Embracing Gaming: Leaders in the Field of Technology in Education

In reviewing my peers’ presentations and learning about several leaders in technology, I began to reflect back on my initial posting regarding upcoming trends in technology in the classroom.  One emerging trend in the classroom is that "technology continues to profoundly affect the way we work, collaborate, communicate, and succeed" (Horizon Report 4).  Teachers and students have begun to use more educational communicating devices through tools such as, blackboard and Edmodo.  As I made connections, the leader that stood out to me was Jenny Levine.  Jenny Levine was an advocate for embracing gaming in the educational field.  She believed gaming could be used in regards to content, narratives, storytelling, socialization, connections, and safe communities for our students.  I believe gaming can be a great way for students and peers to communicate and interact with one another.  Online gaming and MMORPG is very popular amongst today’s youth and something teachers are beginning to try to incorporate into the classroom.  Students can work with each other in an online game world to collaborate, socialize, and gather information.  One game I have seen used in the classroom is “Simlandia” in a science classroom.  In the game, the students can talk to their partners and try to solve a mystery on what is contaminating a simulated town’s water.  As the trend of online communicating, collaborating, and gaming continues, I believe the future of the classroom could possibly become mostly virtual.  Over the past few years, we have witnessed online education becoming more and more popular.  Over time, I can see classrooms becoming strictly online and classes meeting in a virtual environment such as, Second Life.

Jenny Levine’s views also support another emerging trend.  Jenny Levine believes with the new technology resources becoming available, there has been a change from pursuing information to receiving information.  This reflects the trend, "The abundance of resources and relationships made easily accessible via the Internet is increasingly challenging us to revisit our roles as educators" (Horizon Report 4).  During the time I have spent in the classroom as an English teacher, I have had my students often make use of computers and the internet for class projects and assignments. Many of these assignments require students to conduct research and cite their sources in order to complete the assignment. During these assignments, myself and my students quickly discovered what an abundant amount of resources were available for them to use from the internet. However, with the abundance of information comes from unreliable sources. As an educator, I had to change my approach in what I needed to teach my students to complete these assignments successfully. Instead of informing my students on how to find resources for activities, I had to shift my focus to instructing them on how to sift through and identify reliable sources from the unreliable sources. Additionally, my role as an English teacher no longer requires me to instruct the students on the details necessary to remember to create a bibliography. The students now have access to internet sites such as Easybib that do this work for them. Instead of teaching the students how to create a citation, I had to teach the students how to correctly use the website that does it for them. Just some of these simple adjustments show that the type of knowledge we need to impart on our students is changing. Now with the internet and information at their fingertips, instead of presenting our students with facts, we need to give our students the knowledge they need to effectively harness the internet to direct themselves.

The NMC Horizon Report: 2011 K-12 Edition, 2011, http://www.nmc.org/pdf/2011-Horizon-Report-K12.pdf

Bernie Dodge on Prezi

What Makes Us Human? by Cindy Messina

Why did my 16 year old daughter have such difficulty calling her softball coach to find out if her softball game was cancelled due to rain? Why does my niece seem to be insecure about having a face to face conference with her college professor when she was in need of tutoring? Why does my 28 year old son prefer to write quick texts to his dad in lieu of calling him to give him the same message? Why do I prefer to text my best friend well wishes for her first day back to work after maternity leave over calling her or visiting her the day before she has to go back to work? What is technology doing to us as human beings?

Joseph Weizenbaum started his career programming artificial intelligence as a means for emotional therapy and ended his career questioning the ethical relationship between technology and human life. He made a distinction between deciding and choosing. One is the product of judgment the other is a calculation. He is quoted as saying, “It is the capacity to choose that ultimately makes us human.” I see this trend continuing and becoming ever present with each new “social” and “communication” application being developed, marketed, and used by the masses and becoming a way of life. Sherry Turkel piggybacks on his supposition.

Sherry Turkel is a leader in the field in technology who wrote a book entitled “Alone Together”. She, too, questions what technology is doing to us as human beings and how it is retarding our ability to relate to one another and how human encounters are growing fewer. With the use of technology we have the ability to make contact with anyone in the world at any time, yet she asserts that we are all suffering from feelings of loneliness. She advocates for direct human connections through conversation. Furthermore, technology, although good in countless ways, is contributing to the shortening of children’s’ attention spans. As an educator, I am struck by how this is phenomenon is not conducive to quality learning. In fact, I am wondering if any of my TIE classmates were struck by the irony that I utilized a Web2.0 application to simulate a “conversation” with Sherry Turkel.

Remember being told, “keep your elbows off the table”? I have a friend who insists that there is “no texting at the table”. Today I saw a post on pinterest.com that had a picture of a pretty basket a mother places by her front door in which visitors are invited to deposit their phones. The sign on the basket says, “Put your phones in the basket and socialize with the people here. They are awesome.”

Conversation With Sherry Turkle
by: Cmessy

 Presentation on Sherry Turkel

Leaders in the Field reflection

After reviewing all the wonderful Leaders in Education presentations, I was really making a connection with Sherry Turkle. One of the trends that we discussed earlier was about how technology is changing the way we communicate with each other. More and more kids are using their phone to text and not experiencing verbal communication. Turkle is studying the human relationships with technology and how kids would prefer to text instead of talking face to face. Also, kids are losing interest easier. This is an extremely important idea that needs to be discussed. Teachers need to be made aware of student interaction and find places in the curriculum to develop communication skills. Sometimes technology needs to be put away. I am concerned about the future if this continues. Even in my own personal experience, my daughter would rather text things than say it to someone (a boy!). We need to work together as a community to make sure emerging technology doesn't take over everything that is sacred.

 Jamie McKenzie and Collaboration

As I learned about the leaders in the field, Jamie McKenzie is a leader that stood out to me as one whose ideas have influenced my work as a classroom teacher.  He is a consultant for inquiry-based teaching and technology integration.  He helped to define the 21^st century learner, including how they learn and what they need.   The main premise of his teaching is that technology should be incorporated in the classroom but should not be the focus.  The focus should be on student learning and character development.  This has impacted my classroom teaching in that I have focused on helping students to develop 21^st century skills by creating a student-centered classroom.  I have created several inquiry-based lessons in which students are asked to collaborate, problem solve and think critically in order to demonstrate new understanding, such as a webquest about the Progressive Era, after which the students work to identify a problem in the world today and to develop a plan to solve that problem.  These types of activities help students to learn at a deeper level and transfer ideas learned in class beyond the walls of the classroom.

The Horizon 2011 report itself stated that “Digital literacy is less about tools and more about thinking,” and that is an idea with which Jamie McKenzie would agree. One trend that Jamie McKenzie has influenced is “Collaborative Environments” from 2010.  The focus of this trend is essentially all technology tools that support collaborative work in the classroom. This is an important aspect of inquiry-based learning and the 21^st century learner, as discussed by McKenzie. McKenzie worked to use technology in the classroom to enhance the learning environment and allow students the freedom to have more ownership over their learning, and collaboration is a major part of this.   This is also a trend that I use often in my classroom, from turning and discussing with a partner to working on a group project in Google docs to sharing learning through a blog. Being able to work collaboratively is an important trait that employers look for, so I think that this trend will only continue to increase in education.  Students will problem solve together, learn together, and share together, and technology will be able to support that work in new ways.  The trend of 1:1 computing devices further allows students to collaborate and extends the boundaries of this collaboration to outside of class as well.  Students will continue to have new ways to connect to each other and share ideas seamlessly throughout their day.  I look forward to continuing to find new tools to help my students collaborate in my classroom.

Thanks to Catherine Chacon for her original posting on Jamie McKenzie!

 Another leader in the field is Neil Postman.  To learn a bit more about him, watch this short video:

Gaming for Education

GAMING: Game-based learning has been on the cusp of being “the next big thing” for a while now. Perhaps 2012 will be the year. With the flourishing of mobile technologies, with the promise of data and analytics, and with a realization that we can create new and engaging ways to move through lessons, we are likely to see an explosion of educational gaming apps this year. The big question, of course — with this as with every new ed-tech development: does this actually improve learning? When is a educational game fun? What makes it engaging? What makes it actually educational? (Watters, 2012).

I’ve been reading articles here and there about using games for learning in multiple content areas.  It makes sense to me.  I thrive on playing (and beating) games.  Two of my favorite toys growing up were a Speak N’ Spell and a Speak N’ Math.  I learned to type from typing games.  I was all about a math version of space invaders. I’m a nerd.

Those games and toys were pretty obviously educational in nature, which was okay with me because I liked getting things right in school, so winning an educational game was a lot like that.  What will contribute to the success of gaming for education will be that the games have the components that make current video games so successful: a progressive, interesting storyline that requires accomplishments built on accomplishments, multiple methods of moving to the next level, earning stuff to use in the game not points (Carleton College, 2008).  While at the same time as the fun stuff, the games must require students to be learning and applying knowledge and thinking skills to progress in the game. 

I tried out my first game in the classroom just last month.  It was an online roller coaster simulation builder.  I had checked out quite a few of these in the past but was usually unhappy with their potential for take away learning for the students.  Then I found the Coaster Creator made by National Geographic’s The Jason Project.   I ended up using the game with both my physics courses, Conceptual Physics for juniors and seniors and AP Physics B for sophomores, juniors and seniors.  For the CP students, we used the game as a learning device for the types of energy transfer that goes into roller coaster design.  For the AP students, the game was a review of that material as they were gearing up to build roller coasters of their own.  

The game ensnared both courses of students, with groups of students within the classes vying to be the top score.  But not only were they trying again and again to earn the points, they were doing it while using the terminology and thinking that went along with the subject matter.  I overheard, “No, no, put in a hill.  There will be more track so there will be more dissipated energy.  We have to get it to stop at the end.”  Also heard, “If we have more riders, we’ll have more potential energy to start so it will make it around that loop.”  

One interesting thing to note: when i was talking this over with the technology trainer at my school, she asked if there were any differences in interest level between the boys and girls.  When I stopped and thought about it, I would say a high percentage of the guys were in to playing again and again than the girls were.  There definitely were some girls who kept it up to the end of our time with the game, but more of them drifted away from active interest than the guys did.

Being a bit of a gamer myself, I really liked learning who Jenny Levine is, the Shifted Librarian. My library had a few Apple IIe computers that you could sign up to play games on in the children’s section of the library when I was younger, but she’s taking it to whole new levels making sure that the technology available is up to date as well as her knowledge of how that technology can be used is up to date. I think I’m going to have to check out the children’s section at my library and see if they’ve been “Shifted”.

Chris Dede's is another one who is looking into gaming and immersive technologies for education.  Take a look at a short presentation introducing his research:

Christopher Dede : Applying Information Technology to Education on Prezi

Carleton College. (June, 20, 2008). What makes a good game? Starting Point: Teaching Entry Level Geoscience. Retrieved from http://serc.carleton.edu/introgeo/games/goodgame.html

Coaster Creator. National Geographic: The Jason Project. Retrieved from http://www.jason.org/digital_library/4851.aspx

Watters, A.  (January 3, 2012). 12 education tech trends to watch in 2012. KQED: Mind/Shift: How we will learn. Retrieved from http://blogs.kqed.org/mindshift/2012/01/12-education-tech-trends-to-watch-in-2012/

Gary's Blog: Leaders in Ed Tech Field, Influence and Impact

Blog: Leaders in the Educational Technology Field, and How they influenced tech trends and impacted our classrooms, by Gary Feltman

Christopher Dede influenced ubiquitous computing, which is basically using mobile devices to gain and share information. I believe this is the future as many people around use mobile devices as part of their daily lives to communicate and organize information. This impacts me because I am doing my research project on students using their personal mobile devices to possibly enhance and extend their learning outside of the classroom.

The Tablet trend has definitely been influenced by Kathy Schrock. She has put together one of the most amazingly organized websites with resources on using iPads in the classroom. This impacts what I do in the classroom, because our district is moving forward with implementing iPads in the classroom, and this resource was and will continue to be helpful when implementing the Tablet trend.

Bernie Dodge created the Webquest, which we all have learned and implemented in our classrooms. This trend Bernie influenced is adaptive (or active learning). It affected my classroom because my students participated in a Webquest that I created. In addition to the one I created, there are many other webquests to find on the internet for many subjects. This trend allows the students to be involved in their learning.