Digital Media: New Learners of the 21st Century

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At the Quest to Learn school in NYC, students are learning entirely in a game-based environment. Several, if not all of the Connected Learning principals are embedded in this school’s methods. In the video, it mentions how the value of a game is determined by the gamers. In our classrooms, we are the game designers and the students are the gamers. As you watch this video, think about what your can do to apply these methods to a specific lesson or unit you are working on. You can respond in the comment space below on the prompt:

How would you take the Connected Learning methods seen in this video and apply these principles to engaging your students in a specific lesson or unit that you are working on? 

Also, if you would like to look further into the Connected Learning principals and how they are used at Quest to Learn, check out Boss Level at Quest to Learn.

After-School Spaces and Connected Learning

Going through my undergrad at CSU I was given the opportunity to volunteer at La Familia in downtown Fort Collins. It is an after school program that focuses on helping both family and K-6th students with economical and educational hardships. My duties as a volunteer was (still is) to facilitate a space where the students could enjoy themselves but also focus on their own education. This included arts and crafts, homework help, field trips, and games. Since my time there I have seen many changes in what is now offered. It began with more variety in what was offered both to students and their families. 

It seems that these spaces are not always a focus to us as teachers. I am speaking with only the experience that I have had but a question needs to be asked: What do these spaces offer and how can we make them pertinent to our own curriculum? As a student and a pre-service teacher I find so much value in the relationships that we foster with our students. We venture to do this in the classroom but sometimes it is not enough. We need to consider alternative ways like after school programs that will help to enrich better relationships with our students. A classroom setting has a level of structure that some students have trouble focusing and I believe they need after school programs to create outlets based on their interests. 

Here is an example of an outside space: I spent a weekend getting to know STUCO students from Loveland High School in Estes Park. Within those three days being out of the classroom I got to know and care for all 45 of the students that went. I got to see them in way that was not forced or expected. They were in a space that allowed them to be vulnerable and create meaning for themselves. It was nothing short of beautiful and amazing. That was just two and a half days. Two and half days that helped show how important it is to find these types of spaces so we can create this empathy and understand students on a different level other than just a classroom setting. It was a defining moment in my educational experience and a eye opener on what can be achieved if we put more effort into spaces outside elf the classroom. 

YouMedia is a nationwide program that helps to build student/teen interests by encouraging different forms of media and technology. This includes: digital production software and equipment, video games, musical production software and programs, mentor led activities, books, and writing activities. With a wide range of equipment and software students from all walks of life and with different interests will find something that speaks to them in a larger way. These types of programs truly help to keep our students focused on 21st century ideas, culture, peer-support, and it keeps them from spaces that could potentially get them in situations that are troubling. Connected learning is heavily embedded within this type of learning environment. It truly shows that Connected Learning concepts can be applied it spaces outside of the classroom which makes it more meaningful to me as a future teacher. It relies heavily on peer support and open networked ideas because of the emphasis on building relationship among students and the mentors who help out wherever these YouMedias are held. 

With all the benefits that these spaces give to us as educators and to our students their should be more emphasis on them. We must remember that this is a process that cannot be forced. Students make their own decisions to come to these spaces and it is important to keep it as something that is not required since we require them to do many things in our classrooms. One way it will help our own curriculums is just by getting involved and seeing all the benefits it has in building clear and meaningful relationships for both teachers and other students/teens. I have so much faith in these programs and their ability to wrap around the Connected Learning concepts to bridge ideas on 21st century learning and relationships among students.  

Level One: Starting at the Beginning of Game-based Connected Learning

In the case study compiled by Christo Sims on ConnnectedLearning.tv, the Boss Level program at the NYC Quest to Learn School is examined in the ways that it reflects the principles of Connected Learning. These peer supported, interest driven, and production centered methods of learning seem to be highly effective, and I agree with any pedagogy, any curriculum, any teaching philosophy that implements their practice. Notice though that these systems are inherent in the Boss Level projects that students participate in, not the framework.  Boss Level is designed based on the idea of gaming. Students work on topics and skills that progress over the course of a school trimester, like a video game, where gamers tackle new challenges and develop new skills and techniques throughout a particular level and then use those skills and knowledge and apply them to conquer a culminating challenge at the end of each level. This isn’t all that different than the traditional classroom, students absorbing skills and knowledge each day in class and then… a final exam. Did they get it? What did they absorb? That’s what a formal assessment like a final exam is supposed to reveal, right?

Well, by now we know that this method is really ineffective and doing anything other than assess learning. There is very little long-term learning that actually happens in the process of cramming and taking a final exam. This understanding has even led top-tier schools of higher education like Harvard University to dissolve the use of final exams, where as of last year less than a quarter of the 1,137 courses there still use final exams (Huffington Post). At Quest to Learn, when students participate in Boss Level, they are learning, applying their past learning, and producing evidence of that learning in a way that should solidify those skills for long-term use in the adult-lives of each student. The combination of Connected Learning principles and game-based learning work together in a way that strait forward teacher-led lecturing, kill and drill, and handout methods simply can’t match. But I believe we have to be careful with student-centered learning, and not let leave these young minds be left to succeed on their own.  As James Paul Gee, Diverse Educational Leadership professor at Arizona State University, notes from a wide range of research, that “decontextualized, overt information and skill-and-drill on facts does not work as a theory of learning, neither does “anything goes,’ ‘just turn learners loose in rich environments,’ ‘no need for teachers” (Kirschner, Sweller, and Clark 2006; Gee 2008).

What I noticed is that Quest 2 Learn does not just offer gaming-based learning, but with programs like Boss Level, they are creating gaming-based teaching, and this is the system that I would like to apply to my own classroom, lessons, projects, and assessments that steal the fundamental qualities of video games that make them so addictive. If students are going to be the gamers, then as teachers we need to be the game-designers.

If you’re anything like me, you have spent hours on end playing a video game in one sitting almost incapable of putting the controller down. It has been several years now since I’ve had one of these intense gaming sessions; I had to force myself to cut out the video game addiction cold turkey. It is interesting though that we look at video games as something that is an addiction, which Henry Jenkins, Media scholar at the University of Southern California, explains has to do with the fact that it is a common perception to relate gaming to things like drugs and ‘bad habits’ as being an addiction because it is something that is not valued by the majority of our society, where in a different perspective we could see that video games are no different than the activities that we recognize as positive, like when young people dedicate themselves to sports, music, and academics (Digital Media: New Learners of the 21^st Century – Video (10:14)).

 

If we start to look at designing our curriculum and our classrooms like a game, we can achieve the same results of playing a game. “If a learning system is well designed, you don’t finish it without the guarantee you learned it all already… a good game, if you finish it, you learned how to play it. It’s designed in such a way that you don’t get to the next level unless you’re prepared to learn on that level.”(Gee, Digital Media: New Learners of the 21^st Century – Video (9:00))

We can also learn what to avoid in our teaching methodology from the gaming experience. An unfortunate fact of our current education system is the pushing of students forward without gaining the knowledge and skills that will scaffold students’ learning in the next stage. One very quick way to disengage and frustrate a gamer is to put them into a situation that they are unprepared for within the game.  Janelle Bence, in her section of “Teaching in the Connected Learning Classroom” titled Academically Oriented Teaching: How do I teach What I Do Not Know?” she wonders why ‘intelligent” and expert level gamers check out and “find little to no value in the classroom.” I remember thinking how ironic it was that she was presented with this problem and an overwhelming desire to “discover the answer” since in fact this is what drives gamers through a game. It occurs to me that her method of connected learning while well-adapted with the idea of teaching what she doesn’t know and implementing gaming in the classroom (this is a great way to turn students into “producers” rather than “consumers” of learning), but maybe she could take a different cue from gaming. Video games are not necessary in the classroom to get students to engage, but instead we can use the methods that games use to engage the gamers. There is a problem, a skill set, and a desire to achieve at each level . But there is more to it than that. Games are designed to be a gradual progression of difficulty, so that each level challenges the player at a comfortable level. Also, each level offers new abilities and weapons to help you brave the new challenges. Another INTEGRAL part of why gaming keeps kids engaged: You have INFINITE lives. You have the opportunity to retry a situation countless times until you get it right. Schooling today is not infinite lives based, which if they were would make students feel enticed and safe to take risks. Just the opposite, our education system with the NCLB mentality, students are offered one opportunity to either succeed or fail, and are then moved to the next level EITHER WAY!  It is the equivalent of trying to get through a horde of enemies (in a videogame), possibly with not enough ammo, one time, get killed and then entering UP, UP, DOWN, DOWN, A, B, A, B and then “poof!” you’re magically going from grade 7 to grade 8 (in a school). Only those that did successfully blast through the horde of enemies, and did not need the loophole are better prepared for the next level. The kids that get moved forward without leveling up, begin to play a game that becomes increasingly complex while the difficulty setting gets lower and lower.

So, I’ve started compiling some of the things that I think can be adapted from video games and be applied to our teaching methodology and philosophy, our course design, and classroom environment to give students the best opportunities for learning in any environment. For most teachers out there, we can’t offer Boss Level projects in the same way that Quest to Learn does for their students. I doubt that most public schools would allow me to pull my students out of their other classes for 2 weeks straight to work on a solitary project. As I compile this list, I welcome you to offer your own ideas –in the comment section below –for applying the principles of great game design into the classroom. As you read the principles I have laid out and the ones that you develop, think about the impacts that they can have on the learning process.

 

1. Progression needs to move at a comfortable but challenging pace to keep the gamer engaged.
2. We must offer our gamers new tools and support as they progress.
3. Offer the gamer specific goals and resulting achievements in a wide range of complexity and difficulty along the way
4. We can offer students multiple or infinite lives to achieve mastery of the skills needed to progress.
5. Provide various rewards for different levels of accomplishments, incentive systems beyond a simple letter or number grade. Games reward greater achievement with more assets to use later on in the game which inevitably increase the drive to not just complete a challenge but master it.
6. Game designers offer tutorials, and guides along the way.
7. Play it in co-op. Sometimes difficult obstacles can be conquered working as a team.
8. Multi-player sessions: hone your skills playing with others
9. Gamers can draw on forums and online resources for help. Develop a way for students to ask each other questions in a private community board.
10. We CAN NOT offer students the cheat codes to get to the next level
11. And of course, it should be entertaining –almost addictive.