Introduction to Games in Education Mark Wagner Coordinator Educational Technology

What is Hard Fun?Hard Fun  “It’s hard. It’s fun. It’s LOGO.” (1st Grader)  “I have no doubt that this kid called the work fun because it was hard rather than in spite of being hard.” (Seymour Papert)  “How do we make writing become hard fun?” (Seymour Papert)  Seymour’s gears…

Welcome and Introductions  Name  Site  Grade / Subject  What were your gears?  What are your students’ gears?

Overview Piaget, Papert, Prensky and more…

Purpose/Rationale  Digital Natives & Digital Immigrants (Prensky, 2001) Digital Natives & Digital Immigrants  Incidental vs. Intentional Learning (Jonassen, 2002)  enGauge 21st Century Skills (NCREL, 2003) enGauge 21st Century Skills  Digital Age Literacies  Inventive Thinking  Effective Communication  High Productivity  Constructivist Learning Environments…  Context, Choice, Collaboration (Wagner, 2005)

Relevant Theorists  Jean Piaget (1929 to 1976)  Seymour Papert (1980, 1993, 1996)  Marc Prensky (2001)  James Paul Gee (2003, 2005)  Clark Aldrich (2004, 2005)  Graduate Students…

Jean Piaget  Cognitive Structures & Schemes  Functional Invariants  Adaptation  Organization  Adaptation  Assimilation  Accommodation  Stage Theory

Seymour Papert  Mindstorms, 1980  The Children’s Machine, 1993  The Connected Family, 1996 

Marc Prensky  Digital Game-Based Learning, 2001  marcprensky.com marcprensky.com  games2train.com games2train.com

James Paul Gee  What Video Games Have To Teach Us About Learning and Literacy, 2003  Why Video Games are Good For Your Soul, 2005

Clark Aldrich  Simulations and the Future of Learning, 2004  Learning by Doing, 2005  Learning Circuits Learning Circuits

Virtual Leader simulearn.net

simSchool simSchool.org

Graduate Students  Nick Yee Nick Yee  Kurt Squire Kurt Squire  Constance Steinkuehler Constance Steinkuehler  Fiona Littleton Fiona Littleton  Mark Wagner Mark Wagner  And more…

Share Resources  Share new or striking ideas from your own…  Reading  Listening  Viewing  Experience

Break - 5 minutes

Hands On Experience an Educational Game The WFP’s Food ForceFood Force

Richard Halverson (2005) “Nowhere is the current generational gap in technology greater than in game literacy, and while asking school leaders and teachers to play commercial video games may be a stretch, integrating game-based learning experiences in their professional development may help them see the merits of gaming from the inside.”

Reflection Questions  What was your experience like as a player?  What relationships do you see between this game and the theories we discussed?

Break - 5 minutes

Games in Your Classroom What can you use on Monday?

Web-based Games  Browser based  Mostly FREE  Engaging and content related  Great for younger students Great for younger students

Commercial Off The Shelf (COTS) Games  Teachers may not be able to develop a cutting edge game, but many games can be repurposed.  “Instead of embedding a game into learning, it is possible to embed learning into a game.” (Downes, 2005)

Civilization III  Real Time Strategy  Systems Content  Social Studies Concepts  Complexity, flexibility, replayability  Failure and choice  Kurt Squire’s Dissertation (2004) Kurt Squire’s Dissertation

Kurt Squire (2005)  25% complained the game was too hard, complicated and uninteresting.  25% loved playing the game,thought it was a “perfect way to learn history”, and a highlight of their year.  Students played the game in different ways, leading to highly different understandings.  Playing games does not appeal to everyone, and no one game appeals to all gamers.

Making History  Designed for education!  Assessment features  Successfully piloted

Unreal Tournament  First Person Shooter  Mod-able  Used to teach chemistry! Used to teach chemistry!

Neverwinter Nights  Role Playing Game (RPG)  Toolset for user- made content Toolset  Teachers can be gamemasters (GMs)  MIT’s Revolution ModRevolution

MMORPGs  Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games  Context, Choice, Collaboration  Guilds!

Teen Second Life  year olds  Avatar customization  User created content  In game economy

And More…  Age of Empires  Age of Mythology  Rise of Nations  Morrowind  The Sims  SimCity etc…  Zoo Tycoon etc…  Myst  …

Designing a game?  Benefits of design  Deep understanding of the subject required and developed  Variables identified  Relationships between variables identified  Inventive thinking  Benefits of implementation  Technical Literacy  Effective Communication  High Productivity

Think, Pair, Share  What are some possible uses for games in your class?

Lesson Planning  Outline a lesson plan incorporating a game into your class.

What would a state of the art instructional video game look like? (Gee, 2005)

Just do it! (Aldrich, 2005) “[Teachers] can nudge. They can implement. They can make case studies.” (2005)

Games in Education, Part II  Social Constructivism: Dewey Vygotsky Bruner  Serious Games  Games for Change  May 9th,

Go forth and do great things! Mark Wagner