Gaming Trends

The year 2030 is not so far away that we cannot foresee how classrooms might look at that time. Although I hope to be long retired and still healthy by then, I know that it will be different because history shows us how technology has altered the classroom environment. From parchment and inkwells to word processors and the internet, technology changes the face of education, and as educators learned to use those new tools to make their lessons more relevant, so too will the teachers of tomorrow. By 2030, I see students and teachers using their own portable device as their primary source for information and interaction with fellow students and teachers. This is not unlike how some students use their devices today, but I see a more comprehensive role for the device, in whatever form imagined, as an integrated portal for their educational experience and beyond.

The first thing I envision is how to fund this technology. I imagine a new kind of commercialization for education. Not any type we recognize today, but a unique way to use industry to demonstrate to students through the device, the skills necessary to create, produce, distribute, and market their products while keeping their product or company name in the segment. If we could limit the blatant marketing as well as the amount of screen time allowed on the device and insist on a focus of why the student needs the skills learned to succeed, I believe industries would pay for the access and it would give them the right to boast of their partnerships in more typical media applications. A real partnership like this would open a myriad of new ways for teachers to design relevant content. As noted in part ll of the Gamified Classroom, (Proto/ADMIN, 2011), “At its best, technology can provide teachers with engrossing, educational content that is appropriately differentiated for any level at which the students are currently functioning–while still being incredibly easy to implement and manage.”

When students first enter the classroom, which could be physically or virtually, the device they carry throughout the day, once logged in, will be used for mundane tasks such as attendance and lunches, which earn them low-level points. I like the idea of points or badges for doing everyday things like brushing your teeth as suggested in the video with Jesse Schell (Schell, 2010), if students are consuming or doing things that they would do or consume anyway, why not reward them in ways that do not make them so mundane. Students would, using the device, greet the teacher and check their personal account on a site similar to Edmodo to get the day’s activities, check their progress on group, and project assignments, with every action securing more points toward some goal or level of achievement, and then move on to complete their days activities and responsibilities . Some of these may be with students in another classroom or another building anywhere in the world. I can see a classroom similar to that viewed for week 3, Quest Atlantis (TLC, 2011), where students spend “monitored time in a 3D virtual world where children learn science and math, reading and writing and students work together as a team, thinking through complex 21st century problems but they're also having fun playing an online game.” As the interview with Dr. James Gee states in the PBS video (PBS, 2011), “A game is just a set of problems, it could be anything.”

We should collaborate with those that have problems to solve (industries and government). Let them tell us what skills they are using to solve their problems, and introduce students to those real world problems and teach them, with the use of games and simulations, problem solving skills that are relevant to their world now (2030) and in their future. As noted in “What about Games Makes Them Good for Learning?”, (Miller, Klimas, & Mehall), the authors remind us that “Connecting learning to experience increases players' investment in learning, even while they may not even realize that they are learning.” If “Reality is Broken” as McGonigal suggests (McGonigal, 2011), and games can “change the world,” Then I say, “Let the Games Begin.”

McGonigal, J. (2011). Reality is Broken-Why games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World. Penguin Books Ltd.

Miller, T., Klimas, A., & Mehall, A. (n.d.). Lure of the Labrynth. Retrieved April 18, 2014, from Labrynth. thinkingport.org: http://labyrinth.thinkport.org/www/library/learning.php

PBS. (2011, February 13). DIGITAL MEDIA - NEW LEARNERS OF THE 21ST CENTURY. Retrieved April 18, 2014, from pbs.org: http://video.pbs.org/video/1767377460/

Proto/ADMIN, A. R. (2011, 11 9). The Gamified Classroom. Retrieved 4 17, 2014, from Gamification: http://www.gamification.co/2011/11/09/the-gamified-classroom-2/

Schell, J. (2010, February 10). Dice 2010: "Design Outside the Box" Presentation. Retrieved 4 16, 2014, from g4tv.com: http://www.g4tv.com/videos/44277/dice-2010-design-outside-the-box-presentation/

TLC. (2011, November 4). YouTube. Retrieved April 17, 2014, from Quest Atlantis/The learning Channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Q2sRp5YM8Y#t=47