Gaming to Change the World

I have long been interested in the use of games as learning tools.  So I recently read two books on video games, Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World by Jane McGonigal and Video Games and Learning by Kurt Squire.  I'll focus on the first book in this post and save the other for another time.

Jane McGonigal is the director of Game Research and Development at the Institute for the Future and makes an excellent case for using games to solve world problems.  Although her book does not focus on education, I learned a lot about the  mechanics of what makes games (especially online games) so appealing and tried to make my own comparison to traditional educational activities.

McGonigal starts off explaining that all games both on and off line from the simplest to the most complex possess 4 features: a goal, rules, a feedback system, and voluntary participation.  (p. 21).  Then she spends a good deal of the book describing how research has shown that games create positive emotion.  Games make us happy because they are hard work that we choose for ourselves, and it turns out that almost nothing makes us happier than good, hard work (p. 28).  Unfortunately, while many classes are hard work, they are usually required not voluntary.

In McGonigal's book I  learned that there are three things that make online or video games so compelling:

• Feedback
• Flow
• Fiero

Feedback

The 3 types of feedback these games  provide are visual (perhaps by something appearing or disappearing, ) quantitative (a score) and qualitative (a steady increase in the challenge level).  This feedback allows you to always know how you're doing.  In contrast  in a class in the feedback is often sparse and delivered well after something is turned in.

Flow

 McGonigal tells us that In a good computer or video game you're always playing on the very edge of your skill level, always on the brink of falling off.  When you do fall off, you feel the urge to climb back on.  That's because there is virtually nothing as engaging as this state of working at the very limits of your ability - or what both game designers and psychologists call "flow."  When you are in a state of flow, you want to stay there ...(p. 24).  Although some classes are very energizing, others tend to make students keep looking at the clock hoping that the period will end.

Fiero

Fiero is what we feel after we triumph over adversity (p. 33).  It's the feeling that makes us want to throw our hands in the air or do a "happy dance" because we have truly accomplished something.  How often does that happen in a class?

McGonigal both explains the appeal of video games and poses a provocative question.  What if we decided to use everything we know about game design to fix what's wrong with reality?  What if we started to live our real lives like gamers, lead our real businesses and communities like game designers, and think about solving real-world problems like computer and video game theorists (p. 7)?

I still have a lot to learn about video games and education.  So I plan to continue reading and to play several video games like Civ IV in the summer so that I can experience the feedback, flow and fiero that McGonigal describes.  In the meantime, however, I heartily agree with her goal of using games to change the world.

Tools of Engagement Project

  I have been participating in professional development for faculty at the State University of NY at Buffalo through a site called Tools of Engagement. Although previous mods proved interesting, this morning I viewed the mod on collaborative spaces and was disappointed.   Although I was glad to see that my favorite site, Voice Thread, (VT) was featured, I was dissatisfied with the examples that were provided.
    Unfortunately some of the links for examples of VT did not work, but for those that did, the examples showed very little interaction between creator and audience.  The threads showed the creators using VT as a substitute for Power Point.  In my opinion the presenters were ignoring one of the main features of the program -comments.
    In my own online course I use a class Voice Thread for students to post their reflections on certain activities they have done or tools they have explored.  Here is an example from a previous course.  The students in that course (who were all present or future teachers) were also required to create their own Voice Thread to use with their own students.  Learning L2 Culture: More Than Words is an example created by one of the students in which he used VT to elicit comments about French culture.

   Personally I feel that I have just begun to utilize all the features of VT and hope to soon incorporate more.

Animoto for Foreign Language Practice

Here's an example of using Animoto for French. This video clip was created by Keri Sedita. Que fais-tu ce weekend? by sundancer418 on GoAnimate

Animated Presentations - Powered by GoAnimate.

DIIGO

I have been using the social bookmarking tool, DIIGO, for several years.  I rely a lot on this site and am constantly adding to my account.  Here is my personal modus operandi with DIIGO:

1.  As I skim through the items in my Google Reader or my Twitter account, I open the ones that interest me.  

2.   If I think an item I've read may be of use to me in the future, I click on the DIIGO button in my toolbar and choose bookmark. 

 I do the same after following a link to another article or YouTube video.

3.   Then if the title of an item is self-explanatory such as 12 Crucial Questions to Ask before Using iPad with your Students, I just add it to my  account.  If the title isn't sufficient,  I add a note in the space available when I click Bookmark.

  

4.  Then I perform the most important step which is to give the entry multiple tags (labels).  For example,  for Education 2020,  I  used connectivism , gamification,  project-based learning,  and  Inquirybased learning.

5.  Once in a while if I have found something that relates to health or family that I don't want to share with the public, I click the small box labeled Private, so that only I can see it.

When I am planning a new mod for my course or updating an existing one, I rely heavily on my DIIGO account to find information that I have put there.  For example, I recently created a mod on gamification.  I had been collecting articles about gaming for quite some time,  so I looked at all the DIIGO entries that I had tagged game, games, gamification, and gaming to find pertinent material.  This review also allowed me to delete or edit material that I deemed less useful.

Another way I use DIIGO is to include a link to a specific tag in my DIIGO account in my syllabus.  For example, instead of telling the students to search all of cyberspace for pertinent articles on microblogging for education, I simply ask them to choose some  articles from my DIIGO account with Twitter tags.  

I honestly couldn't function with DIIGO!

Google Reader

Google Reader is my lifeline to other professionals.  In my reader I have feeds to other educators in the fields of educational technology and second language learning.  Each morning I skim through the titles of blog post feeds to see which ones merit reading.   Although some people have feeds from newspapers, I prefer to use Google Reader just for blog posts.

Some bloggers post a tremendous amount.  (I don't know when they sleep!)  However, since Reader allows me to view just the titles on my iGoogle homepage, I can quickly delete material that doesn't interest me.  Or if I choose to view items on my Google Reader homepage, I can quickly scroll through my folders in the left sidebar.  Since the blogs with recent posts appear in bold. I can click on them to see the entire posts on the right. 

Keeping my Google Reader manageable requires some "gardening skills."  Once  in a while, I remember to "weed" my garden of feeds by going to the Reader page and clicking Trends.  That way I can see which subscriptions are  less useful by clicking on Inactive or Most Obscure under Subscription Trends and deleting those feeds. 

  Wow!  I think I need to do that now!

Tips for Lifelong Learners

As part of an online course called Tools of Engagement, I viewed a 4 minute video called  7 1/2 Habits of Highly Successful lifelong Learners. These are the three habits that resonated with me.

View problems as challenges

I think I can!

I teach an online course about using technology in second and foreign language classrooms.  As we all know, our relationship with technology is frequently a love/hate relationship.  When things go smoothly we luxuriate in the many ways technology makes our lives and our learning easier.  On the other hand, when problems arise, we can get very frustrated.

Viewing problems as challenges is a good way to look at these occasional frustrations.   We have various ways of meeting tech challenges.  One is to go carefully through the steps we used and, perhaps, write them down.  Sometimes our own error then jumps out at us.  Another way to meet the challenge is to Google the problem.  Usually someone in cyberspace has encountered the same problem and posted a solution.

Create your own learning toolbox

Fill 'er up!

My learning toolbox is the Internet.  Networking with other professionals through social networking sites like Ning, Yahoo groups and Twitter keeps me up to date on the future of education.  Free, online webinars are also essential tools in my toolbox.

 Teach/mentor others

How about this way?

Since retiring from f2f teaching of English as a Second  Language, I have been able to devote most of my time to the online course mentioned in #1.  I truly enjoy continuing to learn and sharing what I learn with future teachers.  In the field of educational technology, things are always in a state of "perpetual beta" and I realize that full-time students and teachers often don't have time to explore educational tech as much as they would like.  For that reason, I feel that I can make a contribution to the next generation of teachers by doing some of the groundwork myself and then pointing them in the right direction so they can each choose whichever tech tools best meet their individual needs.

Naps

As part of a project at UB called Tools of Engagement, I am exploring some features of Flickr and other online sites. I haven't taken the time to clear up "red eye" in some of the photos I used for today's creations, but my purpose was simply  to try out  features of different tools and the photos worked for that.

 Here's a  Flickr slide show of Naps.  I uses a "set" of pix in Flickr to create this.  I could also use the set to create the Animoto version.  It would have been easier, however, if I could have used "tags" to find photos for uploading but I didn't see that option.

Here is the Animoto version .


Make a video of your own at Animoto.


 And here is the Flixtime version with some of the same photos.



 Although the Flixtime version photos seemed fuzzier, there are also some features in that program that might be worth exploring like voice over.  However, I had to download the Flickr photos to my hard drive in order to upload them to Flixtime.

I wanted to use the site Stupeflix which I had used before but there doesn't seem to be a free version any longer.  Too bad.  I liked the site.