TDU E-Learning Blog

This morning I finally got around to watching Big Thinkers: James Paul Gee on Grading with Games @ edutopia.org.

He spends a good deal of the video advocating use of video games in education as they enable a level of problem solving not dissimilar to the learning challenges we face in the real world….but are fun. While not heavily into playing games, I agree with his point when there is a game that works with the context of what is being undertaken.

A few years ago I was temping for a couple of weeks as a YR 10 history teacher in a secondary school and while colleagues I worked with in my regular teaching job were advocating gaming in a big way…I was most definably a skeptic. The topic was WW2 with a group of students bored out of their brains reading the prescribed text.

Having seen my brother in law spend copious hours at night shooting virtual Russians in the Battle of Stalingrad it made perfect sense to me as the desperate teacher to introduce the game ‘Call of Duty’ to the students. After getting one of the students to show me how to install the game across the network, we spent the next 90 minutes playing the game. While a few students begged for a continuation the next class, the students had a wealth of questions that then other students couldn’t help but answer before I could open my mouth. Despite getting a bit of a kicking from the co-ordinator for breaking a few rules…I was sold on gaming, but I’m unsure that there is always such a good gaming fit for a range of contexts…however as the contexts of games continue to diversify maybe there will will be a game for everyone?

Moving on from gaming, James makes a great point in the video where he states that learners like to learn with someone who is also learning. This person may be a step ahead, but the point is that they are in the mindset of learning. Hence I believe that there are two key points:

1. Teachers whom feel a bit intimidated by technology should not see this as an impingement on facilitating a great learning environment, provided they have identified a means/method by which they are going to continue to learn as they experience challenges. This may adapt as they learn from the students etc etc, however the core point is that they need to feel that they are not going to never never land…as I have being asked (in previous positions) to deliver sessions using technologies that I have had very little use with….ahh

2. For those teachers whom are tech savy and aim to bring students and/or their peers along for the ride, the questions I ask is ‘how do you get into the novice headspace?’ and ‘how do you demonstrate that you are still learning and that being a so called expert is not sitting on a summit?’

Simple questions…yes, but possibly not so simple to answer

There are a few gems scattered in this video (see below) his definition of collaboration is a good one worth revisiting…

Tags: expert, gaming, problem solving

This entry was posted on Friday, July 3rd, 2009 at 10:05 am and is filed under Teaching Methods, Technologies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.