Aw Mommmm!

I got a lot of very nice comments on my last post, but one of the most interesting ones came from my mother.  In know what you are thinking. Isn't it nice that Mike's mom put down her knitting long enough to read her son's blog.  Not quite.  My mother is a former teacher and teacher educator, and the closest think to knitting anywhere around her is her golf club cover.  In the past she had many times counseled me to use more active learning in my courses.  Typical mom: eat your vegetables, floss your teeth and don't forget to put your students into small groups instead of lecturing all the time.

Her comment, via social media, was that she had used games in her elementary school classroom many years ago.  This brings up two important points.  First, games are generally associated with children.  This could cause a backlash by students who think that games mean that I am not taking the class, or them, seriously enough.  That concerns me a lot.  I am told both by friends who have used games and by people who write on the subject that there may be some initial resistance, but that eventually people come around.  I'm hoping that it provides an opportunity to add academic rigor to the course.

The second point is that using games to learn is really not anything new.  Of course we all remember the games we played both inside and outside of school that taught us so many lessons.  With all respect to my former teacher, Sheila Tobias, I am convinced that baseball is one of the reasons boys have traditionally been better at mathematics than girls.  In addition, I remember a friend in college who had a business class in which the students were divided into groups to put together fake corporations for which they wrote business plans. And of course we know that the military uses war games, and what could be more serious than that?

What seems to be new is the computer gaming industry and its popularity.  Now I am adamantly not a gamer.  I barely played pong when I was younger, and all of the talk of World of Warcraft initially turned me off to the whole idea of gamin in education.  When I wanted to find out what WOW was all about, I almost destroyed my computer trying to download a demo version.

As it turns out though, I finally had an "aha" moment in which I realized that I am a gamer of sorts. Once source refers to people like me as"casual gamers."  I do play Words with Friends and lose with great consistency.  I also play a game on Facebook called Criminal Case, which I had kept as a dark secret, taking pains to ensure that none of my friends gets those annoying messages that I have uncovered a new crime scene or advanced a new level.

I like Criminal Case because because it involves a lot of hidden object games, which are fun to play.  They involve a lot of trial and error-- the more you play, the better you get.  Sometimes I purposely play a bad round so that I can learn where the harder to find objects are for the next time.

In addition,  it involves getting some help from other players, and there is a bit of a social component.  Some of the other players include my mother, my two sisters, and two of my nieces.   The game provides a way that I can casually stay in touch with family members, even if it only through playing the game.  Jane McGonigal discusses the importance of this social aspect of game playing.

Finally, there are multiple kinds of rewards I can get.  I need energy to solve the puzzles.  I can get that energy by using food, whcih I can also get in various ways.  There are also cards I can collect to exchange for food (that converts into energy).

It hit me that I could do the same thing with a game in an American Government class.  The goal would be to win an election by getting votes.  In addition, players could win volunteers by doing some kind of exercise that is based on attending and donations which would be tied to performance in a debate.  These would all translate ultimately into votes.  I can flesh this out a bit more next time.  If I can find a way to incorporate the trial and error learning and the social aspect, I will be in great shape.

I would like to also thank all of you who read my first blog posting.  I have tried blogging before and never really gotten off of the ground.  I felt really proud of myself until I looked at the posting that had the greatest number of hits.  Here it is: http://regiscoste.blogspot.com/. Maybe I need to work a little on follow through.