The Role of Games

“James Paul Gee on Learning with Video Games” is the podcast I will be looking at now. Video games are often controversial in general and definitely in education. Gee is a major advocated of video games in the classroom.

Gee explains that today’s video games are much more than just the game. Games have become a social phenomenon. Role-playing games have become increasingly popular, which are played with other people.  The main example he uses is World of Warcraft. In this game players make groups of 5 where they all specialize differently, yet must maintain a big picture view to do well. This has obvious overlap with the modern successful business strategy.

It is really interesting to me, a non-gamer to the core, that video games can integrate skills that would be really useful in the real world. When seen from this perspective, teachers can use the games that students play for fun to help the student understand content collaboration and business strategy.

Another example Gee gives is the game of Portal. In Portal players make orange and blue “portals” where they enter one and come out the other to get to different places to complete missions. However, the game follows the laws of physics. This game could be a fantastic way for a physics teacher to pull in the students’ interests to help them understand the material. Playing the game would likely be an advantage to better understand concepts taught in class.

Gee offers many other examples. However, the main takeaway for me is that as teachers we need to be intentional about understanding the culture and interests of our students. It is their interests that give them experiences. A person’s experiences is what helps them to learn, really learn.  We need to give students the opportunity to really use the knowledge that they are being taught in the classroom. While at the same time realizing the depth of their current hobbies and relate that knowledge to their academics as well. This is a distinct two-way street.

  

Mentorship and Collaboration

Today I’ll be reviewing another Edutopia podcast entitled “Teaching Teamwork through Video Game Development.”

This podcast focuses on Computer Science teacher, Ben Chun,  and his high school class, which is making  educational video games for a 5^th grade class. This is a really neat integration idea between different students and schools. The designing students had the opportunity to meet the students and teacher that they are designing these games for.

I think this is a really awesome opportunity and neat idea. Technology isn’t often used to mentor and connect students. However, this relationship has obvious benefits to everyone involved. The high school students have a clear real life application for their work, which is a HUGE plus. The elementary students get games personally made for them, to engage their interests to help them learn. The elementary teacher gets incredibly more say than the average teacher over what the educational games played in class actually entail.

The high school students are broken up into groups of three to create the video games. The roles are broken up quite similarly to the way that they might be broken up at a real software company, which gives the students great experience and understanding.  Except that all of the students in the group are responsible for designing the game, which maintains academic focus. The real-world emphasis in all aspects of this particular project is especially appealing to me and fits in well with the 21^st Century Skills Model.

The fifth grade students were even able to visit the high school to further their relationship with the high school class. During this visit the fifth grade students were able to play some demos of the games, which allowed the high school students to get live feedback from the ‘customer.’ The level of real-world and mentorship integration in this project is mind-boggling to me. It seems like this is an ideal situation that more teacher should be striving for to really make learning collaborative across schools, ages, and content-areas.