Making Quests Engaging

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Haskell (2012) defines quest attractiveness as “the operational relationship of three components: capturing one’s interest, sustaining one’s effort, and resulting in a meaningful, personally relevant (highly rated) learning experience.” Developing attractive quests therefore is very important if we are to engage the learner in the process of learning. In my particular situation working with a small group of students I would probably develop a quest based on the use of Minecraft to develop some form of language arts project in which capturing a scripted movie would be the outcome. I know from experience the students are experienced Minecraft players. I know that such an activitiy would be a challenge due to the research and high level of language and technology skills required. As the students are highly motivated completing such a quest, which is beyond the realms of their normal classroom work, would be very motivating and would allow them to work together as a highly accomplished, entrepreneurial team – something I think they crave from the informal learning activities I have seen these students engaged in both at and away from the computer… this then is my challenge!

How Can Education Be More Like a Game?

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Games allow us to make education more fun. Games allow students to make choices, to learn through trial and error. Most importantly, games give students instant feedback. Here are my thoughts on how to make learning more like a game…..

One of the easiest ways to make learning more like a game is to add the element of choice. Choice exists in many types of projects within the school curriculum and some of the basic ways in which choices can be introduced include:

1. Choose which activities to complete in a spelling contract. (Middle to Upper Primary)
2. Choose which book you want to practise reading again and then choose a new activity related to the book (Early Childhood)
3. Choose which point of view you will take in the response to the development of a particular environmental project. (Upper Primary)
4. Choose the role you will undertake in a short group cooperative project e.g. map maker, model designer, publisher, graphic artist etc. (Middle and Upper Primary)
5. Choose the way in which you develop a product for the outcome of research. (All ages)

Prof. John Hattie has examined and explained the many factors which have an impact on student learning and he would agree that probably one of the most important factors is the quality and timeliness of feedback that teachers give students during the learning process. This table was the only one I could fnd that really explained it well. I can see that having an online curriculum would probably increase the instances of feedback received in the case of students who are able to engage with such a curriculum.

I would consider that probably the most important factor enhancing the gamification of learning would be the introduction of points for trying – trial and error is one of the best ways in which we learn. When individuals are learning to problem solve it is probably the most common method of working out how to achieve a goal. Over time there are more complex equations we can call on but when one is a beginner in a particular field, trial and error, along with the motivation to be persistent until reaching the elusive goal, is the major factor contributing to success. Trying to include this in an overcrowded curriculum where everyone is expected to achieve the same standard at the same time is unrealistic. The whole system would have to change in order for students to learn at their own pace and ability level – this is not a new argument when one considers the plight of Gifted and Talented and also Special Needs students who work in classrooms organised by chronological age. Differentiation will be the keystone for changing how the curriculum is viewed, presented and digested.

3DGameLab – A new way of learning

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379796_Badges2-14

I have spent a lot of my “spare” time over the last few months working within the quest based learning environment provided within 3DGameLab. During this time I have improved my understanding of how to develop pathways for student engagement within a learning management system which operates as a game environment – with system XP, levels, player upgrades as XP increases, new levels unlock as the player achieves more rewards. This environment is very motivationg for people who thrive on achievement and are highly motivated to continue learning. Having finally developed my roadmap for my first quest I have achieved the GameLab Teacher Badge – a badge which is linked to the NETS standards of the ISTE. The 3DGameLab developers have made use of the Open Badges idea and once certain conditions have been met, GameLab players can export their badges to their Mozilla BackPack. I’m greatly enjoying this experience!

Reflecting on Challenge Based Learning and the Past ….. Part 2

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While I was working through the use of HyperCard a new program became available which had much more promise and a catchy look – HyperStudio. I went through the learning process of developing skills in the use of this software at one of the ECAWA Camps in Point Peron – we had some interesting workshops back then. I hadn’t known anything about email nor animation when I attended those camps and it was due to the skills of several mentors over the years that I was able to further develop on my own journey. Everything I learnt was put into action in the classroom – eventually!

On the school front, the introduction of internet was fast approaching and I was able to complete the Internet Train the Trainer course in order to faciitate learning of other staff members. The more I used it the more convinced I was at the possibilties for use by teachers and students. As the library teacher resigned and moved on part way through 1998, I was asked to take over in the library during each morning and to share a class with the new Deputy. During my time in the library, I made sure that I was collaborating with all of the teachers as I had at my previous school. I avidly looked into research skills and the genres of writing, as well as also considering the importance of narrative and informational texts in student development. A whole school project was completed in HyperStudio – it involved the categorisation of favoured narrative texts. This was completed in HyperStudio and it was scripted to take people to the types of texts they were looking for e.g. fantasy, fairy tales, fables, legends, myths, realistic fiction, historical fiction etc. Students were also taught the library skills they required as well as developing their computer literacy. Busy but wonderful time!

In my classroom I was still teaching the basics at point of need but had further developed my practice to include an integrated approach in whichever year level I was teaching at the time. Although I loved working with the Year 1 students I made a move into the middle primary years and this allowed me to engage my students in higher level skills and concept development than I had been able to achieve with the younger students. It was during this time that I began to develop electronic portfolios in HyperStudio with my students. My biggest issue remained how to transfer the HyperStudio stacks into something that parents could access at home. This remained an issue until I came to the realisaton that I could export them to html format. And so the journey into a different form of portfolio began. I started studying the Graduate Certificate in Learning Technologies at Curtin in 1999 and my skill level again took a huge leap into the use of the various Microsoft products, multimedia and web site development. Eventually I returned to the junior primary classes and thus began an extended journey into portfolio development – using Netscape Composer as the vehicle – I had learnt that one might develop a whole website and burn it to a CD for sharing at the end of the year! In 2000-2002 I worked hard on developing portfolios for my students and alongside this development there was a mind switch as to the forms of assessment I could use in my classroom. This involved my students reflecting on their learning – and to do this we started making videos of them doing oral presentations or newstelling. Working in groups and testing products were other aspects which were recorded. All of this evidence was linked within the student portfolios and made a wonderful memory for the students and their parents.

During this time I developed many teaching units incorporating resources and the theme outline – also giving an indication of my assessments and the outcomes I believed my students would achieve via the unit. These I posted to my .mac website (which no longer exists but will return as soon as I have more time to re-develop it!) along with all of my conference presentations, which I started to deliver in 2000 on the suggestion of Dr Sue Trinidad and the lecturers from the Grad Cert course. I also tried my hand at creating an intranet which didn’t really take off due to the high level of maintenance required.

This part of my journey culminated in many invitations to present via the DET and ECAWA and allowed me to engage in some QTP work over the years also. From developing an assessment profile in Oral Language via moderated reflection pieces to delivering ideas on the education of boys using ICT, the use of ICT has been a vehicle for change in practices and in student products. I have no doubt it will continue to push the envelope as far as classroom practice and the assessment of student learning in years to come.

And the outcome of all of this groundwork was ……… A New Stage of my Career.

Reflecting on Challenge Based Learning and the Past ….. Part 1

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On Monday at Slide2Learn2013 I listened to a presentation about the work being done in ACOT2 which immediately catapulted me back to 1999 when I was taking part in my studies towards the Graduate Certificate in Learning Technologies at Curtin. ACOT was being talked about back then and I remember eluding to the research in my very first presentation at an ECAWA State Conference back in 2000 – Integration of ICT into the Curriculum. I had decided that because I had been using computers in my classroom for several years (since the inception of the Commodore 64 and then the Acorn computers and finally Mac Classics) I would embark on a learning journey to further my qualifications to the level I felt I had almost achieved. Forgive my indulgence but I am taking this journey to remind myself of how I ended up in my current position!

I had previously completed a Bachelor of Education Conversion Course via part time learning and Summer School (during which I was totally inspired by a person I consider to be an early mentor – Dr Sue Trinidad). My early experience with computers in the classroom consisted of using drill and practice activities on the Commodore 64. Watching my brothers developing their skills in making the computer work for them, I soon developed a thirst for knowledge about how to make sprites work and bought a book which gave me a start in coding my own maze games for my students on the Commodore 64. When the BBC and Acorn computers came along I had already realised that there was more to computers than repetitive games. Things were not easy to learn back in those days as there were really very few experts around and the internet had not yet reached as many workplaces and homes as it has now. As with all new explorations, most things were learned through trial and error and there were many times when things didn’t quite work out – just learning lessons like not saving a database after making a search and keeping only those records – losing hours of work in the process! I’m sure many people have gone through that self-same process but it is a lesson one will never forget! The BBC computer was not very forgiving. Saving your work was also a laborious process when you had every student in the school coming through a small lab, which I established at my previous school through negotiation with my principal and the rest of the staff. We engineered the whole situation so all the students had access to the computers, and someone who knew how to use them, in the lab over three and a half days a week. That’s a lot of management and saving to floppy disks! There was no network back then you see! However, the DET had had some awesome simulation software created back then which fostered group work and development of understanding of points of view and processes undertaken. We also used concept keyboards for language work and ease of word processing with junior students. Paul Dench’s LOGO manual was highly revered and after I completed summer school with Dr Sue Trinidad, I established the use of LOGO within the school from Years 3-7. The mathematical principles and analytical thinking students developed were showcased in their creations of art work which were printed out and proudly displayed for all to see. However, with the advent of the Apples for Students program, the pride and joy of the school became our three Mac Classic machines with which many things were possible. Group projects, desk top publishing and problem solving programs like the Incredible Machine were accessed and the greater powers of these early computers became the focus point around which group projects were built within each class group.

The Technology and Enterprise Learning Area was developed by DET in around 1993-1994 and it was during that period that everything just fell together in my thought schema. The Bands they had produced on the use of computers in schools was a real guiding force for me. Through accessing one Professional Learning opportunity and the documents that had been developed, I had researched the many ways in which computers could be used at the time and tried to maintain a balance between the various types of applications my students were working through and ALWAYS ensured there was a purpose for the work they were doing. I not only assessed how their skills in using the computers were developing – I also looked very carefully at their ability to think and communicate ideas through the ways in which they participated in the discussions involved in simulations, the way they developed their LOGO coding and the creativity they showed when allowed to experiment.

One of my most memorable projects during these years was a Junior PEAC Course which I designed and ran for Year 1 and 2 students in the District in which I worked. I was learning about HyperCard and how to script it and immediately leapt into the T&E mode of Design, Make and Appraise to further develop a unit which would involve the students in creating their own HyperCard stacks which could be linked and searched as a whole group project. There were 12 students in the group as I only had the three Apple computers with which we could complete the process. There was a mix of desk work and computing as planning had to be carried out before the process of developing the HyperCard stacks could be undertaken. Once their on screen work was completed, students then would demonstrate to their parents how to use this database as a performance activity at the end of the unit. Students became the teachers and the Unit ran again the following year. I also ran an in-school enrichment program based on the same idea with students from Years 1-7.

When I moved to my current school in 1996 I was fortunate to have my own laptop (Mac Powerbook running System 6) on which I could have my students create pictures both in the early KidPix program and in AppleWorks. They also did some word processing and drawing in AppleWorks – my all time favourite integrated productivity software. During this time I also experimented with my own methods of productivity and assisted with technology planning within the school. Within two years, the school had a bank of Mac computers in a lab and these were connected to the internet. I started avidly learning more about these newer systems and what was available and eventually bought one for myself (Performa 2560). My one biggest concern has always been the changes in software – I still miss that element of coding in LOGO on the BBC, making programs in Scratch and Mindstorms is icon based and I am of the opinion that this form of coding can sometimes remove some of the mathematical and analytical thought processes that are needed. I think the only thing that comes close to even resembling what we were creating back then is the use of the 3D building tools in Open Sim and SecondLife. Plotting on a 3D grid is also a mind blowing exerience but considerably easier considering that the positions, rotations and slices of specific objects can be mathematically calculated within a dialogue box, or by eye and manipulation, rather than typed in word by word.

How things changed yet again ……

…to be continued in Part 2

One Day at a Time

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I have come to the conclusion that I really do need to set down my thoughts after every learning activity I undertake. Last year I started doing that after the ACEC Conference. I find that I regularly post to Facebook my thoughts on learning via ICT in response to many thoughts about which other educators and commentators have blogged. Facebook can be useful for sharing quick responses and ideas which can be followed up when time allows, however, it takes time for ideas to gel and become reality. The last two days I have again come to the realisation that I may still have something to offer to colleagues in their pursuit of improving educational outcomes for our students via ICT. Though we have been a bit slow on the uptake of mobile devices due to various bandwidth issues we are almost set to undertake a small trial. My attendance at Slide2Learn 2013 came about due to my desire to meet in person a respected colleague with whom I had collaborated in online projects in 2006. Seeing the range of topics and speakers I realised that my passion for learning would again be reignited, and a new track might be forged, in my desire to help my staff further develop their capabilities, if I could make those connections between what I know can work in practice within the classroom and how mobile devices can help improve the workflow process for teachers and students alike. Over the next few days I intend to take the journey and record here the responses I generated during the sessions I attended. What connections could I make? What big ideas were relevant to the current context of my work? How can what I have already done previously be redesigned so that comparable new workflows can be developed and shared with the broader community. That is the goal I have set myself for these holidays!

Reflections

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Having spent some time at ACEC2012 and rekindled my latent interest in using Web 2.0 tools for communication and education purposes I decided to spend a day trawling through all of the subscriptions I have with various apps and sites. I think I am more confident that these things are starting to become more familiar and, therefore, may prove to be more useful than I perceived them to be in the past. I thoroughly enjoyed the ability to book conference sessions online from both my desktop computer and my iPad. This was so useful as it allowed me to fully prepare my thinking for the sessions I attended at the conference. Advance Organisers at work – something very useful for those of us who like to know what to expect!

The keynote from Milton Chen was inspiring and reaffirmed my own thoughts about PBL and how we need to be engaging all students at this level. Discussing the issue of current practices in schools and the Standardised testing regime driving pedagogy with colleagues is something I believe many educators are going through with the approach of full implementation of the Australian Curriculum. Add to that the need for further teacher development in the use of rapidly changing technologies and the need for seamless integration of technologies across the curriculum and the current situation is ripe for change.

The research completed at UNE by Chris Reading and Helen Doyle expressed ways in which preservice teachers engaged with a variety of technology tools during their studies.  I am thinking that making the use of technologies part of some sort of accountability process may be the way to reach some educators. My reading of Whitaker, 2002 suggests that leaders should be spending more time working with those who want to engage in order to successfully turn things around in your school. This has been the avenue through which ICT development has developed for a few years now at my school. Change moves slowly at times but the fact that people are jumping on board makes a difference. Now we need to review the supply of tools to further enable development.

Martin Levins’ presentation on Bring Your Own Technology struck a chord with me as it was basically a ccommon sense approach to how to go about implementing such an idea in your school. Ensuring devices have basic capabilities before they can access the network is a good rule of thumb to take away with you. I believe this will become the norm for basic everyday work such as accessing the internet and word processing and such. However, as was highlighted during the session, a lot of the more heavy duty work we do in primary schools requires appliances with more computing power and storage space than a hand held device. Pods of computers will probably always be necessary in situations where we, as teachers, work with students on presentation modes which involve graphic and mixing capabilities – e.g. video and music development.

Frederic Fovet’s presentation about his research into Social Emotional and Behavioral Difficulties (SEBD) students using online multiplayer games was very interesting and has been in the forefront of my thinking when confronted with students in similar situations. The work of Yee was mentioned and I followed up this referral and found some interresting information about those of us who are inclined to use online spaces such as games and Virtual Worlds. I have to admit I wasn’t surprised to discover that members of the demographic in which I sit were found to be similar in the activities they have undertaken in Virtual Worlds and online games. That research can be found here. Two papers: Gaming motivations scale and mapping demographics to in-game behaviours will be useful in guiding further research into such aspects of game-based pedagogies.

All in all, it was wonderful to once again bounce ideas around with like-minded professionals who are as passionate as I am when it comes to using technology to enhance learning capabilities of both students and teachers.

So Many Worlds, So Little Time!

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During the last 5 years I have been on a journey of discovery within many different virtual spaces. It started with SecondLife and a research project which allowed me to present a variety of choices for remote meeting and online learning spaces through Action Learning. I kept a blog of my experiences here and decided that, since my website is about to be shut down, perhaps I should find a new home for workshop materials which allow users new to SecondLife, and even Open Sim grids, to have a heads up about what to expect in a 3D Virtual World. I am not sure if I can recreate that in this blog but will set myself the task of learning how to develop that capability. I will admit to having jumped over Web 2 tools and straight into Web 3 spaces as they are rather more appealing and exciting in their capabilities for sustaining engagement of the learner. Another world I have had experience with is Quest Atlantis. As a teacher looking for different ways to engage high ability students, I thought this would be a very good option which would allow students to take part in pathways developing their social commitments through collaboration and problem solving in conjunction with other students from around the globe. Unfortunately, this was a short lived option for students at my school due to issues with my institution’s network and bandwidth. Currently I am working with a small group of students who are highly interested in using Minecraft. So much so that they have learned of their own volition the recipes for making tools and then more complex items within this world and editing the skins of their avatars – in fact they have become researchers and developers at this starting level! They have identified a need and done their homework to fulfill that need. What more could a teacher ask for? Now I must set myself the task of learning more about Minecraft and perhaps learn how to set up a Minecraft server to again try and alleviate internet traffic issues.

So Many Issues, So Little Time!

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Well, it’s that time of year when the planning and preparation begins for a new school year with various priorities on which to focus. With planning meetings and discussions about expectations of students and teachers, it increases the complexity of planning change for improvement across a school, particularly when specific funding is distributed for improvement in a specific area of the school. To my mind there are a few main areas on which plans for improvement need to be focused. Within the Primary School sector, specific targets for improvement need to be identified within a whole school approach to planning in priority areas such as Literacy and Numeracy. All staff at the school who have contact with students during instructional hours should be expected to assist in the implementation of this whole school approach. In order for this to occur, the use of consistent language must be fostered throughout the school community to engender a full understanding of the aspects being developed within the whole school planning documents. Teachers are required to ascertain the instructional needs of their students through analysis of individual student profiles – assessment literacy practices should be increasingly developed. In this instance, case management strategies for groups and individual students need to then be developed with the assistance of key staff specialists and support coordinators. Teachers and other members of the staff will use assessment practices which allow for monitoring of student progress as well as allowing moderation of judgements about the extent to which students are developing in particular areas of literacy and numeracy. Teachers should be able to demonstrate through reflective approaches that they are instigating new practices in their classrooms and that these practices are improving the outcomes achieved by students.

Leaders working with a diverse group of teachers need to be flexible in the way in which they approach teachers to determine how the cycle of improvement is progressing within each teacher’s classroom. Discussions about the monitoring of student progress through the use of learning profiles, rubrics and checklists, as well as eliciting student reflections about how they believe they are developing, will provide some indication of the teacher’s professional learning. The use of standardised testing might also provide some norm referenced information as to how the school generally is developing in particular year levels. One important aspect about this part of the cycle is that teacher professional learning can be offered as an individualised improvement plan rather than one off whole school approaches. In my opinion, having teachers consider where they lie on the dimensions of professional practice will give them an insight into what further capabilities they need to develop and will also allow the leadership team to target professional learning with case management practices if situations warrant this.

It Has Been a While!

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Well … I have just rediscovered this blog after spending a lot of time working on various other things. Currently I am in the midst of developing ideas about leadership after attending the ACEL Conference in Darwin at the end of last month. My ponderings are many and I am sure they will eventually come together in the way the big ideas usually do for me. Even after being in the education sector for around 30 years, the ever-present aspect of change presents its own challenges and the issues become more complex with ever-deepening layers. However, some of the main concerns for education presently lie in those big picture issues:  accountability through National testing Programs, the issue of interpreting and using data for school improvement, managing change and further developing teacher capabilities in order for our students to become citizens for a world with occupations that haven’t been dreamt of as yet and finding ways to cope with the myriad challenges that many educators face along the way.