Evaluating Games for Learning--Education Week Live Chat

Just attended a great Education Week webinar featuring Richard Van Eck, an Associate Professor and the Graduate Director of the Instructional Design & Technology program at the University of North Dakota (UND), sharing his views on the topic of  Evaluating Games as Instructional Tools, and I have my homework cut out for me. I thought I'd share out the wealth of resources Van Eck tossed out for us right at the start of his talk. Later, as I assimilated all he had to say, as described below, I was particularly impressed by this piece of his advice:

We do have to be conscious of our audience. There is a big assumption made that all kids under 18 are a frequent game players. This is not true. Many kids do not play games, and even when they do, that does not mean they all like them equally, nor that they like the same kinds of games. Of course, the same is true of books and movies, and we don't worry about that when designing curriculum.

I'm not a huge fan of this text-only distance learning medium, since it doesn't lend itself to multi-tasking I generally need to be involved in in order to get anything done. Sitting and watching text plop into a CoverItLive screen is not my idea of a fun time. Don't get me wrong: I love the topic, really liked the presenter, and I'm a big fan of text archives. I lost--not interest--the ability to sustain my textual mode after only a few minutes, and I switched to another browser to get work done.

A cool thing happened though. When I'd finished my other online work, and in fact after a class of kids had come and gone, I went back to my EdWeek browser and the whole thing was there. I whipped out my Notepad, copied and pasted the text into a text file, then spent 90 seconds stripping the timestamps out manually. Then I opened my copy of ReadPlease Free and copy and pasted the spiffed up text into that. I'm now listening to a pretty nice podcast from the talk, all mine, all mine, mwahahahaaaaa. I'm not going to redistribute it, but here's a link to the event, with the transcript and embedded CoverItLive. What I do want to do is to give readers the links Van Eck shared out, which I hope will be useful in their own investigations into the dense topic of games and learning. What a fun mine-field of exploration!

Here's a snippet from the dialog:

Moderator: Katie Ash:  Great - let's start with a question that many of you are interested in - where to find resources for games

[Comment From Vera] 

What are some of the best resources available for games at all levels from elementary through 12th grade?

Richard Van Eck:  This is a big question, to which I can only give you a partial answer....

Richard Van Eck:  I have several sites that are a good place to start for K-12 and education in general:

K-12 Games Resources
http://www.gamesparentsteachers.com/
http://www.socialimpactgames.com/
http://www.lostgarden.com/
http://www.pixelearning.com/
https://registration.kelloggcreek.com/pp3/Teachers/default.asp
http://www.kindersite.org/digital.htm
http://online.haileybury.vic.edu.au/sites/edrington/computerclub/index.html
http://www.funkidsgames.com/
http://gamesthatwork.com/
http://brainmeld.org/
http://www.learningplace.com.au/deliver/content.asp?pid=24029
http://www.21stcenturyskills.org/route21/
http://tonyforster.blogspot.com/
http://www.phunland.com/wiki/Home
http://www.gameeducationnetwork.com/
http://www.assistivegaming.com/

Moderator: Katie Ash:  Excellent!

Richard Van Eck:  Here are also some organizations that can point you toward some good research and other resources:

Organizations & Research
http://www.digra.org/
http://isaga.pm.it-chiba.ac.jp/events.htm
http://www.nasaga.org/index.htm
http://www.sgseurope.com/
http://www.sagsaga.org/index.php?newlang=eng&name=EZCMS&page_id=14
http://www.game-research.com/
http://www.game-culture.com/
http://www.ludology.org/
http://www.cs.ndsu.nodak.edu/research/
http://www.seriousgamessummit.com/home.html
http://www.womeningamesinternational.org/
http://www.gamesforchange.org/toolkit
http://igda.org/
http://gamestudies.org/0802

Richard Van Eck:  And finally here are some of my favorite sites for games and related technology for educational purposes:

Games & Tools
http://www.food-force.com/index.php/game/
http://www.simschool.org/
http://www.sawbladesoftware.com/
http://www.machinima.com/article.php?article=428
http://www2.kumc.edu/netlearning/SLEDUCAUSESW2005/SLPresentationOutline.htm
http://secondlife.com/education
http://www.wizardits.com/Londoner/
http://www.unicef.org/voy/explore/rights/explore_3142.html
http://web.media.mit.edu/~jorkin/restaurant/
http://www.metrac.org/
http://www.redistrictinggame.com/
http://www.metaplace.com/
http://www.stottlerhenke.com/products/index.htm
(see Simbionic and Task Tutor Toolkit)
http://nobelprize.org/educational_games/
http://www.projectwhitecard.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=30
http://wwwic.ndsu.edu/faculty.htm
http://vcell.ndsu.edu/public.html
http://www.bavisoft.com/products.htm
http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/launchpad/launchball/
http://www.armadillorun.com/
http://www.atlus.com/traumacenter/
http://enterzon.com/
http://www.beyondspaceandtime.org/FCBSTWeb/web/index.html#link=
http://www.educationarcade.org/supercharged
http://iautistic.com/free-autism-games.php
http://imej.wfu.edu/articles/2005/1/02/index.asp
http://www.tiltfactor.org/layoff/

Moderator: Katie Ash:  

Wow - lots of resources.

Moderator: Katie Ash:  These links will be posted in our transcript after the chat, too, for anyone who would like to check them out afterwards.

Here's the "money-shot," the final series of sentences from Van Eck that I hope will drive you to investigate further:

One of the biggest mistakes we can make is to assume that "Playing games=learning"

While you will get many good skills by playing many games, the best use of games for learning will occur when we as educators take a careful look at different games and make our best efforts to develop meaningful lessons that employ games. That takes work and time, and in any case will only ever be a part of what we do in the classroom.

Computer Addiction, Revisited--Game Time by Bob Sprankle

I've been thinking a lot about "Balance" lately. I've been jotting some notes that with luck may turn into something bindable and of interest. Today through a completely unrelated process I came into contact with two very interesting articles that both lean heavily on the "B" word.

Tech blogger Bob Sprankle last week published a thoughtful article about video game addiction that I would love to share out here with parents and educators who may have missed it. Entitled "Game Time," the TechLearning.com article gets right to the point of the controversial topic, internet addiction and video game obsessions. The topic was raised in a recent research report described in this Washington Post article by Donna St. George, in which researcher Douglas Gentile from the University of Iowa concludes that "8.5% of American youths ages 8-18 show multiple signs of behavioral addiction."

It's funny how the Web is woven: Sprankle's article was an entree for me to the Post story and, through it, to the Gentile report. I likely wouldn't have seen the  report at all had I not been surfing TechLearning.com for some grant information related to teaching with technology. 

At any rate, Sprankle's contributions to the discussion are worth noting--citing Marc Prensky, he suggests that parent and teacher involvement, through honest and interested (not condemning) dialog, might be the strongest contributor to child health and safety. Here's his conclusion (but go read the whole blogpost!!!):

Can gaming be addictive? Can it be a negative experience? I’m sure. But Prensky’s advice of being a part of the conversation has the power to make a world of difference in your students’ use of games. Don't start the conversations with students with the worry or "diagnosis" of addiction. Start with authentic interest in what they're doing with their games. Ask them to show them to you. Ask them the rules. Ask them why they play them. Build that bridge first, and they'll be listening by the time you get to helping them find balance.

3 Controversial but Intriguing Statements in One Business Journal Article

From Fairfax Business Media's New Zealand CIO comes this article, originally published in May, 2008, and penned by Byron Reeves, Thomas W. Malone, and Tony O’Driscoll. Leadership's online labs

It's a loooong article, but to tease you into reading it I provide but three perspectives culled from its over 2500 words. Imagine an extended analogy between online gaming communities and complex corporations, embedded in a complex analysis of leadership in both environments.

Consider these elements of "games such as Eve Online, EverQuest, and World of Warcraft":

1) Leadership roles are often temporary. Perhaps the most striking aspect of leadership in online games is the way in which leaders naturally switch roles, directing others one minute and taking orders the next. Put another way, leadership in games is a task, not an identity — a state a player enters and exits rather than a personal trait that emerges and thereafter defines the individual.

2) Dashboards, or cockpits, display both status and communication functions on the same densely populated user interface and often on a single computer screen, eliminating the need to open and close different software applications. Constantly visible during play, the cockpits allow a leader to stay within the narrative of the game while acquiring necessary information about players and communicating instructions to the group. Unlike a corporate dashboard that is located on a handful of computers at headquarters, with access limited to the senior executive team, these personal, view-as-you-go game cockpits give people in the field access to information as soon as it is available. That, in turn, allows game players to act on it without waiting for instructions from a guild leader. What’s more, the information allows players to assume impromptu leadership roles as needed. In many of our video clips, we see three or four people barking orders to team members during a raid, briefly taking the lead in the improvisational style of a jazz ensemble.

3)Leadership demands speed. A game hour is unlike 60 minutes at your desk or in a meeting. Actions that might take weeks or months to unfold in real life are often compressed into hours or even minutes online. The lightning pace of games is unlikely to become widespread anytime soon in the business world, except perhaps in selected contexts such as high-velocity financial trading. However, business decision making is accelerating, driven in part by the almost instant, if not always complete, availability of certain kinds of data. To keep up with rivals, real-world leaders will increasingly need to be willing and able to act on such information without pausing for long periods to weigh options.

Reeves, Malone, O'Driscoll, "Leadership's online labs." New Zealand CIO. 05 May 2008. Fairfax Business Media. 13 Feb 2009 . http://cio.co.nz/cio.nsf/tech/E9AAD1FBA10D072CCC2574830010E2BE.

There's more. I highly encourage you read the entire article, available without charge online at New Zealand CIO. Thanks also to Genie Tanner for tweeting the link. I think she was just testing out her new Twhirl client, but wow, what a gem she shared. I tweeted back that I was using the free version of ReadPlease to have it read aloud to me whilst I was setting up for 4th graders in Quest Atlantis, and now she has that tool, an information gift from me in response to an information gift from her. That's how it works, pilgrims...

Enjoy!