This video.  

The gamification movement is currently something that is lighting my educational brain on fire.  I grew up playing “Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?”  probably starting around 4th grade.  “The Oregon Trail,” “Reader Rabbit,” “Jump Start Kids…” etc., I loved the games and I loved the multidimensional learning I gained from them instantly.

It was through gaming that I developed the skills to “explore” technology, to push myself to solve puzzles, and to do and try things with a “fail-forward” attitude.  Games like these helped me with history, geography, technology, reading speed, reading comprehension, memory, math, science, typing speed, and I’m sure more that I’m forgetting.

In Gabe Zichermann‘s TED talk, he states that “Where in the Word is Carmen Sandiego” was the “last substantial hit in the education/video game business.”  He continues to say that it was this game that brought parents, educators, and students all together…and that this was a fantastic game.  He then goes into details that will amaze you about gaming improving IQ and Generation G in the classroom.  He references a study conducted by Ananth Pai, which had results that were something we should really stop and think about.  I don’t want to give away too many details, but if you have a spare 15 minutes or so, I’d highly recommend watching Zichermann’s TED talk.

The first reading I chose for this week is “Developing Mobile Based Instruction” by Martin and Pastore. In this study, Martin and Pastore touch on a topic we’ve already discussed this year, the fact that mobile technologies and online access are becoming more readily available and affordable.  In this particular case study, they looked at the design and development of mobile websites and apps.

They had a group of 8 students developed a mobile app or a mobile website.  The design itself turned out to be more challenging than anticipated.  Getting a mobile app or mobile website to look and function the way that they wanted took considerable knowledge of C++, Dreamweaver, and Java.  And while it looks right on one device, that didn’t mean it would look right on another.  They didn’t go into much detail about what the actual apps or websites contained content-wise, the focus on was the design.

They concluded their study by reiterating the fact that access to technology is increasing.  Additionally, more and more businesses and schools are seeking educational and informational resources that can be delivered via mobile apps and websites.  The stress that the potential for mobile devices to aid in teaching learning is here, we just need to get better at designing and developing the content.

This is where my current dilemma lies.  I have a million ideas of gamification, especially in the English language arts classroom (think – video games to make books and literary devices come alive).  But I lack the design knowledge to make them a reality.  Well, I shouldn’t say that.  I have enough knowledge to make a really basic (read: boring), flat design.  I can make a basic website, I’m sure I could make a basic app, but I couldn’t make something like Battlefield 1.  If anyone has any ideas for where I could be going with this…feel free to steer me in a new direction!  For now, I have this wonderful idea of having my 10th-grade class for the next Unit come up with a classroom design for a game for Shakespeare’s “Othello.”  My head is spinning with new ideas.

For my second reading this week, I dove into “A Mobile Gamification learning System for Improving the Learning Motivation and Achievements” by Su and Cheng.  In their study, they looked at how mobile gamified learning systems helped motivate and improve achievement in an elementary school student’s science classroom.  Early in the reading the stated that,  “Preliminary research suggests that mobile devices can create more active learning experiences, which improve student engagement, learning and course retention (Joosten, 2010).”

In this study, a teacher that had been teaching this class for more than three years, and had three fourth grade classes with 102 students total, conducted the test.  After a lesson on insects, each of the three classes were then split into three groups.  The first used game-based mobile learning to continue learning about insects, the second used conventional mobile learning, and the third use traditional teaching.  The knowledge in each group was determined to be relatively the same before the continued education on insects began.  The study took place over six weeks, the differentiated portion over three of the six weeks.

Some of their findings surprised me!  The number one factor of success among the three groups was the initial interest, followed by gender, and then prior knowledge. Ultimately, “The learning achievement of the experimental group was higher than either of the two control groups which demonstrates that if teachers construct learning experiences, using technologies to help students solve problems and face issues that are important to them, then students will be intrinsically motivated to learn,” (16).  I was cheering at this point.  While I suspected this to be the finding…I was extremely excited to find that it was actually the case!

The information gathered from the gamified group’s post-surveys found that “[t]hese applications could make learning more enjoyable, and greatly increase learner engagement, offering students the opportunity to become more active in their learning process,” (16).  And hasn’t that been the goal all along?  To make the classroom more student-centered?  To make learners self-motivated.  To make learning fun?

While this study was done with science in a 4th-grade classroom, I think the research (and they even say this in their conclusion) points to the fact that gaming in the classroom could have very positive effects on learners in many subject areas and grade levels.

One side note, I wanted to include this since it surprised me and really made me stop and think. In their conclusions, they suggested that, “[p]arent support of gamified learning would greatly affect student learning achievement. In the other words, if parents encouraged students to adopt game-based learning, students would approach this new mode of learning more confidently,” (17).  I hadn’t thought about the parent factor but this does make a lot of sense to me.  When I was growing up, my parents had semi strick “technology” rule especially when it came to the time we spent on them.  Screentime and technology limitations might be making students think that technology is somehow a negative instead of a positive.  Getting parents on board may be a key in making educational gaming and gamification an overall success.

My final reading this week was “The Effects of Cognitive Capacity and Gaming Expertise on Attention and Comprehension,” by Lee and Heeter.  In this reading, they closely look at two studies on educational game-based learning.

Toward the beginning of this reading, I was drawn to this thought, “[m]ere exposure to educational games does not predict learning outcomes.”  These studies look closely as, “how learners’ cognitive abilities affect their learning from digital games and whether some learners are more likely to benefit or become disadvantaged from digital game-based learning,” (2).

Study 1

88 undergraduate students with slightly more men than women all in the 20’s took part in this study.  They used The ReDistricting Game to help students understand gerrymandering, with the underlying and more important message that, ” gerrymandering is a problematic practice and can undermine democracy.”

Study 1 found that the learners’ working memory (WM) had better results than the effect of having more game experience (GE).  This differed from their hypothesis, and they began to think of reasons why this might have happened.  Their first idea was that those with more game experience may have felt that the game was “too easy” and didn’t put enough thought into it, and therefore missed some of the higher level thinking.  Their second idea was that they were so focused on remembering their prior game knowledge, they simply missed the deeper meaning of the game because they were distracted.  In order to see which of the two were more likely, they conducted a second study.

Study 2

In study 2, they used the same game, with a similar test group, but skipped the easier “tutorial” like level of the game, and jumped into the more challenging one.  They looked closely at features like, how many times a participant turned in their work, how many times like clicked on the help feature, how long they read feedback before attempting again, etc. to see if those with more game experience where simply using their prior knowledge so much that they overlooked the content.  They ultimately found that, “[g]aming experts are more likely to approach the game with a sense of understanding that leads them to search for familiar information that are coherent with their schema, overlooking important new information such as the educational messages,” (10).

The main take away from their research was that, “[r]esearchers and practitioners need to not only consider the amount of working memory demand that a game imposes on the learners but also examine where learners allocate their attention and design the game to support players so that they will notice and process the underlying educational messages,” (11).  They feel that experienced gamers can do well with the more in-depth information, but only if it is presented in a way that aligns with their previous knowledge of gaming.

This really got me thinking about gamification in the classroom.  What if prior knowledge turns out to be a distractor from the content for the experienced gamer?  Would warning them of the pitfalls help, that was something this study didn’t test.  I know when I’m told to “read something closely” or “pay particular attention to…” I tend to tread more carefully.  I would consider myself a semi-experienced gamer.  If given a warning, I think that would make a big difference for me.  I play a game with my students from iCivics for my unit on the teleplay, “Twelve Angry Men.”  In this game, it’s easy to click away until you stumble upon the right answer, but I warn my students, this won’t get you the most points.  Even my lowest students performed that game well, as did my highest achievers.  It made a lasting impression on them and I all played it more than I required and asked if they could explore the rest of the website.  I was inspired to include a game in my class for another one of my grad courses last Spring, it was exciting to

I play a game with my students from iCivics for my unit on the teleplay, “Twelve Angry Men.”  In the play, the characters are all part of a jury and need to come to a unanimous decision to decided if a teenager is guilty or innocent of murdering his father. In this game, they need to decide if the defendants are guilty or innocent using the evidence provided and then convince the rest of the jury of their opinion.  It would be easy to click away until you stumble upon the right answer, but I warn my students, this won’t get you the most points for spending a short amount of time on the game, and for not interacting with all of the evidence and characters.  I think this makes a big difference because even my lowest students performed well in the game, as did my highest achievers.  It made a lasting impression on them and many played the game more times than I required and asked if they could explore the rest of the website.  I was inspired to include a game in my class for another one of my grad courses last Spring, it was exciting to see a part of my course come to life with games!

Putting it all Together

In Martin, Pastore, and Snider’s study, I realized the limitations and concerns for developing mobile apps and websites. In Su and Cheng’s study, I saw the potential for gaming to lead to engaged learners with higher comprehension, and in Lee and Heeter’s study, I saw the potential of prior knowledge of gaming and game design to lead to overconfidence (and therefore a false sense of understanding) that may lead to lower comprehension. Lee and Heeter said, “[w]e need to understand how learners approach and process information in digital games so that educators and developers can design better curriculum and game systems that support different learner needs,” (11). If you don’t already think games have a huge role to play in educations future, then I urge you to go back and watch the TED talk at the beginning of my post by Zichermann. Taking what else I read I think that is a great way to summarize where we are at with gamification. We are in a place where we need to think critically about the types and delivery of educational games so that they are meaningful, engaging, and leading to deeper levels of understanding for both experienced gamers and beginners.

Martin, F., Pastore, R., & Snider, J. (2012). Developing mobile based instruction. TechTrends, 56 (5), 46-51

Su, C.-H. and Cheng, C.-H. (2015), A mobile gamification learning system for improving the learning motivation and achievements. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 31: 268–286.

Lee, Y.-H., and Heeter, C. (2017) The effects of cognitive capacity and gaming expertise on attention and comprehension. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 33: 473–485.

Zichermann, G. (2011). How games make kids smarter. Retrieved October 14, 2017, from https://www.ted.com/talks/gabe_zichermann_how_games_make_kids_smarter

In Dunleavy and Dede’s except from “Augmented Reality Teaching and Learning,” they looked at AR in mobile technologies such as handheld tablets and smartphones in informal and formal settings.  At the beginning of the reading, they distinguished the differences between the two major types of AR 1) location-aware (videos, text, audio, graphic, etc. that are activated as you move through an area via GPS), or 2) vision-based AR that is activated with a QR code.  I liked the quote they included here, “These two forms of AR (i.e., location-aware and vision-based) leverage several smartphone capabilities (i.e., GPS, camera, object recognition and tracking) to create “immersive” learning experiences within the physical environment providing educators with a novel and potentially transformative tool or teaching and learning (Azuma et al., 200 I; De de, 2009; Johnson, Smith, Willis, Levine, &
Haywood, 2011 ),” especially the use of the word “immersive” and “transformative.”  This idea of AR making for an immersive and transformative experience for students was one of the reasons why I choose this for one of my readings this week, to hopefully learn more about AR and think of ways to include it in my own classroom.

Of the two types, this reading focused on location-aware AR.  They said one of the main drivers for this push toward AR is that there is, “One of the major criticisms of instruction…is the low rate of far-transfer generated by presentational instruction. Even students who excel in educational settings often are unable to apply what they have learned to similar real-world
contexts.” This really stood out to me, because it is something they have been hounding us on during our professional development sessions this year, and also looking for in our informal walk-throughs each week.  If they see too much “teacher lead” discussions or lecture, we’re getting it mentioned in our notes.  Because of this, I’ve been trying to find something more interactive than simply a virtual field trip, like AR, for my Greek and Shakespearian plays.  I haven’t found anything groundbreaking yet, but I did run across this very neat article that talks about AR in theatre and some of the struggles/benefits to using it!

In the next section, they showed a detailed graph of different AR that four major research groups looked into.  They then break down their findings.  A few of their positive findings were that the 1-to-1 device ratio led to more ways for students to participate, it allowed educators to use physical space differently, it encouraged unique note-taking opportunities, and it showed significant increases in students motivation.  Of these positives, the one that most appeals to me is the increase in student motivation.  I feel that this would be challenging to accurately “measure” and so stating it so boldly must mean that it was very significant.  If I could increase my students’ overall motivation to want to learn – I’d be extremely grateful!

Next, they addressed some of the negatives.  With the number one issue surprising me, cognitive overload.  Rarely do I think of cognitive overload, and yet – when I stopped to think about it, this does make a lot of sense.  Students in an immersive learning experience could very easily become overwhelmed, I see it every day especially with my new students in an online classroom.  Too many tabs, too many overdue assignments, too many…xyz.  In an immersive environment, seeings all sorts of directions and options at once might lead some students to shut down completely.  This section also talks about the cultural and developmental hurdles that designers and educators face.

The next section dives into the details of the design features of AR.  It touches on location, narrative, roles, and experience mechanics.  If you’re at all interested in the development and ideas that AR research has come up with to make AR something that designers could make easy for educators to work on themselves, I would recommend looking over the outline on pages 741-743.

The reading ends by saying, “Due to the nascent and exploratory nature of AR, it is in many ways a solution looking for a problem.  More accurately, AR is an instructional approach looking for the context where it will be the most effective tool amongst the collection of strategies available to educators.”  After reading this piece of AR, I have realized that this isn’t a good direction to head with my lesson design.  I don’t even own technology that would allow me to do much with AR, I doubt that many of my students to either.  In addition, currently, AR is mostly conducted in a singular space.  My students are spread out all over the state of Ohio, we’re rarely, if ever, in the same place, making this particular form of lesson delivery, unattainable.  Glad to have learned more about a hot topic!  Perhaps with its development, this will someday be something I can use with my students.

Augmented Reality (especially games): Dunleavy, M., & Dede, C. (2014). Augmented reality teaching and learning.  (pages 735-745).

The reading from “An Online Badging System Supporting Educators’ STEM Learning,” was from the Learning, Design, and Technology department of Penn State University.  Gamrat and Zimmerman were both apart of the program it seems (my attention is officially grabbed).  Their research was looking at the informal use of badges in a professional development project. I chose this as a topic, because my current LMS system has badges as options for teachers to create and assign.  We can give them out to specific students, for example, I made a few badges that were for reading out loud in class or giving a particularly interesting response in class, showing improvement, etc., I also have badges set up to be earned when students complete a Unit, certain assignments, etc.  I wanted to learn more about the topic, to better utilize this feature for my students.

Gamrat and Zimmerman begin their study by defining digital badges, and explaining where they are mainly found.  They use the five key areas as identified by Antin and Churchill, for digital badging in social media and online games.  These five areas include, ” (a) setting goals and providing feedback on goal achievement, (b) providing instruction about what activities are possible, (c) building a user’s reputation based on interests, (d) serving as a status symbol and documenting achievements, and (e) showing affiliation with a community.”  Moving toward their studies with education, these five key areas adapted to something more like, “(a) rewarding and motivating achievements, (b) credentialing or recognizing learning, (c) acting as markers that learning has occurred for learners themselves, the learners’ teachers or mentors, and the learners’ peers.”

They explained that their overall goal was to, “examine learners’ badge-earning pathways in order to refine learning theory about how the things that learners learn in one setting can be applied to another consequential setting via computer tools,” their aim was to build on previous research that looked at how to think about designing for learning across different settings.

Here was their research question, “How do learners interact with elements of a digital badging system including the goal statements, logs, materials submitted to earn a stamp or badge, and their mentor?” in order to best answer this question, they looked at 36 teachers, and 11 of those in-depth, using a system called Teacher Learning Journey’s (TLJ), a professional development (PD) site that support K-12 STEM subject area badge drive PD.

Their findings were varied and interesting, to say the least!  One of the big highlights though were that teachers did not find the badges in and of themselves to be especially motivating, they felt that the content they were learning was motivation for the enough on its own.  While many of the participants valued badges higher than just earning a CEU, Gamrat and Zimmerman felt that it perhaps stressing the badges value may make them seem more desirable.  One major finding of their study was that the more personalized and specific a teacher’s goal was, the greater their experience with the TLG.

As I reflect on this study, I am trying to think of how I can use this information in my classroom.  The first thing I wonder about is the need for “choice” to be present for badges to be meaningful.  This was the big takeaway from the data that Gamrat and Zimmerman collected.  I challenge that this might just be the generation of learner.  Teachers in the study were, I’m assuming, older than 25, and this was conducted in 2014-2015…this is an entirely different learner than my students today.  Today, badges are ingrained in their lives from gaming that started for most of them, outside of the classroom.  I was first exposed to “badges” with video games, I find them highly motivating!  I am very motivated by the badge itself, I just want to collect them all (perhaps this is ingrained in me from those Pokemon days….gotta catch ’em all!)!  I get highly discouraged when earning them all is unattainable in a reasonable amount of time.  In fact, our school last year used Simplek12 for their PD, it was a badge-based system and I would be very surprised if I didn’t earn the most badges out of our 60+ teachers.  I was just…motivated!  Once I realized how LONG it would actually take me though…I started to lose interest after I’d earned all the ones I felt I could, in a reasonable amount of time.

My students love earning badges.  I give them out when I think of it, but reading this article and thinking about what I know about this “gamer” generation…I think this could be a powerful motivator!  I’m actually very excited to take this to the 10th-grade team on Friday to see if this can increase our engagement and student achievement through badges!

Badging: Gamrat, C., & Zimmerman, H. (2015). An Online Badging System Supporting Educators’ STEM Learning. In D. Hickey, J. Jovanović, S. Lonn, & J. E. Willis (Eds.), Proceedings of the 2nd International Workshop on Open Badges in Education co-located with the 5th International Learning Analytics and Knowledge Conference (LAK 2015) (pp. 12–23).

For my final reading this week, I selected “E-books for Education Uses,” a study conducted by Davison and Carliner.  I’m not sure what to expect going into this reading, but as an English teacher, finding suitable e-books that are easy to read, navigate, download, and in a translation/format that I like, can be challenging!

The majority of this reading focused on defining what devices e-books were used on, the different formats that e-books were delivered in, and then moved on to the user’s acceptance (or lack thereof) of e-books in educational settings.  Interestingly enough, they did a lot of comparisons between e-books and printed books.  Many of their findings showed that a readers tendencies were consistent (for example, if they tended to skim) regardless of which type of book they were reading.  An interesting thing that I found in this section was the discussion of how varied e-books are compared to most textbooks.  Depending on the device, the book will have varied page lengths, font sizes, etc..  Thinking about this from a design point of view was interesting and not what I was expecting from this reading.  The reading ended by saying that, ” researchers need to continue exploring proof-of-concept projects that define what e-books are and how they integrate with other learning activities.”

I have to say, I was surprised by this reading.  It didn’t really hit on anything that I felt was “new information.”  But it did get me thinking about the design of e-books and the potential they have.

I remember a game I had growing up.  It was an interactive book on my computer.  It was a disc, and the story would play and the words would highlight as it read to me, or, I could turn that feature off and read it on my own.  The pages were interactive.  I could click on a word for it’s definition.  The story came to life.

I remember wanting more books like that.  And I know that there are similar software, games, and devices that do the same out there, but primarily for children’s books.  I see a great need for major works in literature to develop e-books with these features.  Clickable words, links to video integrated into the text for historical context, definitions, reading enrichment.  While we’ve been able to “digitize” our paperbacks, I think the need now it to catch these digital copies up to today’s technology standards.

I would LOVE to teach with e-books like this.  Integrating literary guidance (like some websites such as LitCharts) with the power of Google and video…it would be powerful.  Especially for this “older books” that students seem to have trouble engaging with.

e-Books: Davidson, A. L., & Carliner, S. (2014). E-books for educational uses.  InHandbook of Research on Educational Communications and Technology (pp. 713-722). Springer New York.

Name: LitCharts
Reviewed by: Megan Riggers
Details: LitCharts LLC., Released 2015, Most Recent Update 2.0 2016, Compatible with iSO 7 or higher 
Cost: Free, additional in-app features unlocked for 59.40/year or 9.95/monthly

Review: LitCharts is an easy to navigate app (and website) that has literary guides for a huge range of popular texts.  The app is extremely interactive, with clickable links to a variety of different topics, including themes, definitions, character analyses, etc.  This app has a spot for the reader to include comments at the bottom, making it slightly more interactive than some of the other apps I’ve reviewed, but it still is somewhat limited to providing information, not so much applying it (at least not directly).  This reminds me of the “always on” “always on me” reading that we had this year, before if a student wanted to study or read, they had to remember to bring their book, go to the library, as ask a parent to get them a study guide.  With apps like LitCharts, they always have that ability to study, access information for discussions, etc.