're like, you need to sit in this quadrant of this sector for five minutes and if you don't you get in trouble.”\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>This game doesn’t serve an educational purpose, the Epic team just thinks it's really cool and they’re hoping it will get kids excited to come to school everyday. Students will start to discover that something doesn’t quite add up about Epic and will need to solve puzzles, investigate gaps in logic and maybe even build some tools in engineering class to help solve the mystery. Participation isn’t required, but kids who figure out the puzzle could graduate as “superheroes.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>SCHOOL DESIGN\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The school building is cavernous, with lots of open space to facilitate exploration and collaboration within grades. Although Epic is trying to do away with the idea of grade levels, following more of a student-directed competency model, the building is divided into three hubs that roughly correlate to sixth, seventh and eighth grade. Each has its own maker space that students will use as part of their engineering and design classes, but also to create independent work, complete 3D printers and laser cutters.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The different class “houses” will even have their own \u003ca href=\"https://www.etsy.com/%E2%80%8E\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Etsy\u003c/a> stores where they can sell the products they’ve designed and made in the maker spaces. Houses can win points through games to spend at one another’s stores.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>All of the novel elements about the school are built in to help students identify as designers, builders, creators -- not just consumers. Hatcher and his team have visited many other schools as they gathered ideas, and found that at affluent private schools, students didn’t just have better access to cutting edge technologies and progressive teaching tactics -- they were also given autonomy and respect.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"You go to other schools, the kids get to wander, do what they want, hang out, kick it, play, talk,” Hatcher said. “You come to a public school, and they're like, you need to sit in this quadrant of this sector for five minutes and if you don't you get in trouble.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He wants Epic to be a place where students know they are trusted to make decisions about things big and small, partners in the learning experience.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>*An original version of this story stated Epic has 12 trimesters. There are only nine. We regret the error.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>-- With reporting by Tina Barseghian; images by Amanda Lucier for MindShift.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"headTitle": "The MindShift Guide to Digital Games and Learning | MindShift | KQED News",
"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_37059\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003cimg src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/08/RS7421_5958586280_bf751bbddb_b-scr-e1406917583442.jpg\" alt=\"NASA\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" class=\"size-full wp-image-37059\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/08/RS7421_5958586280_bf751bbddb_b-scr-e1406917583442.jpg 640w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/08/RS7421_5958586280_bf751bbddb_b-scr-e1406917583442-400x225.jpg 400w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/08/RS7421_5958586280_bf751bbddb_b-scr-e1406917583442-320x180.jpg 320w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">NASA\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Part 14 of \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/series/guide-to-games-and-learning/\" target=\"_blank\">MindShift’s Guide to Games and Learning\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"dropcap-serif\">If there’s one thing we know for sure, it's that today’s technologies will one day be obsolete -- we shouldn’t be too enamored with any particular educational tool. Teachers will always play the most important role in the classroom.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Although ed-tech has a lot to offer, even the most interactive, adaptive software cannot provide the social and emotional benefits that a good teacher can. Early psychoanalytic research already made it clear at the beginning of the 20th century: the relationship between developing children and adult figures is important. Good teachers (especially in the younger grades) understand that they are responsible not only for transmitting new ideas and information, but also for creating a collaborative classroom structure that models, reinforces, and encourages positive social behaviors.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Teaching and learning are not simply about academic content and retention. Don’t imagine game-based learning as an innovative content distribution system. Instead, imagine it as a way to move out of a high-stakes testing mentality and away from a top-down pedagogy. Because they present \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/05/how-games-based-learning-teaches-problem-solving-in-context/\" target=\"_blank\">content in context\u003c/a>, video games encourage students to understand knowledge \u003ca href=\"http://www.forbes.com/sites/jordanshapiro/2014/07/31/our-schools-are-un-american-video-games-can-fix-that/\" target=\"_blank\">not as data to be downloaded into a biological hard drive\u003c/a>, but rather as the collective wisdom that enables one thing to interact with another in meaningful ways.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Of course, such a lofty goal cannot be accomplished with video games alone. It will also require that teachers work directly with students. It requires that teachers move away from standardization and meet each student as a unique individual. The best learning happens when we abandon the “sage on the stage” classroom model and leave behind our reliance on set curricula. When education becomes rigidly homogenized, the change in student body from year to year, or semester to semester, is tantamount to kids taking turns playing an algorithmically predetermined arcade game.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg class=\"size-thumbnail wp-image-35200 alignright\" style=\"border: 0\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/04/MindShiftGames-140x140.png\" alt=\"MindShiftGames\" width=\"140\" height=\"140\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Although many people worry that game-based learning will lead to an increasingly standardized pedagogy, the best implementations do the exact opposite. They make differentiated instruction easier and more efficient. Teachers can use games as a supplement that enables increased one-on-one learning between teacher and student.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I visited one kindergarten classroom where \u003ca href=\"http://www.mindresearch.net/programs/\">ST Math\u003c/a> was part of the curriculum. The kids called it Jiji math because of the adorable animated penguin. Jiji the penguin is not only the ST Math mascot, but also a critical part of the program’s pedagogy. Created by the MIND Research Institute, ST (spatial temporal) Math offers a playful game-based program that teaches mathematical concepts without using words.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>ST Math has all the bells and whistles of cutting-edge software but it is not revolutionary. That is, despite being digital, it remains grounded in three classic principles of good teaching: interactivity, informative feedback, and intrinsic motivation. I spoke to the company’s founder, Dr. Matthew Peterson, to understand how these three principles work in practice.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>1. Interactivity.\u003c/b> Learning needs to be a dialogue. The child needs to come before the curriculum. At the same time, learning needs to be interactive because, as Dr. Peterson explains, “they need to own their own solutions.\" That's why multiple choice doesn’t work; it puts assessment before learning. If the student doesn’t generate his or her own answers, the quality of retention is severely debilitated.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>2. Informative feedback. \u003c/b>Obviously video games and computer software offer substantially more opportunities for interactivity than the old fashioned textbook, or even the supplemental workbooks. But the majority of educational games are simply electronic tests with animated gold stars and smiley faces.They lack informative feedback, which is different from simple rewards because it is \u003ca href=\"http://www.forbes.com/sites/jordanshapiro/2012/11/23/mario-brothers-and-level-up-leadership-social-entrepreneurship-gamification-and-religion/\">transformational rather than transactional.\u003c/a> Unlike points and grades, which simply tell students whether they're right or wrong, informative feedback provides instant explanations about \u003cem>why\u003c/em> an answer is right or wrong. ST Math uses Jiji to provide informative feedback. When the answer is right the penguin can move across the screen; when it's wrong, he can’t.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>3. Intrinsic motivation. \u003c/b>When informative feedback works, students are no longer motivated by transactional rewards. Instead, they are intrinsically motivated to solve the problems, not to pass the test. Dr. Peterson explains this using the example of the Rubik’s Cube. The classic puzzle toy has nothing to do with gold stars, nor smiley faces, nor coins. Instead, one twists the cube because of the pure intrinsic pleasure you get from seeing all the colors line up.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[contextly_sidebar id=\"mX90QMzi6UScXar9WH631KlCPqbTYGMO\"]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>ST Math combines instruction, practice, and assessment so that they're always happening simultaneously, and it can be used even in classrooms with few computers. In the kindergarten classroom I visited, there were only four laptops. They were set up at a table near the “cozy corner.” This was just one station in a room full of math themed choices. There were manipulatives at another table. Worksheets and art supplies at others.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The students were lively. Some were following instructions with the manipulatives. Some were tracing numbers on worksheets. Some were drawing number-themed pictures. And some were playing “Jiji Math” at the table of laptop computers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So how does the teacher incorporate the games into the curriculum? “Video games allow me to keep some students working on academic content while I give other students personal attention,” said Lisa Pack, the classroom teacher. She made her rounds, moving from one station to another, giving focused attention to each student that wasn’t working with Jiji. Then, after 15 or 20 minutes, she rotated some students off Jiji and moved others on. She immediately worked with the students who had been working with Jiji and then she continued to make rounds of the room. Sometimes she worked directly with groups of students, other times with individuals.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It was clear that she knew exactly what each student needed and was able to provide it in an individual way. ST Math was like a classroom assistant. It wasn’t doing the teaching, but rather reinforcing the concepts that had already been taught. The games were classroom management tools, providing engaging practice for some students while she worked with others. They enabled more personalized face-to-face instruction by making it more efficient.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In many of the classrooms I visit, digital games are being used in the same way. They're just one activity in a room full of diverse learning options. When thinking about game-based learning, we don’t always have to imagine the games at the center of the classroom. The games can belong on the margins, supplementing everyday teaching practices and providing the tools that enable differentiated instruction.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>The \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/series/guide-to-games-and-learning/\" target=\"_blank\">MindShift Guide to Games and Learning\u003c/a> is made possible through the generous support of the \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/05/math-science-history-games-break-boundaries-between-subjects-interdisciplinary-learning/www.joanganzcooneycenter.org/\" target=\"_blank\">Joan Ganz Cooney Center\u003c/a> and is a project of the \u003ca href=\"http://www.joanganzcooneycenter.org/initiative/games-and-learning-publishing-council-analyzing-a-rising-sector/\" target=\"_blank\">Games and Learning Publishing Council\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_37059\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003cimg src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/08/RS7421_5958586280_bf751bbddb_b-scr-e1406917583442.jpg\" alt=\"NASA\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" class=\"size-full wp-image-37059\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/08/RS7421_5958586280_bf751bbddb_b-scr-e1406917583442.jpg 640w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/08/RS7421_5958586280_bf751bbddb_b-scr-e1406917583442-400x225.jpg 400w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/08/RS7421_5958586280_bf751bbddb_b-scr-e1406917583442-320x180.jpg 320w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">NASA\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Part 14 of \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/series/guide-to-games-and-learning/\" target=\"_blank\">MindShift’s Guide to Games and Learning\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"dropcap-serif\">If there’s one thing we know for sure, it's that today’s technologies will one day be obsolete -- we shouldn’t be too enamored with any particular educational tool. Teachers will always play the most important role in the classroom.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Although ed-tech has a lot to offer, even the most interactive, adaptive software cannot provide the social and emotional benefits that a good teacher can. Early psychoanalytic research already made it clear at the beginning of the 20th century: the relationship between developing children and adult figures is important. Good teachers (especially in the younger grades) understand that they are responsible not only for transmitting new ideas and information, but also for creating a collaborative classroom structure that models, reinforces, and encourages positive social behaviors.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Teaching and learning are not simply about academic content and retention. Don’t imagine game-based learning as an innovative content distribution system. Instead, imagine it as a way to move out of a high-stakes testing mentality and away from a top-down pedagogy. Because they present \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/05/how-games-based-learning-teaches-problem-solving-in-context/\" target=\"_blank\">content in context\u003c/a>, video games encourage students to understand knowledge \u003ca href=\"http://www.forbes.com/sites/jordanshapiro/2014/07/31/our-schools-are-un-american-video-games-can-fix-that/\" target=\"_blank\">not as data to be downloaded into a biological hard drive\u003c/a>, but rather as the collective wisdom that enables one thing to interact with another in meaningful ways.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Of course, such a lofty goal cannot be accomplished with video games alone. It will also require that teachers work directly with students. It requires that teachers move away from standardization and meet each student as a unique individual. The best learning happens when we abandon the “sage on the stage” classroom model and leave behind our reliance on set curricula. When education becomes rigidly homogenized, the change in student body from year to year, or semester to semester, is tantamount to kids taking turns playing an algorithmically predetermined arcade game.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg class=\"size-thumbnail wp-image-35200 alignright\" style=\"border: 0\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/04/MindShiftGames-140x140.png\" alt=\"MindShiftGames\" width=\"140\" height=\"140\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Although many people worry that game-based learning will lead to an increasingly standardized pedagogy, the best implementations do the exact opposite. They make differentiated instruction easier and more efficient. Teachers can use games as a supplement that enables increased one-on-one learning between teacher and student.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I visited one kindergarten classroom where \u003ca href=\"http://www.mindresearch.net/programs/\">ST Math\u003c/a> was part of the curriculum. The kids called it Jiji math because of the adorable animated penguin. Jiji the penguin is not only the ST Math mascot, but also a critical part of the program’s pedagogy. Created by the MIND Research Institute, ST (spatial temporal) Math offers a playful game-based program that teaches mathematical concepts without using words.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>ST Math has all the bells and whistles of cutting-edge software but it is not revolutionary. That is, despite being digital, it remains grounded in three classic principles of good teaching: interactivity, informative feedback, and intrinsic motivation. I spoke to the company’s founder, Dr. Matthew Peterson, to understand how these three principles work in practice.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>1. Interactivity.\u003c/b> Learning needs to be a dialogue. The child needs to come before the curriculum. At the same time, learning needs to be interactive because, as Dr. Peterson explains, “they need to own their own solutions.\" That's why multiple choice doesn’t work; it puts assessment before learning. If the student doesn’t generate his or her own answers, the quality of retention is severely debilitated.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>2. Informative feedback. \u003c/b>Obviously video games and computer software offer substantially more opportunities for interactivity than the old fashioned textbook, or even the supplemental workbooks. But the majority of educational games are simply electronic tests with animated gold stars and smiley faces.They lack informative feedback, which is different from simple rewards because it is \u003ca href=\"http://www.forbes.com/sites/jordanshapiro/2012/11/23/mario-brothers-and-level-up-leadership-social-entrepreneurship-gamification-and-religion/\">transformational rather than transactional.\u003c/a> Unlike points and grades, which simply tell students whether they're right or wrong, informative feedback provides instant explanations about \u003cem>why\u003c/em> an answer is right or wrong. ST Math uses Jiji to provide informative feedback. When the answer is right the penguin can move across the screen; when it's wrong, he can’t.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>3. Intrinsic motivation. \u003c/b>When informative feedback works, students are no longer motivated by transactional rewards. Instead, they are intrinsically motivated to solve the problems, not to pass the test. Dr. Peterson explains this using the example of the Rubik’s Cube. The classic puzzle toy has nothing to do with gold stars, nor smiley faces, nor coins. Instead, one twists the cube because of the pure intrinsic pleasure you get from seeing all the colors line up.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>ST Math combines instruction, practice, and assessment so that they're always happening simultaneously, and it can be used even in classrooms with few computers. In the kindergarten classroom I visited, there were only four laptops. They were set up at a table near the “cozy corner.” This was just one station in a room full of math themed choices. There were manipulatives at another table. Worksheets and art supplies at others.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The students were lively. Some were following instructions with the manipulatives. Some were tracing numbers on worksheets. Some were drawing number-themed pictures. And some were playing “Jiji Math” at the table of laptop computers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So how does the teacher incorporate the games into the curriculum? “Video games allow me to keep some students working on academic content while I give other students personal attention,” said Lisa Pack, the classroom teacher. She made her rounds, moving from one station to another, giving focused attention to each student that wasn’t working with Jiji. Then, after 15 or 20 minutes, she rotated some students off Jiji and moved others on. She immediately worked with the students who had been working with Jiji and then she continued to make rounds of the room. Sometimes she worked directly with groups of students, other times with individuals.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It was clear that she knew exactly what each student needed and was able to provide it in an individual way. ST Math was like a classroom assistant. It wasn’t doing the teaching, but rather reinforcing the concepts that had already been taught. The games were classroom management tools, providing engaging practice for some students while she worked with others. They enabled more personalized face-to-face instruction by making it more efficient.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In many of the classrooms I visit, digital games are being used in the same way. They're just one activity in a room full of diverse learning options. When thinking about game-based learning, we don’t always have to imagine the games at the center of the classroom. The games can belong on the margins, supplementing everyday teaching practices and providing the tools that enable differentiated instruction.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_36821\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-36821\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/07/j84a8474_0.jpg\" alt=\"Quest to Learn\" width=\"640\" height=\"427\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/07/j84a8474_0.jpg 640w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/07/j84a8474_0-400x267.jpg 400w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/07/j84a8474_0-320x214.jpg 320w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Quest to Learn\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Part 13 of \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/series/guide-to-games-and-learning/\" target=\"_blank\">MindShift's Guide to Games and Learning\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"dropcap-serif\">In education, it seems as if innovation and revolution play like the song of the Sirens in a culture of perpetual obsolescence. It seems as if we’ve got an unhealthy fetish for new-ness, indiscriminately choosing the convenient disposability of shrink-wrap over the sustainability of the well-worn.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Digital games can be amazing tools, but only when used to make it easier to \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/05/how-games-based-learning-teaches-problem-solving-in-context/\">contextualize the gifts\u003c/a> we’ve received from Shakespeare, Socrates, Euclid, and others. The thing about tools is that their strength is usually derived from the way they approach a problem rather than in the particularity of the solution they offer. For example, consider the hammer: a great technological innovation that our human ancestors imagined more than 2 million years ago. What made it revolutionary was not so much in the material from which it was assembled, nor the particular object it bashed. Instead, the hammer was revolutionary because it forever transformed human experience by introducing the possibility of striking, and therefore altering, our natural surroundings. It changed the way we look at things.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still today, a great deal of our teaching is essentially grounded in teaching the perspective that early tools enabled. We want our students to know that humans have the capacity to shape their own world. We want them to provide them with the skills necessary to do so. We want to teach them how to utilize the ways of knowing that were made possible through the technological innovations that enabled, produced, and shaped the civilizations of the past and the present.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Our current civilization is built on information technologies. Smartphones, the internet, and video games are all simply hunks of machinery that become special because they introduce new interactive narrative structures. They introduce non-linear ways of thinking about the world and organizing information.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg class=\"size-thumbnail wp-image-35200 alignright\" style=\"border: 0\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/04/MindShiftGames-140x140.png\" alt=\"MindShiftGames\" width=\"140\" height=\"140\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When we look at a network, or a jumble of hyperlinks, or an interactive simulation like a video game, it immediately appears chaotic. This is because we are conditioned to make sense of it using the habitual linear narrative traditions that have defined “literacy” for a few thousand years. We try to identify beginnings, middles, and ends. But new narrative conventions require a different form of literacy: \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/07/games-can-advance-education-a-conversation-with-james-paul-gee/\">systems literacy\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Systems literacy is playful and inter-subjective. It defines order according to the way things interact with one another. It privileges the quality of the relationship between nodes rather than trying to figure out what is first, last, and in-between (value judgments). Systems work more like a sandboxes than ambitious ladders to the top.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the current world, our schools should be focused on teaching both linear and non-linear ways of knowing. We need to remember that the goal of technology is ultimately to help us mentor our youth so that they become familiar with the many ways of knowing that humanity has discovered. It's not just to develop proficiency with today’s tools while maintaining yesterday’s predominant thinking.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This shift is precisely what seems to be happening at the \u003ca href=\"http://q2l.org/\">Quest To Learn School\u003c/a>. Curriculum experts and game designers work together to reimagine what school might look like if it drew its inspiration from video games. The New York City public school employs a standards-based integrated curriculum that “mimics the action and design principles of games by generating a compelling ‘need to know’ in the classroom,” as they describe it. The goal: to intrinsically motivate kids toward mastery. Students seek out knowledge because they need to know it in order to complete a project based task.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Quest To Learn doesn’t set out to change the learning objectives, but rather the process through which they are achieved. Of course, process and product are indistinct. Transform the shape of the container and you simultaneously alter the the kind of content that can fit inside. Sometimes you don’t notice all the implications just by looking at the surface. Students at the Quest To Learn School “encounter a series of increasingly complex, narrative challenges, games or quests, where learning, knowledge sharing, feedback, reflection and next steps emerge as a natural function of play.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>GAMES IN PRACTICE\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When I visited Quest To Learn, I saw a school that looked very similar to any other school, except every student seemed engaged, empowered, and motivated. It wasn’t what I expected from a place that most people describe as “the video game school.” There weren’t screens all over the place. No fingers pounding game controllers. I didn’t see tons of gadgets or gizmos. But I did see a curriculum that was designed to approach from a video game perspective. The organizational structure through which material was presented was game-like.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_36819\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003cimg class=\"size-large wp-image-36819\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/07/PANO_20140624_131530-640x233.jpg\" alt=\"Jordan Shapiro/MindShift\" width=\"640\" height=\"233\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Quest to Learn School: Jordan Shapiro/MindShift\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“Failure is reframed as iteration” reads one poster that’s hanging by the elevators. Another explains how to break down complex ideas: “Systems are all around us -- games are playful systems.” Students are encouraged to analyze, interpret, and articulate using categories like space, components, rules, challenges, core mechanics, and goals. They apply this model, or other game-based systems-thinking models, to almost everything.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In one class, kids play \u003ca href=\"http://www.instituteofplay.org/work/projects/print-play-games-2/socratic-smackdown/\">Socratic Smackdown\u003c/a>. Eighth-grade English Language Arts Teacher/Designer Rebecca Grodner created the game to teach the building blocks of argumentation while simultaneously making a space where students practice and assess their peers’ conversational etiquette. Students might earn points for using supporting evidence or playing devil’s advocate. They lose points for interrupting or insulting other players. They’re intrinsically motivated to learn the components of rhetoric, to understand how they function within a discursive system, and to be able to use them in everyday contexts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[contextly_sidebar id=\"43245470412e360d3a276e622d83cd20\"]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In another class, the students play Rock-onimoes, a geology-themed version of dominoes that asks players to make connections by using words like sedimentary and magma. Again, they need to understand the relationships between the geological concepts. Success is a product of their to ability use complex concepts in context, not to memorize and regurgitate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Quest To Learn shows us what happens when the old “factory model” of organization is replaced with a systems-based game-like paradigm. They call it games, systems, or design. That’s code for understanding content in context -- and for seeing the interconnectedness between elements.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We need to do a better job at giving children and young people opportunities to rise, which means developing systems that enable that rise -- that enable them to move across networks and to engage in really hard problems with relevant resources. Games are all about creating spaces of possibility, where players feel they can do anything,” \u003ca href=\"http://www.instituteofplay.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/QuestToLearn-DevelopingTheSchoolForDigitalKids.pdf\">writes Katie Salen\u003c/a>, who helped launch and design Quest To Learn while she was the founding executive director of the \u003ca href=\"http://www.instituteofplay.org/\">Institute of Play\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Systems are all about connections, networks, and the ways in which nodes relate to one another. This focus on connections might also be one of the building blocks of citizenry, humanity, and social community. Perhaps this is why one of Quest To Learn’s core values is “Collaboration Matters.” You can see it manifest among their students. They embody it. They know that “we need the support, ideas, and respect of others to truly succeed.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>The \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/series/guide-to-games-and-learning/\" target=\"_blank\">MindShift Guide to Games and Learning\u003c/a> is made possible through the generous support of the \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/05/math-science-history-games-break-boundaries-between-subjects-interdisciplinary-learning/www.joanganzcooneycenter.org/\" target=\"_blank\">Joan Ganz Cooney Center\u003c/a> and is a project of the \u003ca href=\"http://www.joanganzcooneycenter.org/initiative/games-and-learning-publishing-council-analyzing-a-rising-sector/\" target=\"_blank\">Games and Learning Publishing Council\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_36821\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-36821\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/07/j84a8474_0.jpg\" alt=\"Quest to Learn\" width=\"640\" height=\"427\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/07/j84a8474_0.jpg 640w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/07/j84a8474_0-400x267.jpg 400w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/07/j84a8474_0-320x214.jpg 320w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Quest to Learn\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Part 13 of \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/series/guide-to-games-and-learning/\" target=\"_blank\">MindShift's Guide to Games and Learning\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"dropcap-serif\">In education, it seems as if innovation and revolution play like the song of the Sirens in a culture of perpetual obsolescence. It seems as if we’ve got an unhealthy fetish for new-ness, indiscriminately choosing the convenient disposability of shrink-wrap over the sustainability of the well-worn.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Digital games can be amazing tools, but only when used to make it easier to \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/05/how-games-based-learning-teaches-problem-solving-in-context/\">contextualize the gifts\u003c/a> we’ve received from Shakespeare, Socrates, Euclid, and others. The thing about tools is that their strength is usually derived from the way they approach a problem rather than in the particularity of the solution they offer. For example, consider the hammer: a great technological innovation that our human ancestors imagined more than 2 million years ago. What made it revolutionary was not so much in the material from which it was assembled, nor the particular object it bashed. Instead, the hammer was revolutionary because it forever transformed human experience by introducing the possibility of striking, and therefore altering, our natural surroundings. It changed the way we look at things.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still today, a great deal of our teaching is essentially grounded in teaching the perspective that early tools enabled. We want our students to know that humans have the capacity to shape their own world. We want them to provide them with the skills necessary to do so. We want to teach them how to utilize the ways of knowing that were made possible through the technological innovations that enabled, produced, and shaped the civilizations of the past and the present.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Our current civilization is built on information technologies. Smartphones, the internet, and video games are all simply hunks of machinery that become special because they introduce new interactive narrative structures. They introduce non-linear ways of thinking about the world and organizing information.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg class=\"size-thumbnail wp-image-35200 alignright\" style=\"border: 0\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/04/MindShiftGames-140x140.png\" alt=\"MindShiftGames\" width=\"140\" height=\"140\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When we look at a network, or a jumble of hyperlinks, or an interactive simulation like a video game, it immediately appears chaotic. This is because we are conditioned to make sense of it using the habitual linear narrative traditions that have defined “literacy” for a few thousand years. We try to identify beginnings, middles, and ends. But new narrative conventions require a different form of literacy: \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/07/games-can-advance-education-a-conversation-with-james-paul-gee/\">systems literacy\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Systems literacy is playful and inter-subjective. 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The New York City public school employs a standards-based integrated curriculum that “mimics the action and design principles of games by generating a compelling ‘need to know’ in the classroom,” as they describe it. The goal: to intrinsically motivate kids toward mastery. Students seek out knowledge because they need to know it in order to complete a project based task.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Quest To Learn doesn’t set out to change the learning objectives, but rather the process through which they are achieved. Of course, process and product are indistinct. Transform the shape of the container and you simultaneously alter the the kind of content that can fit inside. Sometimes you don’t notice all the implications just by looking at the surface. Students at the Quest To Learn School “encounter a series of increasingly complex, narrative challenges, games or quests, where learning, knowledge sharing, feedback, reflection and next steps emerge as a natural function of play.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>GAMES IN PRACTICE\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When I visited Quest To Learn, I saw a school that looked very similar to any other school, except every student seemed engaged, empowered, and motivated. It wasn’t what I expected from a place that most people describe as “the video game school.” There weren’t screens all over the place. No fingers pounding game controllers. I didn’t see tons of gadgets or gizmos. But I did see a curriculum that was designed to approach from a video game perspective. The organizational structure through which material was presented was game-like.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_36819\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003cimg class=\"size-large wp-image-36819\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/07/PANO_20140624_131530-640x233.jpg\" alt=\"Jordan Shapiro/MindShift\" width=\"640\" height=\"233\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Quest to Learn School: Jordan Shapiro/MindShift\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“Failure is reframed as iteration” reads one poster that’s hanging by the elevators. Another explains how to break down complex ideas: “Systems are all around us -- games are playful systems.” Students are encouraged to analyze, interpret, and articulate using categories like space, components, rules, challenges, core mechanics, and goals. They apply this model, or other game-based systems-thinking models, to almost everything.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In one class, kids play \u003ca href=\"http://www.instituteofplay.org/work/projects/print-play-games-2/socratic-smackdown/\">Socratic Smackdown\u003c/a>. Eighth-grade English Language Arts Teacher/Designer Rebecca Grodner created the game to teach the building blocks of argumentation while simultaneously making a space where students practice and assess their peers’ conversational etiquette. Students might earn points for using supporting evidence or playing devil’s advocate. They lose points for interrupting or insulting other players. 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"disqusTitle": "Literature, Ethics, Physics: It's All In Video Games At This Norwegian School",
"title": "Literature, Ethics, Physics: It's All In Video Games At This Norwegian School",
"headTitle": "MindShift | KQED News",
"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_36894\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-36894\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/07/SPILLELEVER-e1405188707506.jpg\" alt=\"Aleksander Husoy's classes use video games as text and context at the school in Norway.\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/07/SPILLELEVER-e1405188707506.jpg 640w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/07/SPILLELEVER-e1405188707506-400x225.jpg 400w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/07/SPILLELEVER-e1405188707506-320x180.jpg 320w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Aleksander Husoy's classes use video games as text and context at the school in Norway.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>A group of Norwegian high school seniors sit in religious studies class, absorbed by a moral conundrum unfolding in the midst of a zombie apocalypse. Their teacher, Tobias Staaby, is screening a scene from the critically acclaimed video game, \u003ca href=\"http://www.telltalegames.com/walkingdead/season1/\">\u003cem>The Walking Dead\u003c/em>\u003c/a>, which depicts a knotty ethical dilemma confronting the group of rag-tag survivors: Supplies are running low and only four food items are left to ration, but there are 10 hungry mouths to feed. Who should eat? The grumpy old guy? The injured teen? The children? The leader?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Once the class reaches a consensus, they have to justify their choice with one of the concepts they’ve learned from moral philosophy. Was their decision guided by situational ethics, utilitarianism or consequentialism? This is one instance of how commercial video games are used at \u003ca href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0DjI4u8OEg\">Nordahl Grieg Upper Secondary\u003c/a>, a public high school located in the coastal city of Bergen in Norway.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>\u003cstrong>Building a School for the Future\u003c/strong>\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Two years before the school opened in 2010, principal Lin Holvik was mandated to build a school for the future, and she focused on creating both the physical and curricular space for teachers to experiment with video games. The vision materialized into a modern building encased in high glass windows and translucent interior walls that convey an atmosphere of transparency and openness that reflects the school’s pedagogical philosophy. “We have a sociocultural view of learning,” explained Holvik, “and believe in sharing and constructing knowledge together. We also strongly encourage innovation and believe that freedom to fail should be much more emphasized.” And so fittingly, video games have been used to help foster \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/06/games-in-the-classroom-what-the-research-says/\" target=\"_blank\">collaboration\u003c/a> and an appreciation for the \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2012/06/how-to-use-video-game-tactics-in-the-classroom/\" target=\"_blank\">art of failure\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We have been well aware of and interested in the potential of games in school for a long time,” Holvik added, describing how video games were part of the school’s DNA. So when English and Social Studies teacher Aleksander Husøy approached her about using the history simulation game, \u003ca href=\"http://www.2kgames.com/civ4/home.htm\">\u003cem>Civilization IV\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>,\u003c/em> she welcomed the opportunity with open arms.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>\u003cstrong>The World at Your Fingertips\u003c/strong>\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Husøy pioneered teaching with video games at Nordahl Grieg, paving the way for his colleagues to follow suit. Like many teachers today, he’s a lifelong gamer who credits his playing history-based video games as a factor in his decision to major in political science. He teamed up with colleague Vegard Relling and used \u003cem>Civilization IV\u003c/em> as the linchpin in a four-week cross-curricular unit combining Norwegian, English and Social Studies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The first obstacle was getting students up to speed with the game’s elaborate interface. This might seem like time away from “real learning,” but studies increasingly support the idea that learning to play a complex game is, in and of itself, a valuable exercise in cognitive calisthenics. To ease the familiarization process, experienced players were strategically grouped with novices, which Husøy observed altered the class’s social dynamic. “Students became more willing to share and collaborate through working with this project. There grew a community spirit that occurs when a group of people are doing something unique together.” This unintended consequence played well into the school’s sociocultural aim of co-constructing knowledge.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Civilization IV\u003c/em> proved useful in fulfilling both the English language and culture elements required by the curriculum. Playing through empire simulations helped students better understand British colonialism, the spread of English and US cultural hegemony. As to language acquisition, Husøy explained that the game \"introduces fairly advanced terminology in small chunks at a time, making it well suited for vocabulary work.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The game’s diplomacy mechanics and customizable scenarios facilitated the study of international relations in \u003ca href=\"http://ngvcivilization.wordpress.com/2012/08/20/the-civilizatio/\" target=\"_blank\">Social Studies\u003c/a>. The class built simulations and played through various outcomes to unpack \u003ca href=\"http://ngvcivilization.wordpress.com/2013/02/04/using-civilization-iv-to-present-real-world-conflicts/\" target=\"_blank\">contemporary conflicts\u003c/a> and reflect on resolution strategies. “Though the model is not a perfect representation of the real world, the game gives students a deeper understanding of the subject matter,” said Husøy. He feels that \u003cem>Civilization\u003c/em> holds a unique value in letting students experiment with “what if” scenarios to see how changing variables like political structures or social policies affect and alter the course of a nation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The unit concluded on a metacognitive note, as students reflected on gender issues in games, video game addiction and the unique affordances and limitations of video games as a medium.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_36895\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 239px\">\u003cimg class=\"wp-image-36895\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/07/Photo-21.03.13-23-28-37-e1405188977250-300x401.jpg\" alt=\"Teacher\" width=\"239\" height=\"319\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Aleksander Husoy\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch3>\u003cstrong>Reducing Resistance in Physics \u003c/strong>\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Encouraged by Husøy’s work, physics teacher Jørgen Kristoffersen decided to experiment with \u003ca href=\"http://www.thinkwithportals.com/\">\u003cem>Portal 2\u003c/em>\u003c/a>, a venture that came at no cost due to the \u003ca href=\"http://www.teachwithportals.com/index.php/faq/\">free educational licenses\u003c/a> available from Valve, the game’s publisher.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Portal 2\u003c/em> challenges players to solve elaborate puzzles to escape the labyrinthine Aperture Science Laboratory complex. They manipulate cubes, redirect lasers and tractor beams, time jumps, and teleport through walls, all of which rely on the game’s physics engine. Kristofferson’s class played with variables affecting in-game object behavior and freely designed physics experiments with \u003cem>Portal 2\u003c/em>’s flexible level editor. “Should we have a large mass and height? Drop 50 kilograms from 50 meters? Oh, the air resistance kicks in – let’s shorten the height,\" said Kristofferson, illustrating how his students toyed with the power of gravity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Real world experiments are important and the game can’t replace them,” he said, “but the game gives students a different perspective on the laws of physics, where mechanics are simulated by a computer to create a realistic gaming environment. It can also be a great source of discussion when the laws of physics are broken!” Students think about how the simulation deviates from reality and transform what might be perceived as a game’s shortcoming into a critical thinking opportunity.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>\u003cstrong>Hunting, Gathering and Survival\u003c/strong>\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Also inspired by Husøy, Tobias Staaby uses video games to teach units ranging from ethics to narrative and cultural history. “I wanted to use video games as something more than \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2012/04/whats-the-secret-sauce-to-a-great-educational-game/\" target=\"_blank\">chocolate covered broccoli\u003c/a>,” he said. “It’s important that video games are regarded as useful and engaging learning tools in their own right.” To that end, he uses popular commercial games that would not outwardly seem suitable for the classroom.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjqsYzBrP-M\">\u003cem>Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim\u003c/em>\u003c/a>, the sword and sorcery action role-playing game, is set in a rugged, Scandinavian-inspired wilderness that echoes Norway’s natural landscapes. Staaby leverages this connection to teach \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_romantic_nationalism\">Norwegian romantic nationalism\u003c/a>, a 19\u003csup>th\u003c/sup> century independence movement that set out to document uniquely Norwegian cultural elements and natural settings to affirm their national identity. Like their historic predecessors, students explore the wilds of \u003cem>Skyrim\u003c/em> in search of features and landscapes that aligned with the aesthetics of romantic nationalism. “Video games do not give you the answers up front. You have to look for traces of national romanticism in \u003cem>Skyrim\u003c/em>. It does not come by itself,” explained Staaby, identifying a video game’s potential for an active and participatory approach to learning.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Staaby also used the post-apocalyptic zombie survival game \u003ca href=\"http://www.thelastofus.playstation.com/\">\u003cem>The Last of Us\u003c/em>\u003c/a> in his lit class. Critics swooned over its intricate storyline and engaging character development, which his students studied much as they would any traditional work of literature – with a few differences. They played the first eight hours at home, and then completed the game together in class. During class play, Staaby reported that his students applauded, were visibly moved and reduced to absolute silence in the game’s final moments. “These were all events that I could not imagine having happened if we watched a movie or read a novel together.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>\u003cstrong>A Model for Game-Enhanced Learning\u003c/strong>\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>In each case, game-based learning seems to be a misnomer, as the learning is not based on games, but enhanced by them. Commercial games are repurposed and modified to support curricular goals, as opposed to driving them. Of course, learning can and should also be based on games, as they are valid texts that can be studied in and of themselves, but it is important to see video games as elastic tools whose potential uses exceed their intended purpose.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Norwegian Center for ICT in Education, which works on behalf of the Ministry of Education, now takes video games seriously, and has designated two officials, Jørund Høie Skaug and Vibeke Guttormsgaard, to undertake a national project to integrate games in schools. “With a great team of young teachers with game experience, and with time to plan and develop their game pedagogy, Nordahl Grieg now shines as an example and an inspiration to other schools,” said Guttormsgaard. Skaug added that they are developing a \u003cem>Civilization\u003c/em>, \u003cem>The Walking Dead\u003c/em> and \u003cem>Portal 2\u003c/em> teaching guide with the gamer-teachers at Nordahl Grieg.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The school’s transparent walls not only speak to its open approach to learning, but also invite the rest of the country, and perhaps the world, to look inside and see how video games can play an important role in the school of the future.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_36894\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-36894\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/07/SPILLELEVER-e1405188707506.jpg\" alt=\"Aleksander Husoy's classes use video games as text and context at the school in Norway.\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/07/SPILLELEVER-e1405188707506.jpg 640w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/07/SPILLELEVER-e1405188707506-400x225.jpg 400w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/07/SPILLELEVER-e1405188707506-320x180.jpg 320w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Aleksander Husoy's classes use video games as text and context at the school in Norway.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>A group of Norwegian high school seniors sit in religious studies class, absorbed by a moral conundrum unfolding in the midst of a zombie apocalypse. Their teacher, Tobias Staaby, is screening a scene from the critically acclaimed video game, \u003ca href=\"http://www.telltalegames.com/walkingdead/season1/\">\u003cem>The Walking Dead\u003c/em>\u003c/a>, which depicts a knotty ethical dilemma confronting the group of rag-tag survivors: Supplies are running low and only four food items are left to ration, but there are 10 hungry mouths to feed. Who should eat? The grumpy old guy? The injured teen? The children? The leader?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Once the class reaches a consensus, they have to justify their choice with one of the concepts they’ve learned from moral philosophy. Was their decision guided by situational ethics, utilitarianism or consequentialism? This is one instance of how commercial video games are used at \u003ca href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0DjI4u8OEg\">Nordahl Grieg Upper Secondary\u003c/a>, a public high school located in the coastal city of Bergen in Norway.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>\u003cstrong>Building a School for the Future\u003c/strong>\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Two years before the school opened in 2010, principal Lin Holvik was mandated to build a school for the future, and she focused on creating both the physical and curricular space for teachers to experiment with video games. The vision materialized into a modern building encased in high glass windows and translucent interior walls that convey an atmosphere of transparency and openness that reflects the school’s pedagogical philosophy. “We have a sociocultural view of learning,” explained Holvik, “and believe in sharing and constructing knowledge together. We also strongly encourage innovation and believe that freedom to fail should be much more emphasized.” And so fittingly, video games have been used to help foster \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/06/games-in-the-classroom-what-the-research-says/\" target=\"_blank\">collaboration\u003c/a> and an appreciation for the \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2012/06/how-to-use-video-game-tactics-in-the-classroom/\" target=\"_blank\">art of failure\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We have been well aware of and interested in the potential of games in school for a long time,” Holvik added, describing how video games were part of the school’s DNA. So when English and Social Studies teacher Aleksander Husøy approached her about using the history simulation game, \u003ca href=\"http://www.2kgames.com/civ4/home.htm\">\u003cem>Civilization IV\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>,\u003c/em> she welcomed the opportunity with open arms.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>\u003cstrong>The World at Your Fingertips\u003c/strong>\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Husøy pioneered teaching with video games at Nordahl Grieg, paving the way for his colleagues to follow suit. Like many teachers today, he’s a lifelong gamer who credits his playing history-based video games as a factor in his decision to major in political science. He teamed up with colleague Vegard Relling and used \u003cem>Civilization IV\u003c/em> as the linchpin in a four-week cross-curricular unit combining Norwegian, English and Social Studies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The first obstacle was getting students up to speed with the game’s elaborate interface. This might seem like time away from “real learning,” but studies increasingly support the idea that learning to play a complex game is, in and of itself, a valuable exercise in cognitive calisthenics. To ease the familiarization process, experienced players were strategically grouped with novices, which Husøy observed altered the class’s social dynamic. “Students became more willing to share and collaborate through working with this project. There grew a community spirit that occurs when a group of people are doing something unique together.” This unintended consequence played well into the school’s sociocultural aim of co-constructing knowledge.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Civilization IV\u003c/em> proved useful in fulfilling both the English language and culture elements required by the curriculum. Playing through empire simulations helped students better understand British colonialism, the spread of English and US cultural hegemony. As to language acquisition, Husøy explained that the game \"introduces fairly advanced terminology in small chunks at a time, making it well suited for vocabulary work.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The game’s diplomacy mechanics and customizable scenarios facilitated the study of international relations in \u003ca href=\"http://ngvcivilization.wordpress.com/2012/08/20/the-civilizatio/\" target=\"_blank\">Social Studies\u003c/a>. The class built simulations and played through various outcomes to unpack \u003ca href=\"http://ngvcivilization.wordpress.com/2013/02/04/using-civilization-iv-to-present-real-world-conflicts/\" target=\"_blank\">contemporary conflicts\u003c/a> and reflect on resolution strategies. “Though the model is not a perfect representation of the real world, the game gives students a deeper understanding of the subject matter,” said Husøy. He feels that \u003cem>Civilization\u003c/em> holds a unique value in letting students experiment with “what if” scenarios to see how changing variables like political structures or social policies affect and alter the course of a nation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The unit concluded on a metacognitive note, as students reflected on gender issues in games, video game addiction and the unique affordances and limitations of video games as a medium.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_36895\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 239px\">\u003cimg class=\"wp-image-36895\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/07/Photo-21.03.13-23-28-37-e1405188977250-300x401.jpg\" alt=\"Teacher\" width=\"239\" height=\"319\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Aleksander Husoy\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch3>\u003cstrong>Reducing Resistance in Physics \u003c/strong>\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Encouraged by Husøy’s work, physics teacher Jørgen Kristoffersen decided to experiment with \u003ca href=\"http://www.thinkwithportals.com/\">\u003cem>Portal 2\u003c/em>\u003c/a>, a venture that came at no cost due to the \u003ca href=\"http://www.teachwithportals.com/index.php/faq/\">free educational licenses\u003c/a> available from Valve, the game’s publisher.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Portal 2\u003c/em> challenges players to solve elaborate puzzles to escape the labyrinthine Aperture Science Laboratory complex. They manipulate cubes, redirect lasers and tractor beams, time jumps, and teleport through walls, all of which rely on the game’s physics engine. Kristofferson’s class played with variables affecting in-game object behavior and freely designed physics experiments with \u003cem>Portal 2\u003c/em>’s flexible level editor. “Should we have a large mass and height? Drop 50 kilograms from 50 meters? Oh, the air resistance kicks in – let’s shorten the height,\" said Kristofferson, illustrating how his students toyed with the power of gravity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Real world experiments are important and the game can’t replace them,” he said, “but the game gives students a different perspective on the laws of physics, where mechanics are simulated by a computer to create a realistic gaming environment. It can also be a great source of discussion when the laws of physics are broken!” Students think about how the simulation deviates from reality and transform what might be perceived as a game’s shortcoming into a critical thinking opportunity.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>\u003cstrong>Hunting, Gathering and Survival\u003c/strong>\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Also inspired by Husøy, Tobias Staaby uses video games to teach units ranging from ethics to narrative and cultural history. “I wanted to use video games as something more than \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2012/04/whats-the-secret-sauce-to-a-great-educational-game/\" target=\"_blank\">chocolate covered broccoli\u003c/a>,” he said. “It’s important that video games are regarded as useful and engaging learning tools in their own right.” To that end, he uses popular commercial games that would not outwardly seem suitable for the classroom.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjqsYzBrP-M\">\u003cem>Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim\u003c/em>\u003c/a>, the sword and sorcery action role-playing game, is set in a rugged, Scandinavian-inspired wilderness that echoes Norway’s natural landscapes. Staaby leverages this connection to teach \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_romantic_nationalism\">Norwegian romantic nationalism\u003c/a>, a 19\u003csup>th\u003c/sup> century independence movement that set out to document uniquely Norwegian cultural elements and natural settings to affirm their national identity. Like their historic predecessors, students explore the wilds of \u003cem>Skyrim\u003c/em> in search of features and landscapes that aligned with the aesthetics of romantic nationalism. “Video games do not give you the answers up front. You have to look for traces of national romanticism in \u003cem>Skyrim\u003c/em>. It does not come by itself,” explained Staaby, identifying a video game’s potential for an active and participatory approach to learning.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Staaby also used the post-apocalyptic zombie survival game \u003ca href=\"http://www.thelastofus.playstation.com/\">\u003cem>The Last of Us\u003c/em>\u003c/a> in his lit class. Critics swooned over its intricate storyline and engaging character development, which his students studied much as they would any traditional work of literature – with a few differences. They played the first eight hours at home, and then completed the game together in class. During class play, Staaby reported that his students applauded, were visibly moved and reduced to absolute silence in the game’s final moments. “These were all events that I could not imagine having happened if we watched a movie or read a novel together.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>\u003cstrong>A Model for Game-Enhanced Learning\u003c/strong>\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>In each case, game-based learning seems to be a misnomer, as the learning is not based on games, but enhanced by them. Commercial games are repurposed and modified to support curricular goals, as opposed to driving them. Of course, learning can and should also be based on games, as they are valid texts that can be studied in and of themselves, but it is important to see video games as elastic tools whose potential uses exceed their intended purpose.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Norwegian Center for ICT in Education, which works on behalf of the Ministry of Education, now takes video games seriously, and has designated two officials, Jørund Høie Skaug and Vibeke Guttormsgaard, to undertake a national project to integrate games in schools. “With a great team of young teachers with game experience, and with time to plan and develop their game pedagogy, Nordahl Grieg now shines as an example and an inspiration to other schools,” said Guttormsgaard. Skaug added that they are developing a \u003cem>Civilization\u003c/em>, \u003cem>The Walking Dead\u003c/em> and \u003cem>Portal 2\u003c/em> teaching guide with the gamer-teachers at Nordahl Grieg.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The school’s transparent walls not only speak to its open approach to learning, but also invite the rest of the country, and perhaps the world, to look inside and see how video games can play an important role in the school of the future.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"tagline": "The flip side of gentrification, told through one town",
"info": "Gentrification is changing cities across America, forcing people from neighborhoods they have long called home. Call them the displaced. Now those priced out of the Bay Area are looking for a better life in an unlikely place. American Suburb follows this migration to one California town along the Delta, 45 miles from San Francisco. But is this once sleepy suburb ready for them?",
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},
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"tagline": "Exploring the Bay Area, one question at a time",
"info": "KQED’s new podcast, Bay Curious, gets to the bottom of the mysteries — both profound and peculiar — that give the Bay Area its unique identity. And we’ll do it with your help! You ask the questions. You decide what Bay Curious investigates. And you join us on the journey to find the answers.",
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},
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"info": "KQED’s statewide radio news program providing daily coverage of issues, trends and public policy decisions.",
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"order": 8
},
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},
"link": "https://www.cityarts.net",
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"order": 1
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"info": "\u003cem>Code Switch\u003c/em>, which listeners will hear in the first part of the hour, has fearless and much-needed conversations about race. Hosted by journalists of color, the show tackles the subject of race head-on, exploring how it impacts every part of society — from politics and pop culture to history, sports and more.\u003cbr />\u003cbr />\u003cem>Life Kit\u003c/em>, which will be in the second part of the hour, guides you through spaces and feelings no one prepares you for — from finances to mental health, from workplace microaggressions to imposter syndrome, from relationships to parenting. The show features experts with real world experience and shares their knowledge. Because everyone needs a little help being human.\u003cbr />\u003cbr />\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510312/codeswitch\">\u003cem>Code Switch\u003c/em> offical site and podcast\u003c/a>\u003cbr />\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/lifekit\">\u003cem>Life Kit\u003c/em> offical site and podcast\u003c/a>\u003cbr />",
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"id": "commonwealth-club",
"title": "Commonwealth Club of California Podcast",
"info": "The Commonwealth Club of California is the nation's oldest and largest public affairs forum. As a non-partisan forum, The Club brings to the public airwaves diverse viewpoints on important topics. The Club's weekly radio broadcast - the oldest in the U.S., dating back to 1924 - is carried across the nation on public radio stations and is now podcasting. Our website archive features audio of our recent programs, as well as selected speeches from our long and distinguished history. This podcast feed is usually updated twice a week and is always un-edited.",
"airtime": "THU 10pm, FRI 1am",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Commonwealth-Club-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
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"source": "Commonwealth Club of California"
},
"link": "/radio/program/commonwealth-club",
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}
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"tagline": "The conversation starts here",
"info": "KQED’s live call-in program discussing local, state, national and international issues, as well as in-depth interviews.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 9am-11am, 10pm-11pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Forum-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED Forum with Mina Kim and Alexis Madrigal",
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"source": "kqed",
"order": 9
},
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"id": "fresh-air",
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"hidden-brain": {
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"info": "Shankar Vedantam uses science and storytelling to reveal the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior, shape our choices and direct our relationships.",
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"airtime": "SUN 7pm-8pm",
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"source": "NPR"
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"info": "Guy Raz dives into the stories behind some of the world's best known companies. How I Built This weaves a narrative journey about innovators, entrepreneurs and idealists—and the movements they built.",
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"airtime": "SUN 7:30pm-8pm",
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"tagline": "Where conversation and cultura meet",
"info": "What kind of no sabo word is Hyphenación? For us, it’s about living within a hyphenation. Like being a third-gen Mexican-American from the Texas border now living that Bay Area Chicano life. Like Xorje! Each week we bring together a couple of hyphenated Latinos to talk all about personal life choices: family, careers, relationships, belonging … everything is on the table. ",
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"jerrybrown": {
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"title": "The Political Mind of Jerry Brown",
"tagline": "Lessons from a lifetime in politics",
"info": "The Political Mind of Jerry Brown brings listeners the wisdom of the former Governor, Mayor, and presidential candidate. Scott Shafer interviewed Brown for more than 40 hours, covering the former governor's life and half-century in the political game – and Brown has some lessons he'd like to share. ",
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"order": 18
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},
"latino-usa": {
"id": "latino-usa",
"title": "Latino USA",
"airtime": "MON 1am-2am, SUN 6pm-7pm",
"info": "Latino USA, the radio journal of news and culture, is the only national, English-language radio program produced from a Latino perspective.",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/04/latinoUsa.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "http://latinousa.org/",
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},
"link": "/radio/program/latino-usa",
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"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/510016/podcast.xml"
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},
"marketplace": {
"id": "marketplace",
"title": "Marketplace",
"info": "Our flagship program, helmed by Kai Ryssdal, examines what the day in money delivered, through stories, conversations, newsworthy numbers and more. Updated Monday through Friday at about 3:30 p.m. PT.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 4pm-4:30pm, MON-WED 6:30pm-7pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Marketplace-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.marketplace.org/",
"meta": {
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"source": "American Public Media"
},
"link": "/radio/program/marketplace",
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"rss": "https://feeds.publicradio.org/public_feeds/marketplace-pm/rss/rss"
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},
"masters-of-scale": {
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"title": "Masters of Scale",
"info": "Masters of Scale is an original podcast in which LinkedIn co-founder and Greylock Partner Reid Hoffman sets out to describe and prove theories that explain how great entrepreneurs take their companies from zero to a gazillion in ingenious fashion.",
"airtime": "Every other Wednesday June 12 through October 16 at 8pm (repeats Thursdays at 2am)",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "https://mastersofscale.com/",
"meta": {
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"source": "WaitWhat"
},
"link": "/radio/program/masters-of-scale",
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"rss": "https://rss.art19.com/masters-of-scale"
}
},
"mindshift": {
"id": "mindshift",
"title": "MindShift",
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"info": "The MindShift podcast explores the innovations in education that are shaping how kids learn. Hosts Ki Sung and Katrina Schwartz introduce listeners to educators, researchers, parents and students who are developing effective ways to improve how kids learn. We cover topics like how fed-up administrators are developing surprising tactics to deal with classroom disruptions; how listening to podcasts are helping kids develop reading skills; the consequences of overparenting; and why interdisciplinary learning can engage students on all ends of the traditional achievement spectrum. This podcast is part of the MindShift education site, a division of KQED News. KQED is an NPR/PBS member station based in San Francisco. You can also visit the MindShift website for episodes and supplemental blog posts or tweet us \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/MindShiftKQED\">@MindShiftKQED\u003c/a> or visit us at \u003ca href=\"/mindshift\">MindShift.KQED.org\u003c/a>",
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