Although I will occasionally indulge myself in a video game on my PlayStation 4, I have never considered myself to be a "gamer". This is probably because I come from a different time - when "men were men" and dinosaurs roamed downtown Hillsborough. I do not take a day off work to play the just released version of anything, and I do not hang out at the local GameStop (though the Burger King across the street makes a great Whopper).
In the past few months, however, I completed an online educational technology graduate course that utilizes a website called 3D GameLab. Rather than completing a packet of assignments, sending it in to be "blessed" or whatever the institution does, and receiving a certificate in the mail, passing this course requires the completion of a multitude of "quests" (I have completed 45 to date). Each quest could involve writing, viewing and evaluating web content, looking at videos, communicating and working with classmates via social media, , or any other of a number of activities. The work that you turn in is graded, feedback is provided, and points are tallied. To pass (i.e. to "win") hinges on reaching a certain number of points by the end of the semester - in my case 4500. Quests are assigned different point values based on their complexity. To provide further encouragement and soothing of the ego, you can earn awards and "badges" from your instructor. I must confess that I had not earned a badge since the one I got for archery back in junior high school summer camp - a badge that was ripped from my grasp afterwards when one of my arrows missed the target and darn near killed a counselor. Luckily it was a Christian camp and my salvation was not rescinded, though I am sure my counselor's was.
I am certainly not alone in the "lab" of learning through gaming. K-12 schools across the country are using "gaming" in some form or another to attract the PlayStation generation, and companies are springing up all the time to fill the demand. Institutes and workshops are offered to train teachers in using the gaming concept in their face-to-face and online classes. I attended a technology conference in New Orleans, just a beer can's throw from Bourbon Street, back in November that included several sessions on the subject.
Whether or not a teacher engages in online teaching and learning, the study of how educational technology is being used in the classroom is important. This course required me to take a fresh look at some of the basic principles of my university teaching while also applying what I learned to the training of future K-12 teachers in my program. Tools for communication, interaction, and collaboration - virtual or not - are vital for building learning communities. Computer applications exist that can be of great assistance in achieving what many teachers list as some of their most difficult challenges - personalizing learning, assessment, and the teaching of critical thinking skills. One lesson required me to use some common objects for completing a task that they are not normally used for. Further, I had to video the disaster and post it to YouTube. I made a peanut butter and jelly sandwich wielding a whisk, a pair of tongs, and a steak knife. While the video has yet to go viral, I did succeed in assembling the sandwich (and messing up the kitchen counter). I also succeeded in scaring the crap out of the dog, who happened to wander into the kitchen and see his master brandishing a knife dripping in red jelly. The point of the activity was to show how flexible thinking is important to the teaching of concepts. We must "play with ideas", put them together in unique ways, in order to build cognitive constructs. Other quests introduced me to applications for creating and annotating videos and other media, copyright and fair use laws, establishing personal learning networks, and frameworks for integrating technology in a purposeful way. Simply parking a computer in the back corner of a classroom or providing a computer lab is not enough unless teachers have been trained in utilizing that technology. Further, the basic tenets of a course such as the one I took should hold true even if the power goes out and the computers go blank. When it comes to curriculum and pedagogy, there are no "stand alones". It all must fit together or it falls apart.
As of this writing I have not had the opportunity during a busy semester to spend the time needed "playing with" the tools that I took out of this GameLab class. That is, however, the way learning should be. It is left for me to devote even more attention to discovering the possibilities that this new technology holds and specific ways that it can be applied to my personal and professional learning. You don't download good teaching or learning, you scatter the parts on the floor like Legos and put them together in models that fit within the unique architecture of your own individual mind. I will never consider education to be a "game", but I would like to believe that my teaching replicates at least some of the characteristics of a good one - creative thinking, the satisfaction that comes with the achieving of goals, the joy of collaborating with others, and just plain fun.
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