Introduction to
Games in Education
Mark Wagner
Coordinator Educational
Technology
What is Hard Fun?
 “It’s hard. It’s fun. It’s LOGO.”
(1st Grader)
 “I have no doubt that this kid
called the work fun because
it was hard rather than in
spite of being hard.”
(Seymour Papert)
 “How do we make writing
become hard fun?”
(Seymour Papert)
 Seymour’s gears…
Welcome and Introductions




Name
Site
Grade / Subject
What were your
gears?
 What are your
students’ gears?
Overview
Piaget, Papert, Prensky
and more…
Purpose/Rationale
 Digital Natives & Digital Immigrants (Prensky, 2001)
 Incidental vs. Intentional Learning (Jonassen, 2002)
 enGauge 21st Century Skills (NCREL, 2003)




Digital Age Literacies
Inventive Thinking
Effective Communication
High Productivity
 Constructivist Learning Environments…
 Context, Choice, Collaboration (Wagner, 2005)
Relevant Theorists






Jean Piaget (1929 to 1976)
Seymour Papert (1980, 1993, 1996)
Marc Prensky (2001)
James Paul Gee (2003, 2005)
Clark Aldrich (2004, 2005)
Graduate Students…
Jean Piaget
 Cognitive Structures &
Schemes
 Functional Invariants
 Adaptation
 Organization
 Adaptation
 Assimilation
 Accommodation
 Stage Theory
Seymour Papert
 Mindstorms, 1980
 The Children’s Machine,
1993
 The Connected Family,
1996
 www.papert.org
Marc Prensky
 Digital Game-Based
Learning, 2001
 marcprensky.com
 games2train.com
James Paul Gee
 What Video Games
Have To Teach Us
About Learning and
Literacy, 2003
 Why Video Games are
Good For Your Soul,
2005
Clark Aldrich
 Simulations and the
Future of Learning,
2004
 Learning by Doing,
2005
 Learning Circuits
Virtual Leader
simulearn.net
simSchool
simSchool.org
Graduate Students
 Nick Yee
 Kurt Squire
 Constance
Steinkuehler
 Fiona Littleton
 Mark Wagner
 And more…
Share Resources
 Share new or
striking ideas from
your own…




Reading
Listening
Viewing
Experience
Break - 5 minutes
Hands On
Experience an Educational Game
The WFP’s Food Force
Richard Halverson (2005)
“Nowhere is the current generational gap in
technology greater than in game literacy, and
while asking school leaders and teachers to
play commercial video games may be a
stretch, integrating game-based learning
experiences in their professional development
may help them see the merits of gaming from
the inside.”
Reflection Questions
 What was your
experience like as a
player?
 What relationships do
you see between this
game and the theories
we discussed?
Break - 5 minutes
Games in Your Classroom
What can you use on Monday?
Web-based Games
 Browser based
 Mostly FREE
 Engaging and
content related
 Great for younger
students
Commercial Off The Shelf (COTS) Games
 Teachers may not be able to develop a
cutting edge game, but many games
can be repurposed.
 “Instead of embedding a game into
learning, it is possible to embed learning
into a game.” (Downes, 2005)
Civilization III
 Real Time Strategy
 Systems Content
 Social Studies
Concepts
 Complexity, flexibility,
replayability
 Failure and choice
 Kurt Squire’s
Dissertation (2004)
Kurt Squire (2005)
 25% complained the
game was too hard,
complicated and
uninteresting.
 25% loved playing the
game,thought it was a
“perfect way to learn
history”, and a
highlight of their year.
 Students played the
game in different
ways, leading to
highly different
understandings.
 Playing games does
not appeal to
everyone, and no one
game appeals to all
gamers.
Making History
 Designed for
education!
 Assessment
features
 Successfully piloted
Unreal Tournament
 First Person Shooter
 Mod-able
 Used to teach
chemistry!
Neverwinter Nights
 Role Playing Game
(RPG)
 Toolset for usermade content
 Teachers can be
gamemasters (GMs)
 MIT’s Revolution
Mod
MMORPGs
 Massively
Multiplayer Online
Role Playing Games
 Context, Choice,
Collaboration
 Guilds!
Teen Second Life
 13-18 year olds
 Avatar customization
 User created content
 In game economy
And More…







Age of Empires
Age of Mythology
Rise of Nations
Morrowind
The Sims
SimCity etc…
Zoo Tycoon etc…
 Myst
 …
Designing a game?
 Benefits of design
 Deep understanding
of the subject
required and
developed
 Variables identified
 Relationships
between variables
identified
 Inventive thinking
 Benefits of
implementation
 Technical Literacy
 Effective
Communication
 High Productivity
Think, Pair, Share
 What are some possible uses for games
in your class?
Lesson Planning
 Outline a lesson plan incorporating a
game into your class.
What would a state of the art
instructional video game look
like? (Gee, 2005)
Just do it! (Aldrich, 2005)
“[Teachers] can nudge. They can
implement. They can make case
studies.” (2005)
Games in Education, Part II
 Social Constructivism:
Dewey
Vygotsky
Bruner
 Serious Games
 Games for Change
 May 9th, 2006 - http://register.ocde.us
Go forth and do great things!
Mark Wagner
[email protected]
714-966-4153