Educational Gaming: Learn to Play, Play to Learn | EdLab

Last night, Kate and I attended a panel event titled "Educational Gaming: Learn to Play, Play to Learn" hosted by Innovate NYC Schools at General Assembly.

I am happy to report that after attending several of these types of edtech-related panel events with Kate over the past several months and feeling, frankly, a little underwhelmed, I actually thoroughly enjoyed this one and thought it was put together very thoughtfully.

The panelists were Michael Angst, CEO of E-Line Media; David Miller, Chief Learning Architect at Kuato Studios; and Jan Plass, Professor of Digital Media and Learning Sciences at NYU and the Co-Director of G4Li. The panel was moderated by Michael Levine, Executive Director of the Joan Ganz Cooney Center. I think a lot of the success of the event stemmed from the great balance of the panelists, with Michael Angst in the role of a publisher, Jan Plass' background in academic research, and David Miller as a former educator who now works in the commercial sector, but all three of them working on/with educational games (just in different capacities). It meant that the panel had a very diverse set of perspectives while the core focus on edgaming was still very clear.

Michael Levine also did an awesome job in the role of moderator, setting the tone for the conversation by providing a set of themes to help frame questions and responses that they kept coming back to throughout the evening. Some of these core themes were:
* the challenges and opportunities in actually creating these educational games
* the challenges and opportunities in the edgaming space (the specified field as well as the related industries, education/research and the game industry)
* the challenges and opportunities on a more macro level that impact edgaming (eg. economic, technological)

Michael Angst had the opportunity to speak first, and he did a great job lending his perspective as a successful publisher of edgaming and edutainment products. It was clear that he knew what he was talking about, and he was very quotable. One of my favorite things that he said almost right off the bat was:

Actually, the rest of the quote (which did not quite fit in my tweet) was, "...or a meal in itself?" His philosophy is that educational games are great, but we should not look at them as the panacea that will solve all of our problems. An educational game, no matter how great, is still no substitute for a teacher in a classroom with a group of kids doing what they do best, inspiring and motivating their students with personal anecdotes and hands-on activities and whatever else they have found that's effective. Towards the end of the evening, he phrased this same core idea in a slightly different way:

Another thing that I also appreciated about Michael (and, really, all of the panelists) was his strong emphasis on teachers. One trend that was touched upon throughout the evening was what Michael referred to as "the consumerization of education" -- the shift away from education solely being a teacher and a set of students in a classroom where the teacher is in control of learning while subject to a curriculum and set of standards set by school boards and the state, and toward a more learner-centric model where third parties design/develop and market products and services primarily for the learners -- and he posed the very thoughtful question:

I've had the pleasure of hearing Jan Plass speak many times before at NYU and the Games For Change Festival and several other events, but I never tire of listening to him because he's a talented and engaging speaker who always finds a way to bring something new to the conversation. He was an invaluable member of the panel because while Michael and David had great perspectives on the commercial space, he was able to bring in the formal research perspective. One of the key ideas that he brought up was:

The "game mechanics learning mechanics" was a reference to an earlier statement that he had made that what he sees as one of the biggest bottlenecks in the process of developing good educational games right now is the fact that there isn't a good common language or sense of understanding between game designers and educators; designers approach the creation of a game in terms of game mechanics, while an educator or researcher wanting to develop an educational game is concerned with learning outcomes. How do we translate these desired learning outcomes into game mechanics for designers? (On a personal note: this is definitely something I can relate to, as this was one of the biggest bottlenecks in the creation of my thesis project as well!) He said that that is the biggest struggle right now, and he coined the terms "learning mechanics" and "assessment mechanics" as these possible missing steps in the design process that would aid in the creation of better educational games.

One of the other interesting points that he raised that was new to me and that I did not expect was that he said that the lack of progress in mainstream adoption of educational games as a key ingredient in (to borrow Michael's words) "the recipe for learning" is NOT due to a lack of funding! He mentioned that the government has actually been giving quite a lot of money to organizations working in this space, and when Michael Levine asked a hypothetical question what each panelist would do with $5 million, he did not recommend simply using the money to pay for the development of more games.

Again, it's this same idea that the biggest challenge is to get people in education/research working together with people in the game industry, and he felt that it was more important to use the hypothetical $5 million to figure out how to help facilitate those connections.

I don't think I caught any direct quotes from David Miller, but that was not to say that I didn't like what he had to say; in fact, it was much the opposite; I thoroughly enjoyed his perspective and his enthusiasm for both the edgaming space as well as the specific project, Hackitzu, that his studio is currently working on. I had not heard of the project before the event, but it turns out to be a concept that is dear to my heart: a game to teach kids (in the 10-13 age range) to code in JavaScript! During the Q&A, a member of the audience asked him, "Why JavaScript? Why not Pascal, which was specifically developed for education?" My personal instinct was, "Because nobody actually uses Pascal in practice, so why would kids want to learn that? Whereas JavaScript is clearly the future." I was happy to hear my hypothesis confirmed when Michael Angst said, based on his own experiences and research:

There were many great questions during the Q&A. Another member of the audience asked about the technology-as-a-panacea idea that was also my experience in middle school and high school; school district investing huge sums of money in buying new technology and implementing it in classrooms without seemingly any clear goals for how this was going to improve learning. Jan mentioned that from his perspective, we thankfully seem to be moving away from that; schools are no longer investing in technology if there isn't good data supporting how that will improve learning. He also said:

Again, this goes back to the strong focus on teachers I mentioned earlier that was evident from all three panelists which I (and I'm sure all of us here at Teachers College) can certainly appreciate. Someone (I don't remember if it was Jan or David) also suggested that maybe the best way to spend the hypothetical $5 million was to invest more in teacher education.

Finally, another audience member asked a very good question about the challenge of making educational games that are successful. He mentioned that the majority of regular commercial games aren't successful -- most don't break even -- often because they're just not fun to play. Then, when you're creating an educational game, there's the additional challenge of ensuring that the game achieves the learning outcomes that you're aiming for, on top of needing it to be fun. So, he asked, how on earth do you do it?! Michael Angst told a funny anecdote about a time when he was trying to convince an investor to support a project, and the guy told him, "Games are hard. Education is hard. What you're trying to do is hard squared. I'm out." However, Jan observed that first of all, games don't HAVE to be fun, and that in fact, most aren't (and he recommended Jesper Juul's great book The Art of Failing for those interested in learning more); but more importantly, he urged us to remember that when you're creating an educational game, you're not actually competing with the regular triple-A blockbuster title -- a very good point that's worth remembering.

All in all, it was a great event and I'm glad that I was able to attend! I had actually only planned to stay for the first hour, but I ended up staying all the way until the end of the panel -- a testament to the fact that the event was well-structured and the conversation was fun and engaging. Even though edgaming is a field I am actually already quite familiar with, I felt like I learned a lot, and I am very grateful for the three awesome panelists for each lending their unique and diverse perspectives, and my gratitude and applause also goes to Michael Levine for moderating an insightful and fun discussion. And last but not least, of course, kudos to Innovate NYC Schools for putting together an awesome panel and to General Assembly for lending their space!

Source: http://edlab.tc.columbia.edu/index.php?q=node/9023

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