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Gaming@Evans
- 1. English @ Evans – AKA “All the world’s a GAME!!”
- 16. • All students initially in bottom bands for all outcomes. • End of unit assessment – all but 2 students received SUBSTANTIALLY ACHEIVED or above • Lowest increase in overall assessment compared to whole year group – 15% • Highest increase – 45% • All but one student increased ranking position in year group by 10 places
- 17. • Next year, you should get a networked thingamibob … Blah blah … whosiwhatsit ... ” • “Don’t tell anyone else you’re doing this, Miss, you might get in trouble and then Ms Smith will make you do real work.” • “This is heaps mad, ay. Way better than real english with all that stuff to remember.” • “First time I’ve learnt anything since I started at high school, specially that archy-typing stuff, that was tops. Mum let me get credit on my phone because I actually sounded really smart for once.” • “That was F@$*ING awesome Miss!”
- 22. Thanks for listening!! If you’d like further info, or to continue the discussion ….. Twitter: @tamararodgers74 Email: tamara.rodgers1@det.nsw.edu.au Blog: www.tamararodgers.edublogs.org You can also find me on yammer, maang and facebook.
Editor's Notes
- -My experience with trialling a unit of Game study with a yr 9 class I taught last year. Some successes, some challenges for the future
- Boys class – 16 students, varied backgrounds, all with behaviour issues, learning difficulties, attendance issues, etcetc ….
- This is what we have to cover in English –content, literacy, grammar, skills … it’s full on, and it’s often a very text-focussed course – ofthen the biggest concession that is made to meet the needs of the students is picking a novel which has masculine themes if you’ve got a lot of boys in your class
- Surveyed the class at the beginning of the year – and this is what they thought. English is rubbish. Lots of boring books. What’s the point? One student told me that teachers think they can try and make it interesting, but I don’t know why they bother. English sucks.
- I spoke to my HT, the principal, a lot of people around who were starting to look at gaming in schools, but there wasn’t really anything that FIT what I wanted to do… small sections of games used to illustrate a class topic, for example. But nothing holistic. When I told my class that in T3 we’d be working here, in our Interactive gaming room, which is usually just used for sports or drama, they were over the moon.
- They thought we’d be doing this all the time. A whole term of playing games? They were over the moon, and started planning what games they’d bring in, and if we had enough controllers
- The reality was quite different. We spent the first 4 weeks of the term doing some solid in depth research. We looked at the background of the gaming industry, and their target audience. We studied ads for games, and looked at how they targetted that audience.
- These low literacy, low interest, low engagement kids got very familiar with these terms, and more. Before they picked up a controller in class, they were able to talk about stock characters, symbolism, and narrative threads. T
- Our equipment in the gaming room – 3 wii consoles, 1 ps3, 4 networked pcs, 2 nitendodsi’s and 2 PSP’s. Most students spent more time on the wii’s and PC’s, with almost no use of the stand-alone handheld consoles.
- These were our texts for the term. The class suggested games that would be appropriate based on our research, and also limitations of ratings. They were dying to play COD, but were satisfied with legostarwars and age of empires as suitably violence laden substitutes.
- Wo what were the benefits? There was a marked increase in the level of positive cooperation in class. The boys had to negotiate who was playing on which console when, what games were being used, who would work with who. It helped build cohesion in a difficult group.
- We got to deal effectively with a wide range of cross curricular outcomes – particularly HSIE and PDHPE. Incidental conversations about what Alice Leung was doing with need for speed in her science class led to some great discussions about what games applied to other subjects.
- It was important that this group recognised that what they were doing was significant! The emphasis on the rigourous academic study at the beginning of the term helped emphasise that this was serious stuff – as did my head teacher’s occasional input, when she’d pop in and say “wow, I can’t believe you are doing archetypes with this class, I’m not even attempting that with mine until next year!” It really helped to build their capacity.
- They were the experts. I didn’t know how to unlock easter eggs on these games, or find the hidden levels. Mostly, I’d tell them “this is what I want us to be able to do” and they’d sort out what we needed, and how we’d accomplish that.
- Biggest success was that they were empowered – they saw themselves as able to achieve, and it removed many of those barriers that they saw in front of them previously. When faced with a test at the end of the unit, they were excited, because they actually knew something about what was being assessed – and it was meaningful learning!
- EDUCATIONAL OUTCOMES – improvement across the class in almost all cases, above the rate of improvement for the year group.
- Maybe not 100%, but there was certainly an increase in attendance for this class, which continued after the unit was finished, into our shakespeare unit in the following term. Not all teachers were happy about these kids showing up more, but I don’t care!
- Negatives – initial perception by other staff that this was a bludge, and that it was just a way to kill time and keep them entertained
- It was almost too big a unit to try and manage in just one term – when I do this again, I’ll be looking at ways to limit it a bit, so it’s not bigger than ben hur.