April 28, 2006 ♦ Itasca, IL Games in Education Bill MacKenty, M.Ed Computer Teacher Edgartown School Edgartown, Massachusetts

April 28, 2006 ♦ Itasca, IL Grok this? Face-down monsters are not flipped face-up until the Damage Step. If my "Neo the Magic Swordsman" attacks a face-down monster, and it turns out to be "Giant Soldier of Stone", it's too late for me to activate "Waboku" (and prevent damage to my life points). But I can still activate "Reinforcements" to increase "Neo the Magic Swordsman" ATK in the Damage Step after the monster is flipped. Of course, my opponent could also use "Castle Walls" to raise his monster's DEF. Why do kids intuitively understand this?

April 28, 2006 ♦ Itasca, IL Games work. kids are using COTS games to strengthen, deepen and broaden their learning kids are making meaningful, relevant, content-connections kids bring content into the game & use the content from the game in classroom

April 28, 2006 ♦ Itasca, IL How do we know? observations interviews discussions written performance self-assessments

April 28, 2006 ♦ Itasca, IL Instructional Design --> Active engagement <-- Good teaching is good teaching is good teaching.

April 28, 2006 ♦ Itasca, IL Why COTS? Production value Challenge Fun Different player-types can have fun Stealthy education (incidental learning) Flow

April 28, 2006 ♦ Itasca, IL Notable Failures…

April 28, 2006 ♦ Itasca, IL Time permitting… Player types Criteria to evaluate games Cost of COTS Administration approval Digital natives vs digital immigrants Getting to Z