PILOTed

Serious Play 2024

The Serious Play conference brings together changemakers from around the world, with a chance to mingle and learn from each other.

I’d like to talk about two gems that most attendees missed, and that I doubt any of you are aware of.

How to debrief and reflect on practically anything

Julian Kea has crafted debriefing questions that allow a team to reflect, learn from, and debrief after practically any experience, a class, a meeting, a project, whatever. Each one appears on a card in his debriefing deck. Team debriefs after learning experiences are incredibly useful. Here is a sample card:

A PDF of the cards, which includes instructions, can be downloaded at TheDebriefingCube.com and there is also an app at https://thedebriefing.app/en/about.

Making a difference for women and children in Kenya

In public schools in Kenya, class sizes are 60 and above, there usually aren’t enough chairs, and there is often no electricity or running water. The cost of private school is beyond what 90% of Kenyan’s can afford.

The last session of the last day featured Sana Alimohamed of Duara Education in Nairobi, Kenya. Boy am I glad I stayed for this one.

Duara is helping women create micro-schools. A micro-school has up to 30 children, the cost is just over the cost of public school, and the curriculum is play and experiential based and meets international learning standards. The cost of creating a new micro-school is under $1,000 and sets up a sustainable business for each woman who runs one. Talk about win-win-win-win (proprietor, child, parent, and society)!

You can find Sana on LinkedIn and also learn more and learn how you can help at https://duara.education/

This is an exciting initiative.

How to Make Better Decisions with Role Playing

The Decision Making Game

At the Serious Play Conference, I ran a role playing game that pulled 9 of the concepts taught in the Mindshifting: Growth Mindset and Critical Thinking for Impactful Educators Course in order to teach group-based decision making and problem solving strategies.

These were 9 of the 70 different strategies that are covered in the Mindshifting: Growth Mindset and Critical Thinking for Impactful Educators Course, which provides educators with the foundations for building the following in students:

• social emotional intelligence
• diversity and inclusion
• the growth mindset
• critical thinking
• perseverance
• innovation
• problem solving
• communications skills

Here is a link in case you want download the game to use it for your group or students. 

How the Game Worked

In the game, participants played one of 7 different roles, all serfs, in a village in the year 1023. During the game, the village faces problems. Players are part of teams that have to come up with a solution to the problem. For each problem, each team receives instructions on how to conduct their meeting, then, after each team presents their solution and what happened in their discussion, the entire group discusses the different strategies how they impacted the flow of ideas, and how they might use those techniques. When we ran the game, the discussions led to deep reflection on effective ways to communicate, persuade, and influence others. Thus, all participants are exposed to the 9 different strategies for brainstorming ideas or coming to decisions as a group.

Feedback from Participants

The feedback from participants was excellent. I asked them what they learned, and how implementing the concepts changed how the group handled challenges. 

Here’s what they said: 

Question: What do you think people learned through this game:

Feedback:

• Think outside the box. Listen to others. Compromise. 
• I think it would make the discussion process more equitable and positive.
• This reasoning ends with a solution that everyone can get behind.
• Compromise and flexibility 

Question: What were your thoughts on the game?

Feedback:

• Great idea and fun. 
• This is an inspired game. So fun and would help students understand discourse. 
• It was very well designed. I like that we discuss the various strategies afterwards. It gives a great understanding of worst case/best case strategies.
• It’s so much fun and forming relationships immediately. Great ice breaker 

Ready to try it in your classroom or organization? 

You can register for the course here: link

And, as an incentive, if you register before June 20, you can use this code for a $15 discount: Mindshift15.

We Need More F-words in Education

A fellow traveler, Dave Eng, posted a link in Facebook to his Video Fired Up Fiero, 9 minutes and worth watching.

Dave called for Fiero and Flow to drive learning; with them we engage learners and motivate them to put in the hard work of learning. Fiero is the feeling when you have accomplished something momentous. You ever watch a soccer player after scoring a goal, jumping in the air, raising her arms, and yelling because she cannot contain her joy? That’s Fiero.

Flow is that feeling of timelessness when you are doing something and lose track of everything but what you are trying to accomplish. It’s when I tell my wife, “I’ll just be five more minutes” and when the five minutes have passed I’m amazed she’s angry because it hasn’t, in fact, been five minutes, it’s been two hours.

Dave was wrong.

We don’t need just two more F-words in education, we need four F-words.

We also need Failure, and we need Fun. Without the chance of failing, especially relatively risk-free failing, there is no Flow, and there is no great satisfaction of achievement. And without Fun, why bother? Fun and enjoyment are foundational to flow.

I’m thinking we need to find ways to add Fun, Failure, Flow, and Fiero to education. Or the kids are just going to continue giving school the one F-word we really don’t want.

If you could go back in time ...

This blog post is guest written by Dr. Claudie-Santi F. Fernandes, Associate Director play2PREVEVENT Lab, Yale Center for Health & Learning Games and John Joy, Advanced Producer at Schell Games

What would we tell ourselves 6 months ago?

It is all about relationships. Our first Kickoff Meeting between the play2PREVENT Lab at Yale and Schell Games was intimidating for both sides. We had a challenging task: develop a digital interactive prototype that allowed students to assess their school climate and then empowered them to take action and improve it. Both teams consisted of sharp, organized, compassionate individuals who were also ready to work together to create this prototype for a school climate tool and game. Our teams had worked together before, but this was the first time we (John + Claudia) were working closely as team leads. What we didn’t know then, but we later learned, was we felt the same uncertainty about the other team. As our teams worked more closely together and got to know one another (and became friends), we began to show our vulnerabilities and opened ourselves up to learning from and listening to one another. The second we stopped being “Yale” and “Schell,” and were instead a group of committed individuals working with tough constraints, the path ahead became manageable. We were creating the most appropriate digital experience with our collective expertise. As a result of sharing our own vulnerabilities and encouraging openness, we developed a trusting bond that allowed the development of our work to truly shine. 

After 6 months of development, we would tell past John and Claudia that these are the key ingredients to working on a multi-disciplinary team: 

1. Listen to one another and be solution oriented: Hiccups occur. What distinguishes successful working teams from unsuccessful ones is the ability to troubleshoot challenges expressed by members of the team and think about how to find solutions together. 
2. Respect the expertise of each organization: We value different opinions but trust the expertise of each team. When this happens, you also create space to access your own expertise to then build something together.   
3. Allow yourself to be vulnerable with one another: Ask questions. It is okay to not always know the answer!
4. Invite collaboration with a focused purpose: Always have an agenda to stay on task but encourage teams to take time on their own to explore ideas more if teams are not ready to make a decision in that moment. Be sure to set deadlines for decisions to keep the project moving!

Pro-tip: Identify someone at work or in school by whom you are intimidated or have a hard time working with. Pause for a moment and think of this person as a neighbor or friend. Do you think you would you act differently around this person in this new context? What is one thing you could say to this person that you would say if this person were your friend or neighbor? Allow yourself to be authentically vulnerable and see how it feels for you.

Dr. Fernandes and Schell Games' John Joy are leading a discussion on the Schell Games/Yale experience of building a highly effective team on May 30. Click here for more information and to register. They are also both featured speakers at the Serious Play Conference in Montreal in July.

Fun, Interesting Education Products

I often get asked, what are you working on that’s exciting. Here are four products that can impassion kids and teachers.

TeacherGaming

We all know how kids love video games; even when they fail they persist and master the skills they need to level up. Many of us have tried to introduce “educational” video games, but kids quickly pick up that these just aren’t the same. And a lot of video games just aren’t appropriate; we don’t want to encourage the types of scenarios they enact.

TeacherGaming finds widely used video games that kids want to play and that have educational value, they then develop lesson plans around those games, and place the games in a system where a parent or teacher can keep tabs on what the students are doing and learning. They have games that cover Kindergarten through grade 8, and over 300 lesson plans that hit academic topics in Math, ELA, Coding, Science, History, Social Studies, Music, and 21^st Century Skills. Here are a few samples:

3DBear AR

Kids really flipped over Pokemon Go. Imagine if they could set up their own virtual scenes instead of just following what others created, and if those scenes could illustrate what they are learning through reading, social studies, history, math, and science?

In 3DBear AR (which works on iOS and Android devices), students use 3D Designed objects to build scenes that they can then interact with. 3DBear comes with over a dozen lesson plans, but we find that teachers and parents can use it for virtually any subject with students from grade1 through high school. As an example, here is a teacher interacting with a virtual castle and dinosaur.

Answerables

Every teacher or home teaching parent needs a system to track and assign content to their kids. But what’s more boring than an LMS?

Does this look like a typical LMS?

Answerables is different from any LMS you’ve ever seen. Answerables is built inside a video game. Kids explore their virtual world and gain points and add new skills as they advance through the materials and exercises that the teacher or parent assigns. Answerables makes it easy for you to keep the fun in learning for your students.

SiLAS

Part of education is molding students’ emotional intelligence and social skills, and SiLAS works for all students, but especially kids on the autistic spectrum or who are having trouble relating to and with other children.

SiLAS allows kids (and teachers and parents) to create animated snippets that simulated social interactions with characters who can show real emotions. For example, after a session on bullying, a teacher can have the student enact a video of a potential bullying situation with animated characters, and then the can discuss it with the student and ask the student to adjust the video based on feedback. Studies show that this type of play-acting is incredibly effective at advancing social skills.

SiLAS comes with lesson plans for common social interactions where kids often experience difficulties, such as  bullying, disagreement, greetings, and picking up on social cues.

And I’m always excited by the interesting presenters on Edchat Interactive.

Anyone wanting a demo of or to be put in contact with these companies, just let me know.

Teaching First, #EdTech Second, A review of Matthew Farber's new book

Did you ever want to learn how to modify your teaching to provide students with deep learning experiences, and were looking for guidance on how to do it through the use of EdTech tools such as video games?

Then you’ll want to read Matt Farber’s game-based learning in action.

 

This is different from a how-to book on EdTech or books that survey apps or games and how they work. This book gets into the specifics of how to prepare for and conduct evidence-based pedagogy that promotes deep learning in students. It’s not about the game, it’s about the teaching. The games are just a tool. 

 

How might one construct such a book?

 

You’d need to demonstrate what is possible and how that is different from what normally happens in classrooms. You’d want to show teachers, students, and classes in action: 

• What are students learning?
• How does the teacher prepare for and conduct the class?
• What situations occur and how do you handle them?
• What results are they achieving?
• How did the teachers get to the point where they knew enough to teach this way?

 

You’d of course want to know what apps and games they were using, but also how they found the tools, how they learned how to use them, and what types of adaptations they made.

 

And you’d want to know how to do this for different disciplines, and a variety of ages and interests of students.

 

Just as no teacher would just assign students to read The Scarlet Letter without planning curriculum to help students grasp the social context, philosophical questions, and literary devices that make this book such a classic, teachers need to learn how to use games to motivate, inspire, and provoke students for academic purposes. 

 

It's that context that Matt Farber provides in this book.

 

Farber weaves all this information together while relating how an international group of educators are working together to support each other and break through teaching norms. This group, called The Tribe, shares their expertise, successes, and failures (or opportunities for further learning) in blog posts, Twitter chats (including the #Games4Ed chat at 8:00PM Eastern time on Thursday nights which is moderated by the incomparable Melissa Pilakowski), and at conferences (such as the Serious Play Conference and Games in Education).

 

One especially valuable section involved Farber observing classes taught by Peggy Sheehy, Steve Isaacs, and Paul Darvasi, describing how these teachers leveraged game-based learning content, what the students did and learned, what actually happened before, during, and after the classes, the level of engagement of the students, and student reactions. While all teachers will recognize many of the techniques used by the teachers (keeping students on task, setting learning objectives, assessment, etc.), we also learn what’s different, how the teachers cede some authority to the students, how to get the students more concerned about mastery than grade achievement, and how to build foundational skills like collaboration and problem solving.

 

Farber’s hundreds of hours of nterviews with academics and educators provide deep insights into how and why these classroom techniques work to keep kids learning, and where other teachers can step in to try them in their own classes. The people interviewed are readily available on social media, and often active in the Thursday Twitter Chats, to help other educators (or administrators that want to level up their schools) advance their teaching. 

 

Game-based learning in action is the book to read if you want to change your pedagogy not just learn about some shiny new tools.

 

And if you want to personally interact with Matt and the Tribe, register now to join us for an online discussion on Edchat Interactive in April.

The Game Based Learning Guide to FETC 2108

With some help from the kind people of FETC, here are the sessions on game-based learning at FETC this year.

Please pass this on to whomever you know is interested in GBL.

Also, don't forget to visit the Game-Based Learning Pavilion, right next to the poster sessions on the exhibit hall floor.

Title	Description	Speakers	Where/When
Tuesday, January 23
Game Makers	During this interactive workshop, you will be challenged to use creative, innovative thinking and technology to make the best game.	Jaime Donally, Hoonuit | ARVRinEDU; Rachelle Dene Poth, Riverview High School	1:30PM, Hyatt Regency, Bayhill 18
11 Projects Implementing Technology to Develop Critical Thinking	Discover how to teach your students that mistakes and failures are not disasters, but rather an opportunity to learn something new.	Howie DiBlasi, Digital Journey	1:30PM, Hyatt Regency, Bayhill 20
Digital Games Help Develop Students' Literacy, Life and Career Skills	This workshop showcases free digital learning games produced by Classroom Inc. (CI). Led by two CI staff members and one to two middle school educators who use the digital learning games in their classrooms, this workshop will connect the story of creating a game-based curriculum guided by educational research with the story of how the games are used in the classroom to develop critical 21st century skills.	Hee Jin Bang, Ph.D, Classroom, Inc.; Kwamara Thompson, Classroom, Inc.	1:30PM, Hyatt Regency, Bayhill 23 & 24
Wednesday, January 24
MIE Teacher Academy -- Minecraft: Education Edition	During this one-day, in-person Teacher Academy, you will: learn about Minecraft: Education Edition, its place in learning, and unique features suited for teaching and learning with immersive games.	Mary Williams, Microsoft; Zia Hassan,	8:30AM, Orange County Convention Center, North 220C
Break Out of Your Box and Break into Breakout EDU!	Come experience Breakout EDU games for yourself, then begin developing your own breakouts to re-energize yourself as a teacher and students of all ages as learners!	Lynne Herr, Educational Service Unit 6	10:30AM, Hyatt Regency, Bayhill 21
Using Scratch with Elementary Students	Never used Scratch before? Want to learn how to create using the program and discover ways to incorporate coding into your classroom?	Jason Rushing, Wysong Elementary (Neb.); Susan Prabulos, Meadow Lane Elementary (Neb.)	4:00PM, Orange County Convention Center, Booth 1100
Thursday, January 25
CETL: Up Your Game With the National Certification for IT Leaders	For K-12 education technology leaders, earning the Certified Educational Technology Leader program certification demonstrates to your staff, superintendent and other stakeholders that you have mastered the skills needed to define and successfully build 21st-century learning environments in your school district.	Tom Ingram, Escambia County School District (Fla.); Diane Doersch, Green Bay Area Public Schools (Wis.)	8:00AM, Hyatt Regency, Bayhill 21
Game On: Using Digital Games for Teaching, Learning and Assessment	This presentation is designed for PK-12 teachers and curriculum specialists to: find, critique, and evaluate digital games using search and evaluation strategies to determine if they are suitable for instructionm integrate a wide range of digital games into the curriculum utilizing academic standards, and explore instructional and assessment strategies essential to make a game- based learning experience a success for students.	Ryan Schaaf, Notre Dame of Maryland University	10:00AM, Orange County Convention Center, North 220E
Bringing Hands-On Coding And STEAM Into Your District Or Classroom	Are you planning to enhance STEAM and Coding programs in your district, school, or makerspace? Join this session for a fun, hands-on experience with littleBits Code Kit: a complete computer science solution that teaches students how to build their own mini-computer or game console.	Azadeh (Azi) Jamalian, littleBits; Azadeh (Azi) Jamalian, littleBits	10:00AM, Orange County Convention Center, Booth 1159
30 Game Tools to Engage Every Class	This fast paced session will demonstrate 30 free and simple-to-use games, that can be integrated into any classroom, no matter what grade level or content area. Participants will walk away with game based technologies and examples of how they can be used in classrooms the very next day.	Jeff Ertzberger, University of North Carolina Wilmington; Salena Rabidoux, University of North Carolina Wilmington; Amy Rottmann, Lenoir-Rhyne University	12:00 noon, Orange County Convention Center, North 220E
Gameshow Classroom: Formative Assessment That ROCKS	The best features of game shows can be used to review and teach in the classroom. Play with Kahoot!, Quizizz, Quizalize and Quizlet Live, learn about their best features and see how they can bring game show magic to your own classroom.	Matt Miller, Ditch That Textbook	12:00 noon, Orange County Convention Center, North 320AB
Exploring the World of Game Based Learning	During this session, we'll explore the world of Game Based Learning and try out a variety of games and gaming techniques that provide opportunities for students to make connections to learning objectives, standards, and beyond in the classroom. Make sure to bring any type of device pre-loaded with your favorite game to share with others.	Brandon Petersen, mindSpark Learning	1:00PM, Orange County Convention Center, North 220E
Makerfication!	Makerfication is a look into how Google suites can bring gamification and the maker movement together to help enhance engagement in the classroom and increase excitement in PBL.	Rick Funes, Gulliver Schools (Fla.); Andrés Joubert, Gulliver Schools (Fla.)	1:00PM, Orange County Convention Center, South 330AB
Direct from Finland: Deep Learning Using Games, 3D, and AR	What do the developers of classroom blockbuster MinecraftEdu and a group of cutting-edge 3D and augmented reality engineers have in common? They're both from Finland, home to the best education system in the world, and incredibly passionate about innovative learning. Santeri Koivisto from TeacherGaming and Jussi Kajala from 3DBear will take to the stage to deliver insights on how teachers can take a page from Finland, embrace uncommon teaching methods, and deliver learning experiences their students will never forget.	Santeri Koivisto, TeacherGaming; Santeri Koivisto, TeacherGaming; Jussi Kajala, 3DBear	1:00PM, Orange County Convention Center, Booth 1159
Breaking The Mold With BreakoutEDU	This session will share a hands-on gaming platform called Breakout EDU. Modeled after escape rooms, Breakout EDU challenges students and/or staff to think critically about content, problem solve, troubleshoot, and work as a team.	Edie Erickson, Bay College	2:30PM, Orange County Convention Center, Booth 965
BreakoutEDU for K - 2	Come visit this poster session to explore how Breakout EDU can specifically be used with Kindergarten through second grade students!	Cutia Blunt, The Galloway School	2:30PM, Orange County Convention Center, Booth 965
Battle of the Books Gets H.O.T. With FSA Standards	Battle of the Books and web based gaming software is transforming the way our students read in Pinellas County School District. We use higher order thinking, textually complex questions in our games played across the county using technology in a virtual gaming world. Student collaborate with the books in teams to compete.	Laura Woods, Pinellas County Schools Library Media Department; Peggy Duncan, Curlew Creek Elementary	2:30PM, Orange County Convention Center, Booth 965
Don't Flip Your Lid - FlipQuiz	Come and learn how you, too, can use FlipQuiz to create quiz board games for your students. Students are motivated, engaged, and above all learning!	Kimberly Dawn Albury, Horace O'Bryant School	2:30PM, Orange County Convention Center, Booth 965
Breakout EDU with OneNote	Participants will learn about Breakout EDU and how to create virtual locks using OneNote. Ideas and tips will be shared for creating your own Breakout games, as well as exploring and modifying existing Breakout games. In this session participants will also play a Breakout game!	Freda Williams, Cherokee County School District	2:30PM, Orange County Convention Center, Booth 965
¿Hablas Minecraft? Minecraft in the World Language Classroom	Experience Minecraft in the second language classroom! From gamification to game-based learning we will explore how you can start using Minecraft in your classroom immediately!	Glen Irvin, Wabasha-Kellogg School District	2:30PM, Orange County Convention Center, Booth 965
Middle School English: Let's BreakOut Before We Stress Out	You can take students to the next level with their learning and critical thinking skills while fostering communication. BreakOut EDU boxes are applicable to all subjects, but in my session, I focus on effective strategies for implementing BreakOut EDU boxes into English and Social Studies curriculums. Your students will have a blast learning how to BreakOut instead of stressing out.	Betsy Wengler, St. Edward's School	2:30PM, Orange County Convention Center, Booth 965
Make Learning Come Alive in the Gamified Classroom!	The gamified classroom is an adventure at any level or content area. This session will describe how to layer the most motivational techniques of gameplay over your curriculum to increase student collaboration, communication, critical thinking, and creativity.	Tisha Richmond, -- Please Choose (Starts With A) --	2:30PM, Orange County Convention Center, Booth 965
Stemming Attrition in STEM and Promoting Durable Conceptual Change	In this session, we share the game design principles that proved to promote a high level of engagement, interest, and learning as well as the kind of ‘durable conceptual change’ that benefits all students, especially girls and students from low SES.	Victoria Van Voorhis, Second Avenue Learning	2:30PM, Orange County Convention Center, Booth 2305
Designing Games in Scratch	What do students love more than playing games? Making games! Come and learn how to use Scratch to code a variety of games.	Susan Prabulos, Meadow Lane Elementary (Neb.); Jason Rushing, Wysong Elementary (Neb.)	3:20PM, Orange County Convention Center, North 220E
How to Design Effective Starters for Strong Classes	We'll look at several ways that teachers can get their classes going in the right gear with technology, including approaches to using images, discussion tools, games, and short videos.	Rushton Hurley, NextVista.org	3:30PM, Orange County Convention Center, Booth 1805
Breakout EDU : Learning Inside the Box	Breakout EDU is the immersive learning game platform. Come and learn about how to create and share Breakout EDU games with your students and see how easy it is to increase the critical thinking and collaboration in your classroom.	Adam Bellow, Breakout EDU	4:20PM, Orange County Convention Center, North 320AB
Friday, January 26
Using Digital Games for Teaching, Learning and Assessment	Robert will make sure you experience the full potential of game-based learning through a selection of titles hosted on BrainPOP's GameUP portal. Bring your own laptop/device … if you're game!	Robert Miller, BrainPOP	10:00AM, Orange County Convention Center, North 220E
Hands-On STEM: Coding Robots	This session will showcase a variety of robots and products that allow students to learn and apply coding and robotics concepts. Participants will learn about classroom use of Dash and Dot, Parrot Mini-Drones, Ozobots, a coding game called Puzzlets, Bloxels Video Game Creator, and a Kano Computer Kit.	Lauren Wade, Ocean Palms Elementary School	10:45AM, Orange County Convention Center, Booth 2305
Virtual DC Documentary	Through this project, my 5th grade students learned about the history associated with landmarks they'll be seeing this summer on their Safety Patrol trip to Washington, DC.  My 5th grade students did the research, script-writing, green screen setup, and producing prior to being able to "walk the red carpet" as the stars of the movie they produced.	Caryl OSteen, Bronson Elementary School	11:00AM, Orange County Convention Center, Booth 965
Google CS First Clubs	Technology Instructor, Kelly McNeil, will demonstrate samples, lessons and tips from her 6th grade classroom Digital Storytelling and Art Clubs.The teacher dashboard, printed materials and question and answer time will be provided from a tried in the classroom perspective. An overview of the themes will be presented: Storytelling, Friends, Fashion and Design, Art, Social Media, Sports, Music and Sound, Game Design and Animation.	Kelly McNeil, All Saints Academy	11:00AM, Orange County Convention Center, Booth 1100
Next Level Technology Clubs: Creating Divergent Thinkers Through Inquiry-Based Learning	We have created a culture of divergent thinkers through the promotion of student exploration, collaboration, and innovation without the need for specialized staff. Students choose an individualized learning path from choices such as coding, robotics, 3-D printing, invention, and video game design.	Michael West, Elyria City Schools; Cindy Tobel, Elyria City Schools; Brian Kokai, Elyria City Schools	11:00AM, Orange County Convention Center, Booth 1100
Scratch with Elementary Students	Scratch is a visual program that can be used to explore content and create in a range of media formats (games, digital storytelling, animation, etc), making it engaging for young people with various learning styles and interests and languages.	Regina Schaffer, Middletown Township School District	11:00AM, Orange County Convention Center, Booth 1100
The Power of PBL	My high school programming students designed and created a game to help our lower school students practice their mouse skills. Participants will discover all of the steps necessary to bring the project from an idea to an actual product that was played and tested by our first grade students, including feedback and iterative design strategies.	Cristy McCloskey, Sewickley Academy	11:00AM, Orange County Convention Center, Booth 2405
Become Makers: Don't Play Games, Make Them!	Teachers and students can make or augment games for learning classroom material. Learn why Alice programming was created and why it is supported by computer science professors at Duke, Stanford, Carnegie Melon, Georgia Tech and more.	Chari Distler, North Broward Preparatory School (Fla.)	12:00 noon, Orange County Convention Center, North 220E
Builders, Miners and Geeks: Why Minecrafters Need School IT	In this session, Scott, Mitchell, and Daniel will share their journey and introduce school IT leaders to several solutions that address common problems when using Minecraft for educational purposes at home and in school.	Scott Vrablik, Carmel Catholic High School (Ill.); Clean Minecraft Videos; Mitchell Brown, Carmel Catholic High School (Ill.); Clean Minecraft Videos; Daniel Rezac, Tynker & Quest Academy	12:00 noon, Orange County Convention Center, South 330H

Skoolbo Discussion

I had a very thought-provoking conversation with Colin Brown of Skoolbo last Friday.

Skoolbo is a free resource for teachers, parents, and kids worldwide that contains short learning games. They are used by over 50,000 schools (about 300,000 students ages 5-9) around the world with about half of all users coming from the US. There is a premium version for schools with enhanced ways of tracking student progress and assigning work to students.

The conversation centered around learning research an d a new partnership with ChuChu TV. If you haven’t heard of ChuChu TV, you really need to learn about them.

The Research

The Skoolbo platform responsibly (based on their student privacy and child safety policies) tracks student performance and activity, and makes the research available to researchers. Lamar University correlated the data with itegs (International Test of Early grade Skills) for Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the US. In these early grades, the US did surprisingly well, showing the greatest improvement in reading and numeracy skills in the lowest quartile of students, especially compared to the UK and New Zealand, which are both seeing increasing gaps between higher and lower performers. And, if you don’t look too closely at the number of countries included, you will be relieved to know the US never ranked lower than 6^th.

In general, top performers at age 5-6 are more advanced than lower (bottom 25%) performers of children three years older, ages 8-9. It would be interesting to find out if those gaps increase even further as the children grow up. Boys are about 3 months more advanced than girls in numeracy skills, while girls are about 3 months ahead of boys in reading skills. These trends go across all countries.

One surprising outcome was the incredible lead of Hong Kong in numeracy skills. Even at age 5.5, Hong Kong students are three grades ahead of students from the other countries. And these weren’t “privileged” Hong Kong students, the students were poor, with no Internet access at home and whose first language is Chinese. One big cultural difference is the importance of Math in the culture in Hong Kong; there is a firm belief that Math will take you anywhere, and that it’s simply not acceptable to be bad at Math, it would be as foreign as saying, “I am bad at breathing, so I won’t breathe.”

Colin said that Skoolbo is committed to making the data available free to researchers.

ChuChu TV

ChuChu TV runs Youtube channels of educational videos for children ages 0-6. Colin said that for the last 5 years, their prime channel has ranked in the top 20 of all Youtube channels, with about 500 million views a month, and is the number 1 preschool channel worldwide. SocialBlade currently rates them 21st (with 10.5 billion views), which is still nothing to sneeze at.

While I hadn’t heard of ChuChu before the conversation, I did check with relatives that have young children, and they used these videos with their kids.

ChuChu employs about 230 animators who churn out videos with musical educational content.

With their content free, ChuChu makes their money on Youtube ads.

What’s next?

Marshall McLuhan coined the terms “hot” and “cold” media in Understanding Media back in 1994. And while Youtube  is a 21^st century phenomenon, watching videos is still passive learning on cool media.

Colin is partnering with ChuChu to add learning content and analytics around the videos in a joint venture named Chu Chu School. Games, activities, curriculum, tracking, and reporting will be available in a school package in the next few months.

It will be very interesting, to watch this merger one of the most popular creators of children’s content and a widely used education games platform, to see if they can successfully use the mechanisms of Youtube tie-ins and freemium offerings to reach schools and parents and offer them subscriptions.

Slush 2017 Helsinki

I know I wasn’t the oldest person at Slush, because Al Gore was there and he’s 69 years old. But I was probably 35 years older than the median of the 20,000 tech heads from 130 countries attending the world’s largest startup event.

Some snippets of advice from some of the entrepreneurs and investors:

• You can’t change consumer behavior by persuading them, you have to give them an alternative that’s demonstrably better.
• It’s fantasy to expect masses of consumers (or customers) to switch to something more expensive.
• You’ve got to get your systems (production, marketing, sales, support) right in one market before you expand geographically. Avoid the VC trap; don’t expand too fast.
• You don’t make innovation spread. Innovation spreads, or it doesn’t.
• The only way to stay on top is to challenge and change what you are doing.
• You don’t build by focusing on what is going wrong, you expand from what is going right which also breeds excitement.
• The only way to secure data is not to gather it in the first place; the moment you start saving data, you are putting your customers and your company at risk.
• Storing your data under blockchain allows more choices for decentralization, mitigates risk, and reduces cost vs the traditional way of centralizing your data.
• The education system has to have both excellence AND equity, at scale. It's not neither, nor either, it has to have both.
• If teachers aren’t embracing the change (in education) you want to implement, the revolution collapses. And to do that, you have to trust teachers.

Will AI enhance our lives or obliterate the human race?

One series of talks were devoted to artificial intelligence and blockchain. The future belongs to decentralized (meaning blockchain) artificial intelligence. Current AI systems suffer from two missing ingredients: they can’t adapt to new situations without a great deal of human input (for example an AI system that can play the game of go cannot also drive a car), and they are not capable of rich models of objects and their interactions (for example, an AI system might be able to recognize faces, but it would not understand that the face was part of a human being and nor how to create a relationship with that person). It’s expected that the first gap will be solved in the next 3-5 years, which portends things like cars that under most circumstances will drive far better than humans, and the second in 15-20 years, which means machines may be able to learn to complete any task better than humans.

But don’t worry; 60% of AI experts say there is nothing to worry about, while only 40% maintain we are most likely on a collision course with destruction. Of course, speaking of experts, Ernest Rutherford, the founder of the atomic model, famously predicted that there would never be an atomic weapon, and that was just 12 hours before the first one was detonated. Would you get on a plane where only 40% of the experts were predicting it would crash?

Can we design a better person?

Another series of talks focused on human augmentation. Bionic devices are currently used primarily for disabled individuals. They can help people hear, walk, etc. Neuro technology (the interphase between neurons and devices) can work with bionic devices and provide feedback mechanisms. And gene editing already is used to alter crops and change animal cells to produce different chemicals (gene editing on pig cells growing in a lab enables those cells to produce human insulin). But these three technologies have even greater promise. Bionics will be able give people super human strength or other physical abilities (already most professional athletes get eye surgery in order to get vision twice as good as normal human vision). Neuro technology will soon allow brains to process faster, access more information, and control objects through thought. Gene editing will eliminate certain diseases while also offering the ability to create “designer children.”

Will we use human augmentation for the benefit of humanity, or will it further increase the gulf between the haves and the have nots? What do you think?

3DBear and TeacherGaming

Backing off these heavy thoughts a little, 3DBear reached top 10 startup status (out of 100 startup finalists) with Jussi Kajala’s riveting pitch startling the judges by crash landing a drone on the judges’ table. You can see at right how he used this to bring home the disruptive power of 3DBear to immerse kids in 3D design.

If you come to the SIIA Education Business Forum this week, or to FETC in late January, you’ll be able to meet Jussi and another Finnish EdTech star, Santeri Koivisto, whose TeacherGaming Desk is connecting curriculum and standard based lessons with popular video games to help teachers provide engaging lessons that promote deep learning.

Interesting online discussions on Edchat Interactive

And, please join us online in some exhilarating discussions:

• Shifting pedagogy from consumption to creation with Monica Burns
• Are your kids’ classes dangerously irrelevant with Scott McLeod

Just click on the links and register.

Why Game-Based Learning is so Hard for Schools

The following is excerpted from Gerhard Molin’s The Role of the Teacher in Game-Based Learning: A Review and Outlook in the book Serious Games and Edutainment Applications Volume II.

After the student, the teacher is the greatest (school) influence on student learning performance. We know this from John Hattie’s work on Visible Learning reviewing thousands of studies.

Even as long ago as 1938, we knew that a key role of the teacher is to “provoke the mind of children by asking questions” (John Dewey). And today, we know that effective teachers are able to challenge their students’ knowledge and show them a way to find pleasure in learning (Ken Bain).

However, in much game-based learning, teachers are held back because they have:

• Limited time to prepare, play, and connect knowledge acquired in the game to academic and real world knowledge
• High costs of some games
• Limited knowledge of digital games, and lack of confidence in using the game
• Difficulties in identifying appropriate games and assessments that fit the curriculum
• Poor technical infrastructure and insufficient resources

Games run somewhat counter to a traditional classroom scenario. Schools traditionally mold teachers to the tasks of instructing, assessing, critiquing, assigning, controlling, and assigning; and students to be the receivers of these actions. Games invoke a sense of play and adventure. In game-based learning, the teacher must fit the game into the curriculum, classroom environment, and school technology while also connect to the playful world promoted by the game.

This results in common disruptions of games which affect both student engagement and learning.

• When the teacher brings the students out of their “game role” into a “pupil role” in order to instruct, it disrupts the game and can also lead to confusion.
• Students are often demotivated when they are assigned to participate in games that their teachers don’t do themselves; it indirectly signals disinterest on the part of the teacher which can result in disengagement by the students.
• Teachers may not have the time to become proficient in taking on the roles of technical administrator and game administrator, nor on designing pre- and post- activities to transfer knowledge from the game to topics the students need to learn.
• When things don’t go according to plan (well this never happens, right?), the teachers often do not have the time, game skills, or coaching skills to keep students playing and learning.

Most teachers’ job satisfaction derives from their interaction with students and the feeling that they are having a positive influence on their students’ development. These disruptions can not only affect student engagement and learning, they can demotivate the teachers.

Thus, if we ever expect game-based learning to thrive, we have to find a way to support teachers’ professional identity, sense of purpose, and agency by providing the tools and skills so that they can be active and self-creating subjects even within novel contexts.

And like any person, facing uncertainty and possible multiple potential points of failure, teachers will often revert to the familiar: lecture, readings, and questions.

How do we do this?

• Part of it is cultural. When the school culture is one of participation, obstacles are just additional learning opportunities.
• Just as we scaffold learning in students, we can scaffold game use in classes. Organizations such as TeacherGaming and Filament Games have game-based learning templates that ease teachers into learning situations.
• We can provide teachers with coaching and support, such as the ISTE Games and Simulations Network and the edWEb Game-Based Learning community.
• And we can provide guides such as Ryan Schaaf’s Game On: Using Digital Games to Transform Teaching, Learning, and Assessment, and Matt Farber’s Gamify Your Classroom: A Field Guide to Game-Based Learning.

We know that teaching capacity develops with practice over time. So ultimately, it's going to take time, and we have to provide teachers with the time to play and learn.