My First Video Game - Pong

Pong - I was better than my brothers! At least this is what I remember!

Play the game here - http://www.ponggame.org/

Games for Learning Focus

Part of my focus on video games is to explore and learn more about how video games can be used for learning. I know there has been a lot of research on this and the one expert I would like to learn more from is James Paul Gee. He has written a book, published in 2007 called What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy. I read this book while on vacation in Massachusetts and I really enjoyed it.

James Paul Gee was born in 1948 and works at Arizona State University as a Professor of Literary Studies. He was not a gamer but decided to become one after watching how much his son became absorbed in a video game and he wanted to find out more about the video game world himself. It was interesting to read about his experience and how he connected it to learning. Most of the comparisons of learnings in a video game with learnings in school were in the science field so it was applicable to my understandings.

He identified 36 learning principles of video games. He organized these into 6 different learning theory areas - Semiotic domains, learning and identity, situated meaning and learning, telling and doing, cultural models and the social mind. I liked this organization and I enjoyed learning about his experiences with different types of games. This information seems to justify what I know about what we learn from playing video games.  However,  I am looking more for how we can actually bring video games into school and use them for learning.

Lately it appears that Dr. Gee is running a course on Coursera and has summed up the learning principles under only 3 categories of learning - Empowered learners, Problem-based learning, and deep understanding. Here is a the video for How Games Teach:

My next book will be to read Reality is Broken - Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World by Jane McGonigal. 

Game Tutor Game #1 - Threes

The iTunes gaming tutor said that this game was "an ideal entry point." I agree it has an elegant design, is easy to play and understand and is addicting. It is made for my iphone so I can play everywhere. The object of the game it to slide tiles together to add up numbers by 3's. As you slide the tiles to do this is makes room for additional tiles to fill in the extra space. The board is a 4 x 4 square. Whenever like numbers come together they make cute noises but I ended up turning that off. I wish there was an undo button. Maybe in their next update!

At first I was just happy to be adding up and increasing the points I got. Then I discovered that a challenge was to get the highest number in the square. My highest overall score is 4,041 and the highest add up was only 192. Is this good? Just went over to Ryan Clark's Website Brace Yourself Games to find some tips on playing and his high number is 28,077! Wow - I need to read his tips!

So now I need to understand why iTunes included this as the first game of becoming a Gamer. I think that is was so easy to learn to play and very simple. There are some strategies to the game that I was trying to discover as I played. I think this is what keeps us motivated to keep playing the game because you know you can do it! I found myself getting a little frustrated but powered on! Now to move on to the next game.

Video Games here I come!

Next year I will be facilitating (teaching) a course in the HS called Digital Game Development with the help of DigiPen, an institution that develops game designers, graphic artists, computer scientists, animators and offers other digital expertise. I will be doing a course in July to help me to understand the content of delivering a course such as this. I have not been a gamer but I believe that I understand the nuances of games from hanging around all the techies I hang out, Digital Frontier members and the serious gamer in the family, Dagan my son. So I have decided to do 2 things in June:

1. Play Games!
• I ran across from iTunes essential, a Game Tutor. They said that if I play these games in
  
  order that will help me to gain skills and techniques to be a gamer.
• Games for Learning in Steam - Portal 2 and Dream are 2 games recommended to me by Carson. I am also learning about other games that come on sale in Steam.
• The Room - Dagan's newest iPad game that he loves. We will talk about this game during the summer as we both play, or as I get help from him as I struggle through.
2. Read books from Gaming Gurus and learn about gaming
• What Video Games have to Teach us about Learning and Literacy by James Paul Gee.
• Don't Bother me Mom, I'm Learning by Marc Prensky
• Reality is Broken by Jane Mcgonigal 
• The Art of Game Design by Jesse Schell

My plan will be to able to reflect on these 2 areas as I engage in them.

Let the Games BEGIN!

Learning 2.013 Conference - UWCSEA Singapore

Learning 2.013 conference took place on the beautiful UWCSEA East Campus this year with the theme of Learn, Design, Play. Here are some resources of things I learned that I did not know much about

Learning in the Making - you will see additional resources for making - arduino, makeymakey, squishy circuits, rasberry pi

https://sites.google.com/a/briancsmith.org/learning2013/

Games in Education - I really liked this session about the stories behind games and how students can easily make their own! Great ideas for a Writing and Games Integration course

http://gamesined.wikispaces.com/

Schools and Balance - this guy is great!  A counselor who is focused on balance with students. Lots of ideas generated in this session!

https://docs.google.com/a/sas.edu.sg/document/d/1RYJl4TYzm6qn_Sl6aUDo_jn2mFich2u_5LuLzgqW7Ws/edit#

I was involved in a project called Apple Orchards which combined students from SAS and UWCSEA to get involved in a person passion project. Students presented on topics from taking notes with digital drawing devices, using pictures to make subjects more meaningful, bringing music into your classes, and games to help you learn at this project. This was supported by different Apple Distinguished Educators - ADE from the 2 schools. The students met 2 Saturdays and defined their passions and put together a presentation for the Learning 2.013 conference. I learned again how hard it is for students to create something that is not outlined nor defined for them. They struggled but seemed to be very proud of their final outcome. Here is an album capturing the learning on those Saturdays and presenting at the conference.

Another cool thing that happened at this conference was the involvement of our student tech help team - Digital Frontiers who supported the attendees. The students who supported were the seniors of our team and became role models for the younger student helpers.

Next year Learning 2.014 will take place at NIST in Thailand. The group is also forming a Learning 2.014 in Addis Ababa.

I earned my first digital badges from this conference! See them at this Link!

Alan Lavine presentation at UWCSEA - Digital Storytelling

In my job it seems I am aware of so many things around tech but I don't get to go in depth in these things. This year, I have gotten a chance to work with faculty with digital storytelling. So when I heard that Alan Levine, http://cogdogblog.com/ , was coming to UWCSEA I made a point to be there.

I have been following Alan and his blog for some time and I do like his thinking so I knew I would get something out of his talk. It was a timely session for me because I was running the iMovie sessions for a teacher course the next week. Here are some of my new learnings and ideas from the session:

1. Why is Video so hard to teach? Andrew Lin and the 5 Shot Redux
2. Get in the habit of tagging and giving information on uploads - always add captions, notes to photos, map it, pop up note on the flickr images with hyperlinks
3. Creative commons attribution helper - an extension you add to your browser but this led me to a another one - OpenAttribute . Easy to use and I am going to teach these guys all the time!!
4. Look for great project ideas on his ds106  - A new area is The Daily Create which is a space for spontaneous creativity.
5. Use http://thenounproject.com/ for some great images!
6. Video Story problems - AWESOME!
7. Orange Slices Video - No audio but powerful
8. Kurt Vonnegut on the Shapes of Stories - Freytag pyramid for the standard formula for screenplay 
9. Paul Zak: Empathy, Neurochemistry and the Dramatic Arc - Distress and Empathy make a difference
10. Nancy Duarte - Effective Speeches
11. Lost flash drive - Remixed and Then Returned
12. Many Eyes and GapMinder -  Data Visualization 
13. Upping your image IQ - A wiki resource Alan made to help find visuals

Innovative Teaching & Learning with Technology - Punya Mishra, Ph.D.

I got the opportunity to join in on a  workshop at the Centre for International Education at UWCSEA with Punya Mishra, Ph.d @punyamishra. The topic was for administrators to understand the TPACK Model. I knew about this model and was looking forward to learning more about how to implement it here at SAS. Here are some of the notes I took with @jayatwood and @jasoncone.

Image from http://tpack.org/

The first part of the day was thinking about learning in the 21st century.

• Research show that students are not adept to using technology for learning
• Definition of learning is still very 'school-based' Made me think about these favorite videos: http://youtu.be/KM2Iv5D10Bs , http://youtu.be/by_eUi2C_g8 , http://youtu.be/hENtGSrOj5Y

• What is 21st Century Learning Document synthesising all the different theories. 3 areas - To Know, To Value and To Act - need to have a balance in these 3 areas.
• Foundational Knowledge (know) - content knowledged, ICT/Digital literacy, cross-disciplinary knowledge
• What is the cost of foundational knowledge -- especially within an externally dictated curriculum
• Humanistic Knowledge (value) - life/job skills (Self regulation skills), cultural competence, ethical/emotional awareness
• Meta Knowledge (act)  - Problem Solving, critical thinking, communication / collaboration, creativity / innovation
• Literacy - how you define it is important. It's not just traditional views -- includes visual and images.
• Robert Sternberg at Oklahoma State University - Standardized scores are starting to be ou and Creativity is becoming a part of admissions requirements
• Assessment - You must teach to the "test" - the problem is that the tests may not be worth teaching to
• Finding the basics of 21st century skills to start conversations on to get people to start thinking - Where do you have these conversations?

Technology integration/innovation/PD (TPACK)

When the ETT is working with teachers, we need to frame our collaboration as we bring the TP and the teachers bring the PK so together we have it all!

Examples

• Distance to the moon - using Audacity as a data tool
• Representing educational tensions through images using Pixlr. Also use Pixlr for finding images of geometry transformations and translations
• Dynagraphs Applets representing a function in a dynamic way - Geometry Sketch Pad and Geogebra
• Xbox Kinect - Ireland and scratch - scratch.saorog.com
• Jackwei0831 - Kinect Math (YouTube playlist)

Developing TPACK

• TPACK Game - http://mkoehler.educ.msu.edu/tpack-101/the-tpack-game/
• Barriers
• Time, expertise, access, resources, support
• Levels of tech use in the classroom that is close to SAMR
• Mechanical - USE
• Meaningful - INTEGRATE
• Generative - INNOVATE
• Learning by Design
• Give them a design problem and have them come up with an answer
• Open ended problems
• Diversity within the group - cross-disciplinary
• Teaching & reflection
• somewhat limited b/c you don't know what you don't know
• Instructional modelling
• Watching a model
• Doesn't get people to internalize very well
• Learning Activities
• http://hs6911.sas.edu.sg/integration-framework/standard1
• From AES - https://docs.google.com/a/sas.edu.sg/document/d/1uQ1kt_xG7migWjj2y3LT_V93Lie0Qy6xnz43MFN_95c/edit
• curriculum keyed learning activities
• http://activitytypes.wmwikis.net/ Great ideas for Activities and examples of technologies organized by subjects
• Using Deep Play to reflect on TPACK in micro/macro/reflecting ways
• Using digicam to see world in a different way.
• Find Letters
• Finding faces.
• Macro photo of the world
• Testing misconceptions
• Where does the ball fall? Tennis ball & video (e.g., Newton's 1st law)
• understanding understanding using video
• e.g., where does the condensation on Coke can come from?
• Where do shadows come from?
• How do we taste?
• Ideas Generated by the group of Approaches that work...
• How it's structured
• PLCs - embedded w/ a group
• How does it transfer back to the classroom?
• Exemplary class -- Lab classroom, Observe, Debrief. Using Evernote & Explain Everything
• Speed Dating - Appy Hour
• Demo Slams
• Student presentations at Lunch
• Bootcamp Basics (including online)
• Badges - Gamify
• Twilight sessions - 3:30/4:30 to share expertise. Have to do a certain number per year. 3 phases. 1. Intro, 2. Share Practice, 3. Reflective and future planning
• Teachers leading it -- they have credibility
• Goal setting - shared w/ Ed Tech Team. Must be tied to overall school goals, commitments, DSLOs, etc...
• As a school how do you reward it? How do you hire for it?
• Teachers yearly reflect on what they are doing in the classroom to integrate technology
• Action research toolkits provided to schools.
• Getting DATA!! Helps to know what to offer.
• Alcohol! Food!
• Have students teach the integrated tool - ie iMovie
• Don't teach the tool, have them do the activity which grounds it in context
• How it's framed
• Based around 21c Skills
• NETS
• Problems of practice

Trans-disciplinary skills for creativity

• One has to have deep knowledge in the discipline to be creative
• Without the rock of knowledge genius has no foundation - Rosamund E. M. Harding
• (in)Disciplined creativity - http://punya.educ.msu.edu/21cli/handouts/Mishra-Creativity-Handout.pdf
• Where do the ideas of creative teachers come from?
• Have interests outside of the classroom.
• Passions are brought in which leads to creative teaching.
• 7 habits key trans-disciplinary tools - perceiving, patterning, abstracting, embodied thinking, modeling, playing, synthesis

Navigating leadership tensions

• multilemma (multiple dilemmas)
• Leadership is not just about solving problems
• Leadership is about resolving dilemmas
• Facebook learnings - Done is better than perfect, code wins the argument, the journey is 1% finished, move fast and break things, the journey is always 1% finished
• If you can’t imagine anyone linking to what you are about to write, don’t write it.
• EXPLORE . CREATE . SHARE
• e.g., the proposed Ed Tech PD model fits into this!!!

Key Takeaways

• Teachers need to be involved in their own Learning Development
  Using TPACK frame our (ETT) jobs.
• Use, Integrate, Innovate as a model to assess lessons or the SAMR
• TPACK = Planning and tech integration model. All lessons should be in the center or don't use it. In the center = meaningful
• SAMR = evaluative on how your using technology. Each lesson can be at any level, as long as it's purposeful.
• What does it mean to be a good teacher today?
• TPACK can be distributed across teachers