Learning the game - James Paul Gee

James Gee is a professor of literacy at Arizona State University - from his job description you would expect him to be a fan of dusty texts and heavy leather bound tomes.  You’d be wrong.  Gee has some really interesting things to say about the relevance of video games to education - all the more interesting as Gee is a few generations away from the tee-shirt wearing pierced-eyebrow type who you would normally associate with this view point.

In this short video Gee makes some interesting observations - some new, some not so new, but all worth thinking about.  Gee reminds us that testing drives teaching and that we won’t get genuine reform of teaching until we have genuine reform of our testing - not new but none-the-less worthy.  Gee also says that traditional education systems now have rival - 24/7 teaching delivered on line and tailored to your learning style and lifestyle.   Although in its embryonic stages Gee says that the new form of education is outperforming traditional schools.

This is where Gee’s video gets really interesting – he draws a parallel between education and video games.  Video games are challenging and require sustained effort and concentration to master. But children will play them for hours. They will even pay significant amounts of money for the privilege of doing so.   One of the characteristics of effective games is that they build in feedback at regular intervals DURING the game. In order to master the game players have to absorb the feedback and apply it.  That is the only way that they can be effective.  Players also EXPECT to get the feedback through the process – a game that doesn’t in effect teach you how to play it would not last long in the market place.  Gee states that it would not make sense to test players at the end of the game to see if they had learnt the required skills – they simply cannot finish the game unless they have learnt them.  Finishing the game is itself evidence that the skills have been acquired. Yet in schools we test at the end of units of work – often too late to provide useful performance feedback to students.  Gee’s point is that if our feedback followed the model offered by video games then school reform might be one step closer.

Rather than summarise the video further I’d simply recommend that you watch it. Gee is a softly spoken character – this video is well worth viewing more than once as he delivers great insight in such a gentle manner that the significance of what he has said can slip past.

Games and Education Scholar James Paul Gee on Video Games, Learning, and Literacy from DML Research Hub on Vimeo.

Perhaps the old adage is right – “It’s not winning or losing that matters – it’s how you play the game”.

Credits:
Original prompt for this blog =  http://henryjenkins.org/2011/03/how_learners_can_be_on_top_of.html
Video - details contained on video

"Flipping", video and the KhanAcademy.

It is often said that the school room is the one place in our society that seems immune to change.  In many schools educational practices are still fairly consistent with those of many many decades ago - “school” has remained fairly constant for generations.  The growth of the Internet and the technology of video promises to change that.

Salman Khan, the almost accidental founder of the KhanAcademy, gave a speech at TED recently - “Let’s use video to reinvent education”.   In it he describes the developmental pathway of the site.  The fact that it began as his own attempts to tutor his cousins remotely via video link explains the production values and style of the videos.  

At this point I have to state my personal bias - I’m not a huge fan of the site. Whilst I rate its intent highly I have issues with production values.  You only have to watch a few videos, particularly the early ones, to see that production values were low and the pedagogy dated - despite the ultra-modern “screen capture” style presentations.  In a sense this is to be expected for Khan is not a teacher - and it shows.  (He worked at a hedge fund prior to the growth of the KhanAcademy.) However, whilst this may be true - it offers a comprehensive collection of “no frills” explanations of mathematical procedures via web-based video free of charge.   The site now is a registered “not for profit” organisation and receives support from Bill Gates’ charity. This is allowing the KhanAcademy to become more professional and it is now offering some enhanced services to educators and families such as charting student progress.

Khan makes some interesting points in his speech, not the least of which is his notion that video can be used very effectively to enhance what teachers do in school.  If a student is away at the start of a unit and misses some crucial explanation by the teacher how do they catch up? What about students who may have attended the lesson - but failed to understand it?   Does the teacher make the rest of the class sit through it while they explain it again? Do they expect the absent student  to miss out and catch up as best they can?  This issue is avoided if the teacher uses video.

A teacher can either  video the actual lesson they present or prepare a video based lecture; for example, create a narrated powerpoint to introduce a topic or as a lesson.  Students can then view the lesson when they are able or the child can review it as often as needed until “the penny drops”  - either in class or at home.  Thus no child needs to miss the lesson or not understand something heard only once.  Surely this is an aim worth pursuing.

Associated with this is the notion of “flipping”.  Instead of the teacher introducing the topic in class time and then having some time practising examples and then students completing homework to consolidate skills ,“flipping” swaps the process around.  In the “flipped” classroom the teacher prepares a video lesson and students then watch it for homework BEFORE coming to class.  This frees up class time for discussion of the concept and generally working with the concept.  Students who need more time can revisit the video, those who don’t can get straight down to work.  The claim is that this results in much more productive class time - and should, in theory, allow for class time to devoted to higher level exploration of the topic.     It is too early for reliable data to establish if this approach does actually result in higher student achievement and understanding - but there is every reason to believe that it could.  Surely this is an aim worth investigating.

The case for  video lessons would appear to be strong - maybe we should press the “play” button and see if the reality can match the rhetoric.