ICT Assignment 2 (Online Blog Presentation)
Gaming and Mathematics Learning
2. An exposition of the way IT has made possible, or will make possible, new ways of teaching or learning in a specific discipline.
The focus of this blog will be on the Gaming and its potential ways it could be used in mathematics education.
There is great potential for gaming to be used in the secondary education particularly in the study of mathematics. In today’s culture gaming has been very much a part of students’ lives with the prevalence of virtual worlds such as that which exists in the World of Warcraft (WoW). Through the last two decades gaming has been viewed quite negatively by educators on the effects it has on the attention span of the students and blamed for the cause of ADHD or similar attention disorders. In recent times however gaming in a study done by Online Education it is estimated that 65% of households in the US play games with 25% of the all gamers being under 18 [2]. The average gamer spends 18 hours a week on video games with 40% of gaming population being are female, this shows how relevant gaming is to both sexes and is not purely a male obsession. By the age of 21 , It is estimated that we spend 10000 hours on gaming, what’s interesting about this statistic is that by grade 5 to the end of high school assuming you have perfect attendance, they will have had 10800 hours of school class time. This statistic speaks volumes as gamers spend as much time playing game which something completely voluntary than they do attending classes which is in most cases compulsory [1].
Being by far the most popular massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORG) with 11.1 million subscribers worldwide WoW has certainly been a game played by many students in High School. The Premise for playing games like WoW is that people that play wow are usually people that feel that they don’t succeed in real life, this is in contrast with WoW itself where everyone is able to experience success with instant feedback given for certain actions you take [2]. For example, if you kill a monster you will be rewarded with ‘experience’ points in which are used to ‘level’ up your character, this process provides the player with constant stimulus to try to get to the next level [2]. The unique nature of WoW is that it is based on a fantasy world where every avatar the player gets to choose what experience they take, whether this be interacting with other players, levelling your character, trading through the auction house system in the cities on the game, fighting dungeon bosses with other players or simply exploring the WoW world. Each quest in WoW is challenging yet achievable and working with other to fulfil a common goal is encouraged [2]. In fact some challenges can’t be overcome without having to work with other players providing a multimodal experience, as they are required engage in a variety of senses to complete a task i.e. visual, audio, texts [1].
Please watch the youtube video below:
This is an example of a boss fight whereby a team of players work as a team engaging to fight a dungeon boss. The team consists of a healer (prevent the team from dying), a tank (the players the takes most the damage from the boss) and avatars that do damage so that the boss can be defeated. The fight progress and damage/healing done can been seen in real time. Players are seen here communicating via text as well as engaging with the audio/visual aspects of the battle.
This idea could be carried forward to mathematics education particularly in the topic of ‘Rates of Change’ which is taught in year 8 maths and beyond. Since students find that they feel they experience more success with gaming than with real life then why not bring the paradigm of gaming in to the classroom rather than forcing content in which they can’t relate to into the classroom. A way in which maths could be used here is for students to understand the mathematics behind the boss fight. From the video it is clear that each player and the boss have a set amount of health and potential to do damage, with the healer having a potential to heal to a certain amount of health points per second. The goal is to constantly do damage to the boss while healing the player taking damage from the boss. The healers themselves have a set amount of energy (which recharges given enough time) in which they could use to cast healing spells on the players. If the healer use up the energy fast than it is regenerated it would be virtually useless in the fight and would lead to the failure of the whole team. A good mathematical activity for the class to do is to determine how much damage collectively needs to be dealt per second and well as how much healing is needed to keep the team alive. Since there no one right answer as there are range of factors that affect the outcome i.e. who the boss targets, if the healer dies or weather the players constantly deal damage. It bring forward a rich mathematical problem in which student would be solving intuitively as they are normally while playing the game privately. The aim is for them to understand mathematically how and why they would succeed in their quest and weather a certain team combination would be likely to fail at the challenge. The students can then test their understanding and actually use their model(s) of success to see if it really works in the game making it completely relevant to their context (helping them to become better gamers) while teaching them mathematical principals at the same time.
Overall gaming can provide students with a rich from of learning and is despite common conception is quite cognitively demanding as it is very much a multimodal medium in which could be used as a tool for learning.
Gaming is an integral part of students’ lives in the 21st century, they spent many hours playing it to master their skills and develop certain intuitions in how to collectively achieve goals with other people. This intuition can be formalised into mathematics and be used to teach various topics which in turn help them with their gaming (something they play anyway) forming a win-win situation for educators and the students. I personally see this as the future for teaching as student centered learning is changing the face of present education.
References
1. Barlett, C. P., Anderson, C. A., & Swing, E. L. (2009). Video game effects confirmed, suspected, and speculative: A review of the evidence. Simulation & Gaming, 40(3), pp. 377-403.
2. Jane Mcgonical (2010), Gaming Can Make a Better World, TED Video: <http://www.ted.com/talks/jane_mcgonigal_gaming_can_make_a_better_world.html>
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ReplyDeleteI agree with Kai Chan that gaming works as a great problem solving exercise for students, and how it could build confidence, resilience and independent learning skills. This is supported by James Gee, who notes the parallel between playing games and learning at school – how good video games incorporate good learning principles. The fun nature of games is an added bonus in generating students’ curiosity and engagement to learn. The example illustrated, i.e. ‘Rates of Change’, supports the statement from the ICT section of VELS: “Through the selection and application of appropriate equipment, techniques and procedures, students learn to process data and information to create solutions to problems and information products that demonstrate their knowledge and understandings of the concepts, issues, relationships and processes related to all areas of learning.” However, I wish to highlight that it is important for the teacher to monitor students’ progress – in games when time constraints were a feature, some learners may prioritise speed over strategic thinking or accuracy, and although scoring generated competition, it often diverted attention from the intended learning towards developing strategies for gaining a high score (Beauchamp and Kennewell, 2008). ICT activities not moderated by the teacher often lacked the progressive structure needed to extend students’ understanding, particularly when tasks were generated randomly by the software (Beauchamp et al., 2008). I do agree, nevertheless, that gaming has the potential to motivate and engage students in higher cognitive processes when accompanied by effective pedagogical practices.
ReplyDeleteReferences
Beauchamp, G. & Kennewell, S. (2008). The influence of ICT on the interactivity of teaching. Education and Information Technologies, 13, 305-315.