Using Authentic Gaming to Engage Kids in Authentic Learning

Here's a reader comment from Steve Lissenden on yesterday's post about gaming and student networks. I repost it here for your perusal as I think he touches on some really important topics -- like using MMOGs to foster creative writing -- that all of us should consider when we talk about authentic assessment and measuring student understanding.

I'm a teaching assistant in a year 5 class (9/10 years old) I am trying to engage one student, who is almost totally switched off from most lessons, by tapping into her interest in WoW. I asked her yesterday to write me a story based upon her adventures in WoW and she straight away picked up her pen and started to list the characters in her story. She has not yet started writing sentences but even so this is progress.

I intend to keep going down this route and intend to bring in opportunities to explore other virtual worlds, such as Myst, as a platform to engage creative writing.

I'm also having conversations with the children about the games they are playing on their consoles to understand the networks they are involved in and the contexts they prefer. This in itself is something new as I have found most teachers either do not think to discuss gaming or, in some cases, actively discourage talk about games. This something I find baffling considering the major part gaming plays in children's lives and the many opportunities this provides for educators to connect with their students in meaningful ways.

Gaming itself is a form of 'text'. And, especially in terms of fantasy MMOGs, games are complex narratives. Well, if you've got a kid who won't read a book, but who maintains a high-level character on a complicated MMOG, the problem likely isn't that the kid isn't able to understand complex narratives.

There's something deeper going on.

I think the key to Steve's method is getting the student to write about his or her character and their experiences in the game. As any gamer knows, it's easily possible to get by on quests after only reading a small portion of the available [directional] text within the game itself; so the experience within the game is often more self-directed and often less driven by a written narrative.

A problem for teaching kids reading and writing?

Not necessarily. Steve's method bypasses the obvious difficulty therein presented. [i.e. Steve makes it not about reading the text necessarily, but reading the experience.]

For if I'm reading him correctly, what Steve is getting at is that he's got a student who may not be a great reader, but who has a natural inclination for internalizing narrative.

And I think most kids internalize narrative. And it expresses itself in different ways whether in MMOGs or running around in the backyard with a wooden sword. It's the foundation of the kinds of role playing games all creative kids enjoy.

The thing we have to consider in terms of reaching these kids is that their internalized narrative might turn out being a better vehicle for expressing understanding and aptitude than any narrative we can pull from the shelf and force upon them. The internalized narrative might prove more valuable to authentic assessment than any of the books on our shelves.

RPG Club

Working on setting up an RPG/MMOG club at school.

Although I've been gaming for quite a long time, I'm new to the idea of organizing something like this.

I'd love to hear ideas from folks actively working with gaming in education both in terms of what works and what doesn't. And, in terms of the club, I am seeing this specifically as something extracurricular in nature -- a place to get away from the day-to-day of school-life, to explore new ideas, and to try out new identities/realities.

It's too often that kids -- and all of us, actually -- fall into the routines of where we 'fit in' to the roles we are obligated to in our communities. Role playing games allow for unique opportunities to take on and experiment with new roles. They offer opportunities for players to take on leaderships roles and handle open-ended and dynamic and ever-expanding problems.

Exactly the sorts of things we want students to play around with.

Gaming in Education

Cool study on educational gaming called 'Moving Learning Games Forward' linked to and dicussed at Digital Ed.

I am such a sucker for games... whether checkers or World of Warcraft. It's my grandfather's fault: he used to play games with me constantly!

One thing to keep in mind, particularly in using computer games in education: don't pit one student against one computer. Those days are long gone. Now, through MMOGs (Massively Multiplayer Online Games), players can enter a virtual environment full of real-time decision making, collaborative quests, and everything from virtual economics to virtual libraries full of potential research-oriented projects.

It's Virtually Education

Thinking about video games. Well, not just 'video games', but MMOGs -- Massively Multiplayer Online Games.

Ed Week has got an interesting piece on gaming that ran a few days ago.

While the piece stresses the way in which players can handle multiple situations at once, (and of course what that implies about the human thinking apparatus), I find it even more interesting to think about what extreme gaming has done to the visual and experiential expectations of students.

Why are we trying to convince students that VRoma is a virtual environment when they've already toured all over the virtual environments of Azeroth?

Go ahead, click that last link and watch the trailer. Then you'll get an idea of what our kids 'expect' when we talk about 'virtual environments'.

I, for one, think this is a good thing. The kids are ahead of us. That puts us into the position of either catching up or becoming technologically irrelevant. I see this as a great challenge and a great opportunity. Why not engage in co-ops with game makers to create authentic virtual learning environments? Why not teach the Civil War by actually taking part in a virtual reconstruction of it? Why not teach the Theory of Relativity by living as virtual characters in Einstein's world? Why not learn US Government by living and working within a virtual US Congress?

I see a real future in merging ed tech with what's already going on in culture tech.