May

Gamifying education

EDUCATION: Introducing gaming into the classroom

EDUCATION is the very foundation of our future. No doubt there are flaws in our current education system that need to be addressed. The marking system, learner agency and voluntary tangential learning are a few of the major issues in education today.

There’s a theory that tries to define each decade according to technological progress. Loosely speaking, by the end of one decade everyone had cellphones, by the end of another everyone was on Facebook, and this decade (2010-2020) it is said that everyone will be a gamer in a broad sense. It’s not a solid theory, but I’m sure you catch my drift.

Some exciting ideas are starting to surface which involved introducing gaming into the classroom — making education more fun and engaging. Again it is no solid science, but a few schools (especially in the United States) have started implementing such ideas into their teaching techniques and have started to see positive results.

To put gaming into better perspective — the most successful games on the market today are ones that encourage gradual progress. These award the player with experience points as he or she progresses through the game. Once enough experience is gained the player levels up, which comes with particular rewards or perks.

Benefits of a rewards system in education

Working towards clear and tangible levels with clear rewards or benefits would be a huge motivational factor for learners. Assignments and tests would feel more rewarding rather than disheartening if there is something to be gained. This wouldn’t necessarily require a major change in the way papers are generally marked. Marks would merely be changed to levels and learners would work towards a total rather than down from one.

Offering class-wide achievements, such as giving the whole class a reward if one or a few learners accumulates X amount of experience, would also encourage peer support. Rather than envying the top achievers, peer pupils would encourage their progress. The top achievers, on the other hand, would understand that they couldn’t get the best possible score unless they help the other learners improve their marks.

Gamifying Education

Agency in education

A huge hurdle for teachers is dealing with learners who lack a sense of agency — who feel that their opinions and choices don’t matter. They may feel that they have no control over their choices, perhaps ones that were made for them by their parents. They lack long-term goals and motivation — something that is common in young people today.

It is known that learners with a higher sense of agency do better at school. What’s interesting is that agency is the life force of games! You are in full control over the choices you make and the future lies entirely in your hands. What’s more, games teach us that if we fail, we try again (or try something different) until we succeed.

Voluntary tangential learning and information

A third challenge for our educational system is encouraging learners to pursue information voluntarily outside of the classroom. Homework, for most, is a bore — a chore that needs to be completed before we can play proper games. There are very few external motivators that encourage self-education.

An idea is to turn a subject into a game by leaving out pieces of the puzzle and using information that you want learners to learn on their own as keys that unlock the next section of the game or subject. In searching for this information there’s also a chance of tangential learning — learners stumbling across other pieces of related information.

I recall one of the most exciting times in my own education, which was when different subjects started to interlink and connect up. And this happened way after high school. Learning and understanding the connections between information and ideas is so important in education. A cross-disciplinary approach could be created early on by creating the keys mentioned here across different subjects. This will also allow learners to shine in different subjects and encourage communication and sharing of education among them.

This may also create an understanding and an appreciation of the importance of other subjects that learners may not immediately be interested in. I sure wish I had understood this when I was in high school.

This article was inspired by the video above hosted at www.escapistmagazine.com called Gamifying Education.

** More Quite Interesting Posts **

Posted under Gaming | Tags: education : Escapist : escapist magazine : games : Gaming : high school : Learning : students : The Escapist :

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Aug

Porn to be a teen

Have cellphones made porn access an everyday thing for teens?

by Sofia Tosolari

I WAS a young, liberal teacher at a local Cape Town high school. When the children saw I was 22, new and a little naïve, they took it upon themselves to get my attention. The result: teen cellphone porn they began exposing me to the intricacies of their little worlds: to porn, fist fights and parental abuse.

I was soon given access to one favourite Grade 10’s world of secrets, which left me one day staring at a pornographic image on his cellphone.

My teaching career ended soon after that. Having lost contact with the boy in question, I decided to interview another connection - a young man in Grade 12. The topic: cellphone porn in local Cape Town high schools. Although he did not mind being identified, we’ll refer to him simply as Ian.

“They call me the sexpert because I know a lot about sex and stuff, I always found it interesting,” he says.

So, I wondered, where do children get the porn?
“You can get it anywhere, and it’s free.” He names a website. “You can download scenes or the whole movie.”

Professional imagery?
“Nope, most of this is in fact simply home-made. Like with the Grade 8s and 9s, there are children making their own videos and showing them around,” says Ian.

Motives?
“I dunno, it’s a status thing. It’s the same with your virginity, and if you haven’t lost it by Grade 10, there’s something wrong with you,” says Ian.

I shouldn’t be surprised, yet sadly I am...

So while porn has always been around for teenagers to gawk at, it seems that much easier with the introduction of cellphones, with stories including rainbow parties, where teens gather for an orgy to be filmed on a cellphone.

Sharon Paulus, a social worker at the Parent Centre in Cape Town, confirms this:

“Technology has simply highlighted the seriousness of the problem and taken it to a new level,” she says. “Today, teens make their own blue movies, and with more children having access to cellphones and the Internet, this problem could be on the increase.”

So there’s clearly a problem, what to do? According to Paulus, “Parents need to listen, to acknowledge their teen’s feelings without blaming or shaming them.”

On a very practical level: “Parents should have rules guiding the use of cellphones and the consequences if these are broken,” she says.

Paulus says that parents need to consider why their child needs a cellphone in the first place and if they do; does it need to have a camera, bluetooth and Internet access?

“Adolescents who are engaging in this kind of activity are really crying out for help,” says Paulus. “They are letting people know through their behaviour that they lack something in their lives. Love and a sense of belonging are very important for children and are two of their basic human needs. If these are not met in the family the child will go looking for it elsewhere, such as in gangs, cults, substance abuse, sex or relationships."

“Adolescents want excitement, seek peer acceptance, and try to find ways to show that they are superior to others. Teens also want to experiment and in the case of teen cellphone porn, it sounds as if there is a need to experiment in a real way and to have the visual proof,” says Paulus.