The Education Business Blog

The reaction of many parents and educators to the idea of playing games in school is horror. School is supposed to be serious hard work. What these people don't know is that in modern video games doing tasks repetitively to slowly build skills and status is the norm not the exception. These games are all about "hard" play.

Gamers have a term for this - grinding. Grinding is spending two months getting your mining skills up so that you can make a special suit of armor for your friends. Grinding is repeatedly doing some menial chore for a faction so you can earn status with them and get access to skills they can teach you.

Educators also have a term of art for this kind of activity - they call it building fluency. We learn most of the hardest skills in life through a slow process of accretion that amounts to building fluency. According to reading experts a child needs to read several million words in order to become a fluent reader.

Accelerated Reader is essentially a game about reading that is a long steady grind. Like a game you get rapid feedback, frequent promotions, and status from completing the tasks. It didn't get to be "the world's most widely used reading software" by mistake.

But the concept of fluency goes far beyond reading. Learning to play an instrument, writing, using a knife, flirting, skateboarding and thousands of other human activities all share the need to grind it out over time to develop that effortless fluency that is the mark of an expert.

This raises the question of why a child would engage in the grind to fluency? My theory, based on gamer culture, is that it is a critical part of building identity. Players will do routine and menial tasks over and over again to build the story line of their character in the game. It is a fundamental building block of identity - if it was easy there would be no status associated with becoming fluent.

How does this apply to school? Many (not all) low performing students don't have a story thread in their lives that helps motivate them to grind in school (doing homework). Students who are high achievers generally have a story line that is central to their identity that gives the grind meaning and a purpose. Without that story line much school work is just tedium.

If this is true (a big if) what is role of publishers in helping educators and parents guide students to the stories that will motivate them? I believe our role is to bring new tools and approaches to bear that have more story embedded in them, stories that students can appropriate and make their own as they build their identity.

If you want clues on how to do that - you only need to head down to your local Game Stop.

It has been a while since I did a round up of blog articles, time to clean a few items out. Rather than dump a long list I've picked four articles I've found particularly interesting in the past few weeks.

Matt Mihaly over at The Forge notes that MMO's/Virtual Worlds are some of the most valuable private tech firms in the world. I would add to Matt's observation that 3 of the 4 firms he cites in the top 20 are for kids. Silicon Alley Insider's original article is here.

Chris Anderson over at The Long Tail has an interesting take on the decline of the newspaper industry that is directly relevant to education publishing. Sure, readership is down, but at $45b it is still twice as big as Google and Yahoo combined. The money quote:

The truth is that the newspaper business is still a huge industry and will be around in one form or another for the rest of my life. That is not to dismiss the declines, but only to note that there's still a lot of money there and what is required is strategic change, not giving up the ghost.

New information is like opium? Wikipedia as an act of love? Will Richardson, as ever, is interesting.

The Happy Worker Kit - coming to an office near you soon. Funny.

Crayon Physics from Kloonigames is a very cool serious game. I can see young kids in particular playing with this for hours. The designer said about one comment "Chris Baker wrote a great article about Crayon Physics Deluxe for Slate. He wrote that the game looks like it was designed by a third-grater. I take that as a compliment."

If you don't get video games this is an excellent video to watch. The kinds of puzzles kids are solving in Portal and World of Warcraft are very similar to the ones you see here. But with the interface stripped down to bare essentials you can get a sense of the brain work that is going on while players wrestle with the more complicated games.

If you want a sense of how engaging this kind of simple interface with some basic physics can be go play Linerider for a while. It only take a couple of minutes to learn it - then see if you don't want to just PLAY.

This also reminds me a lot of And Yet It Moves - a great indie game that got some attention last year at GDC.

Does real learning happen in virtual worlds?

Cable in the Classroom Magazine published an article I wrote on this topic in their March issue.

The premise is:

"There have always been scientific concepts our children should experience that are too dangerous, too expensive, or too time-consuming for school. For these activities - some of the most thought provoking in science - we have had to settle for lectures and reading.

Virtual worlds change this equation. In a virtual world, students can use million dollar apparatus, experiment with lethal substances, and compress years of activity into a few weeks...."

The article goes on to describe how the Texas Workforce Commission is using Whyville as an outreach vehicle for biotechnology. It also addresses why virtual worlds are particularly attractive to tweens because of where they are developmentally.

If you have thoughts on what I wrote leave a comment here and I'll respond.

Download the complete article (PDF) by clicking on the image to the right.

All the links referenced in the article are below the fold - continue reading to see them.

Continue reading "Virtual Worlds = Real Learning" »

Ed Note: Do videogames embody the best in cognitive theory? In Part 2 of his series on educational video games guest blogger NT Etuk explores the work of James Paul Gee. Part 1 is here

By NT Etuk - CEO Tabula Digita

Why do videogames work? Why are gamers so willing to learn in these environments but so unwilling to learn in school?

Fortunately, some of the answers lie in the research of an extremely well regarded literacy professor. Dr. James Paul Gee is the Mary Lou Fulton Presidential Professor of Literacy Studies at Arizona State, and the author of the book "What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy. Second Edition”

Dr. Gee as an educator was curious about why videogames were able to do so much that our education system was having trouble doing – continuously engaging students, making students feel safe failing (not silly), unafraid to ask questions, and providing contextual learning that makes the learning relevant to the learner.
So he set out to answer these questions. His book is an excellent read and I encourage everyone to read it, but for the sake of brevity, I will pull out a core part of his findings.

Dr. Gee found that commercial videogames are built on a set of design principles, and that these principles translate into some of the more fundamental learning principles that cognitive theory has validated.

Among them are:

1. Active, Critical Learning Principle – [In a videogame] all aspects of the learning environment are set up to encourage active and critical, not passive, learning.

2. “Psychosocial Moratorium” Principle – [In a videogame] learners can take risks in a space where real world consequences (i.e. grades, risk of looking silly) are lowered.

3. Achievement Principle – [In a videogame] there are intrinsic rewards from the beginning, customized to each learner’s level, effort, and growing mastery and signaling the learner’s ongoing achievements.

4. Practice Principle – [In a videogame] - learners get lots and lots of practice in a context where practice is not boring (i.e. in a virtual world that is compelling to learners on their own terms and where the learners experience ongoing success). They spend lots of time on task.
5. Multimodal Principle – [In a videogame] - meaning and knowledge are built up through various modalities (images, texts, symbols, interactions, abstract design, sound, etc.), not just words.

These are principles built into all good videogames. I have listed 5, but there are 36 that Dr. Gee documents.

As you read through them, hopefully it becomes clear how videogame systems can actually translate into tremendously powerful and flexible learning systems. Tabula Digita [link] and other companies pioneering this arena embrace these principles and look to embed as many of these principles as possible in the design of our games.

The good thing is that school systems are beginning to realize the inherent power of simulations. I can only speak from our company’s experiences, but Tabula Digita games and simulations have been accepted in some of the largest and sometimes most conservative school districts in the country, including Plano ISD, Orange County - Florida, New York City Public Schools, Forsyth County, and Chicago Public Schools among others.

Educational gaming methodologies and pedagogical approaches have been accepted as superior by some of the most rigorous judges out there. Orange County educators published a list of 54 intervention products that they recommend their teachers use. Tabula Digita simulations received the highest Rubric score of ‘A’ and the highest educator recommendation rating of 4 stars. Only 4 other products were rated so highly. Two were non-computer based.

And students are singing the praises of educational games and simulations, with approximately 88% of the students who have used our software recommending it to other students and over 90% saying they wished more simulations were in their classrooms.

There is a paradigm shift that is occurring in education and it’s being forced by our industry’s ultimate customer – the student. Today’s child demands immersion. They demand experience. They demand engagement. And their expectations of how they receive, interpret, and absorb information are growing more sophisticated every day. As educators, if our methods don’t adapt to their needs, we run the risk of irrelevance. And if we’re irrelevant then we run the risk that we can’t talk to them. And if that happens, then how will they ever hear what we have to say …. ?

About Tabula Digita:
Tabula Digita is the award winning publisher of the DimensionM series of educational videogame titles. DimensionM titles encompass action and non-action titles and allow students to play other students within classrooms, across schools, and across the country, all while learning and increasing achievement.

Related Blog Posts

Link to Part 1 in this series.

Slaying Myths About Video Games In Schools

Virtual Worlds for Education - 1987 Redux?
Games for Education- Essential Resource Links

Continue reading "Video Games Embody the Best in Cognitive Theory - Part 2" »

Ed Note: Are video games and simulations essential learning tools for the 21st Century? Guest Blogger NT Etuk responds to my post about Ethics in the first of two posts on this topic.

By NT Etuk – CEO and Co-Founder, Tabula Digita.

Video games and simulations are among the most efficient learning tools ever built. Period. This is not a guess. It is not a hypothesis. If you don't agree I'd like to share the perspective of someone who is working with schools to incorporate video games into classroom practice.

But first, let’s reset our minds about videogames. If you can, forget all of the media hype. Forget all of the preconceptions about how good or bad they are for children. Instead, let’s take a fresh look. Let’s view videogames from a new perspective and together let us really see what’s happening …

In fact, let’s look at this through the eyes of a child …

Process Matters

When a child picks up a new videogame, he or she knows very little about the game. He or she knows little about the world the game operates in, the rules of the world, the rules of his or her character, or the rules of the interaction of his or her character with that world. The child doesn’t know what problems they have to solve to advance through the world, and in many cases the child doesn’t even know how to solve those problems ahead of time!

Yet, to win (and that is the goal of most videogames), he or she must learn those rules, master those rules, learn the problems, solve the problems, and fail a hundred times before finally succeeding!

Imagine a system so ingeniously designed, so pedagogically efficient that it takes a child from beginner to master in 40 to 60 hours (the standard amount of time a game plays), forces them to fail dozens of times before achieving ultimate success, but is so inspiring and so engaging that they solve the problems on their own, actively ask friends for help, and even do research to find answers.

Content Matters

Now imagine that what they’ve mastered, what they’re curious about, what they ask for help on, and ultimately what they succeed in is not Super Mario Brothers … but Algebra …

Now – if you were asked to design a system of education, wouldn’t that result be your goal? If you were an administrator or a principal and you were asked to manage a system of education, wouldn’t you be hoping that was the behavior of your students? And if you were a teacher, wouldn’t you be begging for the tools to help that become not just a dream, but a reality?

Of course! We all would! So as educators, we actually owe it to ourselves and to our students not to be frustrated by the videogame medium, not to be afraid of the technology, not to be suspicious of the engagement factor, but actually to embrace it and to ask the critical question “Why?”

In the next post we explore the question of why this works.

A Note from the Author:
This is the first in a series of discussions around the idea of educational gaming, simulations, and immersive learning. It’s a small snippet meant to start a dialogue. I’ll try to keep the piece short so we can dialogue together – so please, any questions, answers, retorts, replies – please post. More than happy to hear them and respond.

About Tabula Digita:
Tabula Digita is the award winning publisher of the DimensionM series of educational videogame titles. DimensionM titles encompass action and non-action titles and allow students to play other students within classrooms, across schools, and across the country, all while learning and increasing achievement. View Tabula Digita titles at www.DimensionM.com

FETC 2008 starts tomorrow and I'm looking forward to catching up with friends and colleagues from across the Education Technology industry.

I'm participating in a panel discussion on Thursday afternoon about games and education that will balance practitioners with vendors in a discussion about the state of games and learning. From the practitioner side John Rice of the Education Games Research Blog will be there along with Gary Weidenhamer, Education Technology Manager at Palm Beach County District. Dave Martz from Muzzy Lane Software and I will be speaking from the business perspective and Karen Billings from SIIA's Education Division will be moderating.

The panel runs from 1:50-2:45 PM Thursday in room CS4. Hope to see you there!

PS - Check the on-site notices - the room may change.

Will a middle school video game to teach ethics using a story line out of zombie movies and Frankenstein work? Doug Thomas at USC’s Annenberg School of Communication is working on “Modern Prometheus” a game that involves plagues, body parts, and building a better monster.

My hat is off to the Professor and his team but I question how much real life ethics they are going to teach. One of the fundamental challenges we face in creating serious games is the balance of fantasy vs. reality. Deciding whether or not to dig up graves for body parts just isn’t something your average middle schooler is going to be faced with on a regular basis. On other hand - being nice to the new kid or saying goodbye to a friend who is using drugs are very real.

It also surfaces one of the more vexing issues the entire game industry is facing - how do we move away from guns and gore and yet maintain fun game play? Mainstream gaming sites are full of lamentations about how staid and formulaic most games are today (despite fascinating new entrants like “Portal” from Valve - crazy fun and mind bending at the same time).

In the world of edugames a range of solutions to this challenge is emerging. At one end of the spectrum you have titles like Modern Prometheus and DimensionM from Tabula Digita which use themes involving shooting and gore that are close to mainstream games. [UPDATE: I should have been clearer in my writing here. Tabula Digita's products do not involve gore. They do have some shooting, although this is not the focus of the game and is directed at inanimate objects. Look for their thoughts on this question here soon.] The argument in favor of this approach is that it is familiar to the students. This should make adoption easier and make it more engaging.

The problem with this approach is that for good reasons most schools have strict rules about violence and its depiction on campus. The similarity in educator’s minds to more violent and socially unredeeming games could stall adoption at the school door.

At the other end of the spectrum we have games like Food Force from the UN and River City from Harvard School of Education which attempt to model real life scenarios using video game technologies. While interesting these games can feel a bit stilted at times.

I was encouraged to see that the USC team is allied with Sasha Barab’s Quest Atlantis project because they are taking the middle road. A fantasy world for sure - but one that doesn’t rely on violence to engage the learner.

In the end, success for edugames will depend on sound game play. If you are not familiar with Raph Koster’s work on this topic I encourage you to read his book A Theory Of Fun and his blog. Raph and the group of thinkers he is a part of talk about game play “atoms” and other essential concepts that should allow us to take instructional content and build games that are insanely fun to play.

You should also play as many games as you can (work work work..). Knowing the canon and the vocabulary (visual, linguistic, social, and competitive) of modern games is an essential grounding for helping us all take this concept to the next level. Get in touch if you want some suggestions on where to start.

We have to find some new environments and themes to ground edugames in - shooting and flinging body parts around isn’t going to cut it except in Forensics 101.

Technology & Learning On-Line has launched a set of forums on education technology issues. For some odd reason they selected me to moderate the Games and Virtual Worlds Forum. As the graphic shows teaching and learning is about a conversation, so lets get one going over there.

MaestroC got the ball rolling by stating that Second Life is the best platform and that games for education are a fad. Agree, disagree, keep it polite and lets all learn together. See my response on the forum and ad your own!

There is also a quick poll on which kind of game player you are. Several years ago Richard Bartle articulated the four primary styles of game play and a theory about how to balance them. Take the poll and see where you fit with your peers.

Other forums include:

• Student Personal Gadgets
• Free Stuff
• Security
• Digital Storytelling
• Letters to the Editor

  Credit to Jessica Hagy over at Indexed for the graphic.

Welcome Technology & Learning readers. My article Getting It Wrong - Slaying Myths About Video Games covers 5 misconceptions many teachers about video games and was published in two parts in September and October.

If you are interested in learning more in on the topic of games in the classroom here are two resources to help you.

John Rice's Education Games Research is essential reading on the subject. John is a Technology Director for a School District here in Texas and has published research in this arena. He writes from a practitioner's perspective but also with a good eye for research validation.

Richard Carey has put together an excellent resource over at Squidoo which provides automatically updated links and resources on the topic of Serious Games, Simulations & Learning. You can find books, blogs, and other items of interest at the site.

I also write regulary here on this topic and you can find all the relevant articles by clicking on the Serious Games link in the sidebar.

On a less serious note you can also read John August's Seven Things I Learned from World of Warcraft.

Do video games belong in the classroom?

Part 2 of the article I wrote for Technology & Learning Magazine is up on their website now.

The myths covered this month are:

Myth #3—Learning elements leach all the fun out of games
Myth #4—Teachers don't need to be involved in the game; kids can do it on their own
Myth #5—There isn't any scientifically based research to support the use of video games for learning

The lede:

"Do video games and simulations really belong in the classroom? A growing body of evidence—from education conference sessions to ramped-up gaming research and university pilot programs—all point to the affirmative. However, sensationalized press accounts, a personal lack of familiarity with games, and other factors still contribute to a broad skepticism of their value by educators, parents, and the public. Last month, we addressed the first two of five commonly held myths about video games. Here, we examine the remaining three."

Part 1 from last month is here. The myths debunked were:

Myth #1—Games are all about twitch speed, not higher order thinking skills
Myth #2—Games are just about violence and sex

Enjoy - then come back here and add your thoughts or tell me what I got wrong in comments!

Teaching metaphors, the role of school in society, bad (i.e. wrong) press for video games, glitz vs. content, banned books, racism in games, phishing games, and monkeys at the keyboard. All featured on this weeks roundup!

Teachings of a Zen Gardener over at PickTheBrain is a beautiful analogy for what teachers do.

The always excellent Will Richardson posted “School as Node” over at Weblogg-Ed. The original post he references talked about revolution but Will argues that we need to engage in a conscious act of evolution. This is a nice follow on to the articles just published here by Paul Schumann.

Unconscionable. Really. Newspaper Seriously Errs Reporting Videogame Study at Educational Games Research. We deserve a better press than this - oh wait we have the web now.

Logic+Emotion published When Presentation Eclipses Story. Textbook publishers are on the horns of a dilemma here - pretty covers and whizzy free-with-order stuff sells books - but at the heart of it we should remember that it is about kids understanding the content. Its also a good reminder for anyone doing a presentation.

Sad but true. Starting to notice - the only people school firewalls keep away from resources are the teachers - students know of every proxy on the planet - from the Classroom 2.0 blog. Related to my entry Disfunction Junction

Love this list - Banned Books: Have you read one? from Clarksville, TN Online. I'm a piker - I've only read 18 of them. But this gives me some ideas..

On the edugaming front at the The Forge · Straight From Central Casting is a disturbing reflection on the role of racism when creating "the bad guys" in game design. Think this doesn't matter for the real world? Head over to DailyKos to read a hilarious send up of anti-muslim stereotyping.

Play this game! Over at PC World Phishing Game Warns Users highlights a great educational game that everyone should play. I consider myself fairly savvy and I only got about 75% right the first time through.

Hat tip to Paul Schumann - this is a really cool video of a crowd game using technology. Look at the intensity - we want that in our classrooms!

Must see video - Chimp vs. Pacman.

Interesting links on education publishing, education technology, and virtual worlds in education.

Research shows schools that fund Libraries have higher scores. Annie Teich at Crazy for Kids Books talks about some work that AASL is doing to shed light on this. I'm surprised this research hasn't been done before.

Student blogger censored by Judge for disparaging administrators. Everyone agrees that the student used unfortunate language on her personal blog to describe school officials, but the Judge sided with the school in abrogating her free speech rights. This one will get appealed. See my article on the disconnect between new technology and schools.

Effects of videogames on spatial learning and awareness are long lasting (and even between the genders). Commercial Gaming guro Damien Schubert comments on some fascinating early results from research in this area.

Google gets into virtual worlds? Raph Koster and others are reporting that it looks like Google is partnering with ASU on a virtual world build on top of Google Earth. Does this have anything to do with James Gee moving down there recently?

Teachers excited about learning due to new technologies! Carolyn Foote at the excellent Not So Distant Future blog talks about how excited she and her peers are about learning and collaborating internationally and muses about how we can share that with the students. (Disclosure - my son attends her school).

Serious Games are not just for kids. John Rice over at Educational Games Research does a nice roundup of some of the recent news around Seniors and videogames. The cognitive benefits apply to all ages!

We need teachers more than ever with new technologies. I agree. There will be more on this in part 2 of my article in Technology & Learning.

Update on game engines for Education. Richard Carey does a nice job of updating his reporting on this critical topic.

The perfect marketing plan. Solid advice on making marketing plans mean something from John Jantsch at Duck Tape Marketing.

Hi-larious IBM video from the '60's about home shopping. Oh well - they did the best they could. They did see the basics - they just had no way to imagine the real breakthroughs and the many ways that society itself would change.

My article busting myths about video games and learning is on Technology & Learning's website now - you can find it here. The prior link was to the flash version of the whole magazine.

Many many many thanks to Jo-Ann McDevitt who encouraged this and especially to Susan McLester who was a great teacher and editor on this project. Give T+L some love - go read the whole thing there.

Here is a teaser from the lead -

"...When you look past the Orcs, Gnomes, and other fanciful inhabitants and elements, you find Blizzard has built an elegant and engaging learning management system. WoW does an outstanding job of guiding players to their zone of proximal development and provides a neverending stream of feedback and fresh challenges while leaving the player in charge. My guess is that philosopher and psychologist Jean Piaget would be proud and amused to see his ideas implemented in this context and on such a global scale."

If you want to see the Flash version of the whole magazine it is here. The article starts on page 16.

As always - come back and tell me what I missed!