Introduction to Games in Education

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Introduction to Games in Education

• Mark Wagner
• Coordinator Educational Technology

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What is Hard Fun?

• Its hard. Its fun. Its LOGO. (1st Grader)
• I have no doubt that this kid called the work
  fun because it was hard rather than in spite of
  being hard. (Seymour Papert)
• How do we make writing become hard fun?
  (Seymour Papert)
• Seymours gears

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Welcome and Introductions

• Name
• Site
• Grade / Subject
• What were your gears?
• What are your students gears?

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Overview

• Piaget, Papert, Prensky
• and more

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Purpose/Rationale

• Digital Natives Digital Immigrants (Prensky,
  2001)
• Incidental vs. Intentional Learning (Jonassen,
  2002)
• enGauge 21st Century Skills (NCREL, 2003)
• Digital Age Literacies
• Inventive Thinking
• Effective Communication
• High Productivity
• Constructivist Learning Environments
• Context, Choice, Collaboration (Wagner, 2005)

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Relevant Theorists

• Jean Piaget (1929 to 1976)
• Seymour Papert (1980, 1993, 1996)
• Marc Prensky (2001)
• James Paul Gee (2003, 2005)
• Clark Aldrich (2004, 2005)
• Graduate Students

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Jean Piaget

• Cognitive Structures Schemes
• Functional Invariants
• Adaptation
• Organization
• Adaptation
• Assimilation
• Accommodation
• Stage Theory

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Seymour Papert

• Mindstorms, 1980
• The Childrens Machine, 1993
• The Connected Family, 1996
• www.papert.org

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Marc Prensky

• Digital Game-Based Learning, 2001
• marcprensky.com
• games2train.com

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James Paul Gee

• What Video Games Have To Teach Us About Learning
  and Literacy, 2003
• Why Video Games are Good For Your Soul, 2005

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Clark Aldrich

• Simulations and the Future of Learning, 2004
• Learning by Doing, 2005
• Learning Circuits

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Virtual Leader
simulearn.net
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simSchool
simSchool.org
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Graduate Students

• Nick Yee
• Kurt Squire
• Constance Steinkuehler
• Fiona Littleton
• Mark Wagner
• And more

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Share Resources

• Share new or striking ideas from your own
• Reading
• Listening
• Viewing
• Experience

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Break - 5 minutes
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Hands On

• Experience an Educational Game
• The WFPs Food Force

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Richard Halverson (2005)
Nowhere is the current generational gap in
technology greater than in game literacy, and
while asking school leaders and teachers to play
commercial video games may be a stretch,
integrating game-based learning experiences in
their professional development may help them see
the merits of gaming from the inside.
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Reflection Questions

• What was your experience like as a player?
• What relationships do you see between this game
  and the theories we discussed?

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Break - 5 minutes
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Games in Your Classroom

• What can you use on Monday?

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Web-based Games

• Browser based
• Mostly FREE
• Engaging and content related
• Great for younger students

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Commercial Off The Shelf (COTS) Games

• Teachers may not be able to develop a cutting
  edge game, but many games can be repurposed.
• Instead of embedding a game into learning, it is
  possible to embed learning into a game. (Downes,
  2005)

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Civilization III

• Real Time Strategy
• Systems Content
• Social Studies Concepts
• Complexity, flexibility, replayability
• Failure and choice
• Kurt Squires Dissertation (2004)

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Kurt Squire (2005)

• 25 complained the game was too hard, complicated
  and uninteresting.
• 25 loved playing the game,thought it was a
  perfect way to learn history, and a highlight
  of their year.

• Students played the game in different ways,
  leading to highly different understandings.
• Playing games does not appeal to everyone, and no
  one game appeals to all gamers.

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Making History

• Designed for education!
• Assessment features
• Successfully piloted

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Unreal Tournament

• First Person Shooter
• Mod-able
• Used to teach chemistry!

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Neverwinter Nights

• Role Playing Game (RPG)
• Toolset for user-made content
• Teachers can be gamemasters (GMs)
• MITs Revolution Mod

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MMORPGs

• Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games
• Context, Choice, Collaboration
• Guilds!

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Teen Second Life

• 13-18 year olds
• Avatar customization
• User created content
• In game economy

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And More

• Age of Empires
• Age of Mythology
• Rise of Nations
• Morrowind
• The Sims
• SimCity etc
• Zoo Tycoon etc

• Myst

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Designing a game?

• Benefits of design
• Deep understanding of the subject required and
  developed
• Variables identified
• Relationships between variables identified
• Inventive thinking

• Benefits of implementation
• Technical Literacy
• Effective Communication
• High Productivity

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Think, Pair, Share

• What are some possible uses for games in your
  class?

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Lesson Planning

• Outline a lesson plan incorporating a game into
  your class.

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What would a state of the art instructional video
game look like? (Gee, 2005)
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Just do it! (Aldrich, 2005)

• Teachers can nudge. They can implement. They
  can make case studies. (2005)

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Games in Education, Part II

• Social Constructivism
• Dewey
• Vygotsky
• Bruner
• Serious Games
• Games for Change
• May 9th, 2006 - http//register.ocde.us

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Go forth and do great things!

• Mark Wagner
• mwagner_at_ocde.us
• 714-966-4153

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