WEEK 8 - Evaluating Computer Games

Computer Games in the Classroom - Pam Wright

Firstly, an admission. When assigned the task of an online ICT activity about evaluating the educational relevance of computer games, I was a little nervous and little ho-hum about it. Computer games? Education? I thought computer games were for adolescent boys who preferred to shoot ‘em up and shoot ‘em down instead of completing their maths or English homework, or chasing girls, or kicking the footy out on the street.

I have often considered the playing of computer games as a sort of an “opportunity cost” for children – why sit and click away at a computer when you can participate in some other more worthwhile activity.
It’s an old-school view, I know, however, I’m not crusty enough to shut the door or my mind to the integration of computer games in my classroom.
My experiences and research shows that computer games have educational value, and are a fundamental resource for 21st century primary school students.

I actually enjoyed the ICT activity and found the readings most useful and interesting.
The authors made me reflect on the types of learning computer games can provide and that video games are not necessarily the “enemy, but the best opportunity we have to engage our kids in real learning.” (Prensky).

The articles also made me feel a little like an old fuddy-duddy, particularly when referring to “digital natives” and “digital immigrants”.
I think I fall in somewhere in between – I remember playing tennis on the TV – I think it was Pong. It was on a friend’s TV, and we usually played it late on a Saturday night when our parents were out. And then there were Pac man, Frogger and pinball machines. But even as a kid, I was never enthusiastic about them. Playing computer or arcade games meant staying indoors, and usually, only one or two people could play at a time. I always preferred to be outside kicking the footy or swinging a bat or racquet.
For better or worse, it’s a preconception I’ve carried into adulthood, and one that I have altered and manipulated throughout my work and social experiences.
But being a child of the 1970s, I fully appreciate that there is a massive gap in my knowledge of computers/technology/games and my students’ potential expertise and understanding. It’s gap, I hope to narrow over time.

I played a number of games outlined by Greg in the LMS including “Playing Roving Reporter and Getting the Story”, “Lord of the Rings Bath Time” and “Bin The Report” on the BBC website; “Beat the Bullies” on http://www.childline.or.uk/ and Bullying Online on http://www.bullying.org/; Play the Peace Doves Game on www.nobleprize.org/educational_games/peace/nuclear_weapons/ and accepting The Anger Challenge on http://www.angriesout.com/.

I had a play with these before I realised that I had to engage in one of the few outlined in the Pam Wright folder. (I’ll look more closely at the instructions next time).

I played “Travelogue 360 Paris” at http://www.bigfishgames.com/download-games/1238/travelogue360paris/index.html
A simple game, the learner had to scour for tourist souvenirs and objects on a trip to Paris. You could do this against the clock or at your own pace. The user is required to collect souvenirs and earn passport stamps for famous Paris locations and landmarks including the Arch de Triomphe, Eiffel Tower and Champs Elysees.
The game lies within the ‘hidden-object” genre and would be suited to youngsters aged five-10. If I have to put a VELS value on it, it would be VELS 1-3.
The game covers geography and history and some learning may occur through the 3-D views and information about famous landmarks of Paris.
However, I would not recommend this computer game to assist students with history, geography or any other subject. The game is about using a mouse and keys, and searching for items within the picture – and many of the objects are not even relevant to the tourist or travel context of the game. (eg) a sink on the Eiffel Tower; a computer mouse on the shop floor of a bakery.
Although there is sporadic historical and geographical information available about the landmarks, it’s not enough to engage or entertain a learner.
There is little educational value of introducing this game to students – it is “primitive” in Prensky terms. Kids are better off playing it at home and in their own time.
As a teacher, I’d try another game.

Even though it may have been a dud game and it took a while to download the free one-hour version, computer games should not be dismissed as a form of learning.
They should be considered to assist in learning in primary schools as they can expose students to subjects and issues they may otherwise not experience or encounter.
Students can learn to develop skills such as strategic thinking, planning, group decision-making, communication, data handling and negotiation competencies that “can transfer to other social and work related users of digital technology”. And the tasks are motivational, fast, active and exploratory – and are fun. (Kirriemuir and McFarlane)

Other parts of the curriculum can encompass these ideals too. The readings reinforce that computer games are a valuable educational tool because children “learn through doing” and can “conceal the learning”. (Kirriemuir and McFarlane)
But as the authors correctly espouse, these remarks assume children don’t enjoy learning – in conventional classroom environments.

Like numeracy, literacy, social, life skills – there is definitely space for computer games in the curriculum. Their integration into the classroom should be harnessed - checked before students are allowed to use them and under the guidance of a teacher or “significant other”.

“Good learning in games is a capitalist-driven Darwinian process of selection of the fittest”, according to Paul Gee.
A few alarm bells go off in my head when I read “capitalist”, “Darwinian”, “selection of the fittest” in any text discussing video games, learning and children.
It also raises a little skepticism, and inertia – within myself – about adopting games in my classrooms.
The computer games market is massive - $30 billion says Prensky. And there is a lot of money to be made from children and the education system in computer games learning.
There is also a lot of choice in games people play. Some good … some bad … some indifferent.

My opinions and attitudes may have shifted slightly more favourably towards developing greater integration of computer games in to my primary school classroom. I believe ICT is important in the curriculum. I won’t argue that case. The research is there, and the kids enjoy and develop key skills from them.
The massive amount of games on offer has surprised and overwhelmed me, however. There are just so many out there. How do you pick the most appropriate ones?
How do you select the most appropriate games for educational purposes?
And for me, I consider that to be the biggest hurdle – to seek out games and programs and not be seduced by glitzy marketing, blurting headlines, fancy designs and false promises.
And then there are the frustrations associated with subscribing, downloading, spam, contracts, copyright, user restrictions, pop-ups, passwords and user names ….they’re bloody annoying and time consuming (and can take up valuable lesson time).

Traditional and conventional teaching methods and resources are wonderful and illuminating if we can convince our kids to appreciate them. And I’m sure many kids and teachers do. I don’t believe computer games should replace these approaches, but rather find a space among them.
And that is our challenge as teachers – to juggle the old with the new, the now with the future.

Week 5 - Making Movies

Wow, what a neat toy. DVolver Movie Maker ….. not a bad introduction into the art of making films in the classroom. Although, this one is not recommended for primary school-aged children. Just follow the prompts and you can have your own 20-second animated movie. The Digital Films program was a little more difficult to master and not entirely user-friendly. I fiddled around with it for a while, bit not like the look or feel of the site. Moving on, next stop was Microsoft Photo Story 3 …. This one could be a winner with the home photos, birthday presentations and creating you own home picture gallery. I might have a bash at this once the semester is over.

I didn’t really enjoy the morning lecture – and it appeared there were a few who were forewarned …. there were a few missing faces … may be the stresses of the afternoon maths presentation was all too much to handle. I just thought the lecture was going over old ground. (eg) technology won’t replace the teacher, IT integration across the curriculum.
However, after admitting that, Greg’s explanations on the learning objects model and development were most helpful (eg) learner focus, content integrity, usability and accessibility. We have to make sure that the needs of all students are addressed, and that we cater for different students, target the appropriate stages of schooling, classroom interaction and ensure content is applicable and meets VELS and progression points requirements. And there was heaps more. Whoa, that’s heavy.

Week 4 - continued - Dust Echoes

Story telling is one of my favourite past times. Nothing like introducing an idea, providing a narration - and popping in a few twists and turns along the way – and building towards a climax, a conclusion and end to the story.
But I have never told a story like this one – through animation and the Dust Echoes program. What a creative way of spinning a yarn.
We had to create a story from an abc.net program and then re-tell it in Inspiration. Quirky idea. I didn’t quite complete the task, but got the idea. I re-told the story of The Bat and the Butterfly. …. Where an indigenous man performs a cowardly act of kidnapping a young girl and taking her away from her family and camp …. The man’s behaviour has dire consequences for himself and the tribe …..it was a beautiful, but terrifying tale of one girls’ will to escape the evil clutches of her captor (by metamorphosing into a butterfly) and how the bad man pursued her (by turning himself into a bat) and coming up a cropper by the local tribesman who killed him.

I didn’t complete the task ... a sample is above.

In the morning lecture, Greg talked about directed, objectivist and behavioural approaches by teachers in technology across the curriculum.

What a whirlwind of a day.

Week 4 – Mmmmm and mmmmssss

The Olympics are over, two minor assignments (yaayy) are in the can and now I have to focus on completing Maths presentation by Monday and knuckling down on ICT Webquest. I feel a little jittery about Webquest assignment because of my minimal technology knowledge. Robyn and I have ideas on paper, but haven’t started tapping away on the keyboard. It’ll be a lot clearer next week when we begin concentrating more heavily on the project.
Today was about M and Ms or should that be mmmmm and mmmmmss … I ate the contents before the exercise was completed.
We had to count the number of M and Ms in the packet, graph them and stick it into the blog.
So here ‘tis :

Earlier, Greg chatted about new technologies in the 21st century and the science of teaching.

Am playing a little bit of catch up today. Head down. Go blog Go.

Week 3 - continued

Beeeb, beeb, beeeeeeeeb, beeeb …. Australia has overtaken Great Britain on the Olympic medal tally. Sigh. Only if it is for the next 48 hours …. Now back to technology across the curriculum. In the morning lecture we continued on with ethical issues, piracy, software use and copyright. This is a very grey area. At home, in the workplace in the class room, in the playground … in front of the TV – we use technology willy- nilly, not thinking whether we’ve forced the closure of a software factory in Calcutta because of our misuse with cheap DVDs from Bali or Thailand. I’ve long been conditioned to pay full-tote-odds for music and movies. Y-gen, however, have managed to turn that custom on its head and resorted to decentralised peer to peer and file sharing. The Napster case was a line in the sand. Even though the major music companies sued the napster crew over massive copyright violations, it was merely a finger in the dike. To beat the flood, the companies joined music’s new-found democracy movement and improved access for users – at a reduced cost. Now we have iTunes and only download the songs we want off those albums. If only the Angels had adopted this back in the 1980s … would have saved me some dough with their one-hit wonders on their albums.
Let’s get a wriggle on, then …..Rebus stories and search engines … they were the two subjects introduced into our afternoon tutorial. Rebus is where an image, picture, piece of animation that represents a syllabic sound in a sentence. A home-made example is attached. I think we called them pictograms back in my school days.

Here’s what Wikipedia says about rebus:
A rebus (Latin: "by things") is a kind of word puzzle which uses pictures to represent words or parts of words; for example:
H + = Hear, or Here.


An example is above.

After an EARful of Rebus talk, we moved onto search ENGINES. Which websites were appropriate to use for primary school-aged children?

Is any search safe for or without parental, guardian or teacher supervision?
We looked through a few search engines and their validity in the classroom – it’s area fraught with danger no matter the best of intensions from the teacher. Greg showed us a few kid-friendly sites, including cricksoft, as well as suggestions as how these programs can be introduced to children with a disability.

Week 3

American Michael Phelps wins a record eight Olympic gold medals in the pool, Grant Hackett misses out on his third consecutive 1500m win ….. and it’s Monday in the technology lab discussing spelling, creative writing and reading to children.
Oh, and good news from the net. Anna Snowstill won gold in the women’s triathlon taking Australia’s medal tally to nine.
Now down to business … Greg opened up with an introduction to a spelling exercise which was quite cute. Switch on computer, create a word document, turn off monitor and repeat and tap away after me:

I have a spelling checker.
It came with my PC.
It plainly marks for my review.
Mistakes I cannot see.

I strike a key and type a word.
And wait for it to save.
Whether I am wrong or right.
It shows me straight away.

Switch on screen and hey presto, a mini spelling test without the spell-checker. We then discussed our mistakes in the typing and how to recognise children’s problems with spelling of similar sounding words (eg) straight and strait, plainly and planely.
We then moved on to creative writing skills – a ditty of an exercise. An example is below.
Create and write an introduction to a story for two minutes and then shift to another computer and continue on with the narrative. I think I gave a young character who enjoyed eating pastries, bulimia. But we won’t tell Sze.

A boy named Buddy.

He’s tall, dark and handsome and kicks plenty of goals for Hawthorn. He can kick goals from almost anywhere – except 20m out in front of goal. But all Hawks fans love the No.23 in the gold and brown jumper.
Of course, I’m writing about Lance ‘Buddy’ Franklin – the star full forward for the mighty Hawks.

Well a hawk fan may worship at the alter of saint buddy, but as a committed Collingwood fan (and thus lifelong masochist) I find myself more often resenting the the draft system which rewards mediocrity, (more often though, how does Collingwood get it all so wrong so often) I also love to whatch the number of points that this supposed superstar manages to kick each game. Yes he gets a million shots at goal, but if he scores at less than 50% he’s useless!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Buddy Franklin decided that he had had enough of playing footy. So went to Bali and became a Nun.

The exercise highlighted the skills required to develop a story – structure, detail, spelling, excitement, humour, sentence and paragraph structure, extending vocabulary and use of compound words, pronouns, common and proper nouns, verbs and adjectives.
Greg stressed that to undertake this exercise, you should know your class. We don’t want to encourage any cyber bullying or covert stalking in our classrooms.
At the morning lecture Greg discussed issues and strategies surrounding students working and learning in an online environment. How do we as teachers, protect children from cyber bullying and untoward websites, blogs, chat rooms and online communities? We must encourage students to behave responsibly and safely in such an ever-expanding cyber world and culture. Privacy and respect were the two glaring standouts for me in this discussion. Protection of privacy and property and respect for others – you treat other people how you would like to be treated – are the mantas here.
Greg has already got me nervous about introducing website investigations / projects / exercises into the classroom. I admit I’m a little old-fashioned in regard to using the web in class. I think it opens a can of worms, a genie in a bottle, a recipe for disaster … and there’s plenty more clichés where they came from.
And damn those Poms! They are going to beat Australia in the Olympics gold medal tally. Let’s hope for a few more Aussie gold and few more provocative technology issues before the week is up.

Week Two

Ahhh, Australia is winning Olympic gold in the Beijing pool and here we are trying to kick goals in class on a wet and wintery day in Bundoora. Greg dropped the W-bomb this week – W for Webquest – a technological learning program designed for school children. Personally, I’ve never heard of a webquest until enrolling in this course. Sounds like some 1970s US space odyssey starring Will Shatner. Greg outlined the vagaries of Webquests and their importance in the curriculum. I have to admit, I wish I had a crack at one of these in my days at Nunawading primary school 3140. Introducing the building blocks, we were taught a fancy program entitled Quia, not Kea, a native bird from New Zealand. Quia is quite enjoyable – brilliant for creating quizzes. A sample is attached below.
We then moved onto the always awkward task of finding a partner to tackle our Webquest task. Brave Sir Robin, will be my partner in peril, and after a few moments of consideration, we narrowed our Webquest area of interest to cricket and football. The summer sport won out on practical grounds - we could use the project in our teaching rounds later this year. We then narrowed our quest to The Ashes, the history of Test cricket between Australia and England. Great fun and great subject that will encompass and cover-off many parts of the curriculum – maths, english, history, geography, phys-ed.
Our major hurdle now is to come up with the major task for the students.
And rounding out the week, we were introduced to Microsoft Publisher, a bells and whistles program for the Webquest. We designed a travel brochure and how to set up a webpage. Scary stuff, but I’m sure it’ll be challenging and fun.

WEEK 1

Whoosh. Welcome to the 21st century. "Technology across the Curriculum" did not rate a blip on the radar during my formative education years in 1970s Australia. Our classroom “technology’ experiences consisted of the annoying watery plop, plop from the fish tank filter and muffled tones from a miniature ray-lamp warming our resident guinea pigs throughout Melbourne winters. Those experiences did, however, prompt thoughts on one of Greg’s most confronting admissions in his first lecture. As new teachers, we will be creating learning systems and processes for children who will work in areas and jobs not even invented yet. And that’s an exciting prospect.

I didn’t type on a keyboard until my 11th year of education, at Blackburn High School, and that was for a computer programming assignment I didn’t really appreciate at the time. My first experiences with the internet and email were not until the late 1990s when Rupert Murdoch decided to upgrade his hulking fleet of old-fashioned desktops, fax and photo gram machines at News Limited. And he only did so because Sydney was hosting the 2000 Olympics and the Y2K bug. As journos, we had to file stories quicker than via an archaic desktop publishing system or speaking to a lovely lady on the other end of the phone typing our prose word for word. New York, London, Paris, Montmorency, Werribee … it took time to file, no matter where you were.

Moving on .... I enjoyed Greg’s delivery and passion for his subject, however, I did feel a little uncomfortable when he related his experience in one school where he insisted computers be switched on before class commenced. I’m not totally in favour with this philosophy, as I beleive it creates anticipation (negative or positive, real or otherwise) that students will be using the computers immediately or have the opportunity to play games. I think they are also an unnecessary distraction in the classroom. Personally, flicking a switch on a computer each morning creates an automatic response as if turning on the TV or the heater, or opening the fridge door when you arrive home from work. We do it without thinking, and thinking is what we need to explore.

And finally, mapping, diagram drawing and – The Blog. Didn’t Hollywood release a movie The Blog in the 1960s? Mastering Inspiration software and concept mapping will be an ongoing process. I enjoyed fiddling around with symbols, illustrations and branches in our mini task. I felt like a kid again. I was probably a little more immersed in doodling on the computer than listening to Greg’s instructions, as can be evidenced by my efforts. The blog. Yes, well, the blog did require patience and a little bit of tweaking. I tried edublogs.org, but that didn’t work for me, so on the advice of a neighbourly student, I decided to set-up my blog on Blogger.com. I preferred the simplicity of the display, login process, settings, templates and edit features. And God Bless the Russians - a pencil in space. What a master stroke. I hope the bigwigs at NASA took notes on the experiment and put it in the following year's budget.