Introducing the Middle Ages to Freshmen History Students via Online Gaming

What's loud, crude, bloody, and educational?

Why, I do believe it's the 1066 game from Channel4.

Summing up the three major battles over England in the year 1066, the game lets the player experience warfare from the point-of-view of Viking, Anglo-Saxon, and Norman warriors.

I particularly like the Flash sequences between battles which tell the story of the Viking and Norman invasions in an accessible format easy for students to pick up on.

The battle sequences liberally splatter the blood around, so I'd tend to save this one for the older kids. But for the 'older kids' among us, it sure is fun.

And to extend the logic of medieval warfare beyond the historical battles, the game also allows players to create their own scenarios and play against one another online.

One thing's for certain: it surely did grab the attention of my Freshmen like no textbook description of the battles ever has.

Thanks to Emily, one of my former students (and now a Classics geek in college), for the showing me the game to begin with.

On Baking Pies and Raiding Dungeons

My son has been having trouble with fractions.

He's eight-years-old, a twin, in third grade, obsessed with D&D and 'Diary of a Wimpy Kid'.

And he hates fractions.

So last night, he and my wife baked a pumpkin pie.

You can see where this is going.

This morning, he took the pie to school to demonstrate a practical application of fractions to the class. I don't know if he snuck the whipped cream into his bookbag.

A couple weeks back he was really interested in pendulums. So we made one out of a string and a teacup. Again, he took it to school and showed the kids what he'd made.

He's good at making stuff.

And he understands math when it means something more than words and numbers on a page.

I've been thinking about this all morning. And I've been thinking about how well (or how poorly) we manage to let kids 'make stuff' to demonstrate their understanding once they are in high school. I'm particularly wondering if we really understand today what it is that kids are 'making'.

My Latin I students are reviewing for the midterm today. Lots of memorization and plugging away at vocab and grammar. And that just comes with the territory; you can't learn a foreign language if you don't nail down the basics. But just a couple weeks back, the same kids researched, wrote, directed, and acted in a play of their own design on the life of Julius Caesar. And I can safely say that while after a semester of daily classes I have a safe guestimate of how each student will do on the rote midterm stuff, I had little idea of where they would go or how individually they might shine on the performance assessment.

Turns out, one of the shyest kids in the group absolutely killed on stage -- a total natural.

Yet without that performance assessment, I'd never had guessed.

Veteran teachers know all about this. I've talked with teachers of 35+ years experience who marvel at how the quiet kid (or the 'troublemaker', for that matter) was found out to have hidden talents through performance assessment.

We know this stuff works. And we know that the opportunity to perform can then motivate the kid to engage more deeply in the traditional modes of work often necessary for success -- especially in the case of subjects like foreign language and math.

So, it's with a certain dismay that I pick up teacher hostilities towards gaming.

Yes, I realize that last sentence might seem like it's coming out of left field; allow me to explain.

I had a student in my class last year who by all standards would have been considered 'average'. He got 'average' grades in most classes and he produced 'average' results on exams. He did have two qualities, however, that often suggested that something was going on with this kid that was entirely 'not-average'.

First of all was his imagination. I've never had a student who so regularly asked questions that seemed so completely out-of-the-blue, and yet seemed to get at some of the big issues in relatively accessible ways. I'm not talking simple daydreamy teenaged stuff; I'm talking really really far out stuff on what seemed at the time like the most random topics -- from economics to war to social relations.

Second was his complete lack of interest in all things extra-curricular. No school play, no sports, no clubs, no nothing. Just this kid with an extraordinary imagination who wanted to rush out of this joint as soon as 2:45PM hit.

Later I came to understand how all of this fit together.

Turns out the kid was working a level-80 character on World of Warcraft. Led his own guild; mastered dungeon raids; and in an act of gaming obsessiveness I can't begin to fathom, pushed his character through the final 15 levels in two week's time over Winter Break (this is a task that takes even hardened gamers months to accomplish).

When I told another teacher about all of this, the reply was: "Well no wonder he had lousy grades".

I think that's exactly the wrong way to look at this.

Consider, if the kid had been captain of the football team. Or captain of the chess team. Or lead in the spring musical.

Only the most cynical of teachers would have said such a thing about him.

But because he spent countless hours gaming, he was just a lousy student.

I contend that the fact that we had such a monster gamer in our midst and neither recognized nor reached out to him to help him bring those talents into focus with our goals in education is actually an indictment of our role as educators.

In fact, he wound up leaving this place thinking that gaming was the source of his mediocre academic record. How cruel!

The fact of the matter was that he didn't need statistics class to teach him numbers. He didn't need psychology class to teach him human behavior. He didn't need literature class to teach him how to analyse.

The game taught him all of those things. In spades.

Here was a kid leading other real human beings (only in avatar form) into battle and through dangerous and complex quests. This was a kid who had mastered a complex system of auction houses and was making in-game gold by the pound. This was a kid who could tell each person individually in his 25 man group what kind of armor to bring to a specific battle based on intelligence of the comparison of fighting classes across a spectrum of character types, classes, and races -- each with its own particular and peculiar modifiers.

And yet, on paper he was a 'C' student.

I think we failed that kid.

Because he was anything but average.

And that brings me back to the baking of a pie.

Early on as young teachers, we learn that kids learn best if they can manipulate things (whether physically or metaphorically) and if what they are learning motivates them to learn more.

The baking of a pie, for example, can produce two great effects: understanding of fractions and love of baking.

Yet, when it comes to gaming, this correspondence so often appears to be beyond the grasp of a teacher. And while it may be understandable that someone may have a knee-jerk reaction against the violence depicted in many games; that does little to dispel the fact that it's often the kids who are masters at such games who are also masters of logic, strategy, and cunning on par or greater than any of your best athletes.

In the end, I guess I'd like to see more kids baking pies and more teachers levelling up and going on dungeon raids. Because there are all sorts of performance assessments; and serious gaming may offer some of the greatest clues into the real creativity, task determination, and intellectual aptitude of a given child.

At the very least, understand that if you see gaming in competition with -- rather than as a potential complement to -- your teaching, then you are going to miss those kids every time.

Game on.

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.

Kids and Networks: The Gaming Angle

Mashable reports that Sony's PS3 is linking up with Facebook.

And why is this of any significance to us teachers?

Because the majority of your students are using one or the other or both.

You might say: "But my kid ain't on PS3". Ok, so switch out to Wii, Xbox, WoW, etc. One way or another, we're talking about huge gaming networks. And as these networks link to social media, we're talking about bigger-than-huge networks.

Networks in which your students are active participants.

Now, you might think I'm taking this towards some 'security' thesis. I can safely say that I'm not. I'm hardly 'afraid' of kids being a part of big networks; in fact, as I've seen throughout the varied VRs, kids who play these games and systems often 'get' the way things work in a network -- and by-and-large, the players on/in the game are most interested in... well... the game and success in the game.

There's relatively little time to waste on one of these things; task determination is a priority.

Alas, back to the question: Why is this of any significance to us teachers?

Because, you see, your students are taking part on a daily and casual basis in networks bigger than any most of you have ever known.

And they understand the idea of a massive network.

And they understand and are comfortable with the concept of a network disconnected from their physical reality.

Just ask a few of your sophomores about Modern Warfare 2. Or ask a few of your 12th graders about Wrath of the Lich King.

They will demonstrate an understanding of interpersonal skills that would make any human resources exec swoon.

What are you, as a teacher, doing to tap into this?

Sims, Ants, Education, and Gaming

Heard this on the way into work this morning. Nothing like a conversation between Will Wright, creator of the Sims series, and E.O. Wilson, the world's most eloquent ant expert.

Wilson was especially provocative in his condemnation of the way we currently teach kids and his belief that the solution to so many of our educational disconnections lies in virtual reality and gaming.

Give it a listen as it's certainly something bound to cause debate in the current conversation on education.

Trying to Answer the Question: "Do Most Educational Games Suck"?

Re-read McLeod's post 'Do Most Educational Games Suck?' after adventuring through World of Warcraft for an hour.

What I came away with was a feeling that we're approaching this whole matter of gaming and education from the wrong direction.

As it stands now, the question seems to be: can we produce educational games that match the quality and engagement of 'gamer games'?

As a longtime educator and gamer, I'm thinking we should go at this from a different angle.

Instead of trying to make better 'educational' games, why not take an educational approach to the classics of gaming and gaming as it exists today?

Think about it: we don't ask authors to write 'educational' books so that we have something to teach in school. Rather, we choose books to read and use in teaching.

Likewise, we should choose games to 'read' and use in teaching.

In the same way that you can learn about American history from reading Huckleberry Finn, you can learn about economics and cooperative activity by 'reading' WoW. In fact, gaming -- especially that of the MMOG variety -- has come so far, we really shouldn't have much of a problem teaching all sorts of logic, learning, and abstract thinking via playing and analyzing games that were never originally meant to be 'eduactional'.

In the same way that Twain and Fitzgerald and the rest of the authors we read in English class never would have foremost considered their work texts meant for high school study, likewise none of the serious game developers would see their work that way. That hardly means that in our classrooms we shouldn't take a look at either Twain and Fitzgerald on the one hand or Civilization and Diablo on the other.

But I think it would help to get away from the idea that 'educational' games have to be something, well..., 'educational'.

Rather, we should take Roland Barthes' old advice that all media is a text and we should teach the skills of critical analysis and higher-level abstract thinking via gaming as it exists.

Raise questions like: What do the goals of the game suggest about the societal viewpoints of the developers? Does the play of the game depend on a gnostic worldview, or are there ambiguities inherent in character and quest formation that relate to contemporary themes? Why is moral ambiguity such a difficult thing to portray in a game? How does the game reflect 21st century culture? Does the violence in the game drive the narrative or is it working on behalf of the narrative? Is the game manipulative or exploitative? How do the tone and mood, the music, colors, environments, fonts, and character attributes contribute towards a reading of the game's greater meaning?

It's not about educational vs. non-educational. Rather, it's all just contemporary 'text' waiting for us to analyze and waiting for us to incorporate into lessons. And our kids can handle this.

Furthermore, especially by middle school, they realize if we are pandering to them via 'educational' gaming. They probably wonder why we can't handle the authentic culture of gaming as it is.

Because at the root of this is the issue of authenticity.

So, in response to Scott's question, I'd say the arch of the problem is revealed if we just drop the word 'educational'.

It's gaming itself that we should be looking at.

That's the authentic item.

And it's authenticity that we're going for, right?

School Games

Generation Yes blog reports on recent EU research on Games in Schools.

This on the heels of the Games, Learning, and Society Conference, and the upcoming opening of the Quest to Learn School in the Fall of 2009.

Naysayers gird yourselves with Pong-addiction horror stories. Let's see where this goes.

Learning Games Network

Learning Games Network is an excellent web resource for information on Games and Learning.

Today they point to a remarkable essay on the topic of designing video games for foreign language learning.

Subscribe to their feed and follow the upcoming Games, Learning, and Society conference from Madison, WI.

From Pong to WoW to Math Scores?

The State of Virginia tries out video games to improve math scores:

"The traditional view of video games has been that they are distractions from the task of learning, said Ntiedo Etuk, CEO and co-founder of Tabula Digita. "But this research clearly shows the opposite is true."

Just heard of the Quest school in NYC going game-ed. Interesting to see a state do it.

Wonder how many admins down there are gamers...

Game School

Have already received a couple comments and a few emails about my last post. Hmm... could we be on to something here?

More than one reader is taking me seriously about the experimental game developer high school (now all we need is a millionaire and a building... [cough] Mr. Gates?):

Let's see what they might need to do. Content - Create a structured narrative that is not necessarily linear (English), establish rules, create puzzles or obstacles that require logic and reasoning to solve (Math), have an appealing look (Art), represent a physical world (Science), have a setting in time and space (Social Studies). Yeah, I think we can get that going.

Skills- team collaboration, use of contemporary technology and tools, troubleshooting/problem solving.

I'm sure there's more, but this is what I've got just off the top of my head. Sounds good, let's go.

Game Development as a Learning Process

On the Media has a great piece on DIY game development.

Anyone want to go in with me on a new experimental high school completely based on students as game developers?

Indie Game Development

Wired has got word from the Independent Games Festival. Lot's of cool stuff being made by indie developers.

And now, MS has made their game development software (in addition to all sorts of web development programs) available for FREE to high school students.

So, how long before a kid in your class creates the next big hit in online gaming?

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.