Category: Gaming

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The Landscape of Digital Learning Games: Finding Paydirt

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By Ryan L. Schaaf

 

This article first appeared at Amplify here. Reposted with permission.

There are a wide variety of digital games available for players on countless platforms. It makes it very challenging to find a game for a specific purpose such as learning. The first step is to understand the purpose of gameplay. Typically, a person engages in gameplay for fun and entertainment. However, in recent years, more and more people are playing games for unconventional purposes. Some gamers want to build mindscapes using digital resources, some want to learn new concepts or cultivate new skills, some use it just to pass some downtime, and some are immersed in game-based storylines and narratives.

Regardless of the purpose of playing them, finding games to meet these various needs is a challenge. The process remains decentralized – there is no one-stop shop or catalog to research. However, self-research is a practical strategy to find a potential game.

Web Browser–Based Games

There are tens of thousands of digital learning games available online at this very second. Educators can perform a simple web search for content-specific games to infuse into their lessons. For instance, imagine a group of science students learning about life cycles. A teacher simply conducts a Google search using a query such as “Interactive life cycle games for kids” to find hundreds of potential games for students to use. Since most schools already have many digital devices, browser-based games are the easiest to adopt into instructional lessons.

RhymeTime_scrn_01 Copy (1)Aqua is a web-based supplemental reading curriculum for grades K-2 currently in development at Amplify and piloting in schools across the country. In Rhyme Time (depicted above) students practice with different rime families and decode words in these families by swapping the first letter sounds of words while the ending sounds remain constant. Learn more about Aqua.

There are also large collections of digital games referred to as game hubs. These sites house many different types of digital games tailored to many different ages as well as content areas. Online learning game hubs can be used in lessons, as resources for technology learning centers, or as support or extra practice at home.

Steam

Steam is an enormous online-gaming platform. Steam hosts a massive online catalog of over 5,000 games for PC, Mac, and Linux-based computers, mobile devices, and even smart televisions.

‘Apptastic’ Markets

The eruption of application or ‘app’ markets has created a digital gold mine of potential games for learners. It is hard to fathom that this multi-billion dollar a year market is not even a decade old. The two major app markets are Apple’s App Store and Google Play. The App Store serves users on Apple’s operating system (iOS) devices such as the iPhone and iPad. And, Google Play supplies apps to smartphones and tablets using an Android platform. Both App markets have their very own categories for Educational Games. With thousands of games spread across numerous mobile platforms, the app markets are extraordinary sources to find potential games for tablets and smartphones.

Personal Computer (PC) Games

Although the download-and-play approach to acquiring new digital games is now popular because of tablets, smartphones, and web-connected computers, PC games are still very popular in classrooms. Schools are still hosting desktop computers workstations and common technology labs to cater to the hundreds of students that require digital learning in their curricula.

Game Consoles

Gaming consoles are one of the last platforms teachers would consider using as learning tools for their students to access highly-interactive virtual learning environments. Teachers are repurposing gaming consoles and using them as instructional workstations rather than as entertainment systems. With careful consideration, gaming consoles and devices have a lot of potential for classroom learning applications. Many learners have these same gaming consoles at home, so they already know how to use them.

Resources to Find Good Learning Games

Common Sense Media is the nation’s leading nonprofit organization dedicated to improving the lives of kids and families by providing the trustworthy information, education, and independent voice they need to thrive in the 21st century. They review numerous games for use by both educators and parents.

Games 4 Change has accumulated numerous databases of potential learning games for players, educators, and parents to consider.

Playful Learning is a project of the Learning Games Network, an award-winning non-profit producer of games for learning.

The InfoSavvy21 team collaborated to create the Digital Learning Game Database (DLGD). It was conceptualized to archive and curate digital games with learning potential and provide it to educators for use with their students.

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At Amplify, we are committed to the educational potential of learning through digital gameplay. Aqua is a new kind of reading curriculum in development by the Center for Early Reading at Amplify. It is a reading adventure that gives students practice in phonological awareness, decoding, vocabulary, and reading comprehension through games. Learn more.

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Gaming Research Uncategorized

The Research Supporting Digital Gaming and Learning Part 2: The Gamer’s Gains: Evidence of Efficacy

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By Ryan L. Schaaf

Preface

There are literally thousands of research studies, books, web articles, and news reports examining the effectiveness of games during the learning process. Some of these sources are research in nature; some are based on firsthand experiences or accounts, while others are formed on opinions or even sophistry. The truth is the analysis of gaming’s efficacy during the learning process are still evolving.

As often as we witness the digital generation’s love of games and the amazing societal, technological, and cultural impact they usher in, there remains the need for evidence of their success as learning tools, or even learning environments.

There is a substantial amount of research on gaming and learning – so much so that this post will be delivered in two parts. In the first part, entitled The Gamer’s Brain, readers examined what scientists, researchers, and educators have observed about the relationship between digital game play and the human brain. In this installment, entitled The Gamer’s Gains: Evidence of Efficacy, examines many of the recent studies and analyses that demonstrate the potential for learning with the use of digital games. The links and citations for each study, report, or data source will be listed below and cited within each snippet.

“Digital games have the potential to transform information for its players into valuable knowledge and experiences.”

Knowledge Gains

In a meta-analysis (an analysis of many studies) conducted in the Journal of Educational Psychology, Wouters and colleagues (2013) found that training with serious games is more effective for developing knowledge, knowledge retention, and cognitive skills than other instructional methods such as lectures, reading, drill, and practice, or hypertext learning environments. These results were further supported by Vogel and colleagues (2006) in a similar analysis as they observed higher cognitive gains in simulations or games as they did in traditional instructional techniques. Similar knowledge gains were evident in analyses conducted by Wolfe (1997), Sitzmann (2011), and Ke (2009). Digital games have the potential to transform information for its players into valuable knowledge and experiences.

“Game-based learning motivates and engages learners just as much, if not more, than other tried and true instructional approaches.”

Motivation to Learn

Student motivation is another powerful attribute that makes learning through gameplay that much more alluring. Thangagiri and Naganathan’s (2016) study explored if games affected student motivation. Their data analyses disclosed that using a gaming approach was both more active in stimulating students’ knowledge and more motivational than a non-online gaming approach. In another qualitative study conducted by Yu and Hsaio (2011), students’ learning motivation was a significant factor in knowledge acquisition during gameplay. These results were further supported by another participatory action research study conducted with learners ages 8 to 10 years of age. The data suggests digital game-based learning were as effective in the classroom as other research-based instructional strategies when measuring student motivation and time-on-task behavior. (Schaaf, 2012) So, regarding instructional strategies in a learning environment, game-based learning motivates and engages learners just as much, if not more, than other tried and true instructional approaches.

Attention, Attention!

The attentional benefits resulting from the use of digital games seems to be the most research-supported. Many studies performed by researchers such as Bavelier, Green, Dye, and others showed improvements in attention, optimization of attentional resources, integration between attentional and sensorimotor areas, and improvements in selective and peripheral visual attention (Paulus, Marron, Sobera, & Ripoli, 2017). Boot and his colleagues (2008) explored similar variables in their work and found participants improved in task switching and visual tracking. In summary, evidence suggests video game players show improvements in selective attention, divided attention, and sustained attention. Finally, McDermott, Bavelier, and Green (2014) observed their research participants showed evidence of greater speed of processing and enhanced visual short-term memory when compared to a control group.

“Students learn better when they assume ownership of the process, take the initiative, and direct their own learning.”

Skill Builders

There are numerous studies that explore the relationship between problem solving and game play. After all, most games have a problem or challenge for the player to face and overcome. The researchers assessed their problem-solving ability by examining the types of cognitive, goal-oriented, game-oriented, emotional and contextual statements they made. They found that younger children seemed to create short-term goals as they played games, while older children examined the problem as a whole. (Blumberg, Ismailer, 2008) Well-designed, content-deep games supported in-depth learning, as well as developed investigative, critical thinking, and problem-solving skills. (Clark, Tanner-Smith, Hostetler, Fradkin, & Polikov, 2017) Games are also ideal for skills acquisition and retention.

As for student achievement, many studies support that games contribute to academic success. They can increase scores on achievement tests, (Posso, 2016) they can improve learning achievement (Hwang, Wu, & Chen, 2012) (Sitzmann, 2011)

Learner Ownership and Agency

Students learn better when they assume ownership of the process, take the initiative, and direct their own learning. (Savery, 1998; Zimmerman & Schunk, 1989) In a literature review conducted by Nousiainen and Kankaanranta (2008), learners that succeeded through gameplay felt ownership in the final outcome, meaning they felt responsible for their learning and accomplishments.

Student agency refers to the degree of freedom and control that a student has to perform meaningful actions in a learning environment. Dalton (2000) reported that 56% of students who participate in online courses sensed a lack of interactivity; they were not active learners with the freedom of choice. Well-designed games, however, encourage students to adapt and design learning and teaching styles most suitable to them, which in turn leads to a more active role in learning. (Klopfer et al., 2009) Sawyer and colleagues experimented the impact of student agency on learning and problem-solving behavior in a game-based learning environment. They found that students showed significant learning gains when offered the freedom and control to learn on their own with some guidance. Game-based learning practitioners should allow learning to take place in an environment that provides freedom and ownership for learners.

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At Amplify, we are committed to the educational potential of learning through digital gameplay. Aqua is a new kind of reading curriculum in development by the Center for Early Reading at Amplify. It is a reading adventure that gives students practice in phonological awareness, decoding, vocabulary, and reading comprehension through games. Learn more.

Sources

Blumberg, F., & Ismailer, S. (2008). Children’s problem-solving during video game play. In F. C. Blumberg & S. S. Ismailer (Cochairs), What do children learn when playing video games? Symposium paper presented at American Psychological Association Annual Meeting, Boston, MA.

Boot, W., Kramer, A., Simons, D., Fabiani, M., & Gratton, G. (2008). The effects of video game playing on attention, memory, and executive control. Acta Psychologica 129, pp. 387–398.

Clark, D., Tanner-Smith, E., Hostetler, A., Fradkin, A., & Polikov, V. (2017). Substantial integration of typical educational games into extended curricula. Journal of the Learning Sciences.

Hwang, G., Wu, P., & Chen, C. (2012). An online game approach for improving students’ learning performance in web-based problem-solving activities. Computers & Education (59) 4. Pp. 1246–1256.

Ke, F. (2009). A qualitative meta-analysis of computer games as learning tools. In R.E. Ferdig (Ed.). Effective electronic gaming in education (Vol1, pp.1-32). Hersey, PA: Information Science Reference.

Klopfer, E., Osterweil, S., & Salen, K. (2009). Moving learning games forward. Cambridge, MA: The Education Arcade.

McDermott, A., Bavelier, D., & Green, S. (2014). Memory abilities in action video game players. Computers in Human Behavior 34, pp. 69–78.

Nousiainen, T., & Kankaanranta, M. (2008). Exploring children’s requirements for game-based learning environments. Advances in Human-Computer Interaction.

Paulus, M., Marron, E., Sobera, R., & Ripoli (2017). Neural basis of video gaming: A systematic review. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience.

Posso, A. (2016). Internet usage and educational outcomes among 15-year-old Australian students. International Journal of Communication.(10).

Savery, J. (1998). Fostering ownership with computer supported collaborative writing in higher education. In C.J. Bonk & K.S. King (Eds.), Electronic collaborators: Learner-centered Technologies for literacy, apprenticeship, and discourse (pp.103-127) Mahwah, NJ.: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Sawyer, R., Smith, A., Rowe, J., Azevado, R., & Lester, J. (2017). Is more agency better? The impact of student agency on Game-Based Learning. The IntelliMedia Group.

Schaaf, R. (2012). Does digital game-based learning improve student time-on-task behavior and engagement in comparison to alternative instructional strategies? Canadian Journal of Action Research,13(1), 50-64.

Schaaf, R., & Mohan, N. (2014). Making schools a game worth playing: Digital games in the classroom. Thousand Oaks, CA.| Corwin.

Sitzmann, T. (2011). A meta-analytical examination of the instructional effectiveness of computer-based simulation games. Personnel Psychology 64. pp. 489-528.

Thangagiri, B., & Naganathan, R., (2016). Online educational games-based learning in Disaster Management Education: Influence on educational effectiveness and student motivation. Eighth International Conference on Technology for Education.

Vogel, J., Vogel, D., Cannon-Bower, J., Bower, C., Muse, K., & Wright, M. (2006). Computing games and interactive simulations for learning: A meta-analysis. Journal of Educational Computing Research, 34(4), pp.229-243.

Wolfe, J. (1997). The effectiveness of business games in strategic management course work. Simulations & Gaming 28(4), pp. 360-376.

Yu, F., & Hsiao, H. (2012). Exploring the factors influencing learning effectiveness in Digital Game based Learning. Journal of Educational Technology & Society, (15) 3. pp. 240-250

Wouters, P., van Nimwegen, C., van Oostendorp, H., & van der Spek, E. D. (2013, February 4). A Meta-Analysis of the Cognitive and Motivational Effects of Serious Games. Journal of Educational Psychology. Advance online publication.

 

 

 

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Gaming Research Uncategorized

The Research Supporting Digital Gaming and Learning Part 1: The Gamer’s Brain

BraininHands_istock
By Ryan L. Schaaf

 

This post originally was posted here. Reposted with permission from Amplify Games.

Preface

There are literally thousands of research studies, books, web articles, and news reports examining the effectiveness of games during the learning process. Some of these sources are research-based, some are first hand experiences or accounts, while others are formed on opinions or even sophistry. The truth is the analysis of gaming’s efficacy during the learning process are still evolving.

As often as we witness the digital generation’s love of games and the amazing societal, technological, and cultural impact they usher in, there remains the need for evidence of their success as learning tools, or even learning environments.

Do playing games, both learning and commercial, both digital and non-digital, both long-form and short-form, promote learning? There is a substantial amount of research on gaming and learning – so much so that this post will be delivered in two parts. The first part, entitled The Gamer’s Brain, examines what scientists, researchers, and educators have observed about the relationship between digital gameplay and the human brain. The second part entitled The Gamer’s Gains: Evidence of Efficacy examines many of the recent studies and analyses that demonstrate the potential for learning with the use of digital games. The links and citations for each study, report, or data source will be listed below and linked at the end of each snippet.

The Gamer’s Brain

It is essential for educators and researchers to explore the human organ responsible for learning – the brain. Learning during the gaming experience provides information and experiences in a manner that promotes brain-based learning.

First, gameplay accesses many regions of the brain associated with learning. When a gamer is engaged in gameplay, they are receiving information through their eyes into their occipital lobes. This region of the brain is associated with visual perception, color recognition, object movement, reading and comprehension, and depth perception. Daphne Bavelier, professor of brain and cognitive sciences, notes that fast-paced, action games can retrain the visual cortex to gain a better understanding of the visual information it receives. (Achtman, Green, & Bavelier, 2008) Video game play also augments grey matter in brain areas crucial for spatial navigation, strategic planning, working memory, and motor performance. (Kuhn, Gleich, Lorenz, Lindenberger, & Gallinat, 2013)

As humans, we are all inherently visual learners (with the exception of individuals with visual disabilities). The human eyes are nature’s greatest cameras. They collect 72 gigabytes (the size of a computer hard drive in the early 2000’s) of information every second. Human eyes contain 70% of our body’s sensory receptors (Cartier-Wells, 2013), which allows them to process the meaning of images 60,000 times faster than that of text. (Burmark, 2002) The digital game experience uniquely accesses visual learners, because, in most games, it is the main method of information transfer to the player.

Additional human senses and brain regions are extensively accessed during digital gameplay. Information received or transmitted through sounds are processed in and routed through the temporal lobes, which are associated with auditory processing, language comprehension, memory, and speech.

Digital games do an amazing job of transmitting high-quality, highly expressive, realistic, multisensory experiences—sight, sound, and touch (and likely in the near future smell and taste). They provide gamers with experiences more immersive than watching a video or listening to audio. Gamers are engaged in these virtual worlds and their appetites to learn and explore are incredibly ravenous.

In the past, the brain was believed to be composed of an unalterable, unchanging structure. However; the scientific community has discovered that repetitive experiences can alter the brain’s structure and rewire it.

“Neuroplasticity is the process of ongoing reorganization and restructuring of the brain in response to intensive inputs and constant stimulation” (Jukes, McCain & Crockett, 2010). Video games provide these repetitive situations and experiences across the different game types, platforms, and genres. They provide constant stimulation for students to learn from using multiple forms of sensory input such as auditory, visual, and kinesthetic. (Schaaf & Mohan, 2014)

The challenging nature of games also makes learning with them particularly rewarding. Dopamine, a neurotransmitter that is associated with intense pleasure, is released as a reward in response to conquering a challenge such as making a prediction, choice, or action, and receiving feedback that it was correct. Gamers want to repeat this neurotransmitter release, so they advance through more challenging experiences. Unfortunately, if a challenge is too easy, then the Dopamine release doesn’t occur, and the player loses interest in the game (Willis, 2011).

Digital games have the potential to provide powerful learning experiences to the gamer’s brain. They transmit visual, auditory, and even tactile information in a compelling manner, so more regions of the brain are accessed during gameplay. They provide information in a manner that helps to restructure (and even retrain) the human brain neurologically. Finally, gameplay offers the opportunities for the brain to reward perseverance, tenacity, and learning through conquering challenges with a pleasurable neurochemical release.

Sources

Achtman, R.L. & Green, C.S. & Bavelier, D. (2008). Video games as a tool to train visual skill. Restorative Neurology and Neuroscience. 26. 435-46.

Burmark, L. (2002). Visual literacy: Learn to see, see to learn. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

Cartier-Wells, A. (2013). The social revolution – Remember me.

Jukes, I., McCain, T., & Crockett, L. (2010). Understanding the digital generation: Teaching and learning in the new digital landscape. Kelowna, British Columbia, Canada: 21st Century Fluency Project.

Kuhn, S.,Gleich, T. , Lorenz, R., Lindenberger, U., & Gallinat, J. (2014). Playing Super Mario induces structural brain plasticity: Gray matter changes resulting from training with a commercial video game. Molecular Psychiatry (19). pp. 265–271.

Schaaf, R., & Mohan, N. (2014). Making schools a game worth playing: Digital games in the classroom. Thousand Oaks, CA.| Corwin.

Willis, J. (2011). Neuroscience insights from video game & drug addiction. Psychology Today.

 

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Gaming Uncategorized

Setting the Record Straight: The Difference Between Digital Game-Based Learning, Gamification, and Other Related Buzzwords

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By Ryan L. Schaaf

 

This post was originally posted here. Reposted with permission from Amplify Games.

As more and more educators consider using games in their learning programs, they must understand all of the nuances involved. Today, the buzzwords in education are gamification, play-based learning, gaming, game-based learning, and digital game-based learning. There are some popular misconceptions about these terms. This post will set the record straight and give potential game-based learning facilitators helpful definitions for the terminology they may encounter. What follows next is some clarifying explanations to help refine meaning and eliminate some of these frequent misconceptions.

Play

Play is a highly creative process, using both the body and mind. Its definition is flexible, and may or may not involve goals. Bruce (2011) describes play as, “a spontaneous and active process in which thinking, feeling, and doing can flourish; when we play we are freed to be inventive and creative. In play, everything is possible with reality often disregarded and imagination and free-flow thinking taking precedence.”

Learning philosophies and educational theories such as Jean Piaget, Erik Erikson, and Lev Vygotsky all recognize the value of children using play for self-teaching and its important role in a child’s cognitive development.

As parents and educators, we must provide our kids with more opportunities to play. After all, George Dorsey said it best, “Play is the beginning of knowledge”.

Games

What exactly is a game? Have you ever tried to define what a game is? We know games come in many varieties and genres. Karl Kapp, Professor of Instructional Technology at Bloomsburg University, defines games as, “a system in which players engage in an abstract challenge, defined by rules, interactivity, and feedback, that results in a quantifiable outcome often eliciting an emotional response” (Kapp, 2012, p.7). Futurist, author, and gaming guru Marc Prensky also dissected their components. Games have “rules, goals and objectives, outcomes & feedback, conflict/competition/challenge/opposition, interaction, and representation of story” (Prenksy, 2007, pp. 5-11). Whether simple or complex, single or multiplayer, or collaborative or competitive, games have many common characteristics:

  • Challenge — the problem or scenario presented to the player to overcome.
  • Rules — the structures, boundaries or freedoms provided to players during gameplay.
  • Interactivity — the actions or processes players undergo during gameplay.
  • Feedback — the reaction of player interaction. Feedback can provide rewards for successful gameplay or consequences for mistakes.
  • Conflict — the in-game challenge, friction, or opposition between players, the game system, or rules.
  • Goals / Outcomes – Goals represent the player’s end desired result. Outcomes represent the end results such as a win, lose or draw.

Game-Based Learning (Digital and Non-Digital)

The quick and dirty definition of game-based learning is simply learning through the use of games, both digital and non-digital. Players learn or review academic content during gameplay. For example, Food Truck (pictured below).

FoodTruck_scrn_01 Copy

Food Truck is a phonics game from Aqua, where students practice “chopping” blends, ending sounds (rimes), and whole words into beginning sounds (onsets), ending sounds, and individual letters to create orders for their hungry goblin customers.

Game-based learning promotes a student-centered approach to instruction. This approach allows teachers to step out of the spotlight and become learning guides rather than the source of all information in the classroom. Many students today would rather not be lectured to, or receive information from a single source. Rather, they prefer to generate their own knowledge from the readily available resources (digital and human) around them.

Gamification

Gamification (or what Jane McGonigal often referred to as gameful design) is an emerging field of practice that involves the use of game design and mechanics into non-gaming situations. We experience gamified situations like this daily.

Have you ever played the MacDonald’s Monopoly game? Is buying a burger or milkshake a game? No, but creating a system-based mental construct that entices players to buy more food for the opportunity to win a million dollars sounds much more appealing.

Do you belong to the Starbuck’s Rewards program — a program that gives you a stamp for every Soy-based Latte you buy? How does this reward you? It provides the consumer with a free drink after so many purchased drinks.

Both of these consumer programs are popular examples of gamification.

Have you ever created a bracket for March Madness? Or raced a spouse to finish cleaning the house or running errands? Or read a story-based book to that asked you to make a decision amongst a few choices? For example, should you visit the wizard, follow the path to the left, or cross the river?

Gamification has many structural elements. In the classroom, they may include the following (adapted from Kapp, 2012)

  • Creating a compelling storyline or narrative — Powerful stories draw us in. When used in the classroom, gamification becomes a means of immersing students into an engaging narrative. Classroom imagination and storytelling spawn a new and exciting mental construct. Students are transported from their classrooms into a storyline. The content, assignments, assessments, and even the classroom procedures all take on the attributes of the storyline.
  • Autonomy — In a game, players receive a great deal of power to make decisions and succeed or fail by their own choices. Educators must look for ways of placing the powerful decisions in the hands of their learners.
  • Mastery of skills — Games allow players to experience them over and over again to master skills or review content. Repetition is a powerful learning strategy.
  • Immediate feedback — Games provide both positive and negative feedback in a timely manner. This fast-paced response allows the players to adapt quickly and overcome learning challenges.
  • Collaboration — Games promote teamwork and community. The individual needs of the players are replaced by a combined focus on common goals.
  • Competition — The conflict and challenge between individual players or teams.
  • Problem-solving — Games provide problems for the player to solve. The problems cannot be too easy, or the player will lose interest. If the game is too hard, then players will become frustrated and give up.
  • Differentiated learning experiences — Games can progress from easy challenges to harder ones. They can offer the right level of challenge based on the current skillset or ability of the player.
  • The use of badges, points, and leaderboards — Games often provide players with data to determine how they are progressing. Badges, points, and leaderboards are a few examples providing feedback to the player. Although these mechanisms are often lower-level strategies, they are easy to implement and augment a gamification initiative when combined with other strategies (as listed above). (Schaaf, Mohan, 2016)

Game-Based Learning vs. Gamification

Game-based learning and gamification are not the same. Although each of these strategies has the potential to invigorate learning, game-based learning and gamification are distinctly different approaches to teaching, learning, and assessment. Remember, game-based learning involves the player learning or reviewing content or developing skills as they play a game. Gamification or gameful design involves the use of gaming elements in a non-gaming scenario. This graphic, provided by my friend Steve Isaacs, summarizes of differences between the two terms. Of course, it is always up to how the educator is using the game or bits of a game in the context of learning to truly make the distinction between both strategies.

Game-Based-Learning-and-Gamification

Sources

Bruce, T. (2011) Cultivating Creativity: for babies, Toddlers and Young Children. London: Hodder.

Kapp, K. (2012). The gamification of learning and instruction: Game-based methods and strategies for training and education. San Francisco, CA: John Wiley & Sons.

Prensky, M. (2007). Digital game-based learning. St. Paul, Minn.: Paragon House 5-11.

Schaaf, R. & Mohan, N. (2016). Game on: Using digital games for 21st century teaching, learning, and assessment. Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree Press.

A special thank you to Steve Isaacs (@mr_isaacs) for the use of the infographic!

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Gaming

Digital Games: Learning through Gameplay – A Prequel

Boy playing video games holding a control - isolated over a white background 2

This post was originally posted here. This article is reposted with permission.
By Ryan L. Schaaf

 

Have you ever observed a person playing a video game? Have you ever witnessed the intense range of emotions, extreme task commitment, engagement, and focus players experience as they smash buttons and hold on to their game controllers for dear life? My ten-year-old son, Connor, amazes me with his proficiency in playing games on the family game console or his tablet. I was guilty of starting Connor on this early path to gaming. At the ripe old age of 2, Connor was visiting Starfall.com to learn about phonics and letter recognition. This interactive site was the gateway to more advanced gaming experiences such as Angry Birds, Fruit Ninja, Star Wars Legos, and most recently, Minecraft.

What was truly amazing with Connor’s gameplay was the amount of content he was learning. However, this learning was a side effect of his fun. Connor discovered digital games had a lot to teach him. Similar to educational books and videos, Connor considered games an educational media format — one that will continue to evolve in its presentation and message for its players for many decades to come. In fact, Connor’s younger brother, Ben, is learning how to game. It puts some credence into the popular proverb, “the family that plays together, stays together.”

Digital games are a powerful factor in the lives of so many people. Whether we observe a committed gamer, spending 20+ hours a week playing Call of Duty or Halo; or a casual gamer, playing Clash of Clans or Candy Crush in their spare time, games are an extremely popular form of media. As gaming evolves, its purpose is changing. Games are no longer considered just an entertaining pastime. A growing body of research (which will be shared in this series) is identifying games as extremely powerful tools for modern-day teaching, learning, and assessment.

Quality digital learning games promote the development of soft skills; the skills so many educational visionaries (Sir Ken Robinson, Ian Jukes, Sugata Mitra, Tony Wagner, and Marc Prensky to name a few) identify as being crucial for our children to develop in order to thrive in the modern world after their academic careers are over. During gameplay, players develop skills in problem-solving, communication, perseverance, strategic planning, information processing, and adaptability to name a few.

Try to envision a scenario where the younger members of the digital generation play to learn. They would take risks, work productively alone or in groups, strive to improve, focus on a single task for an extended period of time, fail without stigma, persevere through challenges, work towards short and long-term goals, and learn through experiences rather than absorbing dry, unconnected facts – all while having fun during the process.

Today’s generations have become experts at analyzing gameplay, interpreting storylines, and ingesting raw game data. If parents and educators could take advantage of gaming’s popularity and positive attributes during learning, then edification would become an epic journey for our children.

Many living in Connor’s generation, the digital generation, will never experience a world without Mario, Master Chief, or The Sims. Outside of schools, they play hours of video games each week. While playing these games in their spare time, they are extremely focused, they take on all challengers, work collaboratively, solve problems, receive instant feedback and gratification, and ingest and retain a large amount of information quickly with amazing accuracy during recall. If these attributes can be transferred to academics, then we will cultivate a generation ready to take on the world.

This post is the first in a 12-part series entitled Digital Games: Learning Through Gameplay. In this series, parents, educators, and other stakeholders invested in the success of the digital generations will: examine the ubiquitous, pervasive nature of digital games and their grasp upon the digital generations.

-define the essential vocabulary associated with digital games, digital game-based learning, gamification, and other related terms.

-analyze the current research related to digital gaming and learning.

-compare and contrast the various platforms digital games are played on and their potential for individual, small-group, or large-scale digital game-based learning implementation.

-examine the criteria for selecting quality digital games for instruction.

-analyze the various ways digital games can be used by learners at home or incorporated into classroom instruction at school.

-observe testimonials of digital game-based learning in various academic programs.

 

Please join us as we dive headfirst into the educational potential of learning through digital gameplay

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Gaming Reinventing Learning

TeachThought Podcast Ep. 81 Reinventing Learning: Why Are Kids Different Today? –

Reinventing Learning For The Always-On GenerationSummaryEpisode 81 of the TeachThought Podcast is the first in a 12-part series on reinventing learning for the ‘always on’ generation.In this series, Ryan Schaaf takes a look at what a modern learner ‘is’ and how teachers can adapt to and serve them. Ryan is Assistant Professor of Technology, Notre Dame of Maryland University and on the  Graduate Faculty, Johns Hopkins University. He is also Director at InfoSavvy21.

Source: TeachThought Podcast Ep. 81 Reinventing Learning: Why Are Kids Different Today? –

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Digital Learning Gaming

Video Games: A Powerful Medium for Learning with a Bad Wrap

Video games are a collaborative effort. They bring together different people and cultures that would normally never communicate with one another. Hordes of players from different continents and time zones ‘game’ for a shared goal. Despite many of the popular video game titles being interlaced with violence and vulgar material, many games have been published for an educational purpose and can bridge different cultures and teach tolerance and peace. Written by Ryan Schaaf and Nicky Mohan, this is an InfoSavvy21 original.

“We can’t undo the past, we have no idea what the future holds. Today, we have the ability to do something which can shape our lives and the lives of those around us.”
— Unknown

While many observers consider playing video games to be a complete waste of time, gamers play with extreme commitment and passion. What motivates gamers, especially those of the digital generations, to devote countless hours to their gaming worlds; and can education benefit from the use of gaming in the classroom.

Continue reading “Video Games: A Powerful Medium for Learning with a Bad Wrap”
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Digital Learning Gaming

How Video Games In The Classroom Will Make Students Smarter

Jordan Shapiro has written a wonderful post at Forbes identifying video games as wonderful tools for deep and immersive learning. Many game designers and educational advocates are crafting games to play in school. Games provide a natural space for rewarding metacognitive skills – the more the gamer plays and reflects, the more the gamer learns through experience and failure.

posted by Ryan Schaaf

Original Source

Around a billion and a half people all play video games of some sort. That’s more than 20% of the world’s population. Video games have become a part of life. They are now more than just leisure and entertainment. They are mainstream media, an everyday method of storytelling and representation. Games have become a common form of rhetoric for the 21st century.

Therefore, it is not surprising that educators, policy makers, investors, and developers are trying to build games for schools. However, the real reason game-based learning is so popular is not only because video games are extremely effective teaching tools; they are also relatively inexpensive to build and to distribute. In other words, they’re scalable, and replicable, and extensible, and all those other buzzwords that philanthropists, and venture capitalists, and policy makers like to hear. Video games have a lot going for them in a world that loves digital technologies and worships the concept of innovation.

Source: Forbes
Source: Forbes

Luckily, it is not all about semantics. Using video games as classroom tools that help teachers do their jobs with more impact is also good pedagogy. Video games can be exceptional teaching tools. To understand why, you don’t need any fancy education or psychology terms. All have to do is think about the avatar…the game character. In video games there are almost always two “I”s. There’s the “I” who holds the controller and the “I” that’s within the bezel of the monitor. Gamers are distanced from their avatar and are accustomed to thinking about their actions like an outsider looking in.

The fancy way to say that is: there is a metacognitive distance built right in. The term metacognition is a key term in educational psychology. It describes the ability to think about your own thinking. Strong metacognitive functions give students an awareness, or an understanding, of their own thought processes. Metacognitive functions provide one with autonomy or control of one’s own intellectual capacity. This matters in education because strong metacognitive functions lead to good academic skills. Through metacognitive functions, learners recognize their own strengths and weaknesses and adapt or iterate their performance accordingly.

In other words, academia can be understood like a video game: something students play again and again, practicing and improving with each new attempt. But what about the digital divide? If video games are so great, doesn’t that mean equal access to educational technologies is even more important? Certainly. But in an imperfect world, it is also important to remember that you don’t need fancy laptops or tablets to implement game-based learning. It is really just about imaginative play.

In his excellent soon to be released book (April 21), “The Game Believes In You: How Games Can Make Our Kids Smarter,” Greg Toppo writes: “Kids make mud pies and paper airplanes, they climb trees and play the piano. The entire time they’re exploring and learning about the world.”

This is why folks have been using play therapy with children for more than a century. Both the Kleinians and the Jungians fill their consultation rooms with toy menageries and mandalas and sandboxes. They’ve always known that games and play strengthen metacognitive functions. They’ve always known that along with the guidance of a mentor–a great teacher–games and play can help individuals learn to recognize their own context. Play helps one recognize the structures, the systems, and the economies in which one participates.

Toppo continues:

What looks like escapist fun is actually deep concentration. What looks like instant gratification is, in fact, delayed gratification in clever disguise. What looks like spectacle is a system that’s training players to ignore the spectacle and focus on the real work at hand. What looks like anything-goes freedom is submission to strict rules. What looks like a twenty-first-century, flashy, high-tech way to keep kids entertained is in fact a tool that taps into an ancient way to process, explore, and understand the world.

In the presentation that I gave at the 2015 Global Education and Skills Forum in Dubai, I explain how and why learning games and game-design-thinking can help to develop students’ metacognitive skills. I also explain why this is an essential part of creating innovative citizens. What’s more, I make a philosophical argument that this kind of thinking is an foundational component of basic human dignity.

VIDEO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNo8Fxn238Y

Jordan Shapiro is the author of FREEPLAY: A Video Game Guide To Maximum Euphoric Bliss and The Mindshift Guide To Digital Games and Learning.

Categories
Gaming

Battling Depression through Video Games

Video games have the power of storytelling and elicit powerful responses from the human brain. Depression is a silent epidemic, and now many are crediting video games as a potential therapy for the infinite sadness. Sampson at Kernal shares these insights with us.

Posted by: Ryan Schaaf

Original Source

Maximilian Dichtl reads the news just like anyone else. He’s seen what politicians, psychologist, and concerned parents have to say about video games and their impact on children—that games cause violence, bad grades and depression.

That last one really piques Dichtl’s interest, since he’s dealt with depression for most of his life. Now in his early 20s, Dichtl is still an avid gamer. He doesn’t blame gaming for kick-starting his depression. No, that would be when his mom and stepdad decided to start hitting him.

“It’s ironic that people look at this link between kids and video games and decide the games are what’s causing them to act a certain way,” Dichtl told the Kernel. “For me, video games were a way to escape the things that were causing my depression.”

Dichtl is one of many young gamers trying to upend the conventional wisdom about gaming and depression. He started a blog to chronicle his story, while developers and other gamers around the world are trying to prove that video games can be a healthy vehicle for dealing with despair.

They are running up against an entrenched narrative. In 2011, the New York Times made hay out of two separate studies that tracked the social characteristics of young gamers.

“For me, video games were a way to escape the things that were causing my depression.”

One, published in the journal Pediatrics, tracked more than 3,000 school children in Singapore over several years. The study found that heavy gamers—those who played more than 31 hours a week—were more likely to suffer from depression, anxiety, or social phobias. That same article cites a Chinese study, published in Archives of Pediatric & Adolescent Medicine, which found that teenagers who spent excessive amounts of time on the Internet in general were more likely to suffer from depression.

No longer a lonely pursuit

Folks like Dichtl (pictured right) don’t necessarily disagree with those sociological findings, but they do take issue with the assertions others make based on this evidence. He said too many critics paint with a broad brush when talking about the actual relationship between games and players.

“Whether you play Angry Birds on the train into work, slice a few fruits on your tablet while you are in the waiting room at the dentist, or spend eight hours a day perfecting whatever game it is you enjoy, we are all gamers,” Dichtl said. “It isn’t fair to fit every single one of us into this huge mold and then berate us, but media outlets do it anyways for their own motives.”

On the surface, Dichtl may look like the kind of young adult profiled in earlier studies, but he said his relationship with video games is more nuanced.

“We are all gamers.”

As an only child who moved around a lot following his parent’s divorce, it was hard to make friends and form the kind of social support network most teens need to navigate adolescence. In video games, however, he was able to connect with others, including his best friend. They met playing Call of Duty nine years ago and have forged a “brotherly bond.” Though they live across the country, a combination of MMORPG and video chat have allowed the two to stay close. These virtual friends were there for Dichtl as he dealt with a difficult home life and thoughts of suicide.

Dichtl has even found a career goal thanks to gaming. Though he currently works in distribution, a trip to a gaming conference inspired him to try and become a community coordinator—a liaison between online gaming communities and developers.

“Gaming has been a positive force in my life when a lot of people weren’t,” he said. “Some of the best friendships I have wouldn’t exist without video games.”

A more emotionally mature game

It’s not just players who are challenging the conventional wisdom related to video games and depression. The rise of indie game developers means the medium is changing and learning to address more emotionally mature issues.

“I think adulthood is extremely underrepresented in video games,” said Will O’Neill, a game developer from Toronto. “Adult in video games means violence and pornography a lot of the time, but rarely does it delve into what it means to be an adult.”

That’s something that O’Neill is trying to change with his first video game outing, Actual Sunlight. The free PC game is O’Neill’s autobiographical take on depression. Released in March 2013, the game was praised for how it handles such psychologically complex issues.

Like Dichtl, O’Neill is a longtime gamer who’s suffered from depression. He dabbles in several different kinds of creative expression—writing and stand-up comedy—but in the medium of video games, he’s found a unique vehicle for exploring depression. As where most video game protagonists grow in ability and gain more freedom as stories progress, in Actual Sunlight, the character has fewer options as the game goes on, simulating depression’s ability to make us feel trapped.

“That’s a feeling that can uniquely be recreated in video games,” he told the Kernel.

Some of the video game industry’s biggest players want games to grow up and begin reflecting the psychological and emotional complexity of other types of media.

O’Neill expects a lot of lifelong gamers to resonate with Actual Sunlight‘s themes. In his younger years, O’Neill allowed gaming to consume a significant amount of his time—time he said could have been better spent on other pursuits.

That’s why he wants to challenge the video game industry to mature, offering games and stories that will allow gamers to seek personal growth and insight.

It’s not just O’Neill. Some of the video game industry’s biggest players want games to grow up and begin reflecting the psychological and emotional complexity of other types of media.

“I know so many game developers, and so many of them are wonderful, smart, creative, considerate and adult, and somehow those personalities are not always reflected in the games that we make,” said freelance game writer Susan O’Connor at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco in 2013.

In addition to gaining legitimacy as an artform, such a shift in the game development could allow users to reap greater emotional and psychological well being. Because at the end of the day, O’Neill, Dichtl, and others say the link between gaming and depression is all about the player’s individual relationship with the games they play.

“Depression lead me to my love of video games,” Dichtl said. “Video games did not make me depressed, or increase the severity of it.

“I actually believe that gaming has combated the depression to a level that is not detrimental to my well-being.”

 

 

Categories
Gaming

Fun App for Kids Turns Writing Into Interactive Game

The writing process can be so taxing for students. Literautas.com frames the writing process into a game while simultaneously scaffolding the experience for students  by offering insightful prompts. 

posted by: Ryan Schaaf

Original Source

Do your students suffer from writer’s block? I’ve found a cure for what ails them: Writing Challenge for Kids, an app by Literautas. After reading several positive online reviews, I tried this app with my students and got results that surpassed my wildest expectations.

With this app, the task of brainstorming a story introduction, scenes, and characters becomes a game. Working against the clock, students respond to specific prompts that guide them through the story-writing process. It’s fun, it’s fast, and, as the name suggests, it’s challenging. Read on to discover if this challenge is right for your students.

Source: http://literautas.com/
Source: http://literautas.com/

Scores

User-Friendliness (5/5)

Tech-savvy kids as young as seven have no trouble progressing through the steps of this intuitive app. Any literate child or adult can partake; simply press “Start” when you’re ready to begin. Beating the clock is the most difficult part of Writing Challenge for Kids, but it’s also the most fun. Students can’t be perfectionists with this app; the goal is off-the-cuff creativity and originality.

To bypass frustration and tears with my young students, I find it helpful to play up the “game” aspect of this activity. If you teach elementary school, you might want to increase the timer length in the settings menu before your students begin.

Teaching (4/5)

This app teaches creativity within guidelines. It’s an exercise in following directions as much as it is an exercise in writing. Some students find this aspect of the game more confining than others. I like to remind my kids that guided ideation is just one of many ways to brainstorm a story.

Depending on the grade you teach, you might decide to supplement app sessions with your own instruction about how story arcs are formed. Writing Challenge for Kids does not teach specifically about tension, climax, and resolution; hence I subtracted one point.

Customer Support (4/5)

Literautas.com has made a conscientious effort to translate all of their Spanish apps and blogs to English so others can enjoy their products. You might find the English-translated website a bit choppy, and for this reason, I subtracted one point. However, the syntax on the app itself is easy to understand.

Methodology

I started the review process by downloading the adult version of this app, called Writing Challenge, from Google Play for $1.99 to my Android tablet. A writer myself, I found this app to be an excellent way to get my creative juices flowing.

My interest piqued when I discovered that Writing Challenge has a sister app specifically for children. I downloaded Writing Challenge for Kids onto my set of classroom iPads and used it in my Writer’s Workshop for three weeks. Each day, students spent 15 minutes with the app, their journals, and a pencil. My kids rated the app highly on a rubric of user-friendliness, and I spent some time reflecting on the worthiness of this app as a teaching tool and source of support in my classroom.

App Review

Background

Literautas.com describes this app as a way for teachers to “improve creativity and writing skills,” but kids also learn time management with this activity. The timed countdowns are pre-set to one minute, but you can change that in the settings menu if you wish. Because students don’t actually input their ideas on their iPads, the countdowns are not really enforceable. Still, a ticking clock is a concrete reminder for kids to focus on the task at hand.

This app won’t teach your students how to end a story. The prompts would go on forever if you let them. Examples of prompts I’ve seen include “Add a character who always lies” and “Write a scene that takes place in a restaurant.” I still had to teach my students how to complete their story arc using tension, climax, and resolution. However, I didn’t have as much trouble motivating my stubborn writers as I usually do.

How It’s Used and How It’s Useful

All you need to enjoy Writing Challenge for Kids is a tablet, paper and pencil, and a lesson plan that incorporates the app into your curriculum. One of the Common Core benchmarks I’m working on with my fourth graders is the ability to brainstorm. This is the perfect tool for that. If you’re a third-grade teacher who wants to expand your students’ range of writing or a seventh-grade teacher who wants to focus on topic development, you can tailor your activities accordingly.

Runner-Up Review: Foldify

Whereas Writing Challenge for Kids takes a linguistic approach to brainstorming, the app Foldify is more pictorial. Edutopia’s Monica Burns prescribes a Foldify lesson plan in which students create a virtual cube with six different images on the iPad. These are then printed, folded into a physical cube, then rolled like a die across the desk. The image that turns up serves as a writing prompt.

This hands-on activity is great for the younger set, but it requires close supervision and guidance due to its ambiguous nature. Visual learners, kids with certain learning disabilities, and those on the AI spectrum could benefit the most from the writing activities you derive from Foldify.

Other Writing Challenge Reviews

The adult version of Writing Challenge received a favorable nod from Edutopia for the way it gamifies the storytelling process. Edshelf lauds the kid version of the app for the fun and creativity it delivers. If you’re thinking of using this in a K-8 classroom, I recommend you download Writing Challenge for Kids instead of Writing Challenge. iTunes hasn’t collected enough customer reviews to declare a rating for the child-friendly version yet, but Common Sense Media cautions that some of the adult version prompts could lead to the creation of stories that aren’t appropriate for children.

Writing Challenge for Kids is the best app for germinating story ideas and opening kids’ minds to the concept of brainstorming. If you have students who resist creative writing, this app makes it easy for you to turn the entire process into a game. No matter what grade you teach, you can adapt this handy app to your curriculum and benchmarks, and you and your students will have a lot of fun in the process.