Using games in learning design
Games provide simulated experiences where player are immersed in complex, problem-solving tasks on devices ranging from mobile phones to home consoles and desktop computers.
Digital Games
What is missing here?
School use of technology
Family use of technology
They are commercial products as well as artistic entities (Ebert, 2010).
They provide spaces for competition and for socialization (Nardi, 2010).
Finally, they are complex sociotechnological objects that depend on user interaction to achieve meaning
Digital Games
Digital Games
Nardi, B. (2010). My life as a Night Elf Priest: An anthropological account of World of Warcraft. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Ebert, R. (2010). Video games can never be art. Roger Ebert’s Journal. News. Retrieved from http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2010/04/video_games_can_never_be_art. html
always simulate an experience
demand problem solving
often commercial/artistic
can be competitive/social
are interactive
demand meaning making
Digital Games
What games do for classroom
experiences of students ...
Jane McGonagal
(Institute for the future)
Scholars have discussed games in regard to the acquisition of knowledge, identity and performance, representation of self and relationships between games and their players for over decades.
(Castronova, 2005; Chee, Vieta, & Smith, 2006; Ondrejka, 2006; Taylor, 2006; Williams, Yee, & Caplan, 2008).
Games are well studied
Piaget, 1962) suggests that games have important implications for children’s, and especially boys,’ social and cognitive development and that one of the functions of childhood games is to practice working with rules and self-discipline, which ultimately underpin social order.
Games are well studied
Where does the playground end?
are these things connected?
Do games help merge or blur real and unreal problems though play and social interaction online?
Performance before competency
How games work
Competency before performance
How schools work
This may well mean that how kids
growing up in game-worlds are
learning in the opposite way to
their teachers.
No licence required.
Action games - these can be subcategorised into shooting games, ‘platform’ games (so called because the players’ characters move between on- screen platforms) and other types of games that are reaction-based
Types of games
Adventure games - in most adventure games, the player solves a number of logic puzzles (with no time constraints) in order to progress through some described virtual world
Fighting games - these involve fighting computer-controlled characters, or those controlled by other players
Puzzle games – moving shapes, objects or other artefacts to complete a pattern or routine
e.g. Tetris
Role-playing games - where the human players assume the characteristics of some person or creature type, e.g. elf or wizard
Simulations - where the player has to succeed within some simplified recreation of a place or situation e.g. mayor of a city, controlling financial outlay and building works
Sports games – where the player participates with skills associated with those sports e.g. soccer, cricket or ice-hockey
Strategy games - such as commanding armies within recreations of historical battles and wars
Hybrids – part game, part open world. Players create own goals to create "things" from the core mechanic of the game.
What comes out of games?
Kirriemuir (2002) found it was difficult for teachers to identify quickly how a particular game was relevant to some component of the statutory curriculum, as well as the accuracy and appropriateness of the content within the game.
TROUBLE!
The Quest: Save the world!
The Importance: why it matters!
The Steps: What I want you to do
The Goal: How do you know you completed it?
The Reward: What do I get from this?
The game-lesson-plan
Games and lesson plans can be designed with the same elements.

Uncertainty can be stressful, but the right amount can be exciting.

Complex games have complex problems. All repeating of tasks.
Kids imagine their play, they often begin to take on the roles and identities of who they are imitating.
They eventually learn that there are rules that come with roles, i.e., white hat cowboys don’t rustle horses.
This means they imitate you, so try to be imaginative in how you present learning too.
... or the rules are made up for new variations as they play—as in, “No, you can’t do that. You are the student, I’m the teacher (BAD rule) “, or “I want you to turn the submarine into a spaceship.” (Great Rule).
1. Information Literacy
2. Media Literacy
3. Digital Literacy
4. Network Literacy
Digital Games are a literacy that
span the 21st Century skills ...
http://www.techlearning.com/
A wicked problem for teachers
Decisions teachers' make on how
the teacher are largely determined
by the limits of formal curricula
and their own personal belief
about teaching ... and understanding
beliefs. It is not surprising that digital games represent largely unexplored territory in the classroom.
kids learn like this
and kids learn like this
Dean Groom, 2011