Love and Video Games

It's that time of year again. Spring is in the air, and sixth graders are turning into seventh graders, and then it is that their thoughts turn to thoughts of love. It also happens to be the time of year when I teach the elements of poetry.

Each year, I force (er, challenge) my sixth graders to participate in a contest wherein they must come up with the most original, never-before-used simile for love. The project begins with moans and groans, but in general the kids are completely immersed in the task within a few minutes, and I've had some truly glorious similes in the past.

My personal favorite remains:

That's a sixth grader for you.

They have to provide ten supporting arguments for how the two things are similar, and I've learned a good deal about love by reading some of their arguments. (It also makes me speculate, sometimes, on the nature of their parents' love lives.)

I always provide my own example, which is video games, because, well, video games are cool and so is love, and I know some kid would choose it if I didn't, and frankly, it's not original because Lana Del Rey's already used it.

So here it is, and it may cause you to speculate on my own love life, but nonetheless:

1. In both love and video games, there are rules, but you generally have to play to figure out what they are and sometimes you never do.
2. In either case, you can win even if you don't know the rules, and you can lose even if you know them very well.
3. Whether playing video games or playing the field, you don't have to follow the rules to play, but if you break the rules too often, you might run out of people to play with.
4. Some people become so obsessed with video games, it's all they think about. I don't think I need to explain that: stalker.  
5. If you don't go outside and get a breath of fresh air every once in a while, both can give you a headache.   
6. Video games have epic wins and epic fails. Love can be pretty epic, too. 
7. You can buy video games new or used, they come in all kinds of conditions, but you can play them in most any condition (unless they've been used so roughly that they don't work anymore). First love is new, but usually people have other loves that follow that aren't new but still work out anyway. And some people have been hurt so badly that they don't know how to love anymore. 
8. There's always another challenge in video games (but you keep playing because it's worth it when you win). Ditto, love. 
9. Video games are built by other people before the player can use them, and those builders were influenced by video games that they've played. Of all the things that have changed about humans throughout our history, love has tended to stay pretty much the same; we've learned it by watching those who've loved before us. 
10. There are many different types of video games: some are for thinkers, some are for adventurers, some are for fighters, but the best probably have many different facets. The greatest loves, the ones that you come back to over and over, are those that challenge and engage all of the parts of who you are.

Just say no to fun-suckers

Nicole Dodson, Dakota Jerome Solbakken and Nadine Clements, students at Quest to Learn, a New York City public school, play a game they designed.

Institutionalized prejudice against fun in the classroom works against students, teachers, and societal progress as a whole. A crippling bias in favor of traditional pedagogy, a stultifying notion that because classrooms were not fun in the past, they needn't be fun today has contributed not only to the low graduation rate in American schools but also to the low morale of educators themselves. 

Almost half of the students interviewed for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation study on high school dropouts claimed they dropped out because classes weren't interesting. According to an NEA report on teacher attrition, of the 46 percent of teachers who leave the profession after only five years, 56 percent cite job dissatisfaction as their reason for leaving. That dissatisfaction is directly tied to high-stakes testing, confused administration, and lack of support and respect. In short, teaching just ain't fun anymore.

Despite the fact that fun could be the savior of education, it's under fire from all sides. Innovative school ventures such as the Quest to Learn school in New York, create stimulating, exciting, rewarding experiences for students and teachers alike. Yet the same parents who fight to have students enrolled in the school, fight equally hard to ensure that the learning becomes increasingly more traditional so that students are prepared for standardized tests (which, if I haven't mentioned this before, prepare students for absolutely nothing in the real world). Meaning, even parents who want their kids involved in more creative, relevant learning, are too afraid of standardized tests to fully support innovation.

Likewise teachers, who would benefit from fun more than anyone aside from students, are often biased in favor of more traditional pedagogy, frowning at fun with the dour affect of a Victorian schoolmarm. They say things like: Fun might mean fun for kids, but it means work for teachers. Kids who are having fun in a classroom simply aren't learning. And, my personal favorite, fun classrooms don't prepare students for the real world.

True confession time. I have told kids, "Kids, this isn't Disneyworld. It's school. It's not supposed to be fun. You're supposed to learn." I admit it. I'm not proud. But in my defense, usually those non-exhortations were direct results of exhaustion from the hundred miserable and utterly meaningless tasks assigned by supervisors appointed at the government level who have never set foot in a classroom for more than five minutes, who have done everything in their power to suck the joy out of teaching and learning.

There have been times when I felt like I was smuggling fun into my classroom, looking over my shoulder to make sure no one was watching, as if that would somehow undermine my authority and credibility as a teacher. And I learned early in my career that as a general rule, fun as pedagogy should not be discussed openly as the very notion pisses a lot of people off, and it doesn't take long for the fun-suckers to start giving you the stink-eye if you're a proponent of such blackguard practices.

But here's what I've discovered over my years of teaching, short though they may be.

Fun is not more work for a teacher. Coming up with fun lesson plans is exactly the same amount of work as coming up with boring lesson plans. Implementing fun lessons is easier than implementing boring lessons. Kids enjoy it, and people commit to things they enjoy. When my kids are having fun while they're learning, they learn more and they don't fight me over it. I've had classes so fun that kids didn't even want to stop learning, and that's a score in my books.

Fun does not void learning. I'm much likelier to stick to something that I'm enjoying. I don't mind practicing something that's fun. And activities that are novel and interesting stick in my mind longer than those that are dull to the point of brain freeze. Innovative educational practices such as Smallab, or "situated multimedia art learning lab," that allow students to learn in exciting, virtual environments, interacting with material rather than having material thrown at them via lecture, have proven already to bear great promise. In a small 2009 study, at-risk ninth graders in earth sciences scored "consistently and significantly higher on content-area tests" when they had participated in Smallab exercises than those who had been subjected solely to more traditional teaching methods.

Finally, there's no reason why the real world, the world of adulthood, has to be anything less than fun. In fact, we are uniquely positioned in history to create exactly the sort of real world that we desire. There are more start-up businesses today than ever before in American history, and that means that people are crafting careers for themselves, and I can almost guarantee that entrepreneurs are not designing futures of arduous anxiety. We're building the careers that we want to have, the lives that we want to lead. Schools should most definitely be preparing students for that future.

A pep talk that will make you want to move back in with your mom and dad.

This is it. I just have a few more things to say about Reading, Writing, and Video Games, and then I'm moving on to a fight scene between a high school kid and an ancient, snarling beast. No, kids. It's not about your English teacher on exam day. Sorry.

Point Nine:

“Imagine if kids poured their time and passion into a video game that taught them math concepts while they barely noticed, because it was so enjoyable,” Bill Gates said last year. Do we want children to “barely notice” when they develop valuable skills? Not to learn that hard work plays a role in that acquisition? It’s important to realize early on that mastery often requires persevering through tedious, repetitive tasks and hard-to-grasp subject matter. 

You're a man after my own heart, Bill Gates.

Due to the plasticity of the brain during infancy, babies are able to learn and develop more in their first two years than they'll ever be capable of again. And they have no clue they're learning. It just happens. Evidently, you can learn even when you have no idea what you're doing. Oh, wait. Isn't that the whole idea of learning? By the way, there's also evidence to suggest that playing some video games improves the brain's plasticity. 

As to persevering through tedious, repetitive tasks and hard-to-grasp subject matter, spend an hour playing World of Warcraft. Nothing could be more tedious, and yet kids stick with it. Why? Why are kids willing to endure hour after hour of game play that gets progressively harder and harder when they can't stay awake for a forty-five minute class?

Obviously boobs and blood are huge motivators in certain sets, but there's more to it than that. Video game creators - creators of virtually all entertainment media - want kids to want to play their game and be happy with it. They make the games interactive, colorful, exciting, and fun. They give kids independence, autonomy, choices, and rewards. And boobs and blood. (I'm not suggesting teachers should come attired in fake blood and ripped blouses, huge breasts heaving, just to be clear.) 

Gryphon Flying Mount by salimfadhley

Do the purveyors of education take the same interest in kids' motivations and desires? Are kids empowered in classrooms the way that they are in video games? Are they challenged? Are they given the opportunity to fail and figure out why they failed on their own without someone else pointing it out to them?  

I'm not suggesting that technology is the only way that kids can be engaged in classrooms. I've had kids thoroughly engaged with notebook paper and sidewalk chalk. Of course, we were making paper airplanes with the notebook paper and defacing property with the sidewalk chalk, but it was all in the name of learning...and fun. Because there's a false dichotomy in the notion that learning cannot or should not be fun. One does not, nor should it, exclude the other. They enhance one another and mutually sustain one another.

I swear, I'm nearly done. Point Ten:

How’s this for a radical alternative? Let children play games that are not educational in their free time. Personally, I’d rather my children played Cookie Doodle or Cut the Rope on my iPhone while waiting for the subway to school than do multiplication tables to a beep-driven soundtrack. Then, once they’re in the classroom, they can challenge themselves. 

That is a terrible radical alternative. In fact, it's not an alternative at all. In most cases, it's the current reality. Happy at home; miserable at school.  

Kids should be learning at home and at school. And they should be enjoying it at home and at school. They should be challenged by their parents, and they should be challenged by their teachers.  

And finally. Point Eleven:

Deliberate practice of less-than-exhilarating rote work isn’t necessarily fun but they need to get used to it — and learn to derive from it meaningful reward, a pleasure far greater than the record high score.

I'm imagining a teacher giving this inspiring lecture: "Hey, kid. You hate school? Bored? Well, you're really going to hate the rest of your life then. Rote drudgery and tedious boredom all the way, pumpkin. But never fear, I'm here to show you how to gain a sense of satisfaction from surviving yet another day of bleak existential crisis. So let's get ready to plod away on those worksheets. Trust me, mountains of paperwork that mean absolutely nothing to you are on your horizon."

Fortunately, we humans aren't in the habit of getting used to things that are less-than-exhilarating. Hence all the progress. The majority of Americans no longer work from dusk until dawn at back-breaking jobs that were foisted on them, like it or not. Compared to those kids for whom the traditional school calendar was tailored, the ones for whom summer vacation meant topping tobacco in the boiling sun, I'd say we're living proof that we don't have to get used to work that doesn't thrill us. 

Despite a terrible economy, the Kauffman Foundation's 2012 report on entrepreneurial activity noted that more than 6.5 million new businesses were started in the United States in 2011. Over half of those businesses, by the way, were technology-driven, with internet publishing and broadcasting representing over 25% of the total and video games and e-commerce over 18%. (FYI, 2012 is the year of exhiliration with hot sauce being in the top 10 growing businesses on this year's report.) My point here is that today, people who have ingenuity and imagination can create their own jobs, jobs that they'll love.

Let's not tell our kids that they need to get used to unsatisfying work. Let's make school a place where they can learn to collaborate and innovate, to think critically and to raise questions that we have never considered ourselves. Let's show them that there are alternatives for people who enjoy learning, who aren't afraid of change. Let's show them how far we've come and push them to go much farther, to refuse the limits that even we set for them.

Because this poor old teacher from ye olde days:

Poor old Erma

is a far cry from this twenty-first century teacher. And that's because learning is fun to me, and I want it to be fun for my kids. I like to come to school every day, and I want my kids to like it too. Making it fun, even when it's hard, is what makes it exhilarating, and I want my kids to know that.

Yours truly

Tomorrow, on an entirely different note: Soundtrack Saturday! My vote for best song to listen to while  penning an epic battle scene and the battle scene it inspired...it made my son cry with fear, which sort of rocked my world.

Emily "Brawlin" Bronte V. Tom "The Sandman" Sawyer: Using video games to market education.

Before I continue with my ramblings about Reading, Writing, and Video Games, let me clarify something that I said yesterday. To quote myself: The day a teacher is unwilling to learn something new to support her students is the day she needs to retire. I did not say: the day a teacher doesn't use technology, she should retire.

The day a science teacher refuses to learn new, proven scientific facts because she prefers the old ones that she's gotten used to, she should retire. The day an English teacher refuses to read a new book that engages students because she still thinks Shakespeare is the only thing worth reading, she should retire. The day any of us refuse to learn and expand our own knowledge and understanding in service to our children, we should retire because the most important thing a teacher teaches is how to learn.

Moving forward. Point Four:

News Corporation plans to introduce in schools a new tablet computer ...Take-home games for the device include one in which Tom Sawyer fights the Brontës. (Lest children avert their attention to the actual books.)

To suggest that students who play a game inspired by literature will somehow limit their exposure to literature is just plain backwards. Most kids wouldn't read Tom Sawyer anyway; they'd read the SparkNotes. Kids who are exposed to literature through video games at least stand a chance of having their curiosity piqued. I'd say they're far more likely to develop an interest in literature than they would otherwise.

Like it or not, we're in a brave new world with options. That means that even Shakespeare needs good press to beat out the competition. Good press agents know to target their audience. If the audience isn't buying their wares, press agents don't say, "Well, they're stupid if they don't like this campaign. This is the same campaign we've been using for twenty years, and it's always worked before, so we're not changing it now." They don't approach marketing that way because they'd lose business.

Literature has lost business. Video games are the new marketing.

So all I'm going to say about this is: a battle royale between Tom Sawyer and the Brontes? Bring it on.  I freaking love it.  

My money's on the Bronte sisters. They got their game faces on.

Then there's this.  Point Five:

Alarmists warn that schoolchildren won’t excel in the i-economy if they aren’t steeped in technology. 

Alarmists are abso-freaking-lutely right. I doubt any alarmist would suggest that children should be steeped in technology twenty-four hours a day. You can steep a tea bag for fifteen minutes and get a perfectly good cup of tea. Extrapolate.

And this. Point Six:

Many schools boast of their iPad-to-kindergartner ratio on the theory that children should learn early on how to use a touch pad. Really? Any parent with an iPhone can tell you how long it takes a small child to master the swipe.

If a small child can master the swipe and every other app on an iPhone by the time they're three (I've seen it, people) and yet fails standardized tests by the time they're in the third grade, then the folks at Mac need to be giving the prevailing powers in educational policy-making some lessons on how to design curriculum and assessment.

Point Seven:

Many of the games marketed as educational aren’t as much fun as video games children would play if left to their own devices. 

Then we need to make better educational games. 

Point Eight:

But the added bells and whistles still make it harder for them to focus on plain old boring work sheets and exams. Imagine how flat a work sheet would seem after a boisterous round of Zap the Math From Outer Space.

Kids like bells and whistles. I don't know what to tell you. I'll wear bells and whistles in class if it'll keep my kids' attention. I'll also incorporate technology because I know they like it.  

And also: I hate worksheets. I hated worksheets before Zap the Math from Outer Space was even born. Kids should not have to endure worksheets just because they somehow look more academic than Zap. If they learn from Zap, give them Zap. Worksheets are flat. And boring. We're better than that in the 21st Century.

I promise I will be done with this tomorrow, and then I'm going to talk about how much I love things other than technology. But I still feel compelled to address this cheery exhortation to students:

Deliberate practice of less-than-exhilarating rote work isn’t necessarily fun but they need to get used to it — and learn to derive from it meaningful reward, a pleasure far greater than the record high score.

What NASA and that kid drooling on his desk in your class have in common.

Yesterday, I began writing this blog in response to an article from the NY Times that addresses technology in classrooms. The author clearly feels very strongly about the detriments of technology to education, devoting one short paragraph of seventeen to its usefulness in certain scenarios. I feel very strongly that technology can revolutionize education, making learning relevant, applicable, and enjoyable for American students. In fact, I feel so strongly about it that I needed more than seventeen paragraphs. I needed the limitless boundaries of the internet. This is where I left off. Let me get my umbrella hat back on and head to the street corner.

NASA Visualization Explorer by NASA Goddard Photo and Video

Point Two:

In a 2012 survey of elementary and middle school teachers by Common Sense Media, 71 percent of teachers say entertainment media use has hurt students’ attention spans “a lot” or “somewhat.” 

I'd like to know where the 71% got the research to support this claim. Had they done studies on their own students? Or could it be that we need a scapegoat for kids being bored to tears by a curriculum that insists teachers teach to multiple choice tests in non-interactive environments? 

Because here's the thing, and I'm going to focus on video games since that was the specific entertainment media targeted by the author of this piece, there's evidence that suggests that some video games actually support the brain processes that focus visual attention and inhibit distractions. A study done by the University of Toronto found that action video games can improve selective visual attention. Another at the University of Rochester in the US found that gamers are able to filter out irrelevant information and spot targets in a cluttered scene more quickly than non-gamers. A study at NASA is even using video games to help improve the attention span of people of all ages. NASA chose video games for this study because video game-like simulations had been effective in training pilots to remain focused while in flight. They chose the Extended Attention Span Training (EAST) system - that's million dollar NASA-speak for really expensive video game - because pilots aren't using scrap paper and scan-trons to navigate jets. They're using technology, like the majority of our students will in their future jobs.

On the other hand, Christopher Ferguson of Texas A&M and T. Atilla Ceranoglu of Harvard Medical School have indicated that research done to prove video games are bad for attention spans were based predominately on the say-so of teachers. And we already know what 71% of the teachers think about it. Furthermore, most studies that suggest students' attention spans are harmed by video games don't take into account the fact that many of the children had problems focusing prior to exposure to video games, either because they were bored, they were preoccupied by situations outside of the scope of their classrooms, or because they were biologically pre-disposed to attention disorders.  

Kids who are bored to tears in classrooms come alive while playing video games because video games provide novelty and challenge (unlike the traditional school model). Video games don't make you start all the way over at the beginning if you screw up a couple of times (unlike the traditional school model). Video games don't force you to endure the same scene, the same characters, the same dialogue over and over and over again (unlike the traditional school model). Video games only get harder as gamers gain the skills they need to progress (unlike the traditional school model). Video games don't force you to stay at the level of other gamers until they gain the skills they need to progress; you can move up as soon as you're up for it (unlike the traditional school model). Video games don't consider fun to be a four letter word (unlike the traditional school model.) And P.S. traditional school model, I can do the math: it's not a four letter word.  

Point Three:

The findings have had no apparent effect on palpable enthusiasm for interactive teaching. When experienced teachers express skepticism about the value of computer games in school, they’re often viewed as foot-draggers or change-resistant Luddites. A 2012 Project Tomorrow report (paid for in part by the technology industry), found that only 17 percent of current teachers believe technology helps students deeply explore their own ideas.

That screwy 28% just will not listen to reason. You can see them. So excited. Nauseatingly giddy over innovation and change.  With their fancy ideas about computers and games and robots that will eventually bring on the apocalypse, mark my word! Their abominable enthusiasm for interactive teaching! Gone are the happy days when you could just stand up in front of a class full of sheepish clones and tell them what to think and what to write. Now we've got to interact with them? What is the world coming to? Send these hippies back to wherever they came from and let's get back to the business of scantrons - safe, easy scantrons.

Damn right they're viewed as foot-dragging, change-resistant Luddites.  What I especially love about this is that last statistic: only 17 percent of current teachers believe technology helps students deeply explore their own ideas.  Only 17%.  And we know that the minority can never be right.  I'm looking at you, Copernicus, you ill begotten upstart. 

However, there's a key word here: current.  Seventeen percent of current teachers don't think technology provides students with opportunities to explore their own ideas.  Let's look at the whole quote that the author cherry picks from the report by Project Tomorrow:

Only 17 percent of current teachers believe technology can help students deeply explore their own ideas, compared to 59 percent of incoming teachers. 

I can't tell you how surprised I am to find that new teachers are less jaded than veteran teachers.  Because I'm not a bit surprised.  I've seen it first-hand.  I've heard it all.  "I've been teaching twenty years without technology, why should I have to learn it now?"

Because you're a freaking teacher.  That's why.  I am in no way suggesting that all teachers must use technology all the time, but they absolutely must wrap their minds around the fact that their students will be steeped in technology in their future lives, as they are right now.  If we are not prepared to understand the world they are entering, to prepare ourselves to prepare them, then we are not fit to teach.  If we're unwilling to even consider the possibility of using technology because we didn't have it when we were growing up, we're completely out of touch with reality.  If I could only have what my mother had and she could only have what her mother had and so on back, we'd all still be sitting around a fire trying to figure out how to pick it up without burning ourselves. The day a teacher is unwilling to learn something new to support her students is the day she needs to retire.  Period.  

Fortunately even with the minimal math skills accrued in my years in traditional, utterly dull math classes, I'm able to pull together enough brain power to know that 76% of the teachers (those inspired incoming teachers and those inspiring veterans) have got it going on.  That's not a bad number.  Not as good as it should be, but not terrible.

And I'm going to leave you with that positive thought until tomorrow because there's still more.  Here's where I'll start:

Moving forward. Point Four:

News Corporation plans to introduce in schools a new tablet computer ...Take-home games for the device include one in which Tom Sawyer fights the Brontës. (Lest children avert their attention to the actual books.)

Because everyone knows we're only able to enjoy one form of media at a time.  

What's wrong with superfun, interactive classrooms? (That's not a rhetorical question.)

First, let me state that I am a teacher.  Not a bad teacher, either.  I've even got a few plaques, and a couple of former students exist who would say that I was not the worst teacher they ever had.  

I want to clarify that because a lot of people have a lot of things to say about education and what's wrong with it and what teachers could do to make it better, and a lot of those people are not teachers.  When I speak to teaching, I want you to know that I am speaking as a teacher with a few years of experience in an actual, real classroom with actual, real human being students from actual, real, and very diverse homes.

Here's something that I'd hazard a guess the majority of those students have in common.  They like games.  Video games in particular.  

Frankly, I don't blame them.  I like games too.  Video games in particular.  In fact, I'm a big fan of technology in general because I believe that technology is just the sort of tool that could bring about a revolution in the way we live.  

Saleem Kassim at Policymic, cites the Arab Spring of 2010 as an example:

Being capable of sharing an immense amount of uncensored and accurate information throughout social networking sites has contributed to the cause of many Arab Spring activists. Through social networking sites, Arab Spring activists have not only gained the power to overthrow powerful dictatorship, but also helped Arab civilians become aware of the underground communities that exist and are made up of their brothers, and others willing to listen to their stories.

Technology did that.  Technology in the hands of people with ideas.  Twitter, which is not allowed in most American classrooms, allowed folks living under oppressive regimes to share their truths unfiltered by government censorship.  

Then there's Foldit, a website designed to give gamers the opportunity to solve puzzles for science.  Guess who used one of the games on the site to create a model of an AIDs-related enzyme that had stumped scientists for decades.  Gamers.  

So when I come across a well-meaning spokesperson for education who bemoans the fall of the illustrious American academic legacy to the coming technology apocalypse, I get a little peeved.  

Today I read an opinion piece in the New York Times Sunday Review that set me off.  It set me off to such an extent that no tweet could contain my irritation.  I needed lots of space for words because I have a lot to say on the matter.  

I'm going to break the piece down point by irritating point here, and so that I do not overwhelm anyone who may choose to read this, I'm going to spread my irritation over several days.  You're welcome.

Point 1:

The concepts of work and play have become farcically reversed: schoolwork is meant to be superfun; play, like homework, is meant to teach. There’s an underlying fear that if we don’t add interactive elements to lower school curriculums, children won’t be able to handle fractions or develop scientific hypotheses — concepts children learned quite well in school before television.

First of all, why the hell shouldn't schoolwork be superfun?  Can we only learn if we're bored to tears? Can someone please show me evidence of that?  Because I don't learn when I'm bored!  I fall asleep.  So do my students!  (Disclaimer: On occasion I've been forced by the powers that be to be boring against my will, and on those occasions I've felt it my duty to put the poor children out of their misery by lulling them to sleep with a monotone droning of boring statistics.)

How is it a farce if students enjoy coming to school and want to learn more because they're having so much freaking fun?

If we don't add interactive elements?  What?  Since all other children in history have had to learn by lecture without contributing anything of their own, today's children should have to do the same?  Here's what's interesting to me.  Kids in the past had to be passive sponges absorbing data to be successful so that they could passively absorb the data fed to them by their bosses in their factory jobs or their cubicles. Guess who passively absorbs data today.  Computers!  We don't need a zombie horde of non-interactive people absorbing data anymore.  We need interactive, collaborative people who can think for themselves and solve problems independently.  

As a teacher, yes.  I am terrified of classrooms with no interactive elements.  I don't want a bunch of potato-eyed sponge zombies drooling on my desks.  I want students in groups asking questions, building things, challenging me.  Yes, me!  If they're afraid to challenge me today, god help us when they have to vote tomorrow.

zombie classroom by velvetphotography

Point Two.  Yes, there's more:

In a 2012 survey of elementary and middle school teachers by Common Sense Media, 71 percent of teachers say entertainment media use has hurt students’ attention spans “a lot” or “somewhat.” 

I have a whole lot to say about this, but I'm going to save it.  I may not ever be this inspired again, and I want to make it last.  Tomorrow I'll tell you exactly what I think about that 71%.