Project IGNITE VT

Today I participated on panel of educational innovators for the Project IGNITE (Identify, Gather, & Nurture Innovative Transformative Educators) workshop. Four panelists: Lucy Gray, Anthony DiLaura, Kyle Brumbaugh and I attended the workshop via Google Hangouts.  My topic: Gaming in Education.

But what about the violence?

Today I was asked about the problem of violence with regard to gaming in school. I seem to field this question a lot and have a lot of different responses. I will use this post to collect my ideas and invite your comments to help me make my position clearer. The role of violence in games is complex and the role of violence in games in schools is equally complex.

Team or individual victory
Most games, whether on video screen or off have victory as the ultimate goal. Basketball, hopscotch, speed skating, spelling bees, chess and checkers, Age of Empires (computer), Chaos and Order (mobile internet) all have this in common. The object is to prove you are (your team is) better, smarter, faster, stronger.  Consider the language of victory. We "crush" our opponents, we "blast" past them, we "destroy" their pieces. Is this "violence" or the domination of pieces on the game board.

Real, almost real, virtually real, fantasy, abstraction.
I don't know if the distinction ultimately matters but it seems worth raising the point. In sports controlled aggression is real and physical, one player blocks, tackles, picks and rolls, body checks another.
In checkers, we "capture" the opponents pieces and they are removed from the board.
In role playing games like WoW and OaC fantastic wars between creatures are fought, those killed are sent to the cemetary (removed from the board or returned home) from where they can start again. While in first person shooters, virtual militaries fight each other. On the screen no one really gets hurt.

Does virtual violence lead to violence in daily life?
There is research to support both sides of the argument, but all of it lacks a thorough examination of the concept of violence. There is no research that compares the effect of violent behavior on the football field with violent behavior on the computer screen. Or the study of civil war weaponry in school with violence on the playground.

Do kids know the difference between video games and real life?
There is evidence to suggests that very young children (pre-schoolers) can not discern the difference between events that happen on the screen and those that happen in real life. (Segovia and Bailenson, 2009). But ask any third grader the difference between what happens in a game and in real life, and they will tell you. "It's only a game."

Is there violence in School?
No, and yes. One of our imperatives is to keep children safe.  Yet, because there is violence in the real world we study violence in school. We try to understand history through wars. The civil war is a favorite topic among teachers and students because it can be made so real. We watch reenactments, visit battlefields, study armor and weapons. Many boys (and I dare say history teachers) imagine themselves victors on the battlefield. In elementary school we introduce the terrible brutality of Naziism through the eyes of young children who suffered.  We study scary stuff in which children have been not only heros but victims. And there is no getting around that all children experience some form of victimization by bigger, stronger, smarter, children.

What do games do?
Those who embrace gaming as a source of good learning and even good social action argue that games give us a break from the challenges of daily life. Games give us a sense of accomplishment that we associate with fun. Getting better at games leads to self confidence.  Games teach us to collaborate with teammates who share a common goal and complementary skills. Games help us feel optimistic and competent. (McGonigal, 2010, JP Gee, 2012)

For myself the violence in games is background noise. When I play, my goal isn't to kill, it is to save myself, save my team, save the world. But that is one perspective. I guess the only way to really answer the question, "But what about the violence?" is to talk about the issues and encourage the questioner to decide. What are your thoughts?



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References
Gee, J.P. (2012). Learning with video games, Edutopia via Youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnEN2Sm4IIQ
McGonigal, J. (2010). Gaming can make a better world. TED http://www.ted.com/talks/jane_mcgonigal_gaming_can_make_a_better_world.html
Segovia, K. and Bailenson, J. (2009). Virtually true: Children’s acquisition of false memories in virtual reality. Media Psychology (12) 371–393

Learning and Knowledge

image licensed under creative commons by
Briar Press, at briarpress.org

In my two classes this past week, we've been discussing Bruner's (1996) notion of Folk Pedagogy - the set of beliefs a person holds about knowledge, learning and how one learns. (Folk Pedagogy is a laywoman's "epistemology.")

Some of the key distinctions among these beliefs include the nature of knowledge: what it is, where does it sit, who possesses it, is it an objective entity, does knowledge get transferred from one entity/person to another, can one transfer one's knowledge to another, how does one acquire knowledge, what is the outcome of teaching, what is the antecedent of learning, how does learning occur, what model best explains the brain, knowledge and learning.


I recently asked my students to blog about these to questions. Below I consider my own answers.

• What is learning?
• What is knowledge?

Knowledge

There is knowledge that the individual holds, that a group holds, that is stored in books, databases, devices, and knowledge that we aspire to gain.  I believe that the word knowledge refers to skill, ability and our explanations of our environment and the problems we face. As we interact with the world our knowledge develops. I don't think there is much "objective knowledge;" there are currently accepted "facts." But knowledge evolves and changes. One who seeks knowledge is more concerned with the testing, interpretation and advancement of currently accepted information, than with the acquisition of facts.

Personal knowledge is highly idiosyncratic. What we know is based on the unique combination and order of experiences we have had and the degree of interest with which we engaged with those experiences. 

Learning 

Learning is a process of examining our existing knowledge in the face of new information. It is not the direct transfer of knowledge from one person to another. A teacher does not transfer a packet of knowledge from her knowledge store to that of the learner.  A teacher conveys a verbal (or other) representation of her knowledge. A learner will interpret this representation through the dual lenses of her past knowledge and her interest. Is this information worth looking at closely? Does it make sense in the context of prior knowledge? Does it ring true based on past experience?

Our definitions of knowledge and learning are changing

In a world in which information is abundant and accessible, and in which our lives are filled with complex problems, people no longer rely - for their day to day living - on the knowledge which they alone hold. We have the capacity to work with knowledge that is outside of ourselves (we operate the controls of a machine and make woven fabric without having a knowledge of weaving, we cook food that we do not know how to raise or gather, we compute large amounts of data and draw conclusions that we could not draw based on our own knowledge alone, experts in biology, economy, and health interact with the knowledge that exists in their "fields" and among multiple fields).

My own notions of knowledge and learning are evolving. 

Through my own study of knowledge and learning and and reflection on my own practice as a learner and teacher I become aware of my beliefs. My "knowledge about knowledge" is challenged by the ideas of my colleagues and by my own observation. 

I hope that my students will teach their students to reflect about learning and knowing and encourage them to expand their ideas.

Reference:

Bruner, J. (1996). Folk pedagogy, in The Culture Of Education. Cambridge MA, Harvard University Press. Ch2 (44-65)

Learning with and from children

Today I had an amazing experience of teaching and learning in a virtual world. The world is MineCraft. I am the learner. The teacher: the 10 year old son of one of my students (a teacher).

Preamble...
My teacher, we'll call him Bear has been present on and off throughout my graduate course for teachers. He helped his mother make the transition from Second Life to World of Warcraft. And though he hadn't experienced WoW before, he knew enough about virtual worlds and gaming to offer suggestions for how to locate and activate inventory, navigate a map, and overcome the short term effects of game-death. He served as an expert discussant during a class meeting about gaming and schools. And while precocious and articulate he is very much a bubbling active curious kid.

My classroom
Bear sits at the laptop on his kitchen table while his Mom looks on.  I sit in my office 100 miles away. For this first session we each have a single player version of the game open, and Bear shares his screen through Skype. I occasionally ask Bear to slow down, but his instructions are impeccable. His explanations are thorough. He has decided, correctly, that I need to know some things to get started and that other things can wait until I have more experience. (How does he know that? Does he intuit it? Has he taught this course before? Or has he modeled his teaching after some similar experience he's had as a learner?). I follow along setting up my new world as he creates his.

My first impression is about the representational nature of the game. Every object is a variation of a block. Like legos there are cut-away pieces to make trees and plants. And like legos most things are made of cubes. If it is a white cube it is snow, a light blue cube is ice, a dark blue cube is water. Minerals are more interesting but look nothing like the rock, coal, precious metal or stone that it represents. This is a game that demands you to see with your imagination, to identify small color changes in a pixilated pattern to distinguish gold from coal.

Next I notice that the game is layered with complexity. It is apparent that to learn to play you need intellectual resources. Bear reports that mostly he uses trial and error to figure stuff out and is usually right, but he does turn to websites and online friends to help. There is a set of knowledge that must become automatic in order to move on to higher levels of crafting and battling, click combinations, early tool recipes, effective use of the world resources.

The boy comes out.
Bear is patient. He slows down, repeats himself and answers my questions without apparent annoyance. And from time to time his excitement overwhelms him and the boy-teacher becomes a boy. He zips around the screen slashing, building, digging and cooing "Isn't this so cool." I hold back my questions to allow the wave of enthusiasm to take me up. This teacher is passionate and he is able to share that with me - his student.  Even if, at those moments, I cannot learn to do what he is doing, I can learn to want to do what he is doing.

As teachers, parents, researchers we can speculate about what young people are doing in these new digital spaces. We can try them out (we must try them out) and uncover what we might do in the spaces.  But we also must talk to, play with, learn from kids.  They are now operating in a collaborative world where they are often learner and teacher. They are developing new ways to learn and we can learn from them how to teach.

Transnational relations

Olive and I spent a couple of hours together today.

Two women facing a challenge, with no clear cut solution, working together to save a virtual land. Marlboro Island in Second Life, where my TLVW class meets and works, suffered its first grief attack in years. A visitor set off the nuisance tetris script, which generates physical boxes, ad infinitum. Boxes that fill the island in three dimensions, boxes that push avatars off platforms, boxes that crash sims. Together Olive and I worked to report and ban the offending avatar, delete his objects (repeatedly), stop all scripts (unsuccessfully), stop this script. There was urgency. Keep the sim from crashing. Solve the problem before other students arrive. It took real time, real thinking, real effort, real collaboration. Finally Olive found the source and deleted it.

Two women talking. About our experiences, about our class, about what we've read and thought about. Two women who know very little about each other's "real lives," brought together in virtual space.  We have common experiences, like two people who have spent a lot of time together. One tells a story and it resonates for the other. One points out something funny and the other finds humor there too. We share emotions and insights. We are two women, one american, one egyptian who would not know each other if not for a virtual connection.

One month reflection on TLVW2012

One of the curiosities for me about my current Teaching and Learning in Virtual Worlds class is the question: What makes it easy for some students to work in Second Life and difficult for others?

This term 14 of 20 my active students have no previous experience in Second Life.  Of them only one identifies himself as a gamer who has played an MMORPG (in this case WoW). This is the extent of my objective knowledge of the group. What follows is anecdotal and wildly speculative. My speculations will I hope lead to questions and hypotheses that could be studied systematically.

Since this is the 5th group of students that I have had in this course, I have noticed some things about my students, the platform and my teaching that may be patterns.

Teachers as learners

In my 12 years of teaching teachers I have drawn the following (speculative) conclusions:

1. We tend to be people who have excelled in a traditional educational environment.
2. Those who have excelled in a traditional educational environment are used to getting A’s, expect to succeed, and have limited experience with failure and ambiguity.
3. Unlike gamers that are used to failing in order to succeed, we do not easily persevere in the face of failure. Frustration comes easily, especially when a computer is involved.

My learners

1. Teachers in a technology program are as a group somewhat braver, more innovative and non traditional than the average teacher.
2. While I get the exceptions, most of my students have excelled in a traditional educational environment.
3. My students approach SL with a range of curiosity and terror; and more often than not a combination of curiosity and terror.
4. Successful students get hooked on some aspect of the virtual world environment: the playfulness, the building, the self expression, the global community… They don’t necessarily become ongoing members of the VW community, but they are able to apply experiences they’ve had to their own teaching and learning and they seem better able to relate to their students about online lives.
5. I identify unsuccessful students as those who complete the course but never fully understand why it is necessary for educators to know about this medium. They go through the motions and are able to move, dress and teleport with their avatar, but they don’t feel any connection to their virtual representative. (4 people out of 46 student or 8.5% from the last four classes: 2 out of 16, 2 out of 14, 0 out of 12, 0 out of 4)
6. At the start, my successful students are as a group no less terrified or needy than my unsuccessful students. I do think there are differences but I don’t as yet know what they are.

The VW platform

1. There is way too much going on - on the screen in any virtual world but especially SL. Too many buttons, too many menus, too many popup windows - it is more complex than photoshop! On the other hand the basic interface in V2 was too basic. People who are used to exploring new pieces of software have a much easier time getting started.
2. The SL experience challenges people in a number of ways that differ from person to person.
   Avatar movement and view controls are the first and hardest to master. Once a user can maneuver their avatar and their perspective they have a much more comfortable experience. But they do not realize that this is the most important thing to practice in the beginning as it provides no immediate gratification. (Dressing one’s avatar is much more gratifying and ultimately less useful.)
   Multiple communication channels offer one of the most powerful aspects of VWs, but are way over stimulating in the beginning.  The open chat window helps you look back at missed discussion, but it takes up a lot of room on the screen. Starting an Instant Message takes several steps (people -> my friends -> double click) that are cumbersome and forgettable at first. Received IMs are easily missed until the learner is able to notice all of the varied buttons, windows and alerts on her screen. Voice seems to work right away for some people and for others it doesn’t come until they are SL experts in every other way.
   Getting back home is difficult and scary for new users. A learner can’t set the classroom as home until she has joined the university group.  4 Weeks in and I haven’t gotten all students to notice my (repeated) group invitations. So though they all now have a landmark to our classroom they have not all got it as there home landing point.
3. I am using three distinct platforms that add to the overall cognitive load: SL, Moodle and Email.  Because Email is ubiguitous, it may seem strange to mention it as a separate platform. I like to use email for things that are time sensitive - but find it doesn’t work.  I find that learners do not “get” as much from email as I expect. It is too much to manage that third source of information. 

About me and my part

I am becoming aware of some of my own qualities that aid in and detract from a smooth transition to the virtual.

1. I believe in the power of kindness and relationship in the art of teaching. I think this works for everyone.
2. I am in-world early and often to help and scaffold (invite phone calls and 1 on 1 appointments in SL). If I can get each learner to spend 5 hours in SL during the first two weeks I believe I can make it a successful experience.  People who don’t spend that much time or who don’t ask for help after the first two weeks sometimes slip through the cracks. It takes me a full month to know every one of my online students.
3. I am flexible as to what I expect from learners with different needs. While this is helpful for many, my flexibility is a double edged sword. Often the people who find SL disturbing also find my flexibility disturbing. They want to be told exactly what to do and what is expected without wiggle room.
4. I am unable to design a course before I know the participants. (This could be a much deeper psychological problem than I am willing to admit :) I am always redesigning. This is extremely disturbing to the same people who find my flexibility and SL’s other worldliness disconcerting. I cannot over emphasize this because it is a limitation of any study that might be done about my students in SL.  This will be a confounding variable that must be teased from the factors related to the platform and learners.

As I writing this I see some things that could be highlighted at the beginning of my next course. Avatar control, communication and getting home obviously need more explicit attention. And controlling my impulse to redesign may be worth the price of a couple of counseling sessions ;-)
A more gentle introduction to failure as a learning practice may be helpful too. And while I believe that as teachers we can reach everyone. It helps to know the different needs of learners.  I am still no clearer about the learner characteristics that may support more or less success.

Dear reader, as always I would love your comments, own reflections, and challenges to my speculations.

Modified Quest-Based Learning

Last month I participated in the three week Teacher Camp: 3DGamelab, run by Lisa Dawley and Chris Haskill. Quest-based pedagogy was the theme. Quest-based learning was the process. We went on quests, we used the 3DGamelab tools - a learning management system and guild site that facilitated good gaming practices in teaching and learning.

With my new term of Teaching and Learning in Virtual Worlds beginning soon, my mind exploded with the possibilities. I started to move my quests from Second Life to 3DGamelab. Then reality hit. Quest development is a craft that takes practice. And May 8th was on the next page of my virtual calendar.

So Teaching and Learning in Virtual Worlds 2012 has begun. I have made significant but manageable (haha) changes to the design. We have not moved to 3DGameLab but we are questing.

• First I have invited non-matriculated students to join from around the world (a mini MOOC of sorts with representation from seven countries)
• A thin but mostly relevant narrative ties the themes of the course and my quests together. Jane and Esme are leaders of a study abroad program, the participants are studying the cultural and pedagogical practices of the metaverse.
• Except for the first two weeks, the modules/quest-chains are independent. As long as a learner completes low level quests before higher level quests they can pick quests from different chains at different times.
• Not all quests need to be completed. Choice is built into each quest chain.
• Reward systems are clunky and manual (meaning that they aren't immediate) but learners level up based on experience points: roadie -> tourist -> traveler -> adventurer....
• Experience points are the number of points assigned in the Moodle grader. Who knew that you could use the grader to tally vs average and that there is no apparent cap on how many points you can assign. I give full credit (xp) or ask for the quest to be resubmitted with guidance.
• Some assignments pay Linden$ (and later copper in WoW) and various virtual goods that can be traded in the DUTY-Free Shopping Exchange (moodle forum).
• It's rough around the edges because I am developing as I go. But I always seem to be redesigning along the way so this is just me doing what I do - making learning and teaching messy.

If you would like to learn more about what we are doing please reply.
Esme and Jane