KSP684 - Games & Simulation Proposal - Student of the Week - Investigative Reporter

Student of the Week

Investigative Reporter

Game/Simulation Design Project

Jenn Carlson - KSP684

July 22, 2016

Overview

Nearly every classroom has a Star or Student of the week program that highlights one student.  Each week a student brings in a poster that showcases their life in photos and text. This project gives students an opportunity to get to know each other and it builds community.  For my simulation I want to turn this on its head and add 21st-century and technology skills.  I also want to change it from a solo project to a collaborative effort.  

Each student will become a reporter.  They will be assigned a classmate (aka Star) to investigate.  They can do this by interviewing them, talking to former teachers, talking to siblings that also attend the school, or emailing parents.  They will gather information on their assigned ‘Star’ and report on it to the class. They will need to compile the information and present it.  This can be done in a multimedia presentation, a live talk show type interview, a printed pamphlet/poster, or in any other format they wish to present the information.  

This simulated reporter/investigator job will make the Star of the week program more personal to the students.  It will encourage them to really get to know each other, while they are honing their communication, organization, and research skills.

Learning goals & Educational Theory

Prior to starting the Star of the Week Investigator simulation, there will need to be explicit instruction on interviewing and reporting. This instruction will include several mini lessons.  These lessons will highlight examples of live, print, and video interviews.  Lessons will provide guidance on what makes an interview interesting to the viewer, public speaking skills, and research. Students will practice interviewing and reporting on someone in their family in order to practice the skills they learn in their mini lessons.  As part of their Student Reporting Labs, PBS Newshour has put together a unit on being a reporter or news anchor.  Many of the mini-lessons in this unit will be used as part of the explicit instruction.  The Star interview that each student completes will be used to assess their learning.  It is important that students are provided instruction on how to do the expected tasks so that they do not get frustrated and disengage.

The learning goals and objectives for this simulation are aimed at social skills.  These soft skills are often overlooked when planning lessons and units of study but are just as important. The skills students will develop and practice during this simulation fall under seven main categories, they are communication, leadership, influencing, interpersonal, personal, creativity, and professional.  Students will hone their verbal communication, listening, presentation, interviewing, decision-making, facilitation, interpersonal relationships, empathy, artistic sense, planning, and research skills.  

Communication skills will be key in this simulation because students will need to talk to a variety of people in order to gather information on their Star.  They will need to format questions that are targeted at the specific knowledge they hope to gain from each person they contact. To fully understand their Star they will need to practice their listening and interviewing skills. Their decision-making skills will be put to the test as they decide what information they want to report about their Star.  Planning their presentation, video, or live interview will require students to practice an attention to detail and be creative.  

Based on how the student decides to present their information, it is quite possible that they will also learn to use a new piece of technology while completing this simulation.  The P21 Model for 21st-century skills highlights career building skills, technology, and communication skills among the important skill students will need in order to survive in a 21st-century career.  This simulation will help them develop all of these skills.

The active real-world focus of this simulation is aligned with the constructivist theory of learning.  Students apply learning in context to further deepen their understanding of the concepts.

Research & Inspiration

I wasn’t able to find a simulation or game that was an apples-to-apples comparison to my vision of this project.  I found several journalism clubs and writing unit plans that I am using as the basis for this simulation.  Below is a brief description of each.

The North Andover Public Schools, in Massachusetts, has developed a comprehensive how-to guide for starting an 8-week long after school journalism club. They have included vocabulary, materials, and detail instruction for each lesson.  The information provided in this unit would translate well into mini-lessons.  The one missing component of these lessons is that they focus on print format for the output. While they will have a choice of delivery product and certainly could do a printed report, I am hoping that my students will decide to do a digital, multimedia presentation or video.

The information in the outlined lessons would give the students the information they need to complete their assigned Star investigation.  

http://www.northandoverpublicschools.com/cms_files/resources/ElementarySchoolJournalismClub2009.pdf

The Reporter Game is a board game, available on One Stop English’s website, provides students with the opportunity to write stories for a pretend newspaper.  This game includes “cards” to inspire students and focus them.  These cards include celebrity, scoop, paparazzi, photo, and bonus cards.  With the paparazzi cards, students are able to steal a scoop from their opponents.  

While the goal for my students is to write about another classmate, they could use the information from this game to gain ideas about the type of storylines they can use when putting together information about their Star.

http://www.onestopenglish.com/community/lesson-share/winning-lessons/writing/writing-the-reporter-game/145186.article

PBS News Hour’s Student Reporting Labs was the inspiration for my simulation.  I knew that I wanted to provide my students with a real-world context for writing.  So often in schools we have our students write about things that don’t matter to them.  Things that have no connection to their lives.  I think that writing about one of their classmates would be make it more personal.  They will be motivated by wanting to impress the class and make this Star feel important.  This “ice-breaker” will help build the community in my class.

The PBS Student Reporting Lab allows students to investigate and submit their stories to the website.  The end result I am hoping for is that my in-class simulation will inspire my students to investigate the world around them. The Student Reporting Lab would provide an authentic audience for my students.  After they have “practiced” and “honed” their investigative skills with a classmate they can move to local or community stories that they would like to investigate.

https://studentreportinglabs.org/resource/lesson-22-interviewingthe-art-asking-questions/

Rules

The rules for this simulation are more like guidelines for my cub reporters.  

1. Always be respectful to your interviewee
2. Report honestly, while keeping positive
3. Explore many sources to validate your findings
4. Be creative
5. Provide the whole picture (lots of details and information about your Star)
6. Take pride in your work

Finished Product Requirements:

1. Presentation: can be a multimedia presentation, video, live interview, poster, booklet, or any other creative idea.
2. Must include:
1. Name
2. Age
3. Where they are from
4. Family makeup
5. Hobbies
6. Sports
7. Pets
8. Travel - where have they been, where do they want to go.
9. Achievements
10. Goals
11. Likes
12. Dislikes
13. Something they would like to learn
14. One funny story from their life
15. Any other information that makes them unique

Interface & Artwork

I am really unsure how to package this simulation.  My first thought is that the mini lesson completion provides them with a badge for completion.  Once they have completed their Star investigation they will receive their Star Finder badge.  I have so many resources that I need to go through and weed out which lessons I want to include.

My initial thoughts are lessons and badges for the following:

Photographer
Copyright & Fair Use
Interviewer
Fact Finder
Production & Publication
Star Finder
Journalist

KSP684 - School of the Future - Exit Summary

This week we read and investigated different aspects of game design and development.  In the article, Applying Pedagogy during Game Development to Enhance Game-Based Learning, we read about how there are different levels of game design for classroom use.  Each level incorporates a unit or lesson from a larger unit.  When a unit is broken down into levels it is easy to see how it can relate to a game or simulation.  The article also reinforced the importance of using the 5E model of lesson design: Engage, Explore, Explain, Elaborate, and Evaluate.

In addition to understanding out to design a game or simulation for use in the classroom, we explored how having students develop their own game can deepen their understanding.  Applying learned content in a real-world situation helps students develop their 21st-century skills and make connections. Student developed games can be used as an engagement and assessment tool.

KSP684 - Value of Students Creating their own Games

As I mentioned in my posts about GEL and GDIAC, having students create their own games is invaluable.  As a teacher, I find that the best way to assess understanding is through project work.  Students are able to show me that they understood the information presented.  Often they are able to transfer and connect it in ways that I don't anticipate.  This truly highlights the individuality of each student.

Having students create their own games (or project) can help them to process their learning, make connections, and transfer content knowledge.  By displaying their understanding in their own project they are given the flexibility to make choices and see how their choices impact the outcome.  In programming, an attention to details is key to success.  Students hone these skills when they are accountable for creating their own games.  The process itself allows them to practice many 21st-century skills, such as creativity, problem-solving, communication, and innovation.

KSP684 - Cornell University - Game Design Initiative

Similar to Michigan State's game lab, Cornell showcases their students work via the GDIAC gallery.  These games are designed and built by students.  These games highlight the learning and understanding of content learned in computer science classes.  Each game showcased on this site shows skill, creativity, and fundamental understanding of computer programming and game design concepts.  They are written in a variety of languages for a variety of platforms.  One can assume that these choices were up to the students, these choices are in alignment with teaching and learning best practices for engaging students and allowing them to express themselves through their personal learning style.

KSP684 - GEL Website Review & Game Play

After digging around on the GEL website I decided to play Saving Draggy.  It is a really well made, very cute game aimed at 5 to 10-year-olds. I love that the computer science students at Michigan State create their own games and publish them.  There is no better way to learn the principles of game development and computational thinking than through the actual creation of a final product.  You get to see firsthand what bugs can develop in your code, how important the details are, and how big of an impact your decision making has on the overall quality.

Computer science and game development students learn a lot of principles throughout their courses and this application of learning can reinforce their understanding.  This game development could be used for assessment of learning.

KSP684 - Applying Pedagogy during Game Development to Enhance Game-Based Learning

Abstract:

• “Serious games” are becoming more and more common for use in education.
• Advances in video game design outpace research on their effectiveness and their design
• Very little is known about how to optimize the game design process or game-based learning.
• Educators and instructional designers leading the design process would likely result in neither fun nor engaging games.  They would focus on educational objectives.
• Traditional teaching practices and learning requirements would be forced into the game
• Entertaining game designers would fail to incorporate pedagogical principles.
• Games shouldn’t distract players with high-end graphics and animations or competing, scoring, and winning.

Applying Pedagogy during Game Development to Enhance Game-based Learning

• Levels of Design & Application
• Four levels must be applied to instructional games
• Instruction must be viewed as a series of events that facilitate learning and achievement of specified learning and performance goals.
• Instructional units should contain a complete set of instructional events. Can be divided into lessons.  Hierarchy of Course:

• Instructional strategy should be grounded in research and theory.  Use of 5E instructional model can help:
• Engage: assess learners’ prior knowledge and helps them become engaged in a new concept by reading a vignette, posting a question, doing a demonstration that has a non-intuitive result, showing a video clip, or conducting some other short activity that promotes curiosity and elicits prior knowledge
• Explore: Learners work in collaborative teams to complete activities that help them use prior knowledge to generate ideas, explore questions, and possibilities, and design and conduct a preliminary inquiry.
• Explain: Learners should have the opportunity to explain their current understanding of the main concept.  They may explain their understanding of the concept by making presentations, sharing ideas with one another, reviewing current scientific explanations and comparing these to their own understandings, and/or listening to an explanation from the teacher that guides them toward a more in-depth understanding.
• Elaborate: Learners elaborate their understanding of the concept by conducting additional activities.  They may revisit an earlier activity, project, or idea and build on it, or conduct an activity that requires an application of the concept.  The focus in this stage is on adding breadth and depth to current understanding.
• Evaluate: The evaluation phase helps both learner and instructors assess how well the learner understand the concept and whether they have met the learning outcomes. There should be opportunities for self assessment as well as formal assessment.

Level Descriptions:

• Level 1:
• Game designed to facilitate one specific instructional event within an instructional unit.
• Examples:
• Recall factual content
• Promote active involvement and discussion
• Evaluate acquisition of concepts
• Events must be planned for learner to explore, explain, and elaborate - can be prior to or after game.
• Level 2:
• Game addresses 2 or more events from instructional unit.
• May present learners with a scenario to engage their interest AND ask them to explore related concepts through a series of readings and activities.  
• Feedback and assessments can occur before or after gameplay.
• Level 3:
• Incorporates ALL activities and events necessary to achieve a specified set of goals and objectives.
• Game is designed to engage learners, facilitate exploration, solicit explanations and elaborations, and evaluate learning.
• Level 4:
• One game played throughout the entire course.  
• Ties together all units, lessons, and events.
• Level 5 - Not a typical level but could be developed to encompass all course certificates, degrees, or training materials. Not very likely to happen.

Distinctions between levels are important because processes and resources necessary to apply what we know about teaching and learning. (pedagogy) to design an instruction game.

KSP684 - Video Game High School - Episodes 3 & 4

This show is a hoot.  It is so well made. When it was first assigned to us I thought, "What? This can't be good."  But I thoroughly enjoy it.  I found myself rooting for the characters and thinking that I would probably be the most competitive person in the school if I went there.

KSP684 - School of the Future - Classroom 5 Summary

This week’s readings and podcasts were all about using video games and badges in a classroom setting.  

I found the article about badges the most interesting since in my classroom I give buttons to my students for various successes.  After reading about their work and planning I wanted to know how it turned out after they implemented it.  I looked at the Portland State University, Office of Academic Innovation’s website and was able to identify the results of “Project 139” and see the follow-up information from after they initiated their new badging system.  It seems that the big takeaway from this project was that the instructional design work they did to develop the new curriculum enhanced and enriched the courses.  

Using commercial video games in a classroom setting was another topic of this week’s material. I will admit that wrapping my brain around using some of the video games on the market in my classroom is difficult.  I see the 21st-century skills that come from exposure to these games.  I have seen first hand how Minecraft can turn a group of kids into a community who collaborates on a very advanced level.  I think the problem-solving and strategy development skills that games encourage are priceless.  My personal roadblock comes when I start to think more deeply about how to assess this value.  So much of what we do as teachers starts with the learning outcome and assessment and works backwards.  I know that if I sat down and started mapping it out I could make it work.  That said, it seems like an insurmountable mountain at the moment.  The time dedication seems out of reach for most teachers.  

My one a-ha moment this week was the “calling the video game development company and asking them” suggestion given by Richard Van Eck’s guest on the Ed Got Game podcast. I am a person who lives by the “it never hurts to ask” motto but I would never have thought this was an option!  I also like the idea of having games on consoles, computers, tablets, and non-digital set up as stations that students can rotate through. I can see this being very effective in my fifth-grade classroom.

KSP684 - Ed Got Game: #18: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly of Using Commercial Games in the Classroom

Game-based learning - commerical, off the shelf game - not targeted at education.

• SimCity for teaching geography.
• Need to stay current - almost any game can be used in education.
• Challenges:
• Political culture - administration and parent perceptions - work is work, games are play
• Fun v. historically accurate - teach must understand the game in its entirety.  Must develop lesson plan around game to overcome any misconceptions that exist in the game.
• Pre-teaching content.
• Teachers must play the game to understand what its shortcomings are
• Latest and greatest is not always best - contact the company to get discounts on older games - or the OK to install it on multiple computers for education
• Economically challenging
• Console games require consoles
• Console games can be played using STEAM in Schools - games can be played on browser
• Good-old-games - another website
• Valve - Portal
• World of Warcraft
• When using a game for education you may lose what the game naturally does - Teacher creates constraints, activities, and challenges for students - changes 1:1 dynamic of game
• Building game from ground up would be ideal but it is expensive and time prohibitive to teachers
• Repurpose media
• Changes lense through which students see the game - they think about different things while playing.
• Games as assessment tool - they are a continuous cycle of learning and assessment - the question is: What are they assessing.
• Benefits of games: what educational principles are already part of the game?  Many!!
• How do I measure what the student is doing in the game along with what addons I use to supplement it?
• Games lend themselves to formative assessment
• The true value of the games is not motivation - it is the skills they learn and strategies they use while playing.
• Competency-based learning marries well with game-based learning.

KSP684 - Badge It! - Ford, Izumi, Lottes, & Richardson

Collaborative learning outcomes based approach to integrating information literacy badges with disciplinary curriculum.

Discussion of approach taken by librarian and disciplinary faculty members to improve information literacy (IL) within disciplinary courses.

• Higher education
• Competency-based
• Technological innovation
• Embed IL into disciplinary curriculum
• Mapping learning outcomes
• Instructional design tasks - planning for content delivery and assessment

Findings:

• An approach to technological innovation for instructional projects based on the principles of pedagogical design can result in improvements to IL pedagogy and collaboration between librarians and disciplinary faculty, whether or not a technological implementation is successful.

Practical Implications:

• Pedagogical and learning outcomes-based approach to embedded IL can be used.

Badges were awarded to certify IL skills.

Article:

Higher ed is at crossroads - people are wondering if it is worth the debt.  What is the value?

What does a bachelor's degree qualify you to do? What did the student learn?

Grades and course list does not sufficiently capture what knowledge, skills, and abilities a student has gained.

Competency-based curriculum is a result of above questions/concerns.

Educational-accrediting bodies have modified requirements to include particular competencies. (so have social and health sciences)

Encourages self-reflection and self-assessment.

Three main criticisms to competency-based education:

• Disempowers students
• Shift away from education’s central ethical and democratic role to prepare students to engage in democratic society
• Represents the neoliberalization of higher education - knowledge becomes tangible.  Education is being commercialized.

Competency-based learning does not allow students to gain esoteric knowledge or critical theoretical knowledge.

Badges:

• Map outcomes - decide on “core” skills - what is most important for them to learn
• They ended with 6 badges:
• Web Ninja (for Web site evaluation skills)
• Source Sleuth (for understanding information formats and audiences)
• Silver Pen (for contributing to the information landscape and providing peer commentary)
• Keyword Hacker (for learning search techniques)
• Recorder (for citation and source documentation).
• Master Information Analyzer: certifies the culmination of students’ work throughout the course
• Decide what skills each badge representation
• Create assessments for each badge
• In cases of work resulting in a culminating project - assessments can be “standalone” for each badge

Lessons learned:

• Don’t underestimate how long it takes to create curriculum, assessments, and badging system
• Aligning with all the various standards and objectives is not easy (CCSS, NGST, MN Standards, etc.)
• Some learning outcomes are very broad and can’t be narrowed down to one assessment.
• Evaluation of a badging project should take into account all work done not just adoption by students.  Pedagogical improvements and collaboration was involved too.
• The success of this project helps ensure that other innovative projects can be done as well.
• Project included scaffolding student work
• Collaborative and learning outcomes-based approach can effectively guide instructional design.
• Badges should not be considered the end goal - the end goal is improved pedagogy.
• Use of control groups can help measure efficacy of badging system
• Learn from the planning stages...