apologies for tactlessness

In my previous post, I had a great idea with a valid question, with the caveat that it isn't very nice to afterward tell the students "Yeah, you're all a bunch of mindless followers".  Gotta find a way to rethink that.

Challenging my assumptions

In most of my work, I seem to be making the following assumptions:

1. That "traditional" teacher-centered instruction kills the desire for independant learning.
2. That the "best" students in the traditional system are those who can spit out memorised facts, and that these very students cannot think creatively or analytically.
3. That games, by placing the player directly in the action and giving him or her the possibility to impact the game, encourage deeper learning, creativity and analysis.
4. That the deeper learning introduced by games will lead students to pursue knowledge on their own.
5. That being in a position to teach others will encourage the student to learn more about the subject.

I'm about to find out how true this is.  I'm planning to teach my human rights games to a group of university students here in Ecuador, then have them host the games for a group of high schoolers. 

Both the university and the high school students are mainly fairly affluent middle-upper middle class students, and both institutions claim to impart Catholic values. 

To begin with, I'd like to find out answers to the following questions by means of a group interview with the university students:

• What global issues concern you most?  What do you know about them?  What ideas do you have about how to solve them?
• What was your high school education like?  Did you get good marks?  Did you enjoy high school?
• How do you think people learn best?
• Have you ever studied something alone or with friends that was totally unrelated to school?
• What were your family's attitudes toward education?  Did they focus on getting good grades or on something else?

My question then is whether teaching them the games with a view to having them teach them to the high school students will spur them on to reading up on the issues (of human rights, teaching or game development) on their own, or whether they will simply follow my orders.

Whether my hypotheses are proven true or not, I still think both sets of students will benefit and enjoy the project.

Plus, then I'll be able to make a more rational decision about my own daughter's education, ie: given that the students I'll be working with are supposedly the best and brightest, having gone to the best schools in the country, is it worth sending my daughter to one of these schools if she will turn out like them?

The ultimate game: travel

While re-reading McGonigal's book, "Reality is Broken", yet again, I came upon the part where she talks about the game "Portal" which essentially twists the essence of gaming around: instead of being given the rules, the game itself is about trying to figure them out.  Now, of course, there are loads more games in this genre, but it suddenly hit me: THIS is what I've always loved about being in foreign countries!  Everything is a mystery to solve.  Talking with people when you don't speak the language and even the physical gestures seem alien, leaping over cultural barriers to get the simplest chores done... even reading menus or street signs is a challenge; especially for someone like me who reads voraciously in her own language, to be unable to read is the biggest challenge of all. 

The whole magic of travel is that no matter how much you prepare yourself, you will never be prepared enough.  That is the ultimate challenge!

Review of Republia game

Wow.  This game is truly disturbing.  According to the game http://dukope.com/play.php?g=trt, the instructions are: You've just been assigned the editor-in-chief position at The Republia Times in the glorious and free nation of Republia. You must use your influence to print positive articles that paint Republia in a good light.

BUT, they've got your family hostage.  Rebels are trying to persuade you to print articles against the governement, in exchange for which they will free your family.

Which articles do you print?

Game: Toxic Love

There is a game show called "Family Feud" which aired for a while in Spanish as "Que dice la gente".  You can check out the rules on wikipedia, but the basic premise is that surveys are conducted with people on the street with such questions as "what kind of kitchen spill is the most difficult to clean?" or "what personal care products are most commonly found in a bathroom?" and contestants need to guess the most popular answer.

The show strikes me as being the absolute antithesis of creativity because the point is to guess what most people think.

However, in considering dating violence or domestic abuse or any other kind of intimate agression, what struck me most was that it exists in abolute secrecy.  It's a documented fact that one of the first things an abuser will do is isolate the victim or swear her to secrecy through guilt, insults, fear or any other means.

This game format works to raise awareness of what can be considered appropraite dating behaviour.  The idea is the students come up with the survey.  Since this game is planned for English language leanrers, the idea would be to come up with binary questions (yes/no, good/bad, etc.) and administer the survey to other, higher or lower level groups.  Then the game can be played, if possible with the respondents of the surveys as audience.

Israel vs Gaza

This is not going to be a political entry, but my mom is in in a bomb shelter in southern Israel right now and it occurs to me that this particular round of fighting started with children.  For the sake of convenience, we can start with the incident a few weeks ago when three Israeli teenagers were kidnapped and killed.  In retaliation, a Palestinian teenager was burned to death.  Obviously it didn't begin there and everyone has different versions of where it did...but the point is disturbing: a child for a child.  Soldiers are not fighting equals in this scenario, rather the revenge is taken on the offspring of the enemy.

There are hundreds of war games out there, but they're all about matched armies, or at least matched opponents in skills (ex: warriors vs monsters or aliens).  None that I know of really simulate this feeling that "You hurt my child, so I'll hurt yours" and so on in a kind of permanent zig zag that continues down through the genrations. 

Yet this is important to any understanding of any real war.  World War II, for instance, didn't just happen out of the blue; a lot of it was started in direct response to the horrors of World War I.  From Hitler to Israel to Gaza isn't much of a jump whichever way you look at it. 

How can we create a game that helps us understand the generational aspects of war?

Units vs systems thinking

Western civilization has a tendancy to divide things into units: people, parts, elements.  This has led to some of the greatest advances in history.  Capitalism for instance, with all its flaws, is still better than any of the alternatives.  Medicine has made huge strides forward too.  However, consider this old joke:
A urologist suggests that his patient drink less beer, perhaps replace it with spirits.
"But Doc, won't spirits damage my liver?"
"Yes, probably.  But you came to me about your kidneys, not your liver."

The point is that having separated concepts into units or elements, the challenge is to bring it all back together.  Sure cars are a great means of transportation, but they have to exist in the environment which they currently destroy.  We will never solve the problems of humanity unless we learn to see units as part of systems.

Therefore, systems comprehension needs to be part of the list of 21st century literacies that we need to teach our students..

Game: "the girl effect"

There is a brilliant video called "The Girl Effect: the Clock is Ticking" ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1e8xgF0JtVg) which shows how easily a girl's life can spiral out of her control (poverty, lack of education, prostitution, HIV), and how, just as easily, she can regain control (school, earn money, raise a healthy family) given the right help. 

This game isn't entirely fleshed out yet, but the idea is to have a board where one side spirals up and the other side spirals down.  Along each spiral are life events: the positive ones (ex: school, earn money, raising healthy daughters) are written sequentially on the upward spiral and the negative ones (ex: poverty, lack of education, prostitution, HIV) are written on the squares on the downward spiral.

The players start in the middle and take turns to roll a dice to see how many squares they move.  As they roll the dice, they also flip a coin: heads means they go up, tails means down.  The winner is whoever reaches one of the ends first.

Game: "Factory line"

This could be an interesting twist on filling in workbooks, especially at the beginning of term in EFL class. 

The students are tasked with completing as many workbook exercises as possible in a given amount of time, maybe with a prize for whoever gets the most points.  Some students will act as "supervisors" and walk around with the answer book (make copies if necessary) checking on their classmates and giving 1 point for each correct answer. 

However, the secondary task will be for the students to get to know their classmates by means of secret notes.

If the "supervisors" catch any "students" passing notes, they deduct 5 points from each of the offenders.  They can also deduct 10 points from the slowest or least productive "student" in their area as measured in 5 minute increments.

However, at the end of the game, whoever has passed/received the most notes (on separate small strips of cut-up scrap paper) gets a bonus of 100 points.

The idea here is to mimic part of the experience of working in a factory, sweatshop or maquilladora where workers are pressured to do as much as possible as perfectly as possible, while striving to make human contact with the workers around them. 

What I like about this game is that winning and losing are not directly tied to academic ability since, in the end it's the student who manages to make the most personal contact who wins.

Game: "Avoid the Boys"

This game is absolutely unfair for girls.

Rules: the girls have to walk around the perimeter of an area (say a small yard or even the classroom).  They must walk alone and they cannot speak.
The boys, of course, have to try to walk with the girls and engage them in conversation.

If a boy sees a girl walking with another boy, he can call her on it.  She cannot defend herself and must go and stand in the center. 

The winner is the last girl left.

This is what misogynist places are like.

ARGame: "Addicted"

This is an alternate reality game that can encourage creative writing (though it may be a lot of work for the teacher).  The idea is to provide journal prompts such as

• "I heard you met Pablo and Sara last night.  The last time I saw them they were dealing drugs downtown."
• "I heard from someone that you disappeared last night.  Where did you go?"
• "You look a little pale.  How are you feeling?"
• "As your teacher and your friend, I really think you need to get help."

The idea is to have them write as though to all outward appearances they're good college students, but secretly they're addicted to drugs.  The idea is that you answer the journals every day or every couple of days and have them write back, just a few lines.  They should be encouraged to read up on the effects of the drug they're "addicted to" to make the story as believable as possible.  Eventually you have the students put the journals together into a coherent discourse and let everyone else read them.

How not to use games

Robert J MacKenzie, in his book "Setting Limits in the Classroom", suggest getting kids to behave by adding (or removing) minutes from "PAT" which means "Preferred Activity Time" (because you just gotta have a cute acronym!)  The idea is that if they do what you want during the week, then they can play a game on Friday.  He suggests the activity could be individual or in pairs, such as Scrabble or Boggle, or a large group activity.  He call is a teachers "gift" to students for "on-task behaviour". 

This is an excellent way to show students that ordinary classwork is boring, and a great way to make sure that they even see games as boring because the only way they're fun is as an alternative to boring school work.  You see the problem? 

This is a total misuse of games in my opinion.  If you can't make learning fun and interesting (which it is to anyone who doesn't have to go to school) then using a game as a "motivational incentive"  is flawed in so many ways.  For one thing, it starts with the assumption that "time on-task" is a good thing and that isn't necessarily true.  I don't know about you, but while writing this, I've stopped several times to check Facebook, play Drop 7, eat an apple and go to the bathroom.  Does that mean I'm not productive?  I would argue the opposite.  If I had someone standing behind me demanding I write so many words in so much time, I can almost guarantee the quality would suffer...as would my sanity.

Secondly, as Alfie Kohn (author of "Punished by Rewards: The Trouble With Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, As, Praise and Other Bribes") and Daniel Pink (author of "Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us")  would no doubt agree, you need external motivators when the task itself is inherently unmotivating.  When the task is interesting and fun enough to be its own reward, external motivators are not only unnecessary, but have in fact been proven to decrease motivation.  Once you've made work appear boring by adding a reward, then of course the kids will appear to enjoy playing a game...because it's the only alternative.  So adding a cutesy little "if-you're-good-we'll-do-something-fun" reward on Friday afternoons is actually a lose-lose situation: the kids are bored during the week and on Friday during the so-called "fun" part.

Finally, "Preferred Activity Time" is just a plain old misnomer.  Ask the kids what they would really prefer to do and my money says they will not choose Boggle.   Me, I'd choose to go out for a coffee and hangout with my friends. 

Game: "chickens in a cage"

How many players can fit onto one square meter and how long can they stay squished that way?

Game: "NIMBY"

NIMBY stands for "not in my back yard".  This is why, for example, the prison at Guantanamo bay isn't directly insde any of the states: who would want to live next door to a bunch of alleged terrorists?

In a classroom, put a stinky garbage can.  Put the players names on the desks  and tell them the desks may not be moved and they may not switch places.  They have to decide where in the classroom to put the garbage can.

Game: "undocumented"

This is a really frustrating board game.  The board is not square but long and divided into sqaures like a road.  Most squares have something written on them: school, hospital, job, house, car etc.  The player flips a coin: heads, you move ahead 2 spaces, tails you move one space.  If you land on a square with something on it, you have to go back to the nearest empty space (because for undocumented immigrants, these doors are often closed).  Up to four players can play at a time and the winner is whoever reaches the end first (beacsue it is possible for undocumented immigrants to overcome all these obstacles, it's just hard!)

Research: the challenges

It can be scary to do research on so many levels. 
The first, obviously is getting the necessary time, funds and support from your workplace to do it.
The others have to do with cognitive and emotional barriers such as:

What should I study?  How do I know what I'm interested in?  Hasn't everything already been studied to death?  To answer the last question first, no, because you always have something else to bring to the table.  So the question becomes what table do you want to sit at?  Are you interested in solving a problem you've found, or in discovering a new problem?  Are you interested in a person or a concept? 

How do I study it?  Many non-researchers seem to think that the experimental method is the only method, but you can also choose from case studies, ethnography, action research...there are load of ways to do research!

How do I know what to read for my theoretical framework?   Heck, I don't even have time to read!  Well, you don't have to read entire encyclopdeias.  You can start by checking wikipedia, google and amazon to see which authors are at the forefront of the field and then find summaries of their approaches.  As you go along, you'll eventually find specific papers you'll want to cite.

How do I write all this up?  Essentially, you need a question, a theoretical background (what answers already exist), a description of your methodology (how you will answer th question), a summary of your results and some conclusions.  How long your article is will depend on what the journal asks for.

How do I find an academic journal? There are essentially two ways: look up journals based on your field of interest, or look up authors in your field of interest and see where they've published.

Do that, and guess what?  You are officially a researcher!

The roots of the problem

I watched a speech given by an education expert the other day and he came to the *surprising* conclusion that we need to improve higher education.
He pointed out that students need to graduate with two crucial skills: 1. the ability to think logically, critically and creatively and 2. the ability to empathise and have "humanistic" values.

My argument is that these are impossible goals.  I'm not saying that it's impossible for students to graduate with these skills, but I am saying that these goals are not possible for universities to achieve on their own. 

Here's why: all through primary and high school, students learn two very important things we they will not magically UN-learn when they get to university.

The first is that your work has no value.  You write for the teacher and the teacher is your judge, jury and executioner.  No-one else will read what you've written or benefit from it in any way.  Therefore, your goal is not to produce well-reasoned, creative, analytical arguments, but rather to give the kind of answer your teacher wants.  Critical thinking, logic and creativity are only important when the final product matters beyond a grade.

The second is that you are graded individually.  This means that you do not want to work in groups because the slowest student might bring your grade down.  Indeed, this is a common teacher complaint: "I don't know how to grade group work; and even if I put them in groups, they'll just divide up the work rather than truly working together."  The kids are right.  I don't want to be responsible for someone else's shoddy work, so it's easier if I just do my bit.  The problem of course is that working individually you never get to develop the skills of communication, empathy and collaboration.  This is important: the best projects aren't being made by stars anymore.  Think of wikipedia and other crowdsourced projects: nobody puts their name and the total is far greater than the sum of its parts.

In other words, the students who enter university, especially the "good" ones, are coming in with precisely the opposite values of those we want to teach; and the "better" the student, the deeper ingrained these values are!

Game: "$2 blackjack"

There are many definitions of game which Salen and Zimmerman scrupulously list in their book Rules of Play (2004) but a simple one that interests me is the idea that a game always has a goal and obstacles.  Jane McGonigal quotes the example of golf: the goal is to put a ball in a hole in the ground, but there are a whole lot of obstacles such as having to hit the ball with a stick from a great distance.

However, goal-with-obstacles is also a pretty good definition for how life works.  What's a budget but the idea that you have things you want to buy but only a limited amount of money with which to buy them?  And what's the difference between the extremely poor and us is that they have even less money.

Blackjack can be looked at as a game about budgetting.  If you have 17 do you stand pat or draw and risk getting a king?   In the game if you get anything over 21, you lose automatically.  In the real world you can't spend more than you have.  

In my version of $2 Blackjack, instead of a regular deck of cards, the deck will be of picture cards with a price value, so for example, a tomato at 12 cents or a bowl of rice for 35 cents.  The aim is to get as close as possible to, but not go over, a total of $2.  Just to keep things interesting, there could be a few cards in the deck with, say, a laptop valued at $2000.