Pokemon Go: Problem or Opportunity?

Pokémon seems to be an enduring attraction for students. This past year, I noticed quite a few of my students with Pokémon cards. I've purchased a few of the guide books for our library, and they are constantly checked out. If you are unfamiliar with Pokémon, the creators’ Parents’ Guide provides a good overview.

Pidgeotto in my living room

The newest incarnation is Pokémon Go, an augmented reality game played on mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. The game shows players or “trainers” on a map of their local area. Walking around the neighborhood, players will come across wild Pokémon which can be caught using a Pokéball. I have only started playing, but one feature I love is that I can take a picture of a Pokémon with the real world as a background! My understanding is that I can help my Pokémon get stronger and evolve into new forms. Eventually I will be able to join a team, battle other Pokémon, and take control of a local Pokémon gym where I can continue competing.

In the couple of days since the free app was released, I have immediately noticed people playing in my area. Taking my dog out, I saw three boys walking by my house with their phones out. “Looking for Pokémon?” I asked. “Yeah, it’s great! I’ve already walked two miles today!” one responded. On top of the existing popularity of the whole Pokémon franchise, players now have the chance to bring their gameplay into the real world, a powerfully appealing opportunity.

Pinsir near shopping area

So what does this have to do with education? Thinking back to those Pokémon cards, I know that I have reacted to their presence at school primarily as a potential problem. I saw them as a distraction at best and the source of student conflicts over trades or theft at worst. But shouldn’t I treat student enthusiasms as an opportunity instead? Can I find a way to connect students’ interest in Pokémon with more traditionally educational topics?

No doubt many of our students with mobile devices are out there right now catching and training Pokémon. And I doubt the fervor will die down before they come back to school in August. They’ll be excited to show their classmates their best Pokémon and possibly trade and battle each other. Is this going to be a distraction to the learning experience or something we can leverage?

I’ve started to think about ways we could help students connect Pokémon GO experiences with our curricula. They could learn about sampling a population by tracking how many Pokémon show up in a certain area over a certain amount of time. Each Pokémon has different abilities which parallels the idea of animal adaptations. When the game allows for trading, supply and demand is going to become an important dynamic. This game also encourages exercise as players are motivated to go out in search of more Pokémon.

How else could we leverage Pokémon GO for student learning? Please share your ideas on this Padlet.

Quick Thoughts from ISTE #1

For the opening keynote at ISTE 2014, I was expecting inspiration, technology, and education. Hearing Ashley Judd talk about her journey from a childhood of love and neglect and abuse to an adulthood of healing and recovery was not what I expected. She did share how some teachers’ actions and remarks made a positive impact on her far beyond what they probably realized. And she talked about how important it is for us to listen to children and to really see them.

So while her talk was not what I expected, perhaps it was what we needed to hear: the core of what we do is to listen to and see what is going on with the children who walk into our classrooms. Sometimes we fill our heads with great educational ideas and exciting technology tools to the extent that we forget the human beings who are our students. Hopefully, we will find ideas and tools that will help us listen to them better.

Reflections on Summer Part II GamesMOOC

Jumping into GamesMOOC gear for the second half of the Summer session, I found a smorgasbord of ideas, examples, games, and worlds. We discussed the use of avatars, explored other game-related MOOCs, visited the GamesMOOC Minecraft server, and shared games that might be useful in education.

Our Wednesday evening tweetchats focused on the experience of using avatars. Rosie O’Brien Vojtek, one editor of the Virtual Education Journal, asked us to think about the Avatar Generation: folks who are very comfortable operating in a virtual world using a personalized avatar. These folks have a facility for negotiating virtual worlds and building and communicating in these worlds.

Avatars have some connection to the identities that we claim in “real life.” Introverts may feel more comfortable speaking up via their avatars. The “disinhibition effect” seems to free us up to behave in ways we wouldn’t in face-to-face encounters. Avatars may represent our sense of our true selves to greater or lesser degrees, depending on whether the player is trying to explore a different identity in a safe space or trying to represent themselves faithfully.

We ventured into a couple of other MOOCs, one of which was the rgMOOC (Rhetoric and Composition: The Persuasive Power of Video Games as Paratexts), a course taught in part by Sherry Jones. This course invited participants to engage with texts and videos that offered background content, explore a variety of games, and enter into discussions of what they found each week. The course had a clear structure within which participants had many choices.

The rgMOOC asked participants to explore the messages and assumptions of the games that we play in our society. In the GamesMOOC, we discussed other uses of COTS (commercial off-the-shelf) games in educational settings. Because I work with students who are under 13 who have access to a school-issued laptop throughout the school year, I have opportunities and limits in what we can use. The easiest games for me to incorporate are free web-based games that don’t require installation. Lure of the Labyrinth and Coaster Crafter are a couple games that I have discovered in the past. I would like to look more closely at several suggested games: Poptropica, the Mesoamerican Ballgame, Wallace and Gromit Sprocket Rocket, and School of Dragons.



Our tours of the GamesMOOC (et. al.) Minecraft server reminded me once again that I shouldn’t give up on trying to find a way to get teachers and administration to accept this game in school. Having a server that educators can explore seems like a good way to introduce the game to those who haven’t seen it. And the work that MouseyMoose and Giraffe619 did to create the Inevitable Betrayal village and castle reminded me of the many skills that children use in this world. Badges may be a good way to define and communicate to outsiders what children are accomplishing in game worlds like Minecraft. Massively @ Jokaydia seems to have a strong start on this with their Awards.

Now that the Summer Part II GamesMOOC has wrapped up, and my school year is about to begin, I need to think about how to bring these ideas and games to life at my school. I love the sharing and camaraderie of the GamesMOOC, but I need to find a way to bring it home. My first thought was to choose a couple of games to explore further and then share those with my local colleagues. But perhaps I need to take it further and get them involved in exploring those games. Perhaps I need to create a Mini Open Online Course for the teachers at my school that would expose them to some of the basics of how games connect with learning and example of games they could use.

Touring This Land

A Minecraft server has been set up to house several educational groups that explore virtual worlds: SIGVE, Games MOOC, Inevitable Betrayal guild, and others. Today, a tour was offered of This Land, the section that belongs to the Inevitable Betrayal guild.

This section was created over the course of four days by two girls, ages ten and twelve. It includes a village and castle surrounded by a huge wall with towers at the corners. The village has a variety of stores, a park, a jousting area, and more. The castle has a throne room, banquet area, kitchen, and a hall of bedrooms. Adults on the tour were rightly impressed by the detail, scale, and design of the project.



The leader of our tour, Kae Novak, pointed out the numerous professional skills that the girls had used. They had been asked to create an outpost for Inevitable Betrayal and went above and beyond in the scope and quality of this outpost. They met a deadline. They did research on different styles of castles, choosing one they had seen but building it with different materials.

The girls reported that one of the biggest challenges was to come to agreements about how the outpost would look. Apparently there were many conflicts of opinion, but the final result shows that they were able to get past those. This kind of negotiation in a group project is a crucial skill for the world of work.

One of the questions that arose after the main tour was, how do we recognize children for the skills like negotiation that they are developing in these virtual worlds? So often the larger culture and educational institutions see games like Minecraft as mere entertainment. But clearly children are practicing and developing many important skills in these collaborative game environments.

My first thought was to develop badges that kids could apply for. We could outline some requirements for the Negotiator, Research, Problem-Solver, or Designer Badge. Our two Minecraft creators could document the project that they worked on and share examples of how they met those requirements. This could be done with text and screenshots or a screen recording or a live interview with an adult who could award the badge.

I do wonder if the idea of getting recognition or credit for their learning is more important to us as educators than it is to kids. I suspect that the kids mostly just want to play the game. But the badges could be used to prove to schools and society the value of what is happening in these virtual worlds. If that value is recognized, schools might give more time and resources to allow students to play these games.

Missives from the MOOC 2: Super-Empowered

A set of questions for educators:

• Wouldn’t you love it if your students had “the desire to act immediately to tackle an obstacle, combined with the belief that [they] have a reasonable hope of success”?
• Would you like your class to have a “tight social fabric”?
• Would you like your students to be “willing to work hard all the time”?
• Would you like to feel like your class is working on “awe-inspiring missions”?

These are no-brainers, right? Obviously, we would love our students and classes to have these characteristics.

In her March 2010 TED talk "Gaming Can Make a Better World," Jane McGonigal lists these as the exact strengths that we develop through experiences with games:

• Urgent Optimism
• Social Fabric
• Blissful Productivity
• Epic Meaning

She goes on to discuss how we need to harness those strengths in tackling the problems faced by our world, but my thoughts go immediately to the classroom. How can I use the design elements of games to help my students become “super-empowered, hopeful individuals”?

Why Educators Should Read Reality is Broken

One of the most thought-provoking and inspiring activities of my summer has been participating in the Level Up Book Club organized online by librarians Jennifer LaGarde and Matthew Winner. Our first book of the summer is Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World by Jane McGonigal.  Within the first few chapters I felt very strongly that this is a book all my teaching colleagues should read. Why?

To understand our students better

We can’t teach our students if we don’t know them, right? And a big part of our students’ lives are the games they play. As McGonigal explains, we have a societal bias against games, thinking that they are a trivial waste of time. She argues strongly that we need to overcome this bias because games are extremely effective at helping us meet our most basic human needs and provide a guide for how other aspects of our lives could be more meaningful. We need to recognize that there is a reason our students love the games they play and to respect this important part of their lives outside of school. McGonigal shares several examples of popular games and helps us understand what our students are getting out of these games.

To start thinking about how game design could enrich learning

Games are incredibly engaging. Contrast the addictiveness of Minecraft amongst our students with the boredom even our best students feel in school at times. According to McGonigal, games provide challenge, meaningful work, a sense of accomplishment, and social connections. They motivate us by providing a real sense of optimism about our ability to succeed. And when we fail at a game, it just inspires us to try again and try harder this time. These are all things that we want to increase at school. Learning more about how games give us motivation, challenge, satisfaction, confidence, and perseverance will help us design better learning opportunities for our students.

To help us do new things in new ways

Technology is increasingly available in the educational realm, but just turning a worksheet into a pdf or a lecture into a Keynote or PowerPoint presentation does not improve learning. We need to break out of our old habits to take full advantage of how technology can enrich student learning. Good game design offers clear goals, immediate feedback, and choice. Those design elements could guide us in how to use technology to create new, more powerful learning activities.

A guild is stronger than an individual

Our book club’s discussions have generated a lot of exciting ideas that I want to implement at my school. I keep thinking how powerful this book could be if my local colleagues read it, too. Incorporating game design into education is a new way of thinking for many of us. Such a challenge is best met by a party of willing adventurers.

For more information about Reality is Broken, visit Jane McGonigal’s web site which includes related videos, reviews, and ordering information.

Why Games?

Photo by Bjorn Hermans

So why am I so interested in learning more about gaming and education? Because I love games. And kids love games. Don’t we all love games? Tennis or chess or Monopoly or Castleville or Minecraft or Super Mario Bros. or Angry Birds?

What makes games so enticing?

If you think about all of those games, they all share certain features:

• Goals
• Rules
• Feedback
• Voluntary participation 

We enjoy participating in games when these four elements are well-designed and meet our personal interests. Some of us like really clear goals and some like more open-ended objectives. The rules need to provide just the right amount of challenge: if the game is too easy we get bored, if it is too hard we give up.

The feedback lets us know that we are succeeding with points, XP, leveling up, badges, etc. Or if we do something wrong, feedback comes in the form of fewer points, losing a “life,” starting a level over, or losing the game to an opponent. The great thing about games is that negative feedback usually leads to trying again.

Voluntary participation is a huge part of what makes playing a game fun. It includes the decision of whether to play the game or not. I think this also relates to the amount of choice within the game. We enjoy playing when we can choose how to participate.

How does traditional education compare with games?

http://capl.washjeff.edu/2/l/4040.jpg

You may have noticed that educational activities also include goals, rules, and feedback. Sometimes we make the goals clear to our students. Sometimes we provide scaffolding that makes the “rules” of our learning activities at the right amount of challenge for students, but not always. Too often we offer one level of difficulty which some students find to easy and others find too hard.

Some voluntary participation and choices may be included, but not nearly as often as mandatory activities, at least in traditional classrooms. Too often students feel trapped in school, forced to do whatever activities teachers put in front of them. Where’s the fun in that?

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3634/3424044473_bab8a257b8.jpg

Another big difference between games and traditional education is in the type of feedback. Usually when students complete an assignment, quiz, or test, if they do poorly, they get the feedback of a bad grade and that is the end of it. They just fail with little opportunity to try again. Also, there is a stigma attached to that failure that is lessened in games. In a game, you can always try again.

Gamifying education

As I consider my teaching, I would like to design learning activities that are more like games. I would like to give students more choices, so that they have more of a sense of voluntary participation. I would like to set up activities that provide variety and scaffolding so that they are at just the right level of challenge. I want to set up feedback systems that recognize students for their accomplishments and encourage them to try again. I think 3DGameLab will provide the structure for these learning activities.

Credits

 My thinking about games in education has been influenced and inspired by Lucas Gillispie and Peggy Sheehy through NCSLMA and NCTIES conference sessions this school year. Gillispie’s blog Edurealms is a great place to read more about games in education.

Game on!

Next week, I am starting an online class on game-based learning through 3D GameLab. I am really excited about finding ways to harness the motivation that is inherent in good game experiences and use it in learning experiences for my students. Check back if you are interested in seeing what I discover along the way.

The following infographic from Knewton gives a good overview of why I am interested in this topic.


Created by Knewton and Column Five Media