How do you or might you use language to change the way that your students think about learning in the classroom?

Language can definitely change the tenor of a comment or a lesson. I do like the idea of calling a miss a first attempt, though I am not so optimistic of the rest of the acronym (FAIL – first attempt in learning), partly because the acronym makes it obvious you are playing with the word failure, and students are smart. They long ago figured out the Blue Bird reading group was the fast readers, and the Yellow Birds were the slow readers who needed extra help, and the Red Birds the rest, no matter that the theory was then students wouldn't be able to grade or judge other students by . The renaming of the groups didn't change how the students thought about the groups or the students in the group. Without the full acronym for FAIL, I suspect 'first attempt' would be more positive for students, even more so if there was a discussion not of failure being a first attempt, but rather talking about many times for many folks/students multiple tries are needed for mastery, just like when learning to do a new skill in baseball, for instance, most need a lot of practice and tries to be a successful hitter. That I think would give students a positive connection for practice and attempts, rather than trying to re-purpose the word fail.

Week 7 reflections - Gamer Types and Education Gaming

 

As I read the other blogs, what strikes me more is Kiang’s focus on pulling all his students into the education game building on their gamer type’s strengths.  One gets the sense that not only are their strengths used, but that others are shown the strengths of each type and how to work with the that gamer type in a joint project (or game).  That must be a great gift to the students involved, to see positives in all their classmates, including themselves, and to see how they can work together with some one whose strengths are very different from their own.  Also, must be a great lesson in its own right.

This week’s question is about how gamer types might impact educational gamification.  First let me predicate my answer on it being filter through my particular style as a gamer. Bartle’s quiz identified me as equal parts (and pretty strong in both) an ‘explorer’ and ‘socializer’, with ‘achiever’ being a bit more than half of those, and ‘Killer’ almost non-existent.  That last seems to be pretty accurate, after all I went into nursing to help people and descriptions of the ‘killer’ style of gamer seem to be fairly diametrically opposed.  Not as sure about the other groupings, but seems reasonable type-casting.(Bartle, n.d.)  For classroom gaming, it seems to me using the four styles of gamers would be more about matching either the gamification to the current group of students, or to the topic of the class.  With a required game to play for a time limited to the class, there is less worry about balancing the game to keep it going.  But to effectively engage students you might want to match style to the students preferences.  Or conversely, you might want to match the style more to students less intrinsically interested in the topic, assuming students more interested in topic at hand will need less external prompting to engage with the materials.  With the types ranging on the two spectrums from people centered to world centered, and from acting on to acting with centeredness, Matera’s (Entering the Realm of Nobles: Michael Matera, n.d.) focus on competition (achiever and killer styles) might be an offset or way to engage those students that find history and social sciences too much about people and touchy-feely things like social interaction over time, thus engaging those students who aren’t easily engaged by the topic itself.  

 Kiang’s usage of gamer types in the classroom seems to focus less on the game and engaging students in the topic or the game, but rather in classroom dynamics and team building.(Kiang, 2018)  His suggestions remind me a lot of similar ideas around using a Myers-Briggs personality tests in building teams and monitoring and guiding classroom dynamics.  Which leads me to wonder if gamer types have been match to the Myers-Briggs (or similar) personality typing, the typing scales seem to share a lot with the personality scales.  Even more so when seen through lens Kiang uses to monitor his class room and student development, especially looking at how to play to the strengths of each gamer type and how to build their abilities to work together.  This would seem to be a third way to make use of gamer typing in the classroom – using it to build positive dynamics and developing skills in working in teams by purposefully playing to each type’s strengths.

Bartle. (n.d.). Richard A. Bartle: Players Who Suit MUDs. Retrieved October 12, 2018, from http://mud.co.uk/richard/hcds.htm

Entering the Realm of Nobles: Michael Matera. (n.d.). [Google + Hangouts]. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/FFG3Vk-MCf8

Kiang, D. (2018, October 11). EdTechTeacher Use the Four Gamer Types to Help Your Students Collaborate - from Douglas Kiang on Edudemic - EdTechTeacher. Retrieved October 12, 2018, from https://edtechteacher.org/use-the-four-gamer-types-to-help-your-students-collaborate-from-douglas-kiang-on-edudemic/

Image from http://www.texample.net/tikz/examples/personality-test/, listed by Google images as free for re-use, accessed October 11, 2018.

This week’s question is whether we agree or disagree with Matera’s proposition in Chapter 3 of Explore Like a Pirate: Engage, Enrich and Elevate your Learners with Gamification and Game-Inspired Course Design (2015).  Matera proposes that the ‘digital native’ students of today need a different way to learn and be engaged, that we literally have ‘ move away from the monolithic structures of education’ (paragraph 2, Chapter 3, Kindle version) and ‘require(ing) us to look past the old ways and create more dynamic learning environments and methods of teaching” (next paragraph, same edition).  In our response we are to cite literature and research supporting our pro or con disagreement.  As I was unable to get good internet access for side things like this class search while I was away for work.  I did read the suggested books and do a lot of thinking.  Instead of a deep research of the literature, I would propose several ‘case studies’: pastor’s college class, science ‘wunderkin’,  5^th grade, and Helen Keller .  

 But first my response to Matera, I believe he is right that you need to engage and interest in students in the topic and connect the topic somehow to that engagement or interest.  I disagree with his take that today’s students are so different from those of previous days, or even that the engagement has to be different.  That being said, I see no reason the engagement has to be the same, or even the same for every teacher, kid or topic.  Without all the hyperbole, I do think that gamification can be one more tool for engagement, and possibly even the preferred tool for some topics (maybe especially teaching digital skills like those suggested by Palfrey and Gasser (Born Digital, 2008) as being needed by every ‘digital native’ to live their digitized life with some privacy, sense of identity and safety.)  Of course maybe some of that is because Matera’s take on gamification emphasizes the competitive, and in the process of trying to catch up I am mixing up weeks and lessons, but having taken the quiz about what type of gamer I am I will note that I score so low on the competitive, kill the other guy type that I might qualify as the anti-killer, so maybe I am mostly reacting to Matera’s style of gamification. 

So yielding the side bar and getting back to the main topic, the case studies that support my take on all students responding to teaching and learning better when engaged,  that is not unique to the current ‘digital natives’.  Nor do the tools used previously to engage students fail to engage the current crop of students.  Recently (Sunday, Oct 7, 2018) during the sermon Paster Phil Campell (Northern Light United Church, Juneau) used a story about his undergraduate school to illustrate a point that is not relevant to this argument, but the story does show even college professors have long worked on various ways to engage students in learning.  There was a required class, that many students considered a dry required course.  The professors used various ways to engage and enrich the learning environment of the students, by coming to class dressed and acting as the historic characters being studied and then re-enacting the big moments in philosophical discussions.  A STAT article about the 2018 Wunderkind of Science (https://www.statnews.com/wunderkinds/, accessed October 11, 2018) explains that what captured Alan Williams attention in his 7^th grade science class was a teacher who “helped students memorize the multisyllabic names for biological organisms with songs”.  Further the article notes this was culturally appropriate as it was New Orleans and the music was ‘in their blood’.  Williams notes that got his attention enough that he paid attention to the rest of the class.  In fifth grade, my teacher caught the attention of the ‘fast’ readers group by reading a story to us when we had finished the regular assignment and hadn’t disturbed the rest of the class if we got done early and were bored.  She picked books specifically for our group and would sit with us and read out loud about lands far away and full of adventure.  I still read the genre and even had read all of that author’s books I could find.  (Tolkien, The Hobbit, in case you are wondering)  More importantly for this essay, the ‘fast’ reading group would quietly read extra chapters or  do other extra credit class work, so we could get the teachers time with us reading something extra.  And while I still read that genre, even more I remember the teacher taking time with the ‘fast’ reader group even when most of time had to go groups that were slower and needed more help.  Boy did she get my group’s attention and our commitment to do more in the class.  Helen Keller, who Matera later quotes in Explore Like a Pirate, is another example of how teachers have long worked in different ways to engage students, Anne Sullivan her teacher initially found the way to engage and lead Helen in exploring was through touch, but they soon moved on to books, with both ladies attending Ratcliffe College.  Digital games and gamification are more tools in engagement, but I don’t think they are radical changes from the past history of teaching and learning, rather a new adaptation of some very old methods.  Watching youngsters I know engage (or not) in learning, it seems the tool and method that catches their attention doesn’t have to be new or digital, just fit to the topic and the kid.

So this post is late, as I was on deployment from Alaska to North Carolina to provide more nursing hands in Red Cross Shelters after Hurricane Florence. I was reading the class readings on immersion virtual reality on the plane(s) on the way back. As I was reading found myself wondering a lot of things, but mostly would something like the immersion virtual reality help in training new shelter managers as we had found out Red Cross had had to use some folks who had never assisted in running a shelter as lead managers. Maybe something like immersion virtual reality would help in training, as books don't convey for many very well the chaos and non-ideal spaces that often need to be used to house folks after a disaster. But as I read Yap's article 'Google Cardboard for a K-12 Social Studies Module”, his mention of the View Master slide viewer as a precursor to the current immersive virtual reality devices, I wondered about other things. I grew up with a View Master, it is still the only way I have 'seen' Yellow Stone's Old Faithful going spouting. It set me to wondering, the new version of virtual reality being described allow the viewer to choose the angle and distance for viewing, and block out viewing of things in the 'real' reality. But like the View Master, don't immerse one in the virtual reality, in that sound, smell, touch and taste are still not included in the virtual reality. However they do give more depth to the visual part of the virtual reality. I can definitely see how they could help in the visual examples of exploring a zoo of animals or relational physics. Or visiting the La Lourve or Le Hermitage museums. Though having been to the last, missing out on sound would be missing part of the experience. On the other hand, visiting the caves in South Africa where the oldest hominid skeletons have been found, might be more profound in the new immersive virtual reality, as the program developer might be able to get permission to watch and actual dig or go back into the closed off parts of the cave where current work is being done and filming the skeletons in situ as they are being found, which a regular visitor couldn't do. All of which lead me to believe that for now immersive virtual reality is useful mostly for visual places that students can't get to, and probably not for training shelter managers, as a lot of the that learning would require the other five senses to 'see' the reality that you are trying to impart to the students as part of their learning.

Image – from https://www.flickr.com/photos/afagen/7127074889, accessed Oct 08, 2018, tagged in Google images as 'free to use or share'.