This course has been an interesting adventure. We looked at mLearning and Gaming in the classroom. Some things were hard for me to translate to my situation as I am teaching distance learning so subjects such as BYOD (Bring your own device) are not a huge issue as all of my students need their own device – whether it be borrowing their parents, having their own personal one or going to a library. I even wrote a blog post about my thoughts on it (which can be found here: http://breanneqlearnsonline.weebly.com/15/post/2014/03/byod-byot.html). Something I found that could be translated to my situation was the evaluation of gaming apps, educational games and COTS (commercial off the shelf games).

I found that gaming apps were the most interesting to me. I think that I found them the most interesting because they could be played on the mobile device and there were many educational games. Web based games and COTS games are good too and have a purpose but having to use them on a computer or with a gaming system made it a little harder for me to figure out how I would implement them. I also found that most app based games were shorter in duration or were paused / stopped whenever necessary instead of having to finish something to be able to save after a level was completed (although not always the case). These games did not come without their challenges though.

A big challenge I faced in this course was exploring Minecraft. I had only seen this as a former tutoring student of mine plays a lot so allowing him to show me builds every time I tutored him was all the exposure I had ever had to it. When I found out that it was going to be utilized in this course, I went back to this student of mine and had him show me the basics of the game. I caught on really fast because a lot of the game made logical sense (I am very much a logical thinker) – you chop a tree and get wood, you take some wood and put it together to make a table, you put cobblestone together with a hole in the middle to make a furnace, etc. The only downside that I found when playing Minecraft was that my motion sickness got really bad and I could only play for about 30 minutes at a time, but the nice thing about the game is that because it is a ‘sandbox’ game, you can just stop at any point and come back to it later.

There were two different types of games that I think I would be most inclined to use with my students – Sandbox games and quest games. I like the fact that sandbox games are open ended and allow students to explore and learn things by themselves and test their own personal limits. Since sandbox games are so open, there are also many possibilities for assignments that you can create with them, or even have your students create assignments for others. With quest games I like that there are set goals and the students have to work through one goal and gain the knowledge from that goal before moving onto the next quest. Games that I have found the employ this kind of thinking have a logical sequence when information gained in one level will help with the next – at least that is what the good ones will do. Another great thing about these types of games is if you get a really good one, there will be help and advice if the wrong action or answer is produced that allows the student to change their thinking and try again.

Overall, I think that mLearning and gaming definitely have a place in the classroom. It all goes back to ‘if they can learn how we teach, we should teach how they learn’. So many students now have games and devices that they are constantly using and engaging with. If we use this to our advantage instead of taking them away, just think of how much more enthusiastic these students would be about their learning! Just look at the infographic below, when they looked at games in the classroom, they found that 43% of teachers now use them. They also found in one study that games raised average test scores to 91.5% compared to 79.1% without.

References:

Kelly, S.M. (July 23, 2012). 91% of Teachers Have Computer Access [INFOGRAPHIC]. Retrieved on April 8, 2014 from http://mashable.com/2012/07/23/technology-in-the-classroom/

We were asked to load a Minecraft EDU map and explore it to see what we thought and how easily we were able to navigate through it. I have included my review of the world below. You can also click on this link:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YuT5G423mww and watch my YouTube screencast of my experience.

Here is an Educational game (We the Jury) that I evaluated for use with my students. I have also included the rubric that my group and I created to help review educational games.

If we are able to teach and inform teachers and parents about the benefits of games in education, we can create courses that not only hit all the learning outcomes but also engage our students in a way that the learning that is happening is not only desired by the students because it is something they find fun, but it is also deep learning.

When I first tried a game for an educational purpose, I searched for learning games and one that I came across was knowledge guru. This game was not one that I would necessarily use with my students (unless I was doing a nutrition assignment for something) but it helped me to learn what a great learning game looked like. This game sent you on quests, which you completed by answering questions, and when you got a question wrong, it explained the correct answer so you could get it right the next time. Like I said, not something I would necessarily use with my students but I am glad that I played it because I would not have thought to look for question games that explained the right answer without playing this one. I also checked out their website and they had a great Quick Start Guide for Game Based Learning infographic that I think all teachers should follow when starting to implement a game. What I thought stood out the most from this was every step seemed to make a statement (either obviously or not so obviously) about getting familiar with the game before bringing it to your students which is huge. If you bring a game to your students that you have never tried before and expect it to hit learning outcomes based on something someone else said and haven’t tried it yourself, what help are you going to be to your students and how will you be able to justify it to the parents of those students?

Obviously some games will appeal to some students where as others will not care for the same game. I can think of a former student of mine who plays Minecraft a lot and really enjoys it – I even went to visit him and his family and he taught me how to play Minecraft so I could have a basic understanding for this course. After playing Minecraft for a while, I can see how some people would like the open-endedness of it but I like the games where there is a goal and when I obtain the goal I move on to the next level until all the goals have been completed and I beat the game. Knowing this about myself is something that has to be thought about with our students. Some with take huge pride in their creations and exploration games with no firm tasks while others will need to have clear tasks set out by the teacher as that is what appeals to them. The nice thing that I have learned about Minecraft is that all of the steps are logical – you need a pick-axe to mine coal among other things, you can build a furnace and create glass from sand, along with many other things – having a teacher ask a student to complete a task can also be set up so that a trail of logic is formed. I can think of having students learn how glass is formed by playing a video game (much more interesting then reading a worksheet) and then having a discussion after about how the process works.

 Justin Marquis suggests that there are 3 Strategies that you can use to make Game-Based Learning Explicit:

1. Encourage cooperative play
   
   
2. Implement structures for active engagement
   
   
3. Embrace failure as a learning opportunity
   
   

While I agree with all three, I think that the third one is huge. Teaching students that failing is not the end of the world, it is another way that we can learn is a great life skill to have. Not everyone is going to be the best or even good at everything (I can play basketball really well but if you ask me to sing, you will go running for the hills) and having students know that failing is okay early in life will help them immensely. For some students, having the opportunity to fail in a game where it is a make-believe place might make the failure easier to deal with, mostly because the bulk of games allow for another opportunity to try and maybe figure out a different way that works better.

 So why are games so great for learning? Just check out this infographic below

My top 3: (Three things that should be considered when using games in the classroom)

1. Do you understand the game and how it works – if you as the teacher do not understand the ins and outs of the game, how will you be able to support your students? 
   
   
2. Is it engaging for your students – do they enjoy playing the game or are they just playing it because it is a requirement that you have set for them? If you want to see the difference when using games that are engaging to your students with their learning just look at the infographic found here: http://www.theknowledgeguru.com/game-based-learning-infographic/
   
   
3. Can it be modified? – Like Minecraft, different options are available and different objectives can be given, choosing games with different ways of approaching it or different difficulty levels can make a huge impact for more students.
   
   

 

Resources:

Boller, S (June 8, 2013) Quick Start Guide for Game Based Learning Design. Retrieved on March 29, 2014 from http://www.bottomlineperformance.com/quick-start-guide-for-game-based-learning-free-webinar/

Helen (August 14, 2012) Why are games good for learning? Retrieved on March 29, 2014 from http://pixelearning.wordpress.com/2012/08/14/why-are-games-good-for-learning/

Huhn, J (May 15, 2013) Getting the Facts on Game Based Learning (INFOGRPAHIC). Retrieved on March 29, 2014 from http://www.theknowledgeguru.com/game-based-learning-infographic/

Marquis, J Ph.D. (November 25, 2013) How To Help Your Students Embrace Failure Through Game-Based Learning. Retrieved on March 29, 2014 from http://www.teachthought.com/technology/help-students-embrace-failure-game-based-learning/

Students shouldn't have to learn how we teach... We should teach how they learn. Whether we want to admit it or not, students are more connected to mLearning and mobile devices (whether it be smart phones or tablets) more than ever and it’s not going away any time soon, so why not embrace it? I should take a moment to say that this post will be a bit tricky for me to write. As a DL teacher, all of my students do at least a little bit of their learning on a computer, tablet or mobile device; if not all of it so in a way they have signed up for this schooling knowing that they need to have their own device or at least access to a shared one. I did find it hard to connect to some of the discussion that we had surrounding this topic because of my teaching situation.

 We had a Blackboard Collaborate session about BYOD and it was interesting to hear the views and opinions of other teachers who are in the face-to-face schools. We also watched some video clips and the one that struck me was the one that was BYOD in the 21st Century when it said “leave the computing to the computers and focus on the meaningful”. I agree with this statement, why not give our students the ability to use the computers to do what they do best and they can then use it as a tool to do meaningful work that deepens their learning? I will admit that if I were to write all my blog posts with pen and paper, I would not be as articulate and thoughtful as I am when I type. No, it’s not because I use the thesaurus to make myself seem smart, I just know that if I were writing it out, I would only want to write it one time. Typing essays, blog posts and other assignments allows me to go back over what I have written, make changes, modify the way I stated something and most of all, I am a lot faster at typing then printing.

 If you haven’t guessed by now, I am a supporter of the BYOD movement. Again, because I am in a DL setting it is hard for me to picture the struggles that would be faced outside of the DL realm and in the public schools but I can back myself up with one instance I had in a face-to-face public school. I had a student who had dyslexia in one of my practicum classes and we allowed him to start bringing his laptop into class. His laptop allowed him to do just what I explained above – he could type a lot faster, he could get all his ideas down then go back and fix spelling errors and grammar after, and he felt a lot more confident with his ability to use the computer to check for errors instead of fretting over each word he had spelled with a pen on a piece of paper (we left the computing to the computer).

 
References:
Marc-Andre Lalande (June 4, 2012). BYOD in the 21st Century retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSXyfX8ABhA



As a little extra: Here is my daughter who participated in BYOD by playing on her tablet (practiced tracing her alphabet) during our Collaborate meeting.

Here are some apps that were reviewed by myself and my group for mLearning (Educational game and presentation apps). We focused on games and presentation apps that would cover a variety of age groups, subjects and each section of blooms taxonomy.

The rubric we created to review the apps:

Buzz Math

Explain Everything

Fizzy's Fresh Pick Lab

Frame Artist Pro

Side By Side

Stop Motion

Before having children I was always the person who saw other people with their kids and it was the kids playing with the tablet or the smart phone and thinking ‘my children will be much older than that before I let them play with my electronic devices’. I had a rule growing up that the day we got our novice drivers licence was the day we got our first cell phone – mostly so we had something in case of emergencies and I was set on giving the same rule to my children. Fast forward a few years and I am now a mom of two girls (11 months and almost 2 ½) and I am eating my words.

I have had an iPad for just over 6 months now and I have seen a lot of benefit from using it as a teacher to help my students but I was constantly wondering what was out there for my students to use. I started looking at apps for my students (mostly middle school) but when I got some primary students who asked for apps to help with spelling and writing, I searched for those. I found many apps, some not so great and some that are amazing. I actually allowed my 2 year old to start playing around with the apps to see what would happen.

The first time I let her play, I was worried. I worried about her breaking my iPad, I was worried about what would happen when I told her she was all done for the day, I was worried what would happen when she saw me playing on it and thought it was her turn... I wanted her to explore but I didn’t want to worry. Recently I was down in the states doing some shopping and an android tablet was on sale for $80. I will now admit that my 2 year old has her own tablet - she calls it her iPad but it is a lot cheaper – and in turn a lot of my worries are no longer there. With just a few weeks of having her tablet she can now count past 10 by herself, she knows the numbers 1-10 just by sight, she knows almost all her colours, and she is currently having a lot of fun tracing letters and learning what each letter is. As for telling her she is done? We have a great routine where she gets it at night while I am doing the bedtime routine with her sister and when I come downstairs to get her, she turns off the tablet by herself, regardless if she is at the end or in the middle of a game or activity, and comes to bed without complaint.

I will admit, I now know to ‘never say never’ and from seeing everything over the past few weeks, getting my daughter her ‘iPad’ is one of the best purchases I have made in a long time. My hope is that when I try to use game based learning with my students and I get push back (if I get push back) from any parents, I can use the story about my daughter as proof of concept. Something else that I think will help a lot is the ‘why mobile learning’ video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dECs3SRh8Xo). I watched this video and was blown away! I have had students in past classes of mine or past tutoring students who would have greatly benefited from having access to a tablet so I am very excited to see what I will learn in this course.

When writing this blog, I thought that I would see what I could find about children’s apps. I learned that 72% of the best selling apps in Apple’s iTunes App Store in 2012 were aimed at preschoolers and children in elementary school and 52% of children now have access to a smartphone or tablet (found on an infographic through: http://blog.ellucian.com/higher-education-trends/the-thing-57-of-students-cant-go-without-infographic/). I have added my daughter into those statistics. I can also see the huge benefits they are having.

Once final thought – I have noticed that Minecraft is on the agenda. I once had a tutoring student who was obsessed with the game and we would make a deal at the beginning of each session that if he worked hard, he could show me his latest Minecraft progress at the end. I am still in touch with the family so I am excited to see what we will learn and go back to talk to him about it.