How is my Masterplan working?

Comment:

English is my second language and according to all my former English teachers I should have a C or lower in English because I have no knowledge. Or as you can see, I have the wrong kind of language skills becuse I've learned English while playing games (Dark Age of Camelot and World of Warcraft) and that's bad :D hehe well, of course not, but I want to point it out so you understand there's much learning going on when you play games even though it's not the primary thought of it.

How is my Masterplan working?

Well, this week I've started slow and easy with my course "PCs and Peripherals" and as you can see I have already done the opposite to my colleague. (I'm Steve and my students are also Steve)

He (and more colleagues) asks me all the time how I'm going to solve my course and most of them also panic when they realize my plan. It can't work! And therefor they try to shoot me down as fast or as often as possible... I do have some allies, but they work in silence and let me take the battles ;)

Anyway, before starting with theory I felt I needed to take up some basics with my students. My colleague started with theory from the very beginning and a whole day... Basics for me: how you problem solve, how you can be creative, how I want them to do documentations, start networking, stuff like that. And to make this happen without being boring I thought the Bartle Test of Gamer Psychology could be a way to trick them: make something boring funny.

So they did the test, and if You try this with your class I have to warn you, the site gamerDNA is slow, and they got their profiles (achiever, explorer, socializer and killer). I don't believe this work for games in general because when I took the FPS test myself I got another profile, something happens with my game role when I get my hands on a M249... 

What comes to a dungeon based game this was working just fine. We had three killers, three achievers, one socializer and two explorers (me and one more).

After the test they had to start working, first go to the wiki site and learn more about their profile. Understand the English, use Google translate if that's easier so you will have a hint what the text is about in Swedish (mothertounge). I believe you have a learning process going on even if you use Google translate, even if it's cheat what comes to language you problem solve and learn to be creative. Important skills as well.

When they had understood the description they now had to, with own words, reflect over their own gaming profile. Is it true? Why or why not? Motivate! Yes or no is not a valid answer. And they did that, all of them! A few sentences.

This, the reflection part, were the part where I realised - afterwards - I had succeeded with something school counselors usually fail with. Students with some kind of diagnose (ADHD, dyscalculia, dyslexia and more) usually have very hard to do this self analysis and put in on paper. I made this happen by misstake...

And as they are a new class, their group dynamic got a push, no matter the age: all are gamers! They started to discuss games and roles, and when I did the same test I was an important part of that discussion.

Back to the master plan!

I know our students, sooner or later, will loose interest if the lessons becomes boring (too much theory) and I know they will start play games. And when this happens, what will happen if I allow them to play one game and only that game. And what happens if I challenge them inside that game? 

• Will they learn more? 
• What unintentional learning will occurs?
• Will they be more interested in the course/lessons?

But I also start to understand build a computer or calculator will be a project too big, mostly because it's going to be a pain in the a** to debug what others have done. 

But if I put it down to the very smallest part of what a computer is, logic gates, and starts from there? Electrical engineering, something that our "cousins" ICT Assemblers study and learn. 

Actually, when I talked with that teacher today he had also been thinking of use Minecraft to get the students more involved in the education. The millennium kids, generation G, for sure learn in another way than we have been taught. And I thought I was the only teacher with that kind of thought in my school... hehe.

I know that the logic gates are not "PCs and Peripherals" but I also know if you understand this you will have much easier to do programming later in the education. 

And this leads to the same question once again:

If they anyway are going to play, what happens if I control the game?

Minecraft: Hack the math

A working mate convinced me to see this TEDx clip on YouTube with 13yo Logan Lapante and hackschooling.

Hackschooling

He isn't talking about geeky nerds sitting in their parents basement, creating and spreading data viruses. Not at all. Among other things he explain the hackschooling mindset with this picture.

And I can't help thinking of Gabe Zichermann when he talks about what increasing fluid intelligence, what you gain with playing games, gamification.

The hacker Mindset.

Back to Logan LaPlante and he explains. Hackers are innovators, hackers are people who challenges and changes the systems to make them more differently, to make them better, it's how they see it. It's a mindset. And according to Lapante, Everything could, and should, be hacked: skiing, education...

You could take shortcuts or hacks to get a better, and faster, result. Flexible, opportunist, and never loose the sight of healthy, happy and creativity the 8 TLC (look at the video!). But, here's the thing, doing this usually freaks people out. Especially teachers...

But hey!?

Where have I heard that before? 

And where have I seen results as that?

Well, after listen to Lapante I realized:

I've hacked the math! 

With Minecraft and Gamification (yep, again: Nobel price, here I am).

As most teachers who uses Minecraft we see increasing math skills. But it doesn't stop there, we also have the interesting point: What unintentional learning occurred? 

The 'hard data' and my evaluation

My school wanted the "hard data" to be shown. Because whatever results I gain, they need figures, something "on paper" to see it actually worked. So I had to come up with some sort of evaluation, and thanks to master Stephen Elford I got some ideas what questions to ask. 

This is definitely not any science, six students had the chance to use Minecraft as an option with geometry, three of them have answered my evaluation. At least one of them has dyscalculia. My scale is 1-6, where 1 is nothing and 6 very much, and there's no middle - either they are a bit weaker (3) or a bit better (4), I force them to think.

Knowledge before the Minecraft experience?

How fun I believe Math is?

Motivation during our classes and by the way, I got the same result when use Minecraft to learn math...

Your activity during class?

The activity was a fun thing. All of my participants are students that usually stays focus for 15 minutes. Now they where all sitting, without a break, for two hours. The only time they used their smartphone was when they needed the calculator. One of my students also participated in class when he was home and sick.

I have them to choose the best and worse lesson and put on a scale how fun it was, how much help they got from that class. They had to give an answer to the worst one but as you can see, it's still a very good lesson. They can't explain why, they had to pick one. 

Best lesson on a scale

Worst lesson on a scale

Knowledge afterwards

And I believe this is an important one and please compare it to the first graph. Do you experience you have better knowledge about math and geometry now? 

How much have you enjoyed using Minecraft during this math experience?

What have you learned (including the unintentional learning)? 

Scale, geometry, to be creative, solve problems, convert 2D to 3D, technical drawings, planning and foresight. 

And of course: 
They couldn't believe math could be funny!

Struggling with dyscalculia

I have this student who is very weak in math and before my first meeting with him one "higher educated pedagogy" told me it's enough if I can learn him to use a calculator. But hey!? If you don't understand what 10+10 is, what sense does a calculator do? 

Everything I tried the first two months was too hard and finally I thought the only was to solve this is so start from the beginning. Back to the basics.

A couple of months ago I realized what the challenge was, like a year too late.

Dyscalculia.

Well, I've learned a lot and I do hope this student have learned something. Now I try to help him with geometry and for the first time I hav e faith. The key to success spells: Minecraft.

Addition is the favourite but he hates subtraction. 
And if I only had knew, Minecraft would have spared us much struggling and troubles if I had started with it before. Today we have been talkiing and discussed volume and cubes. If the area is 16 blocks, what's the volume??

Volume = a * a * a --> 4 * 4 * 4 = way too hard!

So we had to do it the long way, with addition, and also build up the cube and destroy it. Just to prove we have make the math correctly.

But finally, with the awesome tool Minecraft he finally gets it because he see it. In a way he experience the math in 3D. And these small moments, when I see he understands a bit here and there, it encourage me to continue.

Unfortunately, because he makes progress I also became too ambitious. Even though he loves to be creative, loves to paint, loves motorcycles, pixelart was way too hard
:(