Learning and Literacy by Games

James Paul Gee is one of the renowned scholars and authors in the field of New Literacies Studies. Most of Gee's work over the last few years focused on the study and analysis of digital and video games. His book " What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy" is a culmination of his work in this field.

In this book, Gee analyses some popular games such as first-person shooter games, fantasy role-playing games, real-time strategy games, and simulation games and draws out a set of learning principles that are embedded within these games and which make them  more engaging, challenging, and ultimately fun to play. Comparing the kind of learning that takes place in these gaming affinity spaces to the one that take place in school environments, Gee found out that the "levels of textual and cognitive interaction in traditional schooling are decidedly wanting" (Kalantzis & Cope,  "Literacies" ).

Gee contends that gaming affinity spaces where gamers get to virtually meet and discuss the content of their games, help each other solve game-related problems, these spaces are multimodal sites of literacy in which students navigate narratives as powerful as any in the literary canon." They do this as character, as players, as actors in the narrative. They negotiate text and image."

Upon the analysis of several video games , Gee sketched out some of the main benefits these games have for learning and literacy. The table below taken from Literacies(a book I am reading this week) features some of them.

Post Source : http://www.educatorstechnology.com/2014/05/the-benefits-of-games-on-learning-and.html

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Technology Affecting Kids

By Katie Lepi

Technology brings so many awesome things into our lives. A world of information is at our fingertips, not much is out of reach, and there is seemingly a new, awesome, must-have devicereleased every week. We all hear stories of parents who park their kids in front of a TV or computer so they can get things done, and while the kids generally love it, it has taken us awhile to ask important questions about what effect media and devices are having on our kids. 

The handy infographic below takes a look at the effect of media and technology on kids in the US . Some of the statistics are pretty concerning – especially pertaining to the amount of exposure that kids have to media and devices these days. Keep reading to learn more. Weigh in by leaving a comment below, mentioning @Edudemic on Twitter or leaving your thoughts on our Facebook page.

How Is Technology Affecting Kids?

• Children under age 2 spend twice the amount of time watching TV as they spend with books
• 42% of kids age 0-8 have a TV in their room
• 70% of daycare centers use a TV as a regular part of the day
• Kids spend about 110 minutes per day watching TV, and a little over 90 minutes watching DVDs or movies
• 73% of parents say they’d like to limit their child’s TV watching
• 66% talk to their kids about the dangers of social media sites
• 53% count on their kid to tell them if there is a problem online
• 43% follow their kids on social media
• 39% set parental privacy settings
• Parents’ biggest concern with social media is violation of privacy
• 79% of teachers use social media as a teaching and learning tool
• 74% say incorporating tablets would be helpful, 26% say it would be a distraction to learning
• Teachers feel that students’ attention span is what is most affected by media

Post Source : http://www.edudemic.com/technology-affecting-kids/

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Future Of Games In Education

By Katie Lepi

Gamification is a trend that doesn’t seem to be going away any time soon. Incorporating game play elements into your classroom can help to create a dynamic, interactive environment that will help get and keep your students engaged in the material and excited to learn. It sounds great, right? But every trend will see a fizzle, and this one will inevitably see that too, right? Well, maybe not. Gamification has a number of attributes that make it a popular and potentially longer lasting classroom trend. The handy infographic belowtakes a look at why games in the classroom may be here to stay. Keep reading to learn more.

Games In Education

• In the US, 9 out of 10 kids play electronic games
• The average 8th grade boy will play about 23 hours of video games per week
• For girls, that figure is about 12 hours
• For games, the attention span of students is excellent – put that to use in the classroom!
• Using games in the classroom is associated with a 20 percentile point gain in student achievement
• One study shows that surgeons perform better and more accurately when they’re regularly playing video games
• Middle school students in Japan who played games with characters that showed positive emotions often showed them more as well
• 70% of teachers agree that games in the classroom increase motivation and engagement
• 60% say that using games helps personalize instruction
• 62% say that games make it easier for them to reach a wide range of learners
• Games help students develop multiliteracy practices
• Developing games help students develop problem solving abilities

Post Source: http://www.edudemic.com/games-in-education/

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Not All Fun And Games: The Importance Of Student Exercise

By Katie Lepi

Kids these days aren’t generally as healthy and active as we’d probably like them to be. Obesity is on the rise. Screen time is on the rise. Outdoor playtime and general physical activity? Those aren’t on the rise for kids. With things like food education taking a backseat to so many other things that our young students have on their plate, the least we can do is try to get our kids engaged in being active. Kids who are active as younger people tend to stay that way as they get older.

The recommended amount of physical activity for a kid is 60 minutes. If they’re spending the bulk of their time in school during the day, how can they get the proper amount of activity? The handy infographic below takes a look at different ways that students can get their recommended dose of exercise. Click on the link above to access the interactive infographic and learn more. As you scroll through the graphic, you’ll see a little pie chart fill up as you learn about the different ways to incorporate physical activity into the school day.

Making School More Active

1. Before School

Take active transportation to school. This can mean that students can walk, bike, take a scooter, or anything else that is you-powered!

A volunteer adult can lead groups of students to school in a walking school bus.  Similar to a traditional school bus, the group follows a set route and picks up students along the way.

Before school programs are a great way to get active in the morning for those who live too far away from school to actively commute. Intramural sports, music, art, and other extracurricular activities would be appropriate here.

2. Classroom Activity Time

Just 15 minutes of vigorous or moderate-intensity physical activity during frequent regular classroom breaks has been shown to decrease body mass index (BMI) in students over a period of 2 years.

Breaks can be taken during or in between lessons for teachers to lead students in movement in the classroom. A classroom can be set up in ways to maximize space for movement and physical activity.

3. Recess

Recess has been shown to have a positive impact not only on the development of students’ social skills but also on achievement and learning in the classroom.

Recess reduces stress, decreases restlessness, teaches conflict resolution and problem solving, and helps develop cognitive abilities. Keep kids moving for the entire recess period.

4. Physical Education Classes

Physical education classes not only have similar health and social benefits of recess, but also educate children on a healthy lifestyle.

Since the passage of the No Child Left Behind Act, nearly half of school administrators (44%) reported cutting significant time from physical education and recess to increase time spent in reading and mathematics. But, children who are more active show greater attention and perform better on standardized tests.

PE time should include a variety of sports, activities, and forms of movement that are novel, appeal most to children, and are geographic.

5. After School Programs

After-school programs should provide opportunities for students to be physically active indoors or outdoors. Programs should include limited sitting and no screen time, and should be supervised by trained staff.

6. Intra and Extramural Sports

Intra and extramural sports provide additional school-based opportunities for organized physical activity. Schools need to offer sports that are not pay to play and are inclusive of all athletic abilities. In the past 40 years, involvement in sports has flourished, not only in the number of students engaged, but also in the range of sports being offered. By providing a wide range of sports to choose from, students with varying interests have the opportunity to participate. Playing sports may lead to the enjoyment of physical activities over the lifetime.

Post Source: http://www.edudemic.com/get-60-minutes-activity-infographic/

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How To Create Dynamic Learning Environments Using Gamification

By Jason Anderson

 

Gamification can enhance learning in college-level coursework. Using characteristic elements that play a significant role in gameplay can create a more dynamic learning environment where students more fully understand targeted concepts. To examine this, I have been researchingTwitter as a vehicle that would resonate with the course objectives in a course that I teach on Open Source Intelligence, particularly for a module regarding social media intelligence.

Gamified Classrooms

In From Game Design Elements to Gamefulness: Defining ‘Gamification’ Sebastian Deterding defines gamification as the use of game design elements in non-game contexts. To understand gamification in academic terms, the task is to determine how to situate gamified applications in relation to existing course context and what elements belong.

From the perspective of the educator/designer the distinction between gamification in teaching and regular entertainment games is that course content is built using elements from games and does not create a full gaming experience. By interacting with these elements, students learn because of the intrinsic participation factor and information reward.

But does gamification reduce internal motivation that the user has for the activity, as it replaces it with external motivation? Scott Nicholson, in a 2012 paper presented at Games+Learning+Society 8.0, sees it more in the context of the game design elements being made meaningful to the user through information. Internal motivation can then be improved as there is less need to emphasize external rewards or, in other words, grades.

In my training and practice as a librarian, I’ve come to view the value of information gap fillers. When the bridge is made from the point of a knowledge breakdown, conflict, or gap, then information itself becomes the reward. I’ve found with my students, filling in gaps means that they are meeting tasked objectives.

A key concept in information science research is the idea of relevance as it relates to information retrieval. Nicholson continues, “the concept of situational relevance is important when thinking about gamification. Without involving the user, there is no way to know what goals are relevant to a user’s background, interest, or needs. In a points-based gamification system, the goal of scoring points is less likely to be relevant to a user if the activity that the points measure is not relevant to that user.”

Challenges

A significant challenge in creating this type of a broad system is developing a strategy to encompass a wide variety of user skillsets. The structure of the game guided by course objectives could be as simple as identifying a bibliographic source that has been verified and corroborated against other information, or identifying trends associated with various hashtags. Ultimately, the student is allowed to add a verified source to the class Twitter feed as it organically evolves through future iterations.

When applying the concepts behind student-generated content to meaningful gamification, the underlying idea is that the instructors develop a system where users track different aspects of the non-game activity, create their own leveling systems, develop their own game-based methods of engaging with the activity, and share that content with other users. This is inherently built into the various hashtags generated by Twitter.

Systems where users can transform tasks by adding elements of play and then share their new methods allows creative users to think about how to make a task fun without an external reward. Users working toward the same set of goals can then form communities around those goals. These communities of learners can share experiences and increase their learning around the non-game activity, which is a method more likely to create a truly internalized self-organized learning environment.

About the Author

Jason Anderson Faculty Member, Intelligence Studies at American Public University

Jason’s research interests include information sharing regarding transnational criminal organizations. He completed a Master of Library and Information Science degree from the University of Washington and works as a librarian in the Puget Sound region of Washington State. Additionally, Jason has undergraduate degrees from Brigham Young University in Spanish Literature and Political Science.

Post Source: http://www.edudemic.com/dynamic-learning-environments-using-gamification/

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