Do you "get" this?

If you're not a gamer, there's a chance you don't "get" this.

If you're a teacher, what's the chance you're a gamer?

If you're a teacher and not a gamer, there's a chance you don't "get" your students.

What if the characters in this commercial were from books and Michael was the reader?

I've often found that my personal experience with gaming has been a real asset when initiating conversations with kids. If nothing else, I get a sense that because I'm a gamer and a teacher, I'm just a little bit more relevant to my students.

Here are a few posts that I've written about video gaming and learning:

How I use Angry Birds in the classroom

More on How I use Angry Birds in the classroom

Learning and Gaming

Pleasantly Frustrating

Gaming in the Classroom: Rock Band

Assessment and Technology

More on how I use Angry Birds in the classroom

I've written before on how I use Angry Birds in the classroom, and today I want to share another project I use with students to get them engaged in learning.

Below is a project created by Tonia (not her real name). Tonia is a very angry little girl who has a heightened sense of anxiety and an acute fear of failure. Her reading and writing skills are quite weak, and she has very little interest in allowing others to see how much she struggles, so learning for her is a repetitive exercise of either fight or flight in order to maintain her dignity. To say she is unengaged from school would be a gross understatement.

When I first met Tonia, I asked her if she wanted to try an iPad.

She quickly said no.

I've had an iPad in my classrooms for over a year now, and in that time, I've never had someone say they didn't want to try the iPad. Never.

Needless to say, I was a little shocked -- but I quickly rallied.

As I turned on the app, I asked Tonia if she had ever heard of a game called Angry Birds.

Her face lit up and she replied that her dad plays it all the time.

I breathed a sigh of relief now that the ice was broken. I had an in.

So I let her play for 10 minutes and then said How about I show you how to do a project with Angry Birds.

She recoiled and said No. I don't know how to do that. You can't make me.

I backed off.

10 minutes later I asked again. She stood, said fuck off and left the room.

The next day I tried again, and thankfully she was in a better mood. Here's the project she created:



And here's a short video showing how this project can be done on the iPad using Angry Birds, screen shots, Keynote and text boxes:



The beauty of a project like this is that the student starts with a blank page and constructs something from scratch that they can call their very own. And it can be as simple or as sophisticated as you wish to make it.

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.

Gaming in the classroom: Rock Band

Recently, I have been thinking a lot about the use of video games in the classroom. Because the kids love the opportunity to actually use class time to play games, engagement on their behalf is easily attainable. I see this as potentially one of the greatest arguments for gaming in the classroom.

However, it's important to remember that while engagement is necessary, it is not sufficient in developing a classroom around real learning. The best classrooms are not just about engaging the kids. With that, I see two challenges to gaming in the classroom. Firstly, the challenge sometimes is to make sure that the games are mindful and supportive of our learning (there are a lot of mindless games out there). Secondly, the kids sometimes need a lot of guidance in their reflections of the game to be aware just how much learning is in fact going on.

So here's what I tried:

Our two grade 6 classes joined together to play Rock Band 2 on the X Box for 45 minutes. Collectively, we figured out the fairest way to decide who should have a turn. Everyone agreed that if someone had not had a turn, they should get precedence to someone who had already played. Even though no one dared disagree with this, the kids had to regulate and remind a few students that they had already played. I observed this but never interfered with their autonomy. (Keep in mind I was observing in case someone did try to play more than their share - and had they tried without another student calling them on it, I would have asked them to reflect upon their actions. I would have also asked students why they did not speak up)

Because singing is sometimes the most intimidating role to play on Rock Band, I suggested that if people were gutsy enough to sing, then they are gutsy enough to pick the song. 

The first song the kids played was Eye of the Tiger by Survivor. The second song was Should I Stay or Should I Go by the Clash. We then stopped for lunch. I told the kids to think over the lunch hour about why playing Rock Band during class time is a good use of our time. While the kids ate, I whipped up a quick blog post for our class Ning. Here is what I wrote:

When you think of traditional school, not many people would think that Rock Band could help students learn; however, there are a lot of ways Rock Band could be used to support learning in the classroom. Here are a couple of my reasons:

1. Playing and learning together is very important. None of us are as smart as all of us, and this is why it is so important to learn how to play together. When we played Rock Band today, many students were shy and nervous about playing in front of their peers. When you play Rock Band, you get a chance to see how failing in front of your peers does not have to be scary. The classroom should be a safe place where collaboration is normal. I saw many of you go out of your way to comfort and support those who were hesitant.

2. The lyrics from the songs are inspirational. They make you think of things that have happened in your life. For example, the song Should I Stay or Should I Go has a lot to do with my life. At the end of last school year, I was asked if I would accept a transfer to a new school. For the first time in my teaching career, I needed to choose to stay or go. This was not an easy decision for me because Westpark had become like a second home for me.

Eye of the Tiger was a very interesting song because it connects to the video that Mr. Cunningham shared with us. I googled the lyrics and found them here. I found the lyric "Just a man and his will to survive" as very powerful. In this world, challenges, problems and hardship are the norm. Anyone who plays the game of life without failure or mistakes isn't really playing the game. Perseverance maybe one of the most important characteristics anyone can have. 

I can think of a few more but I think I'll place them in another blog post.

I shared this post with them because I wanted to model for them how you could write about this for more than one sentence (Brevity has not been a problem with my students' writing). I also wanted to model how to give a link to another website (my kids are not that tech savvy), and I wanted to connect the game to other media that we've already used in class. (see the video below)

As a class, we discussed why some students would be hesitant to play. Many could see fear of failure and embarrassment as very real concerns. In fact, a couple students were so nervous, they couldn't even be in the room when we started playing. With some artful guidance from my colleague Richard, we convinced them to give watching a try. 

We also discussed the importance of perseverance in the face of failure. Eye of the Tiger as their first song worked out nicely because it led into a follow up conversation about this video that had been uploaded to our Ning:

Later on in the day, we were playing some games that focused on teaching my students how to type (they mostly hunt and peck). That's when Jake suggested that keeping your fingers on the home row required similar dexterity to when you play guitar on Rock Band. I thought that was very cool.

Had a stranger walked by and poked their head into my classroom, they would have seen what looked like chaos - kids were talking, music was blaring and drums were banging. But if that stranger cared to scratch the surface by asking the kids some questions, listening to our class discussions or reading their blog posts, I think they would have discovered real learning (purposeful chaos) was taking place in a context and for a purpose.

Oh, and we also played Mirror's Edge in the afternoon. I'll blog about that tomorrow.

For more on video gaming in the classroom, check out Chris Fritz's post on gaming and Will Richardson's post about the New York Times Magazine that featured gaming in the classroom.