Category Archives: Gaming in the Classroom

Those who are regular readers here know that I advocate working alongside students as writers and creators when doing projects. Last year, as part of our first video game design unit, I created the following video game. Since they were doing a science theme, I wanted to do a science theme. But I was wary of doing a game too close to what theirs should be built around (geology concept), so I decided to do a game about famous women scientists. It would also give them a lesson in recognizing the achievements of women in scientific discovery.

I spent time this weekend playing my game (and realizing how challenging it can be … but not impossible!). I don’t think I will change much about it, but I did want to share out some things in Gamestar Mechanic that show how helpful the site is for young game developers like my students.

First, the game:

Next, the site provides useful stats so that you can determine the level of challenge based on actions of players:

Finally, a new tool in Gamestar is the ability to create visual level maps. Here are the three levels of my game:

Peace (in the science of the game),
Kevin

Yet another thing to make me feel guilty ….

I was on my way home from a meeting the other day when I heard an NPR news report about the changes being done to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM IV), and the controversies over the shifts in how we term “grief” after the death of a loved one. At the end of the report, almost as an aside, they mentioned that the issue of “Internet Use Disorder” and video gaming addiction has been added as an area of “study” by the group of researcher/psychiatrists who make changes to the manual, which establishes what is considered a valid diagnosis and how ailments should be treated.

Over at Slate, this is how they put it:

“Essentially, they’re saying that some people who spend a lot of time on the Internet demonstrate similar symptoms to people diagnosed with other addiction disorders, and that the psychiatric community should study it and consider promoting it to a full-blown disorder down the road. ” — from Slate

And Forbes notes:

“Internet Use Disorder has the many of the basic hallmarks of any other addiction. According to the American Psychiatric Association, the crafters of the DSM-V, a person with IUD will experience “preoccupation” with the internet or internet gaming, withdrawal symptoms when the substance (internet) is no longer available, tolerance (the need to spend more and more time on the internet to achieve the same “high”), loss of other interests, unsuccessful attempts to quit, and use of the internet to improve or escape dysphoric mood.” – from Forbes

It seems that video gaming, in particular, have come under scrutiny. And while some basic research yields some news stories that are alarming (although that could be said about any topic you search for), I have yet to see any empirical research data about the negative impact of gaming.

Which is not to say I don’t worry about it. I have three boys, and the older ones play a lot of games and use a lot of apps, and we are constantly seeking a balance between time on technology and time to run around outside in the fresh air. But I still worry about the amount of time my own kids spent with technology, and I worry when I hear students talk about their weekend activities that revolve around gaming, and only gaming.

And here I am, launching into a full-blown video game design unit with my sixth graders! Sigh.

I’ll be honest — even as a full believer in the power of technology and digital tools to expand writing and communication possibilities, and as an advocate for putting more tools into the hands of young people so that they can learn to make choices and have agency when it comes to their digital activity, I also worry every now and then that I am going down the wrong track, and encouraging a reliance on the screen. But, by framing my work around composing and critical thinking and engagement, I convince myself and, I think, my constituents (parents) that our work is powerful and meaningful and worth the screen time.

I hope I am right.

Peace (in the reflection),
Kevin

I owe a big shout-out to Andrea Zellner and Chad Sansing for all the work they have done in sharing how to bring the hacking mentality into the classroom. I’ve followed Chad’s posts and took part in Hackjam sessions with Chad and Andrea, but this is the first time I have overtly brought the hacking mentality into my sixth grade classroom.  I’m using the ideas of hacking/remixing as one point of entry into the start of our video game design unit, and yesterday, we began our discussion with a writing prompt. My sixth graders were asked three questions:

• What comes to mind when you hear the word “hacker” and is it a good or bad connotation?
• What is remixing and is it good or bad to do it?
• Have you ever used cheat codes in a game?

These three questions opened up a slew of discussions for my students. I did a little informal polling about perceptions of hacking, and of my 80 students, only four did not raise their hands when I asked if they think “hacking is a bad thing.” Most of their impressions of the term come from news reports of groups hacking into systems to steal personal information, or the stereotyped geek sitting at his (it seemed to be only a male hacker in their minds) trying to break into a bank or country’s database or something. The way I steered the discussion in this early stage is to talk about hacking as a way of taking something that is designed one way, and reworking it for your own needs or advantage. I gave an example of working on a lawn mower. A part breaks, you don’t have what the repair manual says you need to repair it, so you “hack” a fix with materials you have to make the engine work. That simple analogy seemed to open some eyes about what we were talking about.

Our discussions around remixing was fascinating as well because many of them did not know the term. We’re going to do an activity today around remixing with Lego commercials, and their use of gender stereotypes. And the last stretch of the conversation, about the validity of cheat codes with video games, was the liveliest. Who know I had so many cheaters in the room? Ha. Actually, what we talked about is the shift in players sharing information with larger communities and how cheat code websites and video tutorials are now an accepted and expected part of a gaming community.

The no-tech activity we did involved hacking. I broke students down into small groups and handed each one a chess set, with an extra bag of assorted odd parts: a dice, some tiny little letter cubes, pompom balls, and other things I found in my basement. Their task: To hack the game of chess and remix it into an entirely new board game. They could use any or all of the pieces they had. Each group had 15 minutes to come up with the name of their game, the objective for winning or finishing the game, and the basic rules. My classroom was a hive of activity and collaboration, and mostly, I just stood back and watched them learning together — not just about hacking, but also about working together, expository writing and creative engineering of a system.

They will be sharing out some of the game ideas today in class, as a sort of “elevator pitch” — as if they were trying to sell the game to a company.

I also eavesdropped on them as they worked. Here are some of the things I heard:

• “Here, this needs to be more challenging. (pause). Guys, how about if we did (this) and (this) and then we did (this).”
• “Let’s just keep the rules of chess but call our game something else?” The group responds: “No way!”
• “We’re learning how to hack? In School?”
• “Our game is SO much better than chess. Actually, I don’t know how to play chess. But this game has to be better, right?”
• “The guys who made Monopoly had years to make their game. He gives us 15 minutes. He’s crazy!”
• “Who knew we could hack?”
• “No, wait. That’s too hard. No one would know what to do except us. We need to change it.”
• “I could so do this at home with those boring games my mom keeps in the closet. Neat.”

Peace (in the hack),
Kevin

Here is a video of the Mass Ed Talk I gave over the summer for the Massachusetts Teachers Association. The main idea here is encouraging students to shift from users of media to producers of content through the design and publication of video games.

Peace (in the sharing),
Kevin
PS — you can view some of the other Mass Ed Talks in this playlist, too.

We’re just starting our video game design project, which will stretch through the end of the calendar year. Yesterday, we had a long discussion about the games they like to play (not just video games), and then design elements of games — the good designs, which make you want to return to a game, and the bad, which make you want to abandon the game. These two question will be ones that we return to periodically as they begin to design, create and publish their own science-themed video games at Gamestar Mechanic in the coming weeks.

I took notes during our discussions and made these there word clouds. The concepts and ideas were only the ones that were repeated across my four sixth grade classes. In other words, the lists for all three questions were pretty lengthy. But I was looking for common themes from my four groups of students.

What struck out to me is the popularity of Minecraft these days (a huge leap from last year), and how graphics are front and center for both what they like in good games and what they don’t like in bad games.

The Games They Play

Design Elements that Work

Design Elements that Don’t Work

Peace (in the sharing),
Kevin

PS — if you want to learn more about our video game design unit, you can visit our reflective website from last year, which has student and teacher video reflections, handouts and samples. Go to our Video Game Design website.