There are essentially two types of education: formal and informal.
Formal education takes place in classrooms, led by teachers with a
prescribed curriculum. Informal learning describes education outside of school: at libraries, museums, and in online communities of practice, like the thousands of Minecraft
instructional videos that students watch on YouTube. Informal education
is self-directed, based on interest. Informal learning has a system of
apprenticeship, in which novices learn from more experienced members.
Beyond the School Bell
This summer, I had the opportunity to meet Justin Leites, Vice President of Games for Amplify Learning, at two conferences: the Games Learning Society Conference at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and the Serious Play Conference
at Carnegie Mellon University. Leites' role at Amplify is building and
curating game content to support its growing curriculum. As of summer
2015, it had about 30 games available.
The World of Lexica is a suite of interconnected English language arts games playable on iPads. This summer, the developer, Schell Games, won the 2015 Serious Play Gold Medal for creating it.
"[Lexica] takes the idea that a game is a series of
meaningful choices, and then offers students meaningful choices to keep
them engaged along the way," Leites explained. Lexica features a
virtual library with more than 600 books, including work from
contemporary authors Neil Gaiman and Lemony Snicket. With so much
content, clearly it cannot be played in one 40-minute class period!
Students begin reading their favorite stories and books in school and
then continue from home, in informal learning settings.
In Lexica, there are quests in which students can interact
with book characters. "One of my favorite things is, if you read a book,
the characters will initiate interesting conversations about things you
read," Leites continued. "It's an interesting engagement tool."
A good learning game has the potential to engage high-order cognitive
thinking for long periods of time. After all, children play games like Minecraft and Little Big Planet
for hours because they're mentally engaging and satisfying. "Extending
learning beyond the classroom is something middle school teachers asked
us for," recalled Leites. "That was a major design goal."
Learning from Fun Failure
Twelve a Dozen
is a math game co-developed by Amplify with Bossa Studios. It can be
played as a standalone application, available for most mobile devices. Twelve a Dozen
teaches the order of operations -- a precursor for middle school
algebra. The game was created with the design philosophy of always
making failure fun.
Games like Twelve a Dozen encourage persistence through
trial and error. In fact, there are no negative consequences for trying
and not succeeding with different strategies. Twelve a Dozen borrows the “rewind” mechanic from The Prince of Persia games: do something wrong and rewind the action so that you can try again! After all, failure is part of the learning process.
Games like this are an example of what psychologist Carol Dweck calls the growth mindset, a state in which "people
believe that their most basic abilities can be developed through
dedication and hard work -- brains and talent are just the starting
point."
A Community of Informal Learning
Informal learning works best when there is a community of practice
supporting it. Often, it may be a digital community. In a K-12 setting,
administrators and teachers may have trepidations about the online
social interactions that support informal learning. One solution is when
learning communities exist within the "walled garden" of a classroom,
grade level, or school. MinecraftEdu
is a good model of how learning can take place using a closed server,
managed by the teacher and accessible only to the students.
Game-based learning is an approach that can inspire student-directed
informal learning. Try having students play a game in pairs in the
classroom and then ask them to try it single player from home to see how
the decision-making process changes. "Games throughout human history
are played together. And it is especially true for this generation!"
Leites explained. "We discovered that, even when we gave a kid a game
like solitaire, they'd ask, 'How do I play this with my friends?' That's
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