Press Play -- Gaming, Simulation & Achievement in the Classroom: Jonathon Best at TEDxDenverTeachers

before you ask I probably won't yoyo but maybe I will who knows uh thank you very very much for coming out this uh you know today to not only see all of the brilliant stuff that we're hearing from all of our colleagues speaking about great changes in education but today what I want to talk to you about is a cultural change in education that's why my talk is entitled press play gaming simulation and motivation in the classroom so if we think about the role of gaming and motivation of my life it does kind of have a place where it starts here now in 1985 I was all of two years old so I did not play this game at its release instead over the years I became very familiar with a small gray and black and red controller that I would fiddle about with and sometimes move along with and as I became an adult I realized what it was that I was doing for a short period of time every day after school in between well let's face it probably the Power Rangers and some other cartoon I was a tiny mustachioed plumber who's always in the search for something something very specific from what I hear she was a pretty princess but she was never in that same castle how frustrating as I grew older I found out that my life my simulated existence could take so many different shapes I was no longer limited to just being a tiny fellow with a penchant for multi-coloured mushrooms instead I became warriors that fought in teams saved the world a number of times you're welcome but I also became a shape-shifter and pen-and-paper role-playing games like white walls changeling I became a tactician of a tabletop where I rolled dice and granite didn't talk to girls but rolled dice and waged Wars all of this has to do with the fact that my existence was no longer just divided between the conscious and the subconscious there was a tertiary there was something new now is a completely simulated life that I didn't know that I could lead so today I'm here to ask this question how can simulation and motivate how can simulation drive motivation and performance in the classroom how can I take that third existence that simulated one that possibly digital one and involve it in the classroom now before we actually talk about that though I do want to share a very important moment in gaming history that happened nigh on six months ago this is a screenshot from quite possibly one of the most epic online battles of all time what I just said has never been said before in the English language enjoy that over 3,000 people on a whim left their jobs gave the baby to a babysitter quit whatever project they're working on in rush home to participate in something called the Battle of aah Sakai over 3,000 people brought their ships to this one single location and a video game called EVE Online they spent in about six hours fifteen hundred dollars of real good old-fashioned American currency on weapons power-ups and things like that all because of a bad mouse click all because one person well showed up in the wrong neighborhood the thing that's interesting about the Battle of a Sakai is that it really represents the fact that so many Americans so many adults so many functional human beings live in a highly simulated world so if I want to create a society of people who carry their imagination on into adulthood who remember what it's like to be a tiny mustachioed plumber who remember what it's like to save princesses or princes remember what it's like to save worlds who remember what it's like to fight for people who fell beside you on a very important day even if it's funny even if it's a video game even if for the majority of people in this room that's probably not a part of their life well the fact of the matter is the children we serve truly serve they do live that life and so to deny them that presence of simulation in the classroom is going to do only one thing which is alienate our children but here's essentially what I'm suggesting I want to propose a series of ideas some of which are taking place in my room a lot of which are just taking place inside my head but I think that was some of these ideas we can correct problems like low investment poor performance and we can even achieve a sense of urgency in a sense of rigor in such a way that doesn't burn students or teachers out we can involve people in our classrooms in a completely different way so in order to learn how to do this we must ask the all-important question what would Hegel do Hegel's dialectics suggests that you can take two opposite ideas thesis and antithesis in this case education and gaming and you can create a synthesis of them you can merge the two of them together to combine them in a way you can leverage new ideas and new concepts in the classroom and something I call simulation based learning here's the thing that's delightful here's the thing simulation based learning is not just about appeasing our loudest squeakiest wheels by placing a video game controller in their hand or telling kids because you can't understand things in your standard traditional way I have to explain it to you in terms of Mario that's not what it is see my speech my presentation this is not about video games it's about that artificial third existence that we can choose to embody it's about a simulated existence in which material can be delivered see if you were to think about simulation learning in a classroom the first question you probably want to ask me is what does it look like and I'm going to tell you I don't really know there's no real set framework all this is kind of by design but there is some overarching materials we want to make sure that we can allow students to connect to complex material through imagined or simulated experiences one possible option that I really like in my classroom is something I call the classroom avatar I teach eighth-grade at Kipp sunshine peak Academy I'm honored to serve those children however I learned very early on that my children come to me every day facing challenges and struggles that I can literally never understand but by the same token I have a lifetime of experience that my students will never experience in the exact same way possible so instead of us just kind of looking at one another and saying oh I guess we're not going to communicate we do it in an artificial or tertiary way and we create what are called classroom avatars imagine a way way for students to completely dismiss a lot of the negative baggage that they carry in with them into class imagine being able to tell a student that it doesn't matter what it's like this morning at home doesn't matter what it's like this afternoon in the hallways and it doesn't matter how they feel either in here or in here because while you're in my classroom if you choose to you can be someone else you can build a completely different character I literally do this at the beginning of the year with my kids we essentially if you've ever played Dungeons & Dragons we roll characters we roll characters by taking Diagnostics so we can track each individual standard each individual learning goal on the basis of improving those characters kind of like a role-playing game my kids love it they get to choose graphical representations for themselves they get to create completely new histories for these characters new names and when we have in-class competitions it's character versus character it's not student versus student what this allows students to do is it allows them in light of previous talk to understand a risk in a completely different way see failure is important it truly is however a lot of students don't necessarily come to my classroom equipped with the ability to handle failure so through a series of activities I can show them that failing in my class from time to time it's kind of like going back and being Mario and falling into a fire pit you're not gonna beat yourself up over it you're gonna press Start click restart and you're gonna try it again and again and again until peach comes home with you not a bad option but this can also take the simulation based learning can take a lot of other forms in your classroom one of which is discovery based instruction I'm a big fan of before any direct instruction or anything like that goes on in my classroom essentially giving my students the material and allowing them to interact and kind of suss out what they're going to learn on that day or learn in that unit before I even say a word because their characters carry that experience with them you can also thematically design units around say a quest or a challenge in order to for you to pass this unit you have to defeat this evil boss at the end of this world and in order to defeat them you must do X Y & Z or rather your character must do that you can also use technology to better implement check for understanding and exit ticket assessments every day I give my kids to multiple choice assessments either through clickers or scanning sheets using a system called illuminate and what this allows me to do is this allows me to differentiate on the daily with my students at every given moment so I don't have to worry about just grouping my kids based on TCAP or map data I can group my students and allow them to collaborate based on how their character is performing on that day my students love my in-class achievement system if you play xbox or playstation 3 you probably know about an achievement system and if you don't basically what it means is that these are systems that allow players whenever they achieve something great to get a tiny little tag or a clever little saying that allows them to remember what it was like on that day when they succeeded two of my favorites are the Eagle Eye achievement whenever a student sees a mistake that I've printed on a test if they inform me extra points for you well done high-five but if the entire class gets 100% on say a weekly assessment or on an exit ticket then we have our veni vidi vidi achievement the kids can really celebrate that conquests together through this achievement system which is all part of that simulation but my favorite thing to do are to create minigames there's to create minigames now if you've played any number of modern console video games lately you've probably seen what these little mini games are it's like a break in the standard story to do an additional task to just do something fun that might not necessarily have to do with the main storyline well in my class I have two of them of note one is one that is still going on today it's called word decks it's a Pokemon style flashcard game involving dice where students create their own decks of flashcards basically the toughest and most challenging concepts that they learn in my class that they can then challenge another player another avatar and wage battle it's kind of fun kids like it their roll dice they write sentences all of the materials all the questions are blooms scaffolded and it's brilliant and the kids love it but another one of the games that I created was a revolution simulator when I taught high school I once had the pleasure of teaching of teaching George Orwell's Animal Farm which if you've read lately doesn't exactly have too much to do with our standard ninth grade lives right and so in order to make revolution real to these students I created a full role-playing game where students had to tactically manage resources spend resources they had to share with their teammates who died on that day and they loved it and for the first time those children really felt what it was like in a very simulated way to participate to wage a revolution so essentially if you want to try simulated learning or simulation based learning in your classroom I recommend that you keep your class structures relatively the same from day to day but there should be a good vernacular shift there should be something that allows you to communicate to the students we are now speaking in simulated terms this exit ticket is no longer an exit ticket it's a boss battle this check for understanding is a minigame but you also want to make sure that certain procedures do happen daily like your check for understanding in the exit ticket type procedures you do need to collect that data in order for simulation based learning to work otherwise it's kind of empty without that data daily tracking kids can track their progress or rather contract their avatars progress in class every day based on every single activity in my classroom everything from the do now to the direct instruction to the guided practice to the check for understanding independent practice and exit ticket weekly quizzes they know every single thing that they're doing and it's brilliant to see the kids take ownership of these avatars and their progress through this game and whenever you can I do recommend that you reach out to people around you to create these engaging games to allow students to really for maybe the first time and a lot of years actually play in class and see the real value of play so for a second let's talk about what simulation based learning can do what is the future of simulation based learning I'm here to suggest to you that as our world becomes increasingly simulated where the internet becomes literally a second second existence a second plane for so many of us I recommend that we all take a moment to recognize a simulation in our lives in order to best meet our children where they're at after all all of us in here are educators and as educators I'm sure we all know the original story of creating the first English dictionary how the biggest war that was waged was between whether or not we want to create a prescriptive dictionary that tells people how they should speak what words they should use or a descriptive dictionary that says here's what people are using it is what it is so today I'm going to suggest to you that if you've ever been hesitant about involving games or game structure or this nature of simulation itself in your classroom I implore you to think differently as educators we have but one purpose and we have that essentially it's we want to give our kids the best lives it's not that I want my kids to pass a test it's not that I want them to graduate high school it's not that I want them to graduate you know to graduate college the fact that later on in life someone is going to ask them for help their mother their father their brother the sister their loved ones and I want my students to be the kinds of people to say yes I want my students to be the kinds of people that live good healthy long and comfortable lives and in order to do that they have to have the best education possible and I'm going to suggest that in order to create that best education possible if we are to truly meet our students where they're at we have to follow them into a place that even they've never been we have to follow our students into a simulated world that is not better that it's not worse than this one but it is both an inevitability and surprisingly liberating thank you very much for your attention today I greatly appreciated

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 18,272

Keywords: gaming, tedx talk, video games, ted, simulation, United States, ted talk, education, ted x, yo yo, technology, best practice, Video Game (Industry), yo yo champion, ted talks, 21st Century Education, tedx, TEDxDenverTeachers, English, game play, gameplay, tedx talks

Id: lKpo5SeZWns

Length: 16min 37sec (997 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 31 2013