Games in Education Conference

About a month ago I was asked to attend a symposium on Games in Education that was held in Schenectady NY. To be honest I was a little worried it might turn out to be a total bust, but to my delight it was actually very informative. AND I got to teach a bunch of near senior citizens to play Rock Band. We were able to play Creep after about 10 minutes of practice. Below are some of my notes from the conference that I prepared for the secret group that sent me on my mission.

Five Lessons Learned

1) Currently the only acceptable use of video game technology in the classroom is as a supplement to existing curricula.

While this mindset is understandable it severely limits the ways in which video games can be employed for teaching purposes. Teachers have a sense that any given video game has a very limited scope only applicable in a specific area either as a teaching aid (math, spelling, physics) or as a way to enrich material already being taught (world war II, middle ages, civil rights). No one is thinking about the possibility of a video game that teaches how to learn, or creates self-reliant learners.

2) Results must be quantified and demonstrable.

The standardized testing and evaluation of skills brought on by No Child Left Behind has instilled a knee jerk reaction to any learning tool (video game or otherwise) that doesn’t promise provable results. No one denies that learning is taking place with even mainstream COTS games, but that learning is hard to quantify / apply to the current system of evaluation.

3) Teachers realize that play is learning, but don’t know what to do about it.

‘Play’ was certainly one of the buzz words at the conference, teachers seem to realize that children (and adults for that matter) use play as the primary way of learning and experimenting without the consequences associated with ‘failing’ in a traditional academic context. Video games are an easy sell here because there is already a strong association with games and play. Leveraging this culture of play is key.

4) The game industry continues to raise the expectations of production value in video games. If you can’t compete, keep it simple.

One of the most interesting moments of the conference was a speaker showing the audience images from a popular COTS game – people were clearly blown away by the art, design, atmosphere etc. The game, BIOSHOCK, is rated MA and could never be justifiably brought into a school context despite how compelling the game is. Students are going home to these games when the school day is over. None of the games being demoed at the conference had production value anywhere close to BIOSHOCK – however many of them attempted realistic graphics and atmosphere but fell very short when compared to a major COTS. Developers assume that if a game doesn’t have flashy graphics no one will play. If the success of the Wii has taught us anything it is that creative gameplay and design can more than make up for a lack of production value in a game’s presentation. Following Nintendo’s model of creating engaging games that don’t attempt high production value would be wise.

5) It’s up to us to create the fourth type of video game.

Currently there are three kinds of videogames: Commercial off the shelf (COTS), Edutainment titles, and Serious games. This is a familiar paradigm – COTS games have the greatest production and design value and are the most fun to play. That is because developers and publishers make a mint selling them and can afford the R&D necessary to continually innovate. Edutainment games are learning aids like NUMBER MUNCHERS, or READER RABBIT – games which feature repetitive training in a specific area with graphical rewards and scoring. Serious games are a relatively new area which focus on some real world issue, FOOD FORCE is the classic example which asks the player to help deliver food and supplies to war ridden refugee camps as a United Nations agent. Serious games often lack decent gameplay, or employee well worn designs and simply re-skin them for ‘serious’ use.

Bill MacKenty, one of the keynote speakers talked about these three types of video games and predicted that a fourth type of game would begin to emerge in the next 5 years which would combine the best elements of the aforementioned categorizations. He was under the impression that the vision and ability to bring together experts from the game industry and from education would come out of a major university or institution.

Some Interesting Video Game usage in Classrooms

Second Life, not an adult paradise after all…

Peggy Sheehy, an ‘Instructional Technology Facilitator’ did a great presentation on the use of Second Life (SL) as a teaching tool. Her school, Suffern Middle School, has a private SL island which the school pays for. Because SL is totally customizable she is able to have the students build environments specific to course material, and then use it in a quasi role-playing game setup. For example when studying TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD she had student build a copy of the town and courthouse and then re-enact the trial with students playing all the important roles, and communicating via keyboard. She also did a very interesting unit on self image in which the students created self portraits with various constraints and then discussed their appearance in virtual small groups. I don’t think SL if where we want to be focusing, it’s going to get replaced sooner of later, but for now at least some people are using it in interesting ways.

Video games as Literature

Brock Dubbels explained teaching a unit in which he had students bring in their game consoles and videogames from home. Groups of students picked a game to focus on and then wrote a report and did a presentation as would be normally done with a book report. Not surprisingly students had a lot to say about the games.

Teaching Game Design

Alex Games presented a web based game design game. Yes that’s right, a game about designing games. He and a number of other people thought there was a lot of be learned (and there is) in the process of designing a simple game system. Tweaking the timing, number of enemies, level design etc. I totally agree, and am looking forward to trying the software, entitled GAME STAR MECHANIC, when it comes out. Something to note is that it is free and web based, that means good penetration both in schools and at home.