Blowing up the grade book : What games have taught us about how to save our schools

"Our Job as educators is to loosen the restrictions on they learn and apply the context to they learn."

What do we know?

"Educational gaming is NOT just playing games to learn, but making learning a game."

Industrial Age School Design

Information Age School Design

vs.

21st Century

19th-20th Century

Student's check-list

Digital mindset

Cognitive load management

virtual collaboration

Arithmetic

Reading

Geography/History

Sense-making

Social intellegence (Boys too!)

Novel and adaptive thinking

Transdiscplinarity

Cross-cultural competency

Computational thinking

New-media literacies

Collaborative

Follow instructions

Be on time

Respect Authority

Accept Punishments

Manners

Penmanship

Spelling

Work Hard!

We play a class!

Schools are always a reflection...

- Experience Points

- Allow and reward failure

- Multiple paths

- Define a winning condition

- Quest-based learning

Choice

Selection

Approval

Rewards

Progress

Ranking

Students say...

"I like that we can do Game Lab easily at home and here."

"I like that I can study while playing games."

"I like it because there isn't a chance of me losing my work."

"It is fun and easier to learn with."

Future school bus

...of the societies they serve.

The paradigm will change...

Blowing Up the Grade Book

What games have taught us about how to save our schools.

Dr. Chris Haskell

Clinical Asst. Professor, Boise State University

chrishaskell@boisestate.edu

Artwork by David Stanley

#3dgamelab #WCCCE

Twitter @haskell

What's wrong with the way school works?

Future School

It was designed for a different time.

Equity

School is not fair.

This Prezi

(Not a Rickroll)

What are we doing?

- Big Ideas (Hey! We just did that.)

- Modeling: Quest-based PD

- Examples: Play though Real Curriculum

- Create your own quest

- Play and talk through the experience

- Next Steps

The Game

"Educational gaming is NOT just playing games to learn, but making learning a game."

Students say...

"I like that we can do Game Lab easily at home and here."

"I like that I can study while playing games."

"I like it because there isn't a chance of me losing my work."

"It is fun and easier to learn with."

To do List...

The future of education...

Gaming IS solving complex problems

What games do...

Developers and researchers are working in every area of game-based learning, including games that are goal-oriented, social game environments, non-digital games that are easy to construct and play; games developed expressly for education; and commercial games that lend themselves to refining team and group skills. Role-playing, collaborative problem solving, and other forms of simulated experiences are recognized for having broad applicability across a wide range of disciplines. (Gee, 2010; Haskell, 2012; Smith, 2012)

• "The Game" as it currently exists.

• What's wrong with it now and how we can fix it?

• Changing the rules of the game.

• How and why we built a new system of learning?

• What does the classroom of the future look like in a game-based approach?

James Paul Gee

Let us learn from failure

Allow leveling up

Influence the story

Allow us choice

Offer multiple pathways

Credit ALL successes

Scaffold difficulty

Reward effort

Show progress

Allow us to collect meaningful artifacts

They are fun!

No Homework

No Due Dates

Student Choice

Play

Better Tracking

HOW

WHAT

In 2013...

Failure not an option

Failure

Student 2.0

...is a tool for learning...

UNIQUE

...a creative device...

...an opportunity for growth...

consumers of knowledge

Masters of informal learning

tests do not compute

...a sign we have to revisit our design strategy.

Homework!

Due Dates

• ...shows which students have the best support systems and school-schema.
• ...assumes that non-school time can be regulated.
• ...serves as punishment for many students who lack the skills or support.

• ...effectively DELAY the start of work.
• ...are often arbitrary.
• ...limit the amount of work that CAN be done by students.
• ...are a tool for teachers rather than students.

Learning

INFORMAL

Super-learners

Future teachers must know the tools of their students!

Student Choice

Schema

Every other digital system students interact with values and leverages their beliefs and decisions.

FORMAL