Gamers..Gaming and Gamification..its all GamEd to me.

Its late… 1am…and I’ve still not succeeded in the task Id set myself to have completed by midnight. I know this situation isn’t unusual for us teachers…however this time was unique for me because the task was to complete a mission as a titan guardian/warrior on my sons PS4 Destiny game.  Destiny is a first-person shooter video game set in a "mythic science fiction" world, the game features a massively-multiplayer "shared-world" environment with elements of role-playing games.

Ive intentionally devoted time towards exploring gaming with the purpose of learning how these games educate gamers (like both my 12 & 14 yr old sons) to develop key skill sets and strategies to succeed in their games…(No really..Honestly, this is not just what I’m telling my wife.)

I have recently begun focusing on gaming for education because of the interest our learners at Te Karaka Area School have with games. During a course I was shown a short clip about gaming and its role in education by James Gee.  It’s a thought provoking insight into the culture of gaming and the divide between traditional education and gaming based education developed by businesses like Bungie (the creators of Halo and Destiny). I initially focused on his comparison between assessments of learning between conventional systems and gaming. Its well worth watching and only 5 minutes long.

As I begun to write this blog, my 14 year old son sat down with me and asked what I was working on. I replied Im writing a blog about what Im learning about through playing Destiny. I explained how Im thinking about how valuable games like Destiny can be for teachers. I immediately saw a flicker of interest in my sons eyes…”What will you be saying?” “Well I’ve seen how much time and effort you devote towards developing the skills and strategies you need to succeed in your game… and that’s an amazing blog in itself, but this blog is focusing on the obvious value you and your brother place on even the small and (in my mind less important) details like appearance and affiliations. You spend hard earned credits on making your guardian look colourful or upgrading armour based on style or clan instead of function or purpose. My son laughed at this..” Yeah its real fun..and they (the creators) are about to put a person on Tower whose whole purpose is to teach your guardian new dance moves….” Yep your Destiny guardian can save the universe and bust out the meanest dance moves at the same time… go figure. I said to K.. “ It must be annoying when teachers or adults talk about games as being irrelevant and of no real value when they are clearly so important to you..” My sons reply…“Yep..” I could see I got him thinking… “Hey Dad I read on line recently of a study that showed that people who played Portal 2 did better on spacial awareness tests that luminosity users.”  We checked it out..There is and its true. (Man am I setting his learning advisor up for a fun time next term.)

Gee describes games as a combination of learning and problem solving experiences. I am beginning to think that this is a simplification of the  deeper learning & problem solving experiences games like Destiny provide. My children have committed a reasonable amount of effort into their on line characters. This is clearly their online identity..not just in appearance but also in status, affiliations, reputation and style (as in dancing..) Why discredit this identity as nonsense or of no real worth? Who are we even to say such a thing? Perhaps most importantly how can we use this concept effectively when designing learning programs within our education systems? In asking these questions I have a short list of suggestions that have been had shared with me recently that may be a good starting point.

An online site called Classcraft appears to be successfully helping teachers to bring status and identity into the classroom. I haven’t yet tried it out but the more I learn about gaming and gamification of learning the more I return back to this as an option.

Digital badges are being used more frequently now for recognition of specified achievements. One site recommended to me is credly.com .  This again may be used as an indicator of progression (another key gaming concept according to Seth Priebatsch in his Tedtalk on building a game layer on top of the world.)

This last suggestion is referring to a suggestion that both Gee and Priebatsch make in their video about "leveling up". At TKAS we use SOLO Taxonomy for guiding learning within our programs. Levelling up can be used to incentivise our learners to progress towards extended abstract. I often explain to our learners that gaining extended abstract is not much more work than what they have already have completed for achieved. Its not about quantity but quality. Developing a rubric system that shows that achieved is <75%, merit 76% < 89% and Extended Abstract 90% + may better express this concept while helping with the level up idea.

Finally I would whole heartedly encourage teachers to take some time to explore digital gaming from a pedagogical view point. Ive had some amazing discussions with TKAS learners and clearly see their appreciation when I take time to listen to their stories and share my own gaming experiences with them. I know that I am only just beginning to experience the amazing learning oriented concepts being applied in modern online gaming. I know this is well worth staying up for.