How I use Angry Birds in the classroom

I've had two iPads in my classroom for sometime now and as a class we share them. Yesterday, I continued to use the iPad with Allan (not his real name), a seven year old boy who has special needs (Read: Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder).

For a few weeks now, I've had Allan playing on a number of iPad apps including a wide variety of Dr. Seuss books, logic puzzles, Pages and YouTube.

Yesterday, Allan was playing the free version of Angry Birds that I had on one of my iPads. It was fascinating to watch his initially clumsy pokes develop into very deliberate and accurate gestures. After completing all the levels on the Free version, Allan begged me to buy the full version - so I did.

It is safe to say that Allan has a limited attention span, so I was impressed to see him spend the time and effort getting better at something that he initially had very little success with.

As I watched Allan get better and better at Angry Birds, I could see him experiencing the game with a pleasantly frustrated demeanor. The game was challenging enough to keep Allan's interest but not so hard that he ever wanted to quit.

I watched him become more and more proficient at the angle of his sling shot and the trajectory of his Angry Birds.

I watched him develop a strategy where he would fling his first bird and if it did not do something productive (read: hit a piggy or knock down some structures), Allan would in one motion click menu and then restart. While it's true that I can't tell you exactly what his reasoning was for this - I saw him only ever restart the level if his first bird was unproductive. It seemed to me that he was developing a coping strategy in an attempt to set himself up for the most success.

Angry Birds was a great way for Allan to work on his perseverance, patience, focus and fine motor skills.

Watching Allan clap his hands while wearing his ear-to-ear grin after knocking down that last passively defiant piggy is something I will never forget.

For more on how Angry Birds and other video games can be used in the classroom, check out Josh Stumpenhorst's post on Angry Birds!

Learning and Gaming

In his book What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy, John Pual Gee shares how both gaming and learning are social activities:

Let me tell you a little story about the social nature of gaming. I don't, in general, encourage baby boomers to rush off and play video games, since the games are often quite hard and can be frustrating for people not willing to confront their own, perhaps rigidified, learning muscles in a new setting. Nonetheless, some older people do run off to play for the first time when they hear me talk (and, indeed, there are a growing number of older gamers these days). One older adult who tried a video game after hearing one of my talks did, indeed, become seriously frustrated. Then his 21-year-old gamer stepson came into the room and asked him "What are you doing?" The man said "Trying to learn to play this damn video game." The son said "For heaven's sake, why would you do that alone?" Ah, so, here is one good learning principle built into gamers, not just games.

I can really relate to this.

For three years, I played a game called Company of Heroes, which is a World War II, real-time strategy game. During my time playing the game, I played with a very good friend of mine, Dr. Brad Bahler, and we both were proud members of Gamereplays.org. And yes, we both were, and still are, 30 year old men with a career, a wife and children.

Inside of our three years playing this game, we became intricate members of an on-line gaming community of gamers. This included becoming discussion moderators, replay reviewers, strategy specialists and game administrators. We wrote guides, made videos, created podcasts and even participated in a mentor/mentee program. Essentially, these positions with the on-line community meant we were openly and actively volunteering our time and effort to help ourselves and others become better gamers.

The time I spent playing the game Company of Heroes and on-line at Gamereplays.org provided me invaluable lessons that have proven to be eerily transferable to classroom teaching.

Like James Paul Gee's story, perhaps the largest lesson I took from gaming is that learning is a highly social, emotional, cultural and deeply intrapersonal activity.

Pleasantly Frustrating

I play video games.

I know the kind of hard work and perseverance that must go into becoming competent at video gaming. I even have an idea of the kind of blood, sweat and tears that goes into mastering a video game.

I also love to learn.

I know the kind of hard work and perseverance that must go into becoming competent at learning. I even have an idea of the kind of blood, sweat and tears that goes into mastering something.

In his book What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy, James Paul Gee was really on to something when he said:

Learning should be both frustrating and life enhancing, what I will later call "pleasantly frustrating." The key is finding ways to make hard things life enhancing so that people keep going and don't fall back on learning only what is simple and easy.