Adrian Camm

Perpetual Testing Initiative

Fri, 11 May 2012 15:09:46 +1000

The Perpetual Testing Initiative for Portal 2 was released as DLC on May 8th. Originally, in order to create custom levels or maps for Portal 2, the Hammer Engine needed to be used - now Valve has put level creation into the hands of all with it’s simple to use in-game editor. Below is a map that I put together in about 5 minutes - granted it’s never going to win a prize for aesthetics or level of difficulty - but what it allows is rapid prototyping of ideas and for students to be engaged in iterative design where they design, test, modify, test, modify, get their peers to test, modify and so on.

I have written before about how this game can be used as a vehicle for students to learn about physics concepts such as gravity, momentum, energy, conservation laws and even modern physics such as Einstein-Rosen bridges from the theory of general relativity. An example is the concept of ‘flinging.’

Essentially ‘flinging’ is using the properties of gravity, transferring energy from kinetic to potential and vice-versa, in order to build up enough momentum to traverse distances that would be normally impossible.

In order to make high-quality maps, Hammer will still need to be used to apply textures and lighting effects (by importing your maps created into the SDK) - as this functionality in the in-game editor is quite limited. Overall though, it is excellent - if you haven’t yet played Portal 2 go buy it now - it’s only $6.99 on Steam.

Play Ecosystems & Why You Can't 'Teach' Games

Wed, 09 May 2012 11:54:00 +1000

from http://minecrafteduelfie.blogspot.com.au/2012/05/kids-are-just-kids-sometimes.html

“I caught up with her after the lesson and she said she had a lot of trouble with them, they were not listening to her instructions when asked to not to dig tunnels into the mountain and generally being uncooperative. I must say I am a little disappointed in the students, however does the saying “kids will be kids” excuse the behaviour?

I have been very upfront with the students about how what we do in class, while being used to teach them, is also being used to help other teachers see how this can be used in classrooms to make learning more interesting, both at our school and further afield…

Now I have this class tomorrow, and I will be having a discussion with the class about what they did, and what it means for them, me and other teachers. So my question to you is, how would you approach this situation?”

Roger Caillois in Man, Play & Games (building on Huizinga [1938|1950]) describes the essential characteristics of play as being: 1) free (not obligatory) & 2) uncertain (outcomes are not determined in advance). The emergent behaviour in games and virtual worlds like Minecraft, arise out of a complex interaction between players and the affordances of the play space they inhabit - the affordance of the play space leads to a dichotomy of freedom v control. Freedom in a relative sense compared to absolute freedom (but still freedom) as opposed to the culture of control in the classroom. In this case the teacher is trying to exert control over a space where she has none - this is why as Lisa Dawley from Boise State explains,

“We don’t teach games, we game games.”

Borrowing from complexity theory, an environment such as Minecraft can be characterised as a play ecosystem. It has been designed to facilitate networked play, and has specific features and affordances (freedom & uncertainty) that differ significantly from school environments (control & certainty) - but at it’s core is the fact that it hinges on intrinsic motivators of students wanting to be there, and the fact that students’ experiences are not obligatory and certain. Many educators and indeed parents differentiate between a time for play and a time for learning without seeing the vital connection between them - play is not unproductive - saying that we need to cover ‘x’ in ‘x’ amount of time misses the forest for the trees.

The teacher in the example above, introduces a magic circle of freedom and than attempts to battle the affordance of the space - in MInecraft you can’t tell students to build a model eye for example - more likely it should be creating a space and designing the ‘activity’ in such a way that they want to create an eye. The game world is non-linear which has its own rule set - trying to overlay a rule set that doesn’t make sense to either the game or the player will not work out that well in most cases. This post doesn’t touch on the social aspects of such a space - but I echo Dean Groom’s comments.

My only suggestion would be to lose the specifics - instead introduce students to a fairly broad driving question, and then giving them sufficient time, see what they are capable of. Trust the students and maybe, just maybe, some of them will surprise you.

Design & Analysis of F1 Racing Vehicles

Tue, 08 May 2012 15:45:00 +1000

At Quantum Victoria students have the opportunity to design a Formula 1 racing vehicle using Computer-Aided Design (CAD) software, engage in mathematical modeling, analyze computational fluid dynamics by using a virtual wind tunnel, and then construct their design using a manufacturing unit. They will then race their designs to see who truly has “The Need for Speed.”

This program is multi-faceted and multidisciplinary - it is true PBL. It inspires students to learn about engineering principles such as physics, aerodynamics, design, manufacturing, leadership, teamwork, media skills and project management, and then apply them in practical, creative and exciting ways. It raises awareness of careers and pathways related to Science, Technology, Engineering & Mathematics (STEM). Students use industry level, 3D CAD/CAM and simulation technologies to design, analyze, test, manufacture and race miniature CO2 powered balsa wood cars.

After this 5 day program, students and schools may well be inspired to compete in the F1 in Schools Challenge and work their way to a spot in the World Championships!

Using CATIA, this is an intial design based on design specifications that basically constrain the car to the size of the material being used - in this case balsa with dimensions 223x50x65.

Using the Generative Structural Analysis capabability of CATIA, this is a preliminary Finite Element Analysis to see how the design holds up under external forces.

Using this technique students engage in some sophisticated property analysis of materials including Young’s modulus, Poisson’s ratio, Density, Yield strength’s and coefficients of thermal expansion and look to optimize their design in relation to the material being used.

As part of marketing their car and producing an exhibition display space, students have to produce photo-realistic images and put together an assembly so that their design actually looks like an F1 racing vehicle.

They then render their car assembly to make it appear as if the car is actually real - granted this attempt is miserable (Still learning about photorendering…)

Collaborations between industry partners and actual designers and engineer’s are encouraged, as students learn about computational fluid dynamics, virtual wind tunnels and CAM processes. Put this all together with designing team shirts, public speaking, project planning, development and management, resource procurement, graphic design and manufacturing engineering, resource management and team work, make this program one with incredible depth.

A photo of a half-machined car. (In the background is our MRC40 CNC Router)

Gadgets, Fetishism & Web 2.0

Sat, 28 Apr 2012 13:02:00 +1000

Jaron Lanier, a pioneer of Virtual Reality, takes apart Web 2.0 mentality and launches an attack on the internet, computing and a culture of gadget fetishism that is driven more by fear than love of technology, in his book You Are Not a Gadget.

Proponents of Web 2.0 talk about the powers of collective knowledge construction but the reality is not always borne out by the facts. Lanier describes this emergent line of thinking as the noosphere - a global brain formed by the sum of all human brains connected through the internet. Lanier basically suggests that to enter a new era of creativity & innovation we need to kill the ‘hive’ mind (noosphere, echo chamber) that is web 2.0.

This line of thought is at odds with the open source movement and Clay Shirky’s concept of Cognitive Surplus which can be summarised as “Lets say that 1% of people’s time, instead of watching TV, is devoted to producing and sharing - this would be equivalent to 98 Wikipedia projects per year of participation.” Lanier counters this with “…if we got all people to say, contribute some seconds to a physics wiki, we would not replicate the achievements of even one mediocre physicist, much less a great one like Einstein.”

The thing that both Shirky & Lanier assume though is that people actually want to contribute - the reality is that often they don’t. We talk about Twitter and PLN’s and all the wonderful sharing, but we are caught up in this concept of the ‘hive mind’ or ‘echo chamber.’ We only need to look at the #commentsforkids and all the coercion that people engage in to artificially produce an audience for students.

From my own experience I would even go as far as suggesting that the idea of cognitive surplus may be nothing more than an idealistic, utopian fantasy - at best a moot point that relies on intrinsic motivators for participation.

For instance, my Games in Education wiki - 187 members and only one has made a contribution. This is ok because I really only use this space to collect interesting research and information about games and GBL - it’s a public/personal space for me as opposed to being a space for collective knowledge construction (which is how a wiki is supposed to operate). This lack of interaction isn’t restricted to this wiki however - being a moderator of various online communities of both adults and children, with memberships ranging from 3500 to 200, some people actively participate more than others. Researcher Jakob Nielsen calls this “Participation Inequality“.

In summary Nielson states that:

90% of users are “lurkers”. These people tend to read or observe, but don’t actively contribute.

9% of users contribute from time to time.

1% of users participate a lot and account for most contributions

Lanier got me thinking about the motivations of people and in particular the study of Game Theory and how this can be applied to the situation.

Game theory is the study of mathematical models of conflict and cooperation between intelligent rational decision-makers. One of the first known uses of Game Theory was to describe and model how human populations behave. By finding the equilibria of games, you can predict how actual human populations will behave when confronted with situations analogous to the game being studied. (A famous example of the application of Game Theory is the Prisoner’s Dilemma)

In game theory, Nash equilibrium (named after John Nash - think A Beautiful Mind with Russel Crowe) is a solution concept of a game involving two or more players, in which each player is assumed to know the equilibrium strategies of the other players, and no player has anything to gain by changing only his own strategy. Overall, an individual can receive no incremental benefit from changing actions, assuming other players remain constant in their strategies. So for a Nash Equilibrium to exist in the game of Collective Knowledge Construction, assuming that the optimum strategy is knowledge building and sharing, no players would change their strategy, despite knowing the actions of their opponents. And this doesn’t play out to be true. As long as we have corporate interests, consultants, publishing companies and old mindsets a Nash equilbria can never be reached. But this use may be slightly incorrect because we assume player participation.

Lanier states,

“Numerical popularity doesn’t correlate with intensity of connection in the cloud”

This book challenges many fundamental assumptions those of us caught up in the hype of web 2.0 make. Regardless of whether you take the time to read Lanier, and whether you agree/disagree with his thoughts, I think this is what we should be looking for: Intensity of Connection - Holding the quality of connections higher than the quantity of connections.

Watch Jaron Lanier’s talk at LWF in January - Learning Through Experience & Play.

Why Children Need Make-Believe Violence

Wed, 11 Apr 2012 11:04:00 +1000

Children play - its how they make sense of the world.

In societies where guns are part and parcel of media and culture, children inevitably at an early age play toy guns and ‘shootouts’. In other cultures, where guns are not part of the local symbology, children play instead with toy spears or bow and arrows.

The act of imaginary weapon play and violence in itself provides children a sense of power as they struggle to make sense of the world around them. In all of popular culture, from Harry Potters magic wand, to the ‘One Ring’ in Lord of the Rings, Excaliber from Arthurian Legend to destructive spells emanating from a child’s seemingly normal open hand, a single object becomes a vehicle for story and a symbol for power - this act of ‘violent’ play is important for the development of a child.

From when they are born to the time they are independent, all children feel powerless to a certain extent. They struggle to learn how to walk, they are dependent on their parents for meals, and what seems easy for adults can be frustratingly difficult for children. This feeling of powerlessness can be especially amplified if the child grows up in an environment of abuse, neglect or poverty.

A Grade 4 student in the school yard who is reenacting a scene from Call of Duty where he’s avatar has snuck up behind an enemy player and slit their throat with his knife, knows that what he is doing is play. The same child who with his friends pretends that he is a Wrestler from the WWE knows that he is not actually a Wrestler from the WWE. Children are using this reenactment to develop emotionally - they are reenacting a story and using it’s emotional power to aid in their development of character. Games enable children to play with certain realities and to take power over them to an extent. Gangsta Rap and movies about seriel killers are similar tools - in engaging in this culture children feel that they understand things better, and feel stronger in the face of such realities.

Most adults are anxious about this type of behaviour. The cybersafety consultants who do the rounds in schools would most likely say to be vigilant in the look out for this type of behaviour. Won’t children who play guns or video games like Call of Duty become desensitised to violence and grow up thinking it’s ok to shoot people? Won’t this act of play, turn out kids who enjoy violence? These anxieties are natural. From years of experience, we know that in reality guns are bad and do lead to violence - but adults mistake play with reality - kids don’t. They have an innate sense of what is play and what is real.

Children need to fantasize, and play, and lose themselves in stories. It’s how they learn. Most anxieties and fears about make-believe violence and violent video games come from ignorance, media ‘beatups’ and hyperbole or perpetrated soceitel ‘myths’ - Henry Jenkins debunks these myths about video games in his article Eight Myths About Video Games.

Gerard Jones in his book Killing Monsters states,

“Nearly all the violent stories that kids play with deal with lessons about courage, resiliency and development. It is the action itself - the process of identifying with a character who is faced with a physical threat and fights back with every resource he can find - that transmits some basic life lessons:

Achievement feels good.

Goals are achieved through complete commitment.

Clear Choices must be made.

Sometimes conflict is useful.

Sometimes shattering old ways is necessary.

Loss and defeat are survivable.

Risk has it’s rewards.

We can feel fear - but do it anyway.

Monsters can be destroyed.

Self-assertion is powerful.

Simply being me is heroic.”

Cloak of Darkness: Using IF for systems thinking

Fri, 06 Apr 2012 19:52:03 +1000

Having first written about using Text-Based Adventures in education back in 2009, my interest in them as a tool for teaching programming concepts, game design, literacy and systems thinking has been renewed. Exploring Interactive Fiction (IF) design systems such as Inform7 and Adrift, I have found Quest to be probably the best for small projects ideally suited to K12 education. The desktop client is currently for PC only, but a beta Chrome Store Quest app is now available for use on any platform.

Following the tutorials available to familiarise with the tool, I decided to attempt to write my own small game based on Roger Firths “Cloak of Darkness” specification. This is the programming equivalent of ‘hello world’ in the IF space. Firths specification for this game are as follows:

There are just three rooms and three objects.

The Foyer of the Opera House is where the game begins. This empty room has doors to the south and west, also an unusable exit to the north. There is nobody else around.

The Bar lies south of the Foyer, and is initially unlit. Trying to do anything other than return northwards results in a warning message about disturbing things in the dark.

On the wall of the Cloakroom, to the west of the Foyer, is fixed a small brass hook.

Taking an inventory of possessions reveals that the player is wearing a black velvet cloak which, upon examination, is found to be light-absorbent. The player can drop the cloak on the floor of the Cloakroom or, better, put it on the hook.

Returning to the Bar without the cloak reveals that the room is now lit. A message is scratched in the sawdust on the floor.

The message reads either “You have won” or “You have lost”, depending on how much it was disturbed by the player while the room was dark.

The act of reading the message ends the game.

You can play my attempt at Cloak of Darkness online at http://www.textadventures.co.uk/review/468/

In the classroom, I would have students first play one of the Infocom Text Adventures and perhaps unpack verbs, nouns, game mechanics, space and narrative and maybe even get them to do a mapping exercise of the world in question. (A discussion could also be included about Choose Your Own Adventures and Fighting Fantasy.) This would be followed by an introduction to the Quest editor and a discussion about verbs, nouns, objects, rooms, dialogue, first, second and third person narrative perspectives, If->Then statements, attributes etc. and their first project would be to create their own version of the “Cloak of Darkness.”

This would be approached by having them map out the required rooms on A3 paper and then use brainstorming cards to map out their proposed game. Students would be routinely asked to go through the process of rapid prototyping and iterative design by having their peers playtest and provide feedback. By engaging in something like this, students are building their skills and confidence leading up to their final project, which would be a game of their own design. Assessment of their final project/game would include:

Competence - the game should handle the user interactions expected for a piece of interactive fiction.

Immersiveness - the degree to which a player loses him or herself in the game world.

Completeness - the world should have a reasonable number of room and objects.

World Design - non-linear story with several puzzles to solve.

Prose Quality - the room descriptions should draw the player into the game.

Interactivity - the player should have interesting objects and environments to manipulate.

Fun - the game should entertain the player and motivate him or her to play often.

A question that educators at all levels should ask themselves is “What would you do with a computer if their was no internet access?” Using Interactive Fiction enables students to engage with game design whilst not having to worry about skill in designing digital art - and it is a great literacy workout too.

IF resources:

Welcome to Interactive Fiction

IF Delicious Stack

Interactive Fiction Wiki

Zork Library

Brainstorming Cards

Interactive Fiction Authorship

Play IF Cheat Sheet

Red Dead Redemption: Liars Dice

Thu, 05 Apr 2012 10:15:33 +1000

One of the mini-games in Read Dead Redemption is Liar’s Dice.

Liars dice is a game of incomplete information which distinguishes it from games like chess and backgammon where you can always see what your opponent is doing. The art of liars dice is filling the gaps in the incomplete information provided by your opponents bidding, and at the same time preventing your opponents from discovering any more than what you want them to know about your roll.

Originating in South America and originally going by the name of Perudo, this game is inherently engaging for students.

Rules:

•2 to 4 people are the ideal number of players

•Each player starts with 5 six-sided dice and something to conceal their roll

•All players initially roll their dice for everybody to see. Highest numerical total starts play

•The ‘One’ is wild

•All players now roll their dice so that they are concealed from the other players

•Each player in the game, proceeding clockwise, must make consecutively higher bids or call ‘liar’.

•A bid consists of a number and the value of a die. For example a bid of ‘Three Sixes’ could be followed by “Four fives” or “Six fours”

•As long as the bid is either numerically greater or contains more of the one bid it is valid. For example, if player 1 bids ‘Four Sixes’ player 2 could bid either ‘Five Sixes’ or ‘Five Fives’ as 5 x 5 = 25 which is greater than 4 x 6 =24

•If the opening bid consists of ‘Ones’, ‘Ones’ are no longer wild

•When a player is called ‘liar’, all players reveal their dice. For example, if you bid ‘Four Sixes’ and someone calls you ‘liar’ your bid is correct if between all players at the table, there are at least ‘Four Sixes’

•If you are caught ‘lying’ you lose a dice and play resumes. If there is at least the number of dice that you bid the person who unsuccessfully called you a ‘liar’ loses a dice and play resumes

•The last player with dice is the winner (of course, as with any game, there are variations to these rules)

The skill of liars dice consists of knowing when to tell the truth and when to ‘bluff’ and also when to call someone’s bluff. Obviously the optimum strategy is to mix bluffing with statistical estimation of what’s on the table.

Since the other players have to base their estimation of the dice on what you bid, if you can get away with a bluff in the early rounds you can affect their estimates of what’s on the table.

For example, all players roll their dice. Player 1 has 3 3 4 5 2, Player 2 has 6 6 3 2 4 and Player 3 has 6 1 3 3 5. Player 1 opens the bidding and bids ‘Three Sixes’. Player 2 has two sixes himself so bids ‘Four sixes’. Player 3 also has a six and a one so bids ‘Five Sixes’. Player 1 holds no sixes so can fairly confidently call liar with the odds being in his favour.

The early bluff is misleading information designed to skew the perception of the other players. When a player makes a bid that the information he has does not support, that bid is likely to be accurate based on simple probability, but other players will think the bid was made because the player had some part of the bid in his own dice. This in turn causes the other players to inflate their own bids based around that value, increasing the likelihood that those bids will be false.

Once other players are aware that you like to bluff with an opening bid, it can be to your advantage to start semi-bluffing. Lets say you have the opening bid and you roll 6 6 1 3 2. Bid ‘Five Sixes’. Player 2 thinks that you are bluffing and calls you ‘liar’. The probability is definitely in your favour that Player 2 and Player 3 have each got either a one or a six.

Position is one of the key elements affecting virtually every bid in liars dice. The game is heavily weighted in favour of the player acting first. Aggressiveness in this position ensures that you control the round. For example, an opening bid of ‘Three Twos’ is relatively weak and gives the other players a lot of room to move, potentially exposing yourself to a precarious situation later in the round. By demonstrating weakness on the opening bid, you have relinquished your powerful position to the next player who can then take control of the round. A much more dominating and aggressive bid might be ‘Five Fives’ or ‘Four Sixes’. An aggressive opening like this one puts pressure on the other players immediately and gives you control of the round.

A complete strategy of liars dice is inherently complex because it takes into account not only the dice that each player is holding but also the state of the game in general. After experimentation you will find that certain players exhibit certain tendencies and that their are subtle differences in game play between a game involving two players and a game involving more than two.

Good liars dice players, to one degree or another tend to possess knowledge of game theory and the following characteristics:

•Mathematical proficiency – Ability to accurately calculate probabilities

•Reading skill – Ability to determine if a player is telling the truth or is obviously bluffing

•Flexibility – The ability to modify their approach to the game based on their opponents and what their opponents ‘know’ of their game

•Awareness – Constantly scanning opponents, looking for clues that assist in decision making

•Aggression – An attacking dominating style

The movie, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Mans Chest, also gives a variation of Liars Dice (seen below) and an online version of ‘Pirates Dice’ has been created by Disney, where you get to wager your soul as you play against Davey Jones and his crew.

I have provided here a brief overview of an opinion on liars dice. It is not meant to be comprehensive, but instead is provided to guide thinking when developing your own strategy and to help you guide students in their own exploration of this game.

Feedback welcome.

Hexacopter

Fri, 23 Mar 2012 15:13:00 +1100

Testing our Hexacopter at Quantum Victoria. (Obviously we are still having a few issues with stabilization and the altimeter - kudos to Paul Taylor who is ironing out these bugs)

The Hexacopter’s features go far beyond the basic manual control RC multicopters on the market today. Unlike RC-only multicopters, our Hexacopter is a complete UAV solution, offering both remote control and autonomous flight via GPS, including waypoints, mission planning and telemetry displayed on a powerful ground station that integrates with Google Maps.

In the next week or so, we will be putting it though it’s paces.

Mission Planning Interface

There is nothing wrong with this picture

Thu, 15 Mar 2012 19:54:12 +1100

Today I spent the day with Grade 3&4 students playing & designing in Little Big Planet and learnt more about them in 4 hours than some teachers would in six months - and yet, some teachers would scoff at this picture and say that it isn’t rigorous and nothing of value could possibly be going on here. Play is for home. Play is for ‘free-time.’ Play is for children and only after the ‘hard work’ has been done…

At its most basic level, play fosters creativity and imagination and connects pleasurable emotions to learning. This is what ‘back to basics’ should be all about.

Play with your students. Get down on their level. Learn with them.

It’s empowering.

Make Chrome Store Games With Construct 2

Mon, 12 Mar 2012 16:22:15 +1100

Construct 2 is a relatively new HTML5 game making tool. Currently available only on PC, this powerful engine allows you to make Chrome store & Facebook Games, with zero game making or programming experience.

There are lots of tutorials available, but if you are the type that feels that they need a bit more direction than you can currently take a Construct 2 course on Udemy for $149.

Catch a short demo of Construct 2 by the Scirra team.

Data Driven Bullshit

Sun, 11 Mar 2012 20:43:00 +1100

Yesterday I saw a Grade 3 child, who has a love for learning and life, retreat into a shell of his former self. This child has missed the entire last week of school, and since the year began, almost missed 15 days of school, due to very significant home issues.

It broke my heart.

If students are struggling at school, ask yourself why? Is it that the ‘curriculum’ is beyond it’s use by date or is it because the child is having such a difficult time outside of school and is being asked to behave in both a mature & emotional level well beyond their years? Think of the impact that a difficult home environment has on the development of a child, and then compare this with the pettiness and insignificance of data driven approaches that require a child to be tested till they bleed.

Seriously, what is the purpose of education? It’s about the kids. The emotional well-being of kids. Lets get in touch with reality…

Games & School: The Failure Argument

Sun, 04 Mar 2012 13:27:37 +1100

Failure is a concept that we are all familiar with. In school you likely passed or failed. You made the basketball or football team or you didn’t. And if you did fail, perhaps your parent or guardian was there to tell you, “don’t worry about it, we will try harder next time and you will succeed, mark my words.” Except in rare circumstances where a students intrinsic motivation, life at home and belief in oneself is in perfect harmony, the most likely result from students failing at something is that they will expect to perform similarly on similar tasks in the future. Failure engenders a feeling of incompetence or helplessness in most people.

In Perceiving the Causes of Success or Failure, Weiner states that when one thinks of success or failure, the four factors that come to mind are effort, ability, luck and difficulty. The first two factors, effort and ability are features of the student, whilst the last two are external.

When the emphasis is on how students are performing, like it is in most schools, the perception of static intelligence is perpetrated throughout the community, usually during conversations between parents and their children, “I was never any good at math,” which in turn becomes a vicious cycle of self-fulfilling prophecy which alienates children from the subject area that their parents were no good at. This mindset is the ability mindset, and hints at the fact that no matter how much effort one puts in, they are just not that intelligent when it comes to mathematical thinking.

Alfie Kohn, in The Schools Our Children Deserve, states that,

“When kids are led to focus on how well they are performing in school, they tend to explain their performances not by how hard they tried but by how smart they are. Research demonstrates that when students who explain how well their doing on the basis of ability, tend to think less deeply and carefully about what they’re learning.”

As an aside, this is my main problem with gamification - the adding of an extrinsic layer is at odds with what makes a learning activity or a game good in the first place. What typically motivates a student/player to gain mastery over a game and spend a great deal of time with it is intrinsic. The reward mechanic of a game or learning activity (leveling up, unlocking an ability or item) is only a small part of what makes it successful. By adding a rewards layar to something in the classroom (badges, experience points - Lee Sheldon, The Mutiplayer Classroom), sometimes the focus then becomes the reward, to the detriment of what you were trying to achieve initially - mastery over content. In a ‘Gamified’ classroom, how many students are just brushing over content superficially in order to ‘level up’ as quickly as possible? Gamification assumes that a player/student isn’t especially motivated to begin with, and then provides incentives to ramp up that motivation - with games it is the opposite - students are motivated to begin with and it is the design of the game that provides motivation, namely that students are always within their zone of proximal development. A consequence of this is that gamification than has the potential to glamorize a poorly designed curriculum, or curriculum that may have been no good to begin with.

The argument or comparison about failure in games and schools is something I have been struggling with. At it’s most basic level it seems too simplistic.

Failure is discouraged at school - in school, typically the process is that students would hand in an essay, project etc. for the teacher to grade. This assessment is summative and depending on the circumstance, one could argue that the student learns very little about the process, irrespective of the depth of feedback obtained from their teacher. The student either fails or they pass. And then they move onto the next topic. Whereas with well-designed games, a culture of informal formative assessment is present, where failure is a form of progression rather than being a sorting mechanism, and the feedback gained in real-time allows the player to adapt and overcome any and all obstacles in front of them.

James Paul Gee often talks about video games creating a psychosocial moratorium - that is a learning space in which the learner can take risks where real-world consequences are lowered. The cost of failure in these environments is not prohibitive, as it is so often in schools. As Gee is one of the definitive scholars in using games for learning, most cite his work and say that school should then be more like a game. And this is where I have difficulty. Think of the most complicated game that has levelling mechanics, maybe World of Warcraft, maybe Skyrim, and apply this process of failure as a form of progression. A player grinds toward the next level up, often fails, but then gains mastery or unlocks a new skill such as the ability to cast a new spell. Relating this to the current state of education; the grind is the process of gaining mastery, whilst the level-up is the point in which one can fluently wield the destructive powers of say, Calculus.

I don’t think I like the comparison. Yes, the structure of the curriculum should allow repeated failures and allow students to go through a process of iteration in relation to their coursework. And yes, as educationalists, I believe that we have much to learn from games designers and can leverage much of what makes games so compelling in our design of engaging curriculum. But something doesn’t sit easy with me when making this comparison between games and school…

What am I missing?

Medieval Re-Design

Sun, 29 Jan 2012 10:21:00 +1100

Your typical Medieval PBL unit would typically be built around a driving question like “What was life like in 14th century England?” Students would research clothing, art, music, food and perhaps have a culminating event like medieval bread baking. This is inauthentic PBL in my opinion and doesn’t do this incredible period of time justice.

Stirling Castle, standing high on a Volcanic crag, dominates the land below, and is equalled only by Edinburgh Castle in it’s age and prestige. The Castle’s strategic importance, being situated as the gateway to the highlands, saw it besieged at least 15 times during it’s history. On a recent visit, I learnt that Stirling Castle changed hands 8 times during the Scottish Wars of Independence between 1296 - 1357.

Geographically, the Castle is almost impregnable on three sides, so it’s defences were focused on the inclined approach from the south-east. As I walked the Castle’s walls and looked out towards Stirling Bridge and then the fields of Bannockburn, I wandered why, given the fortress-like nature and position of this Castle, was it susceptible to being sacked so frequently?

To me this is a more authentic approach to a Medieval PBL unit which might be derived from asking a question like, “Could the sacking of Stirling Castle have been avoided?”

This is a rich question that is open-ended enough to allow all students, after under-taking some preliminary research, scope to take this unit in the direction that interests them most. Using Sketchup or Minecraft, you could challenge your students to re-design Stirling Castle, inline with the geography and technologies of the day, to be able to better withstand an attack or invasion. This approach would allow you to investigate politics, architecture, geography, science, materials, mathematics and culture, all through the lens of the Castle. Students would investigate a Castle as a defensive structure built for strategic purposes and investigate the different architectural components like towers, defensive walls, inside buildings, etc.

Even better, you could get them into some game-based learning using Castles 1&2. I remember first playing this castle-building sim on my Amiga 600, and it has stood the test of time surprisingly well. For only $5.99, it should be affordable for most schools.

From the website,

“Welcome to the world of Castles - a game of medieval diplomacy, treachery and power. To win you must survive. To survive you must scout the surrounding territories, defeat the local militias, subjugate the land with a Castle, feed and maintain the people, forge diplomatics alliances, appease the Church and unite the land under your iron fist.

There’s more. Now you can watch 30 minutes of BBC documentary footage which shows you how and why castles were constructed, planned, besieged and attacked prior to the age of gunpowder. Using this knowledge, you can create your own original castle designs or choose from 10 historical castles for your own personal fortress.”

In Video Games and Learning, Kurt Squires talks about the cognitive benefits of having students explore history by having it situated in context. Using games like Civilization or Castle’s to explore history, not only provides this situated context but allows an even more sophisticated form of experiential pedagogy to emerge where bias, gameplay, mechanics, inaccuracies, simplifications, generalisations and perspectives can all be explored.

Nintendo at Oakdale

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 04:37:56 +1100

Dawn Hallybone recently hosted Lynette Barr and I at Oakdale Junior School, where we got to see some games-based learning in action in a primary setting.

As the students entered the room they were instructed to collect a Nintendo DS and then sitting in pairs, use the Time Lapse activity, which is part of Dr Kawashima’s Brain Training. Time Lapse displays two analog clocks and requires the students to calculate the difference in time between these clocks.

The students were given ten minutes to complete as many of the problems as possible. Students were discussing their strategies and engaging in some genuine collaborative problem solving. Too often, students are put into ‘solitary confinement’ in the classroom due to traditionalists evoking romantic, and somewhat deluded notions of nostalgia, where ‘rigorous learning’ only occurs independently, but this deprives students of one another’s ideas and disagreements.

“Thus, the source of intellectual growth is conflict.” - Alfie Kohn

There has been much research both supporting and debunking the cognitive benefits of using Brain Training, but used in this context I could see real benefit in having students verbalize their thinking. (see:

the findings of the small scale Improving Mental Mathematics research trial conducted by Learning and Teaching Scotland.
Brain Training? Think Again published in the Guardian
Does Brain Training really work? by Dr. Jack Lewis

Once the DS’s were put away, the students engaged in some data collection Using Wii Sports for Averages, where the data they collected was used to explore the concepts of mean, median and mode. Students were hypothesising and conjecturing without fear of being incorrect, and some deductive and logical reasoning was evident that is unusual to see in students of that age - eg. “Well, I know that the answer isn’t…”

Repetition, reinforcement, processing, active learning and communication were all evident as students ‘oohhed’ and ‘ahhed’ there way through a game of ten-pin bowling. Something very simple that shifted the emphasis of the classroom, was the fact that each group had a small whiteboard and whiteboard marker to use - this shifted the emphasis from taking notes and filling in worksheets, to having students internalize the concepts by engaging in discussions with their peers and their teacher. Something simple, but I felt it made a real difference to engagement levels.

“Talking is not merely a way of conveying existing ideas to others; it is also a way by which we explore ideas, clarify them and make them our own.” - Michael Marland

Every minute a teacher is doing the talking is a minute this isn’t happening. Very little direct instruction was given as Dawn didn’t monopolize the classroom and gave her students a real chance to talk - and therefore to learn.

A big thanks to Dawn for her hospitality!

Pyramide du Louvre

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 03:40:56 +1100

The Pyramide du Louvre is in the Cour Napoleon of the Palais du Louvre. It aligns with the Arc de Triomphe and the obelisk in the Place de la Concorde giving a truly spectacular view that sweeps from the Louvre through the Luileries and continues up the Champs-Elysees to the Place de i’Etoile.

In Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code, Robert Langdon states at one stage that the Pyramid contains 666 panes of glass embedded within the numerous rhomboids and triangles making up it’s outer surface. According to various sources this is one of the myths that Brown took a creative licence with.

From Wikipedia -

“counting the panes is remarkably easy: each of the four sides of the pyramid has 18 triangular panes and 17 rows of rhombic ones arranged in a triangle, thus giving 153 rhombic panes. The side with the entrance, however, has 11 panes less (9 rhombic, 2 triangular), so the whole pyramid consists of rhombi and triangles, 673 (outside) panes total. If the entrance was designed to be six panes wide at the base (just as it is in reality) and four (instead of two) panes high, the number of panes would be indeed 666 (598 rhombi and 68 triangles).”

(I still love the Da Vinci Code…)

The Louvre itself is spectacular and I could of easy spent a week wandering the galleries and corridors. Our tour guide, Charlotte told us that,

“if you spent only 3 seconds at each piece at the Louvre, it would take 4 months, both day and night, to see the entire museum collection.”

Seeing the works of Da Vinci was one of many highlights.

Incorporating the works of Da Vinci into the mathematics classroom would be a great way to instill in students a sense of history and culture. Using the Last Supper, Mona Lisa and Vitruvian Man, students could explore and investigate concepts like perspective, depth, the Golden Ratio, Golden Rectangle, proportion and both 2D and 3D geometry.

Prime Meridian

Sat, 21 Jan 2012 04:09:22 +1100

From Newton’s clockwork universe through to Einstein’s relativistic effects of time dilation, classic science fiction movies like 12 Monkeys, Terminator and Inception, through to the deep philosophical questions of Plato and Aristotle - the human race has an inherent fascination with time.

(I once set a Physics assignment that had students watch the movie 12 Monkeys, and then using the film as a stimulus, answer a question that deals with destiny, time and fate - an authentic way to have students discussing the philosophy of time, time travel, debating their own thought experiments, classical v modern physics, implications etc. Students actually wanted to spend every second of their time researching and discussing mind-blowing questions like “Is the present actually the past?” Seriously, think about that one…)

More simply though, ask your students “Why do different parts of the world have different times?” and you will get a variety of answers. In fact, ask many adults the same question and expect to get the same wide variety of responses.

The Royal Observatory in Greenwich is the home of Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) and the Prime Meridian. A meridian is a north-south line selected as the zero reference line for astronomical observations. The line in Greenwich represents the Prime Meridian of the World - a longitude of 0 degrees. Every place on Earth is measured in terms of its distance east or west from this line.

Before 1851, when this absolute reference point was first established, almost every town in the world kept it’s own local time. There were no national or international conventions which set how time should be measured. However, with the vast expansion of the railway and communications networks during the 1850’s, the worldwide need for an international time standard became imperative.

The world’s time zones are based on the fact that the Earth moves through 15 degrees of longitude each hour. Therefore, there are 24 standard time zones (24 hours x 15 degrees = 360). Time zones are counted from the Prime Meridian, with each time zone based on a central meridian, counted at 15 degree intervals from the Prime Meridian, and extends 7.5 degrees to either side of the central meridian. For example, New York City lies in the zone of the 75 degrees west meridian, and that time zone includes all locations between 67.5 degrees west and 82.5 degrees west.

(Since time zones are based on segments of longitude and lines of longitude narrow at the poles, scientists working at the North and South Poles simply use UTC time.)

Using Google Earth, and generating random locations, have students note latitude/longitude of destinations and work out the time in that location. You could also have them investigate physical features of locations and have them answer questions that involve estimation: eg. If one of the locations was Egypt - How far is it from Burundi to the mouth of the Nile?

Have students turn on the latitude/longitude lines in Google Earth (View -> Grid), then from their current location count the number of longitude lines between them and the Prime Meridian. Then they will have to determine if they are east or west of the meridian. If they are west of the Prime Meridian, GMT will be ahead of, or minus, the time at the Prime Meridian. If they are east, the time will be after, or plus, GMT. For example, Melbourne is located 145 degrees east of the Prime Meridian, so Melbourne time is GMT+10 (not taking into account daylight savings)

(Before running this type of activity using Google Earth, it would be worthwhile reading Why Google Earth and the Prime Meridian Don’t Line Up)

The idea of time zones, latitude and longitude is an important one in a world increasingly reliant on GPS. It is not enough for students to use new gadgets or tools, but rather they need to have a certain level of understanding of how these new gadgets or tools actually operate.

What do people think - Is it important for students to know about time zones when they can quite easily use the web to find the time anywhere in the world in an instant?

Inklings at Oxford

Sat, 14 Jan 2012 02:41:00 +1100

Oxford is one of my favourite places in the world.

It is like stepping back in time - from the ancient buildings and grand architecture, Christ Church College, to the feel of an important sense of history and ancient traditions; time seems to slow down.

This visit, among many other things, I visited The Bear Inn and the Eagle and Child Pub, two of the oldest pubs in Oxford. The Eagle and Child Pub is famous as the pub that the Inklings came to discuss literature, writing and life during the 40’s and 50’s. Members of the Inklings included C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien and it is now lore that discussions at this pub contributed to the Lord of the Rings series and the Narnia books.

It is told that many hours were spent in the Eagle and Child smoking pipes, drinking pints, discussing, debating and reading each other’s unfinished works for the other members of the group to critique. A story told by a local we met named Chris, had C.S.Lewis, whilst listening to Tolkien read an unfinished work (Tolkien was a notoriously bad public speaker apparently), interrupt a reading and say, “Oh no, not another fucking elf!”

Needless to say, this story has probably questionable amounts of truth to it…

But I got to thinking about how the Inklings, as a literary group, actually publicly read each other their unfinished work, had it critiqued, and then held discussions and debates around the writing. In school, typically the process is that students write and then hand it in to the teacher for a grade - if they are lucky, the teacher may ask them to post it on a blog. This assessment is summative and depending on the circumstance, one could argue that the student learns very little about the process, irrespective of the depth of feedback obtained from their teacher.

Taking an Inklings approach, and having students read each other unfinished pieces of creative writing, creates a culture of informal formative assessment and invokes many other skills other than just banging out a piece of writing and handing it into the teacher. It invokes higher-order thinking skills, listening, critical analysis and exposes students of all ability to different writing styles and capabilities. Just a thought…

I was recommended the book The Inklings of Oxford: C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien and their Friends. Below is the Trailer.

Exploring Culture through Games

Tue, 10 Jan 2012 18:52:29 +1100

Games are a universal part of human experience and present in all cultures dating as far back as 3000BC. (Although many Archaeologists claim that they have found evidence of board games dating as far back as 9000BC)

From an education perspective, games and game design can teach students system thinking, logical reasoning, spatial awareness, strategy, game theory, the difference between zero-sum and positive/negative-sum games, design thinking, games with complete as opposed to games with incomplete information and how this changes the dynamic of the game etc. - and these are just traditional games. If we start talking about digital games and game design we can also talk about computer science and a host of other important skills and key 21st century competencies that students will need to be successful in a multi-disciplinary, high-tech world.

Games provide meaningful situations for the application of thinking skills that could be dependent or independent of specific skills eg. mathematics. But there is also a big chance to explore cultural and historical perspectives of games.

At the start of each class have students play a unique game that has been used by a particular culture at a period in time - one such game could be Nim.

“Play is the highest form of research.” - Albert Einstein

Allow students sufficient time to play the game. What strategies are they employing? How long does it take to come up with an optimal strategy? Is there a blocking strategy? Is there an advantage for the player going first/second? Does it matter? Then try variations of the game (there are over 70 variations to the game of Nim). Explore the mechanics of the game - does altering the game change students strategies? Have students ‘hack’ the game - how can we change the game to make it easier, more difficult, more interesting? Can we add bias to the game?

Once the game as been explored, have students research the historical and cultural aspects of the game. Have students pick a particular era/culture or moment in history that interests or intrigues them, and then have students design a game that would fit with what we know about that point in time.

Students when presented with this approach have a context for learning and are required to use a range of problem-solving strategies and processes such as:

searching for patterns
applying mathematical thinking
manipulating variables
being systemic
transforming information
backwards design
hypothesising and testing
generalising

Some examples of games to use could be found on the Games in Education wiki or from this list of research papers about games used in different cultures. The most recent addition to the Games in Education wiki is the Ancient Egyptian game, Senet.

I came across Senet today whilst wandering the Ancient Egypt exhibition at the British Museum (British Museum description). The oldest known representation of Senet is in a painting from the tomb of Hesy (Third Dynasty circa 2686-2613 BC).

The Senet game board is a grid of thirty squares, arranged in three rows of ten. A Senet board has two sets of pawns, and the actual rules of the game are a topic of debate (perfect for the classroom - read Gaming with the Gods). Senet historians Timothy Kendell (rules) and R.C. Bell (rules) have each proposed their own sets of rules to play the game.

Why not have students form teams to debate the rules that Kendell and Bell have proposed? And then have them come up with some alternative rules, that they have collaboratively constructed using the evidence they have collected from their analysis of culture and history?

This is authentic learning at its best.

Interested in your thoughts.

KickStarter: Approaching the Elephant

Sun, 11 Dec 2011 14:42:27 +1100

Approaching the Elephant is a proposed documentary by film-maker Amanda Wilder.

From KickStarter;

“Imagine attending a school where it’s up to you what you learn. No class is mandatory. Rules and judicial decisions are determined by democratic vote. Everyone from the youngest person, who could be as young as five years old, to the director of the school, has an equal say in how the school runs. Whether your response to this picture is, ‘I love it! Send me, this is my bag!’ or, ‘Horrible! Anarchy! Hogwash! Don’t tell me it’s real!’ I bet you’ll itch to know more. Free schools are rare birds, radically different from conventional models of ‘school.’ Approaching the Elephant takes its audience into a free school, and through carefully observed scenes cut and strung into an engaging story, invites viewers to fundamentally reconsider the rights of children and how we learn.”

This documentary would be a valuable addition to the larger narrative of the notion of ‘school.’

$8568 has been pledged so far of a goal of $14500 - if you would like to see this film made, please consider donating.

Yeah but...

Wed, 07 Dec 2011 19:57:00 +1100

Following the #pencilchat storm over the weekend (I wonder how many people know that John Spencer’s blog Adventures in Pencil Integration has been doing this for years and in fact Seymour Papert used the pencil allegory dating back to 1980) got me to thinking. As educators who are pushing change or perhaps just trying to promote the integration of more technology, we need to have a go-to list, to overcome the ‘yeah buts…’

Developments in technologies have played a critical role in bringing about social and institutional change throughout the ages, but resistance to change is not new.

From Rethinking Education in the Age of Technology:

From the journal of the National Association of Teachers, 1907: “Students today depend too much on ink. They don’t know how to use a pen knife to sharpen a pencil. Pen and ink will never replace the pencil.”

From Rural American Teacher, 1928: “Students today depend on store bought ink, They don’t know how to make their own, When they run out of ink they will be unable to write words until their next trip to the store. This is a sad commentary on modern education.”

From Federal Teachers, 1950: “Ballpoint pens will be the ruin of education in this country. Students use these devices and then throw them away. The American values of thrift and frugality are being discarded. Business and banks will never allow such expensive luxuries.”

Or from Out of Our Minds:

“If Shakespeare was alive today he would only understand 50% of what we were talking about - as indeed many of us struggle to completely understand Elizabethan English”

“At the end of the 19th century, artists worried that photography would be the death of painting. Others argued that this would be unlikely since a photograph could never be a work of art.”

Many people have interpreted passages of the Bible to imply: “The earth is fixed and immovable and lies at the center of all things.”

Or Bill Gates: “256K should be enough for anybody.”

These points illustrate the long struggle people, let alone educators, have had with contemporary technologies and dealing with change. The future is hard to predict, but one thing is certain - in a world moving at an exponential pace, change is the one known against the multitude of unknowns. So the next time you here a “yeah, but…”, tell them to get over it.

Add your own evidence below about resistance to change.