Oh the sounds of summer…The crack of the bat (or ping if you’re talking about Little League). The pop of a ball being caught in the pocket of a leathery glove. The swishing sound of feet gliding across orange clay. These are sounds I grew up with for 15 years. My true formative years. Memories that to this day I can remember very vividly.

How many of you remember going out and “playing catch” with your dad? Or kicking around that soccer ball with your brother or sister in the backyard? Better yet, how many of you played whiffle ball or cup ball with your friends at a park, on the street or even in your swimming pool?

I for one can say yes to all of the above. I so cherished the time I was able to spend time with dad to play catch in the side yard. He would get all gussied up in the catchers gear that we had as part of my Little League team. As I got older, the more equipment he seemed to put on. By the time I was in the Senior Division (14-15 year old) in Little League he was in full catching equipment and double batting gloves under the catcher’s mitt. I’ve even had the true cool experience to play softball as a 19 year old with my dad and grandfather on the same team for two seasons. Nothing cooler than having 3 generations of Turners on the same field at the same time. We get to do that occasionally for golf, but the frequency is alot less now that my Grandfather’s Parkinson’s is really prohibitive these days.

The point is, I’ve been blessed with the fortunes of living a very active youth (we won’t mention how its gone downhill from graduation now will we?) The question is, where did this love of playing come from? Where was the spark? Sure, my parents encouraged me to play Little League. Heck, my dad was my coach from my 6 y/o Tee Ball first team, all the way to my 15 y/o Senior Division Team.

No matter what activity it is, the ability to succeed at these activities requires 2 things. Repetition and Practice. The two go together. How often do you see a big league ball player hitting in the batting cages? Pretty often I’m sure. I know when I was playing ball, I practice everyday. The routine is still etched in my head. We did infield/outfield fungo drills, followed by baserunning drills, then hitting practice (cage or game type situations or live bp) finished up with cardio/strength training exercises.

Again, I had the luxury of being able to practice extra to hone my skills. But where were the primary skills taught? Where are these primary skills taught today? What individuals are in charge of teaching our young children these life skills of being active and learning through sport and play? Those physical educators that you see coming and going with the nice sun tan, floppy hat and the sun glasses hanging either from their neck or sitting on their cap. I have a very soft spot in my heart for PE teachers. Little known secret, my initial teaching certificate is in physical education from the University of Central Florida. I’ve had to deal with for years being told that I took the ‘easy’ route to becoming an educator. “PFFFT”, I tell them. I won’t get into the ins and outs of what a physical education major program looks like at the college level. You can do your own research on that.

Back to the kids though and their PE curriculum…

I’ve shared at length my desire to see more gaming in the educational setting. The same can be said for the physical education curriculum for an elementary age child. We lived by a motto/creed at UCF. “Monkey See Monkey Do, Children Learn the Best as they are Doing.” The goal of any PE curriculum is to have the children actively engaged at ALL times. Movement, movement, movement. Active, active, active. Two things occur when this sort of engagement is not occurring: there is no retention of the activity that is being learned and there is a HIGH probability that the children will begin to misbehave.

Does this result sound vaguely familiar? All to often I’ve walked into classrooms where students are proverbially ‘bouncing off the wall’. It is not in my place to tell these teachers how to do their job. However, it is well within my role as a technology integration specialist to offer suggestions for engaging students. Why then do we not see as many brick and mortar classrooms being run similarly to those out on the PE fields?

My mind is swirling now that it is 2 am in the morning. I’ve been churning this topic in my head since I returned back from New York last week. I think it’s high time for me to hit the sack and return to this on Saturday when I return home.

Seeking the Wisdom of the Ages…

Tom.

photo courtesy of: jimmywayne22, “Howard J. Lamade Stadium.” Flickr. 27 July 2008. 1 Aug 2008 <http://www.flickr.com/photos/61278305@N00/2706681401/>.

When  looking at our goal in education, what is it that we are there to do? Let’s take a look at my school district’s mission statement: “

I hear all the time when walking into classrooms and breakrooms on campus that there is not time for the ‘fluffy’ stuff that I’m there to help teachers with. The stuff that the students need are all in the text books anyways. Who has time to create a wiki or blog? Where would I fit into my day the time to tape my students creating video books to share with other classes and grade levels? Heaven help us all if learning turned out to be fun in any way, shape or form!

What type of games are out there that would allow students to learn and *gulp* and have some fun? I’ve compiled a list of a few that might work.

1. Webkinz – I’m not going to rehash this as I wrote about this earlier this week. Still find that it would be an invaluable tool in the classroom.
2. Roller Coaster Tycoon (or any other Tycoon based game) – I love this series of games. I remember playing one of the first versions of RCT that came out years ago, and how addicting it was to try and get more and more people to show up to my theme park. Creating a roller coaster of your own can be interesting. Can’t get the cars to go back up the rise of tracks? Hrm….sounds like a physics issue there. Better get Newton’s Laws of Physics out for a lesson.
3. Sim Tower Sim City or Sim Theme Park – Old school versions of RCT and that genre. I’ve found Sim Tower online through ebay and have contemplated buying it again. Between these 2 games and RCT, what better life and math lesson is there than to have to create your own parks/cities. I remember in Sim Tower creating shopping malls on the top floor of the tower (about floor 100 I think) and it not doing well. Then tasked my daughter with creating a tower similar but choosing to put the shopping area in the basement and she was quickly making money to create more types of shops and condo units.
4. Sid Meier’s Gettysburg, Civilizations Series, etc – What a greatly cool thing to do to learn about historical events, then to recreate them via software. Don’t like the way General Robert E. Lee performed at Gettysburg? Just think of the possibilities that can be explored by allowing General John Bell Hood to perform a flanking maneuver on day 2 instead of the assaults on Little Round Top. Might have a different  result possibly.
5. World of Warcraft or other MMORPGs – I know what might be going through your heads. Tom, you are a WoW-head of course you are going to espouse using such a thing. One thing that I’ve noticed in my lifetime of gaming (going back to Advanced Dungeon and Dragons days using pen/paper) that there is a THRIVING economy in these games. Since leaving San Antonio I’ve been enjoying the family vacation up here in Niagara Falls, NY, yet I’m still able to log into World of Warcraft and complete some minor tasks that does NOT involve any killing. Yet, I’ve still been able to make about 300 in gold by performing these tasks (usually creating food that other players consume and selling off items that other people can use to cook) Sounds like a math lesson in there somewhere to me.
6. Fantasy Sports – I LOVE my fantasy football and baseball. Can’t go a football season without having at least 2 football leagues that I’m a part of. Dan Flockhart created a math curriculum to go with fantasy sports and mathematics. I saw this about a year and a half ago on ESPN and is definitely worth taking a look at if you are a math teacher.

Notice a trend there? Alot of math. In my most humble of opinions, alot of emphasis is placed on reading (rightly so) but sometimes I feel it’s to the detriment of mathematics. Right now the GLS conference going on in Madison, WI. (Gaming + Learning + Society) I’m hoping some literature or webcasts come from this conference to sink my teeth into. I know Kevin Jarrett and David Jakes are there. Here’s hoping they have something they can share with everyone.

Seeking the Wisdom of the Ages…

Tom.

Yesterday I looked at the first part of play, that being structured. Today I will tackle the second form of play, unstructured. There are several avenues that children can partake in unstructured play. The conventional method is through recess. That time where teachers usually take their children outside and allow their students to ‘have at it’ so to speak. I’ve heard from administrators that this is a liability nightmare. Typical though, shying away from a productive part of the day for fear of litigation.

So where is the outlet that our children need from the daily grind of learning?  Our students are bombarded by  a HUGE mountain of required learning for standardized testing, one fatal mistake is being made on a daily basis. Our students are not being allowed to be children. They are not being given a chance to learn to ‘play’ together on the playgrounds and playfields. Broken down, this means that students are not being given a chance to learn collaboration on their own. I remember growing up playing ‘war’ in my neighborhood with at least 2 dozen other boys and girls. We gave ourselves objectives for opposing teams to complete to be able to win (usually a capture the flag type deal). This would NEVER happen in today’s society because of the whole guns today looking alot like plastic/toy guns. But it was play like this that taught the power of leadership and working together as a team to accomplish a common goal. I will ask the same question that I asked in my previous post, does this have anything to do with learning what a noun is or how to divide by double digits from double digits? Probably not, but as most of us already know, there is more to education than the proverbial “X’s and O’s”.

What does this all have to do with Technology? Tons. I remember a few months back my daughter came home and said she was able to log onto her Webkinz account from school when she was finished with all her work. My wife was AGHAST. I was pretty ok with it actually. For those that don’t know, Webkinz is a virtual world. The only way to get in there is to buy a Webkinz pet of some sort. You get a code to create an account. You are responsible for feeding the pet, taking care of it, putting it to sleep and bathing/hygiene type things, or the pet will get sick. Haven’t asked my daughter to go so far as to allow that to happen yet, just to see what happens. As it stands now, I’m pretty positive I have well over 30 Webkinz pets strolling around my house (bleh! is all I can say about that!). Not only does my 3rd grade daughter have many pets that she tends to in this virtual world, so does my 6 year old son (just turned 6 less than a month ago, which is important to remember).

As with the real world, money in the Webkinz world is key. The economy is driven by “kinzcash”. You get so much for creating a new pet in the world. You can get kinzcash for selling off gems that you can search for in a cave. You can also earn kinzcash by playing different type of games, or doing jobs. The moral of this is, it is NOT very hard to earn money in this virtual world. It is important though to be able to purchase items for your rooms for your pets, as well as food and other luxury items that you may desire. Back to my son though. Being 6 now, but 5 for the time that this example is taking place, he really has zero formal education in economic issues and concerns. Being 6, his mother and father take care of all of his wants and needs. One thing is for certain though, my son is VERY understanding that when his kinzcash amount reaches 0, he needs to sell off some stuff that he knows he doesn’t need or use, or he simply plays a trivia game to earn money. The humor in that lies in the fact that he knows not a single answer to the trivia questions….he perfectly knows this and has said as much. He merely clicks on an answer and he still is able to earn money, whether the answer is right or wrong. Somewhere in there, there is an argument for getting something for nothing. Now’s not the time or place for that discussion. What I take the MOST out of that example is this: my five year old son was able to ‘learn’ on his own, a way/plan to get money in a virtual world to fulfill his wants/needs. Better yet. By looking at the curio shop (virtual store’s name), he knows how much the item(s) he wants costs. And he plays these games, sells off other items, to allow him to save enough money to get what he wants/needs (***Cough***Math Skills****Cough****)

By explaining this all to my wife, I brought her back to my daughter and her playing this Virtual Game at school. With the in game environment as safe as it is going to get (no chat allowed as of yet, only friends on her list are allowed to gain access to her house map, but unable to move anything) the academic pros well outweigh any cons that might be there. The fact of the matter is this, the face of unstructured play at school has changed, this is what that face looks like. I applaud my daughter for the hard work she does in this virtual world. She works very diligently at making sure all her pets are tended to and that her garden is weeded everyday, lest the weeds get out of control. I would show screen shots of the map of her ‘house’ but I’ve been unable to do so. I keep trying to get her to log onto her account on my macbook or to give me her account user info to which she won’t. I really cannot complain about her not giving me her account info (I know mom has it, but I’m not going to push that), it goes to show that she is listening to the ground rules that I’ve laid out for her to continue using it.

I will finish tonight with this one final thought:

I don’t know about you, but Mr. Fred Rogers is someone I trust and someone whom I feel can’t be stated unequivocally as an expert in this field.

Seeking the Wisdom of the Ages…

Tom.

Received word from Darlene Wolfe here in the Orange County, FL area of an event that might be beneficial to some of you. If you are interested please read further on below the images.

Educators, guidance counselors and administrators may register on line at http://www.fdmec.org/registration/event_012208.htm . More information for this free program is at the registration site ( http://www.fdmec.org and select register for January 22nd event). Since we do have a cut off point due to the size of the meeting area, participants will receive an email confirmation for them to print and show as both parking pass and free entrance to the Science Center.

The program begins with optional tours of Otronicon and the Orlando Science Center . Otronicon explores gaming, simulation and digital media in education and entertainment. A networking hour with snacks follows. Then, we have presentations from educators involved in the changes, industry professionals who will share what they look for in employees, and an update on the Digital Media Banner Center to be housed at Seminole Community College and on the coming programs, and changes in secondary and PSAV digital media curriculum.

Seeking the Wisdom of the Ages…

Tom.

Technorati Tags: FETC edtech gaming education technology

Here are some of the highlights that I liked:

• “Educational games frequently consist of repetitive, superficial tasks with limited transfer or poorly disguised attempts to sugar coat learning, which can leave the student feeling patronized or deceived.”
  • This is the skill and drill mentality that most administrators LOVE because, well I’m not really sure. I guess it looks like the students are engaged in learning…but really just repeating the same tasks over and over again.
• “MMOGs are rich, pervasive 3D virtual worlds with thousands of participants rendered in real time. The interface allows participants to create and experiment with a second life, experiencing an alternate reality that includes aspects of possible selves, regardless of who one is offline. In a virtual world, people can reinvent themselves to become better, worse, or altogether different from their real-world identities. A normally shy player can become someone with a more attractive physique or a more confident personality. Alternatively, a player can choose to have an ugly physique or to adopt a brash, obnoxious personality. He or she may even change gender, age, or ethnicity, or take the opportunity to investigate seemingly impossible options; for example, a disabled person may have an avatar that can walk or fly. Because the virtual world is free of most of the constraints of the offline world, players can communicate, behave, appear, and be differently in an MMOG.”
  • This is one of the most endearing qualities to MMORPGs that I love. The game continues on, even if I’m not logged in. For example, this is an image taken in Ultima Online. To make a long story short, these images of my house in UO. When I’m not logged in, the house is still there, all of the contents are still there…and other PC’s can come by my house to check it out.Many of my friends that play take on thoroughly different personalities as their normal persona. Males playing females and vice versa. I’ve never really looked at the gaming as a way to discover one’s self as in this article suggests, but I can truly see the rationale in doing the study in this manner.
• “Were MMOGs able to sustain engagement and motivation as teaching tools? At the end of the five-week course, students were highly enthusiastic about using MMOGs in general, calling them “fun, engaging . . . amazing learning tools” with “the potential to teach many things.”
  • I’ve reported ad nauseum about my heydays of online gaming in Everquest and World of Warcraft. I could literally spend 16 hours glued to my monitor screen as 1 person in a 40 or 100 person raiding experience; or simply doing mundane tasks as pulling MOBS for my group. I know this is not a selling factor to bring gaming into education, but it shows how engaging and fun games can be. When it ceases to be fun, that’s when games start to see their attrition rates having a marked increase.
• “Merely applying a superficial sugar coating of game-like activities to educational tasks like the repetitive math tasks found in games like Math Blaster or Number Munchers is not motivating or engaging in the long run, since students may quickly lose interest due to unmet relevance needs (Squire and Jenkins 2004). In contrast, MMOGs promote learning by motivating and engaging students through the direct leverage of identity enactment and role play; that is, they deeply recruit an individual’s identity while taking on the identity of a character in a game. This identity adoption process trains students to solve problems from the point of view of the roles they are assuming, opening them up to new perspectives and challenging them to think in new ways.”
  • More skill and drill mumbo jumbo in my eyes. There was a game being demonstrated at NECC back at the end of Jun. I was too busy engaged in conversations at the Blogger’s Cafe to pay much mind to it. However, from the sounds that I could hear, the game sounded ‘cool’. That’s the fundamental key to any ‘game’ that is introduced as a learning tool to our students. It has to be cool. Number Munchers and Thinking Things just don’t cut it in the eyes of our kids.
    

Faculties and Parents would never allow such games as World of Warcraft or Halo, etc into the classroom setting. There’s some developer out there that has a concept that will make all the difference. I just hope that it will come sooner than later. Compass Odyssey and FCAT Explorer just doesn’t cut it in my eyes. Something along the lines of Dungeon Siege or even Diablo (both 1 and 2) is certainly viable as well.

Seeking the Wisdom of the Ages…

Tom.

Technorati Tags: coolcatteacher MMOG MMOEG MMORPG edugaming education technology edtech

Source: This article was originally published in Innovate (http://www.innovateonline.info/) as: Lee, J., and C. Hoadley. 2007. Leveraging identity to make learning fun: Possible selves and experiential learning in massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs). Innovate 3 (6). http://www.innovateonline.info/index.php?view=article&id=348 (accessed August 6, 2007). The article is reprinted here with permission of the publisher, The Fischler School of Education and Human Services at Nova Southeastern University.

No more…I think I can get used to the navigation pretty quickly. In a matter of 10 minutes I had my dragon avatar suit going on, a set of black spider outfit type of thing, bat wings (TO THE BAT CAVE ROBIN!) and I was off to Kathy Schrock’s place. The second I walk in, she was right there wondering how I got into her place. Seems she forgot to lock the door or I’m an L33T Sup3R H@cK3r or something. From there she let me snag one of her schnazzy Schrock’s Guide for Educator T-shirts and I was off to the ISTE Complex. I will definitely head back there tonight when more people are around, should make for more interaction. Here’s some screen shots of Mithras Barbosa (combination of my online gaming persona and Pirates of the Caribbean, ARRGG!) and my first 30 minutes in Second Life.

The screen shots are saved in .bmp, and I used Zamzar to convert them to .jpg. I’m sure there are other tools out there…but truly like ease of use that zamzar gives.

Seeking the Wisdom of the Ages…

Tom.

I’ve spoken about ‘another’ new found passion of mine several times recently. For those that don’t know it is “gaming” in education. David Warlick has blogged, even did a podcast last fall, about it. I’m looking forward to discussing it this Friday with him at some point if I can catch him. So as I’m trudging through my big ole stack of blogs to read, Vicki Davis’ post on Cheryl Oaks’ TechLearning blog on online gaming just JUMPED out at me. As a recovering online gaming addict (read “Little Things that Make me Smile“), you will not see a person agree with this wholeheartedly. By no means am I suggesting that we all have our students run out and pick up the next best MMORPG or FPS. Let’s look at some of the benefits that gaming in education might have:

• Team building – in other words, social skills. I’ve played my share of FPS games. One of my favorites is a free version published by the US Army called “America’s Army“. Hey, let’s face it. I’m a teacher aren’t I? I LOVE free things!!! To be successful at this FPS game, the team must work together to accomplish the ‘goal’ for the map that you are playing on. I’ve played this both over a server and at a LAN party. The one constant was communication. We had to communicate effectively and work together to be successful. Is this not what we strive for our students??
• Real World Skills – I remember a game my wife picked up for her classroom a few years back. I wish I still had the copy of it somewhere. It was called Ice Cream Truck. If I can find it I will add the link here. The basic premise was the player had to plan the routes their trucks took, the amount of stock they put in the truck, account for costs such as fuel, tires and I believe labor. After each day it would show a chart of how well their truck was performing. Jen Wagner had an excel/spreadsheet introduction lesson posted on her blog last week. Nice way to integrate the 2 technologies.
• Critical Thinking Skills – This is the buzzword you hear administrators talking alot about. Build our students critical thinking skills!!! Apply, Create, Analyze! 3 ways that a student, of any age or level, can show how well they ‘think critically’. I’ve told you all before. I was an Everquest addict until I sold my account a few years back (made good money on that too!). I played a class of character called a monk. In EQ, my class was responsible for bringing things back to the location the group of other players I was playing with was located. We had a skill called feign death (I will let you all guess what I could do with that skill ). When ‘pulling mobs’ (mob = monster, creature, npc-nonplayer character) I had to take into account factors such as distance, angles of approach, speed and acceleration of my own character, the mob I was trying to pull and the weapons I chose to use to wield. The monk class was a HIGHLY stressing class to play. At the end of a large raid when I was pulling, I was mentally exhausted.

I am going to go on record as saying that most, if not all, online games, be it a FPS or MMORPG, have an addictive side to it. I will say with the UTMOST caution. As we approach this meshing of gaming and education that we are careful in what we are exposing our students to. I’ve seen college age students, we’re talking Ivy League law students, flunk out because they were spending WAY too much time playing rather then studying. I’ve seen marraiges and families ripped apart because of the addictive natures of these games.

So to an extent I agree with Cheryl and Vicki. Gaming has a place in our educational system. It does allow a connection to exist with students. It might even give you the “COOL” label as a teacher. It’s worked in my favor on more than one occasion in my career. To both Cheryl and Vicki, as a gamer (I still dawdle around in Ultima Online on occasion) I will be more than happy to show you around some of the other worlds that are out there. There are plenty of things to see and do! As always…

Seeking the Wisdom of the Ages…

Tom.