Kids, Games, Educational Tech & the Future
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Delivered at Casual Connect Tel Aviv 2016 | Forget grades. Let's have fun with math! This session will focus on the importance of failing, how grading takes the fun out of it, and how games can help kids extend their potential with engaging educational content - without killing their passion for learning.
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Kids, Games, Educational Tech & the Future
- 1. Kids, Games & The Future of Educational Technology
- 3. Founded 2012 90 Employees 40 Countries 170+ Games 1.5M+ Users
- 4. Users
- 5. Kids, Games & The Future of Educational Technology
- 6. Technology The technical means humans use to extend their potential (William Brian Arthur) “ ”
- 8. Just as technology has revolutionized other industries, it has the power to transform education “ ”
- 10. 1905
- 11. Record Player
- 12. Public Radio
- 15. Tablets
- 16. What is common to all of these technology implementations in education?
- 17. “Let’s use technology as a distribution channel”
- 18. Assuming that knowledge is a transferable object like any other commodity
- 20. Reduce Cost Increase Quality Increase Speed Increase Results
- 28. What will happen if we’ll take away all the technology out of schools?
- 29. Nothing.
- 30. Trying to solve the WRONG PROBLEM
- 31. Assuming that knowledge is a transferable object like any other commodity
- 32. Learning Act of acquiring new, or modifying and reinforcing existing, knowledge “ ”
- 33. “To understand is to discover, or reconstruct by rediscovery” Jean Piaget
- 34. Learning should be an active process. Too often, students come to school to watch their teachers work.
- 35. How to use technology to promote a meaningful thought process?
- 36. GAMES!!!
- 37. “We’re obsessed with grades because we’re obsessed with data. But grading takes away the fun of failing” Professor Shimon Schocken, Co-founder, Matific
- 38. Fear of Failure
- 39. “I missed more than 9,000 shots in my career, I’ve lost almost 300 games, 26 times I’ve been trusted to take the game’s winning shot - and missed. I’ve failed over, and over, and over again. That is why I succeed.”
- 43. “Can you find a way to solve this?”
- 44. Do you know the solution?
- 45. Each problem in educational games, should be a chance to learn and improve.
- 57. Fear of Failure
- 58. “If you cannot measure it, you cannot improve it”
- 59. Matching each student with its own program
- 61. “The role of an educational game is to inspire, to challenge, to excite the students to want to learn”
- 63. It’s too late for me, son
- 65. Thank You! Amir Dori, Sr Game Designer | Matific amir@matific.com
Editor's Notes
- Hello everybody. My name is Amir Dori, a senior game designer at Matific. Before joining Matific I was a Creative Team Leader and Game Designer in TabTale for 3 years, and just before that I opened my own game design studio Lookandfeel and created several independant apps. Probably the one that you are most familiar with, is...
- iWatermelon. An app to spot a ripe watermelon… yep - there’s an app for that.
- Matific is a company that deals with Math education through games. We are an evolving start-up with users across 40 countries.
- And by users - we mean kids, grades K-6, covering the whole elementary Math curricula.
- What we’re going to talk about today is “the relationship between kids, games, and educational technology”. So first, let’s try to understand what is educational technology. Technology - A very wide term, with a variety of definitions.
- Take Batman or Iron Man for example.
- Technology has truly revolutionized lots of industries, and the concept of educational technology developed from the idea that… Think about businesses like Uber, think about Amazon, Facebook, Google…
- However, it’s not a really new idea..
- ...And all you have to do is to connect the kids to a piece of technology and by the end of the process they will become experts
- 30s
- 40s
- 50s
- They all share the same idea of
- This assumption is based on a typical supply chain \ If we take a look on a typical supply chain, it’s the same idea
- Eliminate the “middle man” to reduce cost, increasing the quality, speed and results. It works so well that tons of industries can’t exist without technology.
- What will happen if we’ll take the technology out of businesses like waze?
- It’s gone.
- No computers, no smartphones, no tablets…?
- So we have a problem here. There’s a gap between the great vision of using technology in education and the reality.
- And the reason for this gap is very simple. We are trying to solve the wrong problem. It’s not about moving data or information from one place to another - it’s about learning.
- So the basic assumption that knowledge is an object that can be moved like any other commodity is wrong. Knowledge is not a commodity, and learning is not a process of transmitting and receiving information.
- What is learning?
- Jean Piaget, which is father of modern psychology, said.. If we want the kids to really understand the concept, they need to discover it themselves.
- Learning should be an active process. The goal for educational technology, is to stimulate this active process.
- What’s the coolest way to stimulate an active process for kids?
- Currently, most of the educational technology companies, and the technologies that are available in schools, are not utilizing games - but utilizing digital tests. And the reason is that tests gives you grades. And school is all about grades.
- One of Shimon’s quotes is the following.. ..and fear of failure is indeed one of the most critical topics that games resolves.
- Right now, most of the educational systems for kids breeds a fear of failure. And failing is very important - especially for learning. Tolerant for failure is really essential if you want to get better in what you’re doing. But unfortunately, schools are not very tolerant for failures… they teach you to be afraid of being wrong, rather than seeing your mistakes as opportunity to improve.
- Most of us are not Michael Jordan. If we’re going to fail, some of us will try again, and some of us won’t try again. But as I said - school culture doesn’t work like that. School is all about weather you’re successful in the test or not - and you better success on the first try, or else you’re simply will be punished with a bad grade..
- Now compare that, to how we learn in games. Think how many times you’ve missed a jump, got busted, failed the mission… but immediately got back to try it again.
- Think how many levels, how many challenges and games you failed - only to try a new tactic or experiment a different solution. On the spot!
- In games you were never trained to fear the failure - you were trained to overcome it. Games teach us that what’s matter is finding a solution to the problem, rather than just getting it right on the first try.
- The important thing here, is that problems in games ask you…
- …rather than: “do you know the solution?”
- In Matific this concept is deeply in our DNA, so …... rather than simply a test to see if you already have the knowledge to solve it. We developed a pedagogical system of “3WAS” --
- First mistake - we are going to highlight the mistake Second mistake - we are going to highlight a tool, a mechanic or a method of using elements on the game - that can help you to overcome the challenge Third mistake - showing the answer and the steps that were needed to get to this answer In addition to great pedagogical content, the whole concept of playing the games in Matific is also wrapped with a gamified environment for kids.
- this is how homework looks like in Matific. <explain>
- <explain about the album> … And we see great feedback from teachers, parents and kids.
- By doing so we are eliminating the fear of failure. No one thinks that he is a loser, just because he failed in a computer game. The self esteem of the kid is not going to be demotivated even if he failed, because he has the opportunity to instantly improve. But it’s not all about the engagement -
- one of the great pluses, is that we are collecting massive amount data about user’s scores, by topics, and the data is available for the parents and the teachers. This is extremely important, because …. But again, the focus for educational games should be on the learning process, not on how to evaluate it. In addition, we are also using data from games for responsive and adaptive learning.
- Matching each student with its own program to ensure they’ll overcome their personal weakest points. Our games are giving them special “attention” that they can’t get from a teacher in a class of 40 students -
- And by the end of the process, they are becoming experts. The kids are playing games that helps them to extend their potential by themselves.
- We believe that… … If you want to develop an educational game, these should be your guidelines. To give the kids instant feedbacks with incentives to continue playing so they can learn and improve.
- And we choose to focus on math, by the way, because it’s extremely important as it develops logic, innovation & problem solving. And these are going to be the skills that kids will need for their future success.
- The only thing that left for me is to wish I had the chance and the opportunity to play Matific games when I was a kid myself… ...but I’m more than excited and happy...
- ...to know that my kids will.