connect. create. question.

I’ve recently been reading quite a bit about games in education. The ECT program at Steinhardt has an entire course on games, and I have to admit I’m not all that keen on them (simulations are, in my mind, a different but related genre, by the way). It’s not because I don’t think they have value; I absolutely do. And it’s not because I dislike playing them; while I would never colour myself with the Gaming Crayon, I definitely like to play, but rarely for extended periods. After an hour I tend to lose interest, and I’m not sure why. However, I will admit to having spent more than my fair share with the Nintendo Wii (which I specifically did not buy because I knew I would never study), and my all-time game definitely has to be Tetris. I’m also a big fan of the classic ’80s Atari games like E.T., Frogger, and PacMan. I like playing games more with other people than by myself, and I definitely see their social value. Many of the articles I’ve been reading for Frank’s class have lauded educational games because of their problem-solving features, their adept story-telling and story-weaving, their promotion of positive emotions, and many other features that help explain, on a cognitive psychological level, why games help foster learning. And I understand that games can be totally, wildly fun and involving and still teach. I get all of this, and for the most part, I agree with it.

If you had asked me a few weeks ago why I don’t think games will be big in schools, I probably wouldn’t have been able to tell you why. I simply haven’t been able to articulate the reason why I don’t think they will ever really be incorporated and integrated into schools.

Until now.

I read this article by Constance Steinkuehler at the University of Madison-Wisconsin and Dmitri Williams at the University of Illinois: “Where Everybody Knows Your (Screen) Name: Online Games as ‘Third Places’.” (BTW, you can see the article with my highlights and annotations via Diigo here, in case you are interested.) The article is about how online games, in a social-networking kind of way, provide “Third Places” for users to hang out, share, explore, and learn. I totally agree with this comparison. The article goes into depths comparing various games and users to the definition of Third Places as defined by Ray Oldenburg in The Great Good Place: Cafes, Coffee Shops, Bookstores, Bars, Hair Salons, and Other Hangouts at the Heart of a Community.

The epiphany happened for me when I read this quote (emphasis mine):

First and foremost, third places are defined as neutral grounds where individuals can enter and leave as they see fit without having to ask permission or receive an invitation (as one might in a private space) and without having to “play host” for anyone else. Compare, for example, weekday attendance at the workplace to happy hour attendance at the neighborhood tavern. The former is a second place, marked by financial obligation and rules that structure who is expected to be where and for how long; the latter is a third place, marked by relative freedom of movement. [. . . ] To oblige any one person to play requires that explicit agreements be entered into by parties (much like making arrangements for a recreational team sport), since the default assumption is that no one person is compelled to participate legally, financially, or otherwise. Unless one transforms the virtual world of the game into a workplace (e.g., by taking on gainful employment as a virtual currency “farmer” for example, Dibbell, 2006; Steinkuehler, 2006a) or enters into such agreement, no one person is obligated to log in.

Do As I Say by Viewmaker
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License

And then it hit me: I think this is why we will never see games take off in current schools. The game cannot be the Third Place because school is a Second Place. Students are required to be there, required to participate, and marked by rules that structure it.

So, it’s my current belief that until schools are reformed into neutral grounds marked by relative freedom of movement, we’re not likely to see games become something big within them.

From Clark and Salomon (1986):

General media comparisons and studies pertaining to their overall instructional impact have yielded little that warrants optimism. Even in the few cases where dramatic changes in achievement or ability were found to result from the introduction of a medium such as television, . . .  it was not the medium per se that caused the change, but rather the curricular reform that its introduction enabled.

I am Here for the Learning Revolution by Wesley Fryer
Attribution-ShareAlike License

This is why, in my opinion, the state of education is so sucky today. Our (educators’) use of technology for learning is hampered by the glass ceiling of curriculum. Only when the curriculum changes will dramatic changes in learning occur. Currently, too many schools are trying to fit square pegs into round holes; that is, teachers are using fabulous technology (IWBs, Tablet PCs, iPod Touch, VoiceThread, and more) to teach curriculum that is still content-based.

These technologies should be reforming curriculum. Why aren’t they?

How can we move this forward? How can we change curricula so that it allows teachers and students “dramatic change”? What is standing in the way, and how can we overcome this obstacle?

Clark, R.E., & Salomon, G. (1986). Media in teaching. In M. Wittrock (Ed.), Handbook of Research on Teaching (3rd ed., pp.464-478). New York: Macmillan.

Stay Warm by Erik Charlton
Attribution License

Frank gives us a few web resources now and then that he wants us to look at; whether for inspiration or understanding, I’m unsure. Whatever the case, they are usually interesting reading / viewing, and probably things I would not find myself were I surfing around on the ‘net. Communication Arts magazine has reviewed many different kinds of interaction designs, and given awards to a few. They’re worth checking out, if for no other reason than just to see some of the new, cool, hot designs on the market these days — everything from web design to physical spaces. I’ve been bouncing around their site, looking at different designs and trying to understand what makes them “good.” While sometimes that is obvious, what I find even more fascinating than the designs themselves are the responses to the question CA mag asks of the designer:

What was the most challenging aspect of the project?

Some responses: (emphasis mine)

• “The most challenging part of this project was keeping it simple, staying true to the core ideas and avoiding ‘feature creep.’ . . . I had to stay focused on the original goal—not reinventing the wheel but rather enhancing it.” Sebastian Bettencourt, art director/writer/interface designer/information architect/project design and development, Beyond The Fold
• “One of the primary challenges to designing TokBox was understanding and embracing user interactions that are unique to live video calling.” Chris Fox, design director, TokBox
• “For the Loudspeaker team, the big challenge was caring for the original idea—amplifying the voice of a great cause—as we built the site.” Scott Brown, creative director, The LoudspeakerSite
• “It was a challenge to keep each individual story entertaining and short (there were many ideas that were thrown out because they were too long or just not fun to watch).” Trevor Van Meter, creative director; Luke Lutman, Flash programmer; and Brian McBrearty, composer, Crappy Cat

And this question:

Did you learn anything new during the process?

Responses:

• “I learned that inspiration comes from experience. It comes from rethinking everyday activities and from reconsidering everyday interactions.” Sebastian Bettencourt, art director/writer/interface designer/information architect/project design and development of Beyond The Fold
• “One of the first things we had to face was the huge risk of that transparency, and what it really meant. No approvals. No editing. In the end, it was actually freeing to give up all control to the audience.” Gary Koepke and Lance Jensen, executive creative directors, Modernista!

This has got me wondering about how design influences learning. How conscious are educators of keeping it simple, staying true to the original goals, giving students experiences (rather than instruction), and giving up control to the users? How would schools be different if we did all of this, all of the time? Would there still be schools? If so, what would they look like?

I’ve just finished reading a whole whack of stuff about the history of constructivism and constructionism in educational theories. Fascinating. But in it all, I came across a gem of a reference that helps (I think) support my point in an argument with Dennis Harter about the IB Learner Profile. To sum up, our Twitter discussion was about whether the IB Learner Profile adequately covers the area of collaboration. Dennis thinks it doesn’t; he feels that it should be a separate attribute in the Learner Profile. I, however, think it is adequately covered under Communication. I think this because communication does not exist in a vacuum. To be an effective Communicator, you must know how to work with others effectively. To me, the terms “communicator” and “collaborator” are NOT mutually exclusive. You cannot be one without being the other.

So, I was reading a chapter from Psychology of Learning for Instruction by M.P. Driscoll (2005), and came across a cross-reference to some research done by Roy Pea (1994) and Edelson, Pea, and Gomez (1995).  I looked up the article (PDF) by Pea, Edelson, and Gomez, “Constructivism in the Collaboratory,” which describes how the authors set up a learning environment based on constructivist theories which allows learners to collaborate in an open-ended investigation. Here is the quote that got me; it is from the conclusion:

The collaboration tools enable students to engage in this scientific practice in a social context that includes other students, teachers, and scientists. The resulting social interactions enhance the learning that students achieve through the transformative process of communication. (p.16)

Basically, the authors are concluding that collaboration enables social interactions, and these interactions — and therefore the collaborative efforts — are achieved via communication. So, one cannot be collaborative without communicating effectively. Communication is essential to collaboration, and can not be achieved in any way other than via communication.

Roy Pea, in his article (PDF) about how multimedia (specifically computer-supported collaborative learning, or CSCL) can help or transform communication between learners, comes to a similar conclusion earlier. His article is about how the complex construction of CSCL needs to be re-thought in light of new ways of communication. He says, about communication in relationship to collaborative processes:

I therefore propose describing this third view of communication as transformative. The initiate in new ways of thinking and knowing in education and learning practices is transformed by the process of communication with the cultural messages of others, but so, too, is the other (whether teacher or peer) in what is learned about the unique voice and understanding of the initiate. (p.288)

What to make of all of this? I would posit that recent research suggests that communciation is an essential part of collaboration: communication changes the way we collaborate. It cannot be separated from it, and therefore the IB Learner Profile is justified in applying these two domains together.

Works cited:

Edelson, D.C., Pea, R., and Gomez, L. (1995) Constructivism in the Collaboratory. In B.G. Wilson (1995) Constructivist Learning Environments: Case Studies in instructional design. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Educational Technology Publications.

Pea, R. (1994). Seeing What We Build Together: Distributed Multimedia Learning Environments for Transformative Communications. In Journal of the Learning Sciences, pp. 285-299.

Sometimes, change is gradual and we don’t even realize it has happened until we look back after a period of time and realize, “Hmm, this is different than before.”

Other times, change hits you like a sledgehammer and you sit straight upright in your chair, wondering, “When and how the heck did this happen?”

Today is one of the latter: I’ve been hit with the Change Sledgehammer. 

While on Twitter, Karl Fisch tweeted about his latest post titled “Things Just Changed. Again.” Intrigued, I clicked the link. Within minutes, my world has changed.

• Read Karl’s post.
• Watch the screencast, which will introduce you to Wolfram Alpha, a “computational knowledge engine.”
• Pick your jaw up off the floor. 
• Tell everyone you know, especially educators.

We’re trying to take as much of the world’s knowledge as possible, and make it computable.