What I Learn from Video Games Part 2

If you read yesterday's post, you'll know I'm a sucker for a great game. In fact, I credit Jane McGonigal's book Reality is Broken with legitimizing my love of gaming in the academic world. How amazing her job must be, to always be gaming... heaven!

Anyway, I wanted to continue on my gaming-connecting path and take a look at some other ways that video games- and the lessons I've learned from them- have made me a better teacher.

#1-At first, you don't have to know what you're doing to do it. See Part 1 for details on this gem.

I guess this applies to the art of teaching as well. You don't have to start out as the greatest teacher in the world; in fact, if you think you are the greatest  teacher in the world your first year, you're probably delusional and shouldn't be around kids. Nobody starts out as great. You might know a lot, but applying it in a real-world setting has plenty of challenges- managing a room full of students, managing your own knowledge of students, curriculum, and best practices, finding time to have a life outside of teaching, and figuring out all the power trips and pitfalls in a new (and constantly changing) work environment. I know plenty of amazing teachers that are still learning- and that's probably what makes them amazing.

You don't have to know everything about what you're doing to do it. You don't need to know everyone's name to step foot in the teachers' lounge, know every reading strategy to start reading a book, or know every classroom management technique to start the first day of school. Knowing those things may make your job (and life) easier, but it's not necessary to getting the work done. So stop freaking out about what you don't know, and just do it.

#2- Lay the foundation early and keep adding to it.

Video game lesson #2 comes directly from my current addiction, Knights and Dragons (as well as myriad other great video games. Foundations can consist of skills or knowledge, but it's important to set the stage for future play/ learning by building a firm and broad foundation. I actually got stuck on this part of my current game because I was working so hard to complete quests. The instant gratification of completing a quest was keeping me from seeing the big picture- namely that I needed to upgrade my armor in order to complete the quests. I kept getting stuck, dying just before I could complete each quest, and the heart of that failure was a neglect for building a strong game foundation.

So, here are the basics of the game. You build structures that generate gold. You collect that gold and use it to pay for armor for your knights. You can pay to forge armor together to create stronger armor at higher levels. Stronger armor means that you can withstand greater attacks by monsters. You fight monsters to collect building blocks that allow you to craft different types of armor. Gold pays for the armor, but you must have the building blocks- fire shards, stone slabs, dragon scales, etc.- to make the armor. You earn the building blocks by battling monsters in different game arenas. Quests guide you through the game arenas and push you to conquer more and more levels. [There are more pieces than just that, but that's enough to get you to my analogy.]

The quests push you to move forward, sometimes before you have the foundation to support a forward move. Ultimately, you can't move forward until you have a high enough level of armor to beat the monsters at the game arena. But you don't know if you have strong enough armor until you test it out. Failure means you have to wait to heal before you can try again. Winning building blocks to create better armor means you have to go back to game arenas you've already moved past in order to defeat monsters you've already beaten and earn enough building blocks to create better armor- the goal of which is to defeat monsters that are much stronger.

So, here's the analogy to education. Students build learning habits (structures) that generate access to information (gold)- the better the habits, the easier it is for students to access new information. Students collect that information and craft it into knowledge (armor). The more information you have, the more knowledge you can build. But information alone is not enough to build knowledge- students need skills (building blocks) to craft information into knowledge. This knowledge helps you pass tests/ solve problems (monsters)- both school-based and real-world. The more problems you solve, the more your skills improve and the easier it is to build more knowledge. Getting better, faster, and more adept at solving problems makes future- tougher- problems easier to solve.

Then, there are quests. In the field of education, we call them standards. Whether your school is on Common Core or State Standards, you have objectives that students are expected to accomplish in a particular time frame- before moving on to the next level. Let's continue with this quest analogy, because it offers some key insights into education as a whole. Quests move the game forward. They set expectations for what the next big move should be and put objectives into a logical sequence. That's great- clear, simple guidelines that help students navigate from one learning activity to another and maximize their educational experience.

Here's the problem... or problems. First, students don't always know what the standards (quests) are. I'm not a big fan of posting standards on the board- even in kid-friendly language- because it doesn't really mean anything to students unless completing the quest grants some form of reward. [We'll talk about rewards later.] Second, quests should be big objectives and as such require time to secure all pieces and complete. If you look at only English Language Arts, there are four Common Core strands (reading, writing, speaking/listening, and language) and 42 Anchor Standards if you split reading into literature and informational text. That's 42 quests in nine months- for just one subject! Quests take time, energy, dedication, and a sense of purposefulness- by the one on the quest, not the guide. Good luck with that.

Finally, quests don't take into effect the differences in questers (students). Some students start school with strong foundations- lots of skills and information to craft into knowledge with which to solve problems and gain more skills. Some students start school with no foundation and have to work to build it from scratch. Some students are better strategists than others. Some students have more time to quest than others. Some students "get" how to work the system and accomplish more. Some students have extra money to buy a "Mountain of Gold" or a "Dragon's Bounty" and start with a clear advantage (I'm back to the actual Knights and Dragons game now, but the same principle applies.)

To bring it around full circle, the point is this. Building strong foundations is important to accomplishing any quest- whether the quest is fair, reasonable, or even known is irrelevant to this fact. In order to build a great foundation, you have to keep working at it. You have to build and add, build and add, build and add, then test. If you want to know how well you've built it, you've got to test it, analyze the results, and evaluate the next round of additions. Keep building and adding to your repertoire of teaching strategies, knowledge of environment, curriculum and materials, and all of the outside factors that influence how effectively you teach. For every step up into new knowledge, build two steps out for support. And remember, it's the little things you do that add support for the big risks later on.