5.10.18- Teaching with technology. Design and Instructional Design. Aural drilling and music theory.
This week we looked at disruptive technology and the ways in which teachers effectively (and ineffectively) integrate technology into the classroom. As I've always said, technologies are tools that: a) are not all equally useful in every situation, and b) can be just as easily misused as they can be unique learning opportunities, and it's important that educators are thinking critically about why they chose the tools they do.
We also had a guest lecturer, Rebecca Ly, who came to talk to us about gamefication, which I find extremely interesting. She talked about the spectrum from 'play' to 'game', or unstructured to structured, and I thought of my experiences in year 6 where most of the learning I remember from that year was in the form of gamefication, though we didn't know that term at the time. We participated in Murder Under the Microscope, a sleuthing game that spanned a number of schools across Australia. We trialed the Quest Atlantis 'transformational play engine' and ran their adventure The Doctor's Cure based on Shelleys Frankenstein, which taught us a range of skills like journalistic integrity, medical ethics, and ethics theories.
The third experience of gamefication we had that year was a live roleplay game we undertook as a class inspired by the show Lost. I have broken down some of the core elements of gamefication that Rebecca went through with us, using the game as an example.
Roleplay- we were given characters (my favourite element. To this day roleplay games are my one passion outside education.) Some of us had relationships with other characters, and they were all spoofs of pop culture characters which added humour and made it fun. We all had to work together to survive on the island and decide on a social, political, and economic structure that worked with the wide range of characters that were there and their strengths, weaknesses, and personalities. It was an excellent team building exercise and taught us a lot about the practicalities of organising a group of people from scratch. It tied with our unit of work on Australian politics, however as a group we went above and beyond the course content, researching and trying out a number of political systems to fit our unique position. There was something for each of the four main types of players:
Achievers- in this game, goals were tiered and probably changed slightly depending on the priorities of the individual. 1. Stay alive, 2. Be comfortable and healthy, 3. Develop a harmonious society. The people in my class who were achievers would have been very focused on these goals, done most of the research that allowed us to succeed, and their characters often stepped up as leaders. The complication in this part of allocating roles was that our characters had personalities of their own. Although I often find myself in leadership positions in these sorts of games, because my character was based on Homer Simpson that wasn't really realistic. It was a little frustrating not being able to contribute as much as I'd have liked to because of this.
Socialisers- as a role-playing game which relied on communication and teamwork, I think socialisers did very well. These would perhaps have been the players who had the easiest and most pleasant time, since we all relied on the group functioning as a whole and being well-liked goes a long way when it comes to making decisions about allocation of resources.
Explorers- developing a map of the island, figuring out what resources are available and where to get them, i would also argue that exploring the situation would come into this type of gameplay as well. Getting to know the other characters and players not to socialise necessarily (although that may be a secondary effect), but to take stock of what's available. In this survival circumstance, one's allies are one's greatest asset and I'm sure I was especially aware of that as a predominantly explorer type player.
Killers- I don't remember there being any murderers in our midst, but there were definitely characters that were designed to sabotage the group in various ways. My own character who was lazy, rich, useless, and very selfish was one of these, as was our resident arrogant rock star. Whether these correspond to the play styles of the players I doubt, but in some ways it was interesting to step into roles that one wouldn't otherwise try, which I think was one consideration the teacher running the game would have had. And she knew us well enough that if we'd been playing just as ourselves we would've created a neat little commune with few complications.
The other element that was covered was rewards. I don't remember there being any out of game rewards for success, and I think it was mostly narrative rewards. For instance, learn how to weave and you can sleep under a blanket instead of a pile of leaves, which worked well for us.
Year six was by far the most enjoyable year for me educationally. Not only did we have three game-based learning opportunities, but our final project was an independent learning project, similar to the SOLEs of Sugata Mitra which I've written about at length elsewhere, the premise of which is that the students choose their own area of research. I hadn't thought about it much, but my extremely varied experiences of learning in a classroom have had a huge impact on my own ideas as a budding teacher. It's exciting to know that my interest in these things is supported by current research, which I will definitely be looking into further.