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PBI Video
Jie Ling
Kaitlin Montgomery
Jenna Taylor
Why Games?
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
“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
the engagement. For example, Kahoot is a classroom response system which creates
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
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
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
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
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
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
In the lesson, the objective is for students to use gaming as a prewriting tool,
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
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
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
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
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
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
Habitica, did not work on the school’s server when we tried it on the students’
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
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
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
Citations
60-70.
http://www.slideshare.net/007aud/revised-blooms-taxonomy