Observations of 8th graders.

Observing students closely has been an interesting experience this semester, eighth graders are a difficult age to observe, so full of hormones and moodiness on their way to negotiating adulthood I can never be sure what I am seeing is a true reflection of their personality or some change happening minute by minute.

It is lunchtime when I enter their school building and I walk along the edge of the cafeteria to get to my classroom, on this journey, I pass by a table of students I will see in class. These are the students who separate themselves through their enjoyment of art and anime. They are often happy and smiling as they enjoy their friends and their lunch period and then ten minutes later the surly, sullen and glum versions of themselves appear for class. One of them won’t even talk to me, so I have left her alone. It makes me feel useless not to be able to talk, but I don’t know her history. I have specifically sought out conversations with these edge students and, often, been shut out of meaningful conversation. I think it is a reaction to my adulthood and their adolescence. They are all generally bright and good students from what I have observed and the limited interaction they have allowed me.

The classroom I have been observing this semester does not integrate much technology into the classroom experience. All the students have their obligatory Chromebook, the teacher presents most information in this Social Studies class on a white board. I have been in her class two hours a day through the month of February and I have been in class with all her students. I have talked to a good cross section of them during that time. I have specifically sought out shy students, bold students, artistic ones and ball jockeys, I have not let race or gender influence who I speak with or what I speak with them about.

A few general observations have surprised me about them. First, they all have cell phones, this did not surprise me, neither did their use of cell phones to answer some of the more arcane questions that would arise. What did surprise me was how these 13/14 year old young people were seemingly on the cusp of wanting/needing the authentic experience. The experience of an authentic place. When I asked one girl about her video gaming experience she said she did not play video games, I believed her. The artistically talented kids also seemed to reinforce this perspective, being content to sketch and draw as much as play games on the computer. I strongly believe in a pendulum theory, where interests and concerns swing from one trend to another, I wondered if this was the generation that would treat electronic connections with disdain. Would they be the equivalent of the early 70’s generation who grew up with the tv on in the background of every life event and was an integral part of modern life but had started to find out that the promise of tv was empty and isolating. I will never know the answer to that question, mostly because I like to ask questions more than I like answering them. But I do think that this pendulum may be swinging again.   

This blog will be as much about the age transition as much as anything. Eighth graders are unique, not yet fully jaded about adulthood and not quite ready to leave behind the behaviors of childhood that have served them up to this point. 

This blog would have been, in my almost 30 hours in their classroom, my take-away from the experience, but then I went into the classroom yesterday and it was almost if there was an electronics explosion. Everywhere, in both classes, the students were on their laptops and cellphones doing research on their group topics and people to contact regarding their topics. They were working in groups of 4-6, I worked with them to refine their topic and focus on the individuals and groups they needed to contact. Within each group I noticed a leader step forward, or more precisely answer first when I walked up to their group and started quizzing them about their topic and their approach. I found that an interesting dynamic. I helped some, gave clues to others as to where they might find more information, and some where we simply bounced ideas around. One student found quickly that even elected officials have accessible twitter and facebook accounts and was so excited when she received a reply from Senator Portman via her e-mail. One girl had to try her phone call three times because she kept getting nervous and hanging up. It was one of those fun moments in the class that I really enjoyed.

Wow, so I just looked up icivics.org the creator of the game I am exploring. I know this is off topic, I understand that we should be talking about how we learn, how our students will learn and what they will learn, but as a future social studies, government, and history teacher I have to share what I just learned.

As a graduate of a high school in Arizona I always had some pride in Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. She as you may know was the first female on the Supreme Court, she also served in all three branches of Arizona state government, pretty impressive resume for anyone. She considers her most significant legacy her founding of icivics.org the creators of the game I am learning. Yet she is not alone Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor is also on the governing board.

I mention all this because I believe in this world of hidden agendas we must ask, and we must know, who is producing the knowledge that we are providing to our students. I now feel much more comfortable and have a higher degree of trust that this game is not promoting an aberrant political agenda.

My intent was to discuss the game I had found on icivics.org but the article from Squire has been consuming my thoughts. I had resolved myself to not discuss age in this class, people get so turned-off with boorish people who spout off about ‘I’ve been here or I’ve done that’ and I truly do not want to bore you, but the article brings up two things which I have some real world knowledge of, urban planning and history. On page 25 the first paragraph under the heading Entertainment Games Used for Learning. I would like to draw your attention to the final sentence of the paragraph. “Although teachers around the country use or have used Sim City, Civilization, and Rollercoaster Tycoon in urban planning, world history, or physics classes, there has been little academic study of how learning occurs through such programs or how conceptions of history or urban planning change as they are represented through digital media.” I have been an Urban Planner for 25 years, a little less than half of my life. I will concede without reservation that these kinds of games introduce some concepts of Urban Planning, and with more than a passing interest in history, (my first degree is in Historic Preservation), I will also concede that games have the potential to bring history to the student in far more interesting ways than any textbook can and especially to students who can learn better through the mediums that games provide. But there is something else that has been brought up, in the readings and in class and that is the feeling that for the most part games should be treated as supplements to learning. My concern is that by playing these games are students supplanting real world experiences with games and believing that they have mastered the topic? In my most recent posting as an Urban Planner for a wealthier urban county north of Atlanta my experience was that I have never seen these simulations used in the actual practice of planning. Design Charettes ask participants to analyze the myriad of design issues, from scale and massing of buildings to open space and viewsheds. Do these games do that? Property developers are cost conscious and barely submit for review adequate project renderings, so they are not using simulations out of budgetary constraints. So, do these simulations teach or are they only supplements that only scratch the surface? The point I want to make that, as an educator, I will scrupulously examine any game, long or short form, for usefulness within the lesson plan, the teaching standards and the time constraints of 40 minute classrooms. What is the game actually teaching, how do I conclude if learning of appropriate content is taking place? What shortcomings in knowledge does the game have? Is there a slant to the game, that is does the developer of the game and the funding source have an agenda and will participation in their ideological system be harmful to my students? As the article points out this “Shift toward a culture of simulation, whereby digital technologies make it possible to construct, investigate and interrogate hypothetical worlds that are increasingly a part of how we work and play” is undoubtedly true, I want to be certain that the world that is constructed in these games and the ideas that students are asked to investigate and question in these hypothetical worlds serve the purposes of truth in education.

This is a screen shot of the assessment page of the the video game I am learning, Liberty Belle’s Responsibility Launcher on icivics.org. The assessment reflects how often I encountered one of the ten civic responsibilities and the number of times I answered correctly. I scored highly on getting an education and not so well on jury duty. Full disclosure, I intentionally answered some wrong to see what the game would do, but that Jury Duty question was very vague and confusing and I had to methodically use every choice the game provided in order to get the question right. By that time I was on my third run through of the game, I wondered if I had learned anything about civic responsibilities or not. This particular question had stumped me.

Within the game the player is asked to match a civic responsibility to statement made by one of the in-game characters and then through a quick series of choosing, placing and launching an anvil the player knows if the choice was correct.

In the screenshot above the three characters represent the citizens, each of them makes a statement regarding some civic responsibility. The thought bubble above the middle character is an example of this. Liberty Belle, the winged character, is the game and player interaction. The box to the right is where the player scrolls through Civic Responsibilities, in this screen shot it is voting. The picture above the concept is the anvil you will launch at the in-game character. The player chooses the correct concept anvil places it on the launcher below the correct character, if the concept anvil and the citizen character coincide with each other the anvil will be launched and land in front of the citizen, who will then stand on it proudly, if the player chose incorrectly the anvil comes down on the head of the citizen and the audio makes that dreaded “looser” sound and you keep trying until you are correct.

This screen shot shows the maximum number of citizens and each of their civic responsibility shown in the thought bubble. The three citizens I’ve already guessed correctly are floating above their anvils and the launchers below them have gone dark. In the box on the right with the civic responsibility you’ll notice the anvil is dark, that means that I have already chosen that responsibility with the correct citizen. In this shot you see Liberty Belle hovering near the bottom right basically being an annoying game interface, also annoying is the continue button, it shows up far too often.

I see the potential for this game to be an activator of knowledge about civic responsibility and not a re-enforcer of one. This game may be effective to begin an exploration of the topic but I think its focus is too narrow. But that will be the topic of my next blog – identifying this games strengths and shortcomings as a learning tool.

I am learning a new thing. How does the learning of this new thing take place within me? How do my fingers learn how to move, how do I recognize the clues? My new thing will be learning video games. This will be the third time in my life I have learned video games. The first time was the summer of 1974 Pong was in the arcade at the campground that summer. The next time I learned video games was Christmas 2002, our Nintendo Game Cube was new, and the games of Luigi’s Mansion, Pacman or Harry Porter my son and I played that Christmas vacation was the last time I played video games.

I think the learning ‘how-to’ of the game had not changed all that much from Pong to Luigi’s Mansion. Learning the controls of motion is click and try, risk taking – you make a few stumbles of the controller and soon you’re walking. Later as the player I discovered and become an active participant in a quest, it was at that point then learning began to take place and the purpose of the play became more nuanced from one of learning unnatural physical movements to one of intellectual ones in figuring out the solution of the game. In the game I am learning today I am first trying to learn the controls of motion, which key performs which function all while negotiating though a war-ravaged apocalyptic landscape carrying the weapon of my choice and trying not to get someone killed. I am a raw recruit in this free game developed by the U.S. Army. The controls of motion within the game is the first thing I have to learn, WSDA SHIFT SPACEBAR basic steps, the tutorial shows about a hundred other keys and combinations, how will I learn them all. Oh no I have to learn how to crouch, low-crawl and climb, more keys to learn. Pop-up box, I think, comes up, says I’m sure press F1 I hit escape by accident – the game is gone… I am barely a few minutes into the tutorial. There is at first shock but I then realize I did not plunge the eastern U.S. into an electrical blackout by pressing the escape key. Probably a novice gamers first mistake, or at least I’d like to think so. But it was a perfect first stopping point to reflect on what the last three minutes were in my learning of the game. I am by all accounts a complete novice which means that WSDA Shift and Spacebar are new language for me, a language I seem to be having trouble interpreting in this fast paced world of combat simulation.

The controls of motion within the game are the first steps I had to take into the digital make-believe and I did not learn the controls before going in and people were going to die and students were not going to be learning. The combination of keys I used to move my character felt foreign to the muscles in my fingers and hands that were playing the game, but I was in the game my heart rate has gone up when I couldn’t remember the control key for low crawling through a culvert full of muddy water, people could be dying, there was gunfire. Using my left hand to manipulate six primary keys in conjunction with the mouse and taking in the visual input from the unfamiliar setting of the game environment meant overload for me, and it culminated quite humorously in the hitting of the ESC key by accident, for some pushing a button and having the screen go blank is the computer equivalent to test anxiety. I hit another random button and it was back again. Nothing worse than downtime in the classroom waiting for the teacher to figure out technology.  

I chose this game, America’s Army: Proving Ground for a couple of reasons. First it was a sophisticated game that was free. Second it was something I had experience with. This was not necessary but I felt if I already had some experience I might be better able to judge what the learning experience was, as it turns out it was not at all pertinent. I have not yet learned what the game is about because I’m still learning the controls. I would never use a hyper violent game in the classroom but I looked at this exercise as how do I learn a video game. What processes does my mind go through that assist or hinder learning. And once I learned the mechanics of the game how does real learning take place?

 I reside by choice in a technologically quiet world. I have avoided gaming. I believe in and have no doubt that games are powerful learning tools. I lack any prior knowledge of gaming, there is very little to activate. I am in the context of the game I am learning a raw recruit. Reflecting on how I learn something is one that I guess takes a deeper reflection of the process of learning. Just getting to the tutorial for this game was a challenge for me – I had no clue what I was doing.

The game setup and configuration was easy enough if time consuming. Loading the game maker software and then loading the actual game was a learning process for me. I don’t want to bore you with details but every single aspect of the experience was new for me, I don’t play games, I don’t download games so for me remembering pages of keyboard commands, learning how to move using the mouse and the keyboard and which key command to use will test my faculties. I found the game did not support a controller. I installed a mouse but I wasn’t sure at first how the mouse and the keys worked together. Meanwhile bullets were whizzing and machine guns were buzzing. And I kept locking up the computer, pretty sure I won’t last long once I start playing the game.

Photographers have this process where they take one picture a day, writers too have a similar thing – you can’t be a writer if you don’t write something everyday, you can’t be a photographer if you don’t snap some photos. Day One is the starting point for the ‘education of Tom’. After having spent my life in government all things in education are new to me, whether technology or pedagogy, reflection or lesson planning, its all new. My goal is to become a history and government teacher and I would prefer middle school.

If you want to become a teacher and you have not read “Dream Keepers” by Gloria Ladson-Billings put it on your reading list. If you want to be a better human pick up a book and read. If you want to be an interesting human don’t just pick up any book, be selective, save the garbage for magazines and television. Read “Siddhartha” by Herman Hesse or “Conquest of Bread” by Peter Kropotkin. If that tennis shoe company sold books instead of shoes maybe the advertising geniuses would have come up with “Just Read It”. Fall down a few Wikipedia rabbit holes and see what interesting things you will find to read. Read the John Carroll Review, read what your fellow students are writing.

As my Blog progresses and I learn more education “stuff” I hope to focus on the intersection of education and civic responsibility, on areas that may inspire you to teach the difficult things and not just the easy things. To find ways to educate and inspire the next generations to build a better world for themselves. And if you have specific questions about how government, especially local government works and how you might integrate education into the process of creating curious minds sent me a question or pose a problem and lets answer it together.

Be yourself; Everyone else is already taken.

— Oscar Wilde.

My first thoughts on the intersection of technology and education.

The usefulness of technology in education is clear. The transformation of technology over time has created and continues to provide many options for learning. The challenge for the users of technology are to find the appropriate place to fit technology into the instruction with clear and measurable goals. The technology should be scrutinized to access if learning is the product. The technology itself should not obscure the learning.