Vous êtes sur la page 1sur 8

Gamifying Imaginative Narratives

PBI Video

By: Kirsten Alderdice

Jie Ling

Kaitlin Montgomery

Jenna Taylor

Why Games?

Unsurprisingly, 21st-century college students are somewhat different from those

of the preceding decades, even as those differed from earlier students. Games will help

us work with them. In particular, 21st-century students have grown up using different

technology from that which their professors grew up with. Using games, not necessarily

video games, for teaching is one way to shift to a more appropriate learning format for

the Digital Generation.

“New literacies” that arises from new technologies include things like text-

messaging, blogging, social networking, podcasting, and video making. These digital

technologies alter and extend our communication abilities, often blending text, sound,

and imagery. For educators, it’s about thinking about how students “move through”

materials as they read and research and how digital materials make that a

fundamentally different process. We can apply New Literacies to our PBI pedagogy,

content and classroom. James Paul Gee (2011), the Mary Lou Fulton Presidential

Professor of Literacy Studies at Arizona State University, mentioned in his book that

good video games are designed to enhance learning through effective learning

principles supported by research in the Learning Sciences. By using and introducing


some good video games, we can successfully attract our students’ attention to improve

the engagement. For example, Kahoot is a classroom response system which creates

an engaging learning space, through a game-based digital pedagogy to motivate our

students.

Being an effective teacher means knowing how and when to use technology in

the classroom. We must come prepared with technological knowledge in order to guide

our students in their own discoveries. Koehler and Mishra (2009) write, “There is no

‘one best way’ to integrate technology into curriculum. Rather, integration efforts should

be creatively designed or structured for particular subject matter ideas in specific

classroom contexts” (p.62). By using the TPACK model, we were able to align our

pedagogy, content and technology. We used the online platform Metaverse to help

teach our students the concepts of narrative writing. These sites helped motivate our

students to understand the content of narrative writing, and made our pedagogical

decisions revolve around motivating our students through gaming.

Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy (2009) is a tool used to represent student

progression in learning. It targets the 21st century skills needed by our students. It

pushes them to take their concrete knowledge and use that knowledge innovatively.

The implementation of Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy was used to ensure that our

students were reaching these higher-level thinking skills. Skills that are needed in order

to be successful in a global society. We wanted students to move beyond remembering

and understanding, so they could move toward creating. By using Metaverse, students

were motivated to begin creating their own narratives by applying their knowledge of

story elements.
Here, we’d like to apply Erikson’s developmental theory to our PBI program. Erik

Erikson proposed a psychoanalytic theory of psychosocial development comprising

eight stages from infancy to adulthood. During each stage, the person experiences a

psychosocial crisis which could have a positive or negative outcome for personality

development. We would focus on the fourth stage which children will be learning to read

and write. Teachers begin to take an important role in the children’s life. If children are

encouraged, they begin to feel industrious and confident in their ability to achieve goals.

Therefore, in order to implement more game-based learning and help students reach

their potential, teachers should encourage and reinforce children’s initiative by applying

more effective games in class.

A New Tool & Student Learning

We are executing this concept with an 8th grade English/Language Arts class.

The class is small (seven students) and the students are considered to be advanced in

their reading levels. Our essential question for the lessons is “How can we facilitate

students’ creativity in writing through gaming?” These lessons are part of a larger

Project Based Learning Unit titled “Change Over Time.” In this unit, students are

learning about geological and biological change over time in Earth’s history as a part of

science class. In English/Language Arts, students are reading dystopian novels and

producing a creative writing piece in which they explore their own interpretation of

dystopia, incorporating concepts learned in science and ELA through model texts:

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley and Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. Our goal is to

make the writing process more engaging using gaming as a tool. The students who are

using the Metaverse tool are 8th graders enrolled in an English 1 class, so their
curriculum follows the 9th grade Common Core standards. Standards W.9-10.3a-e

comprise the narrative writing requirements.

In the lesson, the objective is for students to use gaming as a prewriting tool,

students will engage in a cause-and-effect game to explore the concept of dystopian

writing. Students will be using the online platform Metaverse to create augmented reality

experiences inspired by their dystopian readings. Metaverse has a wide variety of uses

with users being able to create everything from mobile games to interactive stories that

allow the player to choose their own adventures. Metaverse is geared toward the

everyday tech user as it requires no ability to code. Users simply arrange components

from a toolbar above their “working space” onto a storyboard and connect them together

with the click of their mouse. The user’s creations are shareable and can even be used

to interact with augmented reality experiences.


Lesson Implementation

The lesson was implemented over two class periods. In the first class period, the

students considered gaming as a tool for learning and their own experience with video

games on their own. This was effective because all seven students play video games

outside of school and had their own opinions. The students considered their views and

responded to questions to get them thinking about how gaming has a place in the

classroom and what they could use it for.

In the second class period, we reviewed our Utopia/Dystopia PowerPoint and

talked about how we could make it more engaging. Then, we watched a tutorial on

creating an experience in Metaverse. Students divided into teams and each chose an

aspect of society that could take on a utopian ideal, then devolve into a dystopia. There

were three teams: forms of government, economic systems, and decisions about family

units. In their teams, students created the experiences in Metaverse, thinking of

different ways their systems could result in a dystopia. At the end of class, we chose the

team whose experience was the most complete and experienced it on one of the
student smartphones. At the end of class, we discussed the connections to our

dystopian creative writing unit. The students made plans to revisit their writing and add

to it and edit it based on a better understanding of sequencing events.

What went well?

Students were engaged by the process of using Metaverse for gaining an

understanding of how a utopian ideal can become a dystopia. Initially, this activity had

been a PowerPoint-based activity created by the teacher and done on a handout by the

students. Through Metaverse, we were able to use engaging technology to turn the

activity into an interactive game that made the connections and sequences of events

much more clear to students.

Students were able to make clear connections between the game and the

objectives of our unit. They were able to state that they had a greater and more

nuanced understanding of how a utopian ideal can devolve into a dystopia. They were

also able to review their creative writing with a greater understanding of the sequence of

events that could create their own dystopia. This met the narrative writing standard W.9-

10.3c: Use a variety of techniques to sequence events so that they build on one another

to create a coherent whole. This also met one of the goals of the unit which was being

able to explain how societal changes occur. We were able to do all of that through

gaming and it was much more engaging to the students.

What was challenging?


The first challenge was trying to determine which game to use. Our initial choice,

Habitica, did not work on the school’s server when we tried it on the students’

technology. As a result, we decided to spend more time on Metaverse to create an

experience that would address both the reading and writing objectives through gaming.

The initial idea was to have the students bring their own technology for one day

(smartphones) to use the program. Unfortunately, only two out of the only seven

students had smartphones at school to use. Additionally, when setting up the process,

we determined through trial and error that the game had to be created on a computer

for later use on a smartphone.

Like all classes, another challenge was time. We could have spent much more

time on this process to perfect it. As can be seen by our video, when the class tried the

experience on the smartphone, it was not quite finished by the end of class. With more

time, we could create multiple augmented reality experiences and that would have been

more impactful toward the overall goal.

Ultimately, the students came to the conclusion that they were able to overcome

the technology challenges and felt more ownership through problem-solving on their

own.

Collaboration

Our collaboration process went smoothly. Working in groups can be difficult but

there are a whole new set of challenges that come with working in a group for a

distance education class. Everyone in our group worked to meet the expectations for

their portion of the project, making sure to offer assistance to anyone else who might

need it. As we worked on our project we learned that we still have a lot to learn when it
comes to the types technology available. There are so many little known resources that

would be great to implement in a classroom. We are also reminded that when using

technology there’s always a chance that things won’t go according to plan. Of course

that means one of the most important things we learned about ourselves as

collaborators was that we have to be flexible.

Citations

Koehler, M. J., & Mishra, P. (2009). What is technological pedagogical content

knowledge? Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education, 9(1),

60-70.

Revised bloom's taxonomy (2009). Slideshare. Retrieved November 5, 2017 from

http://www.slideshare.net/007aud/revised-blooms-taxonomy

Vous aimerez peut-être aussi