Insomnolence16

I start slowly land from our eSport project and the final, March 30th. It has been a fairly stressful project year to be the first school in Finland to test e-Sport in education. Not least because it has felt like walking in a combination of marsh and uphill. Around Christmas Finnish media realized we have started, that you actually can learn e-Sport in school in Finland from the fall of 2015!

We have circulated in both Finnishswedish as in Finnish media; newspaper articles, radio programs and national television. We have started to collaborate with three Finnish e-Sport organizations, a PhD Student at Helsinki University (Game education research), The Finnish e-Sport federation (SEUL) and there is also a master thesis coming up on the health aspects connected to our e-Sport project.

We have been on a field trip to Sweden and Arlandagymnasiet, an upper secondary sport school where they also started e-Sport last fall. It was both interesting and educational, and we realized two things: 

• we're on the right track
• we've managed our first year better

Both Sweden (and upcoming Norway) uses the sports curriculum while we use a vocational curriculum. Contrary to our neighboring countries, our students actually not game in school, they do it in the evenings and home (as they anyway do it) and then it is counted as school days.

We also have all participants to sign written contracts, they are not legally binding, but we want both parties (the school and the students) agree on a contract. All experience so far has also been written down.

Like any construction project that takes the first sod to fundamentally we have done the same. Though instead of a shovel, we have used a Minecraft pickaxe and all collaboration partners we have come across has signed it!

In January 2016 we thought it would be cool to arrange a CS:GO school tournament (Insomnolence16) and when asking we should have at least 30 teams. Turned out we got seven and have to open it up to other Finnishswedish upper secondary schools as well. Then we got 12 teams. All groupstages would be played in evenings from home but the final, would be played daytime in school on stage. As we wanted this event to be a happening we also invited lectures, other educator's (schools) and parents. To document this, we thought we could take advantage of our media assistant education. Suddenly national television was eager to stream the occasion and our media students found themselves in the position to make national TV... 

Lot's of education connected to a gaming project, that's for sure!

We got caster's from the Finnish e-Sport stage, actually the same guy who usually cast in national TV (Teemu "wabbit" Hiilinen) together with a former female e-sport pro, Jenny "NapuliX" Kåla. Except the national TV stream we also had their TV show "Sportmagasinet" making a reportage about our project and the final. If you download the app (outside Finland) you would be able to see the show and e-Sport starts after approx 19 min.

With such a limited time (53 schooldays all in all) our students truly made a masterpiece. But to next year we need to start to plan right now.

I'm alive! but a bit stressed...

Hi PLN,

I feel a bit bad for not blog that much at the moment, believe me; I have loads that need to come out.

It turned out last fall our students needed help with lots of missing course points, that they somehow havn't taken or havn't been offering. To put together an aid kit of 200 lessons just like that takes energy.

Because I'm the Minecraft teacher I see a lot of benefits with gaming, I teamed up with our sports coordinator (old guy 55+ with a son who played way too much videogames). And together we're trying e-Sport in education.

Or actually, together with Team Menace, ENCE eSports, 100k eSports and SEUL we're building Finnish e-Sport in education! 

It turned out we're the first school in the country to use e-Sport in education! As we also do the "sharing is caring" we're a major hit in the national news. But time? I have really no time to blog about it.

My colleague by the way is an impressive guy, he's the national handball coach for the guys born 1998. He has also started a one of the kind possibility for our top athletics: combine your sport with a vocational degree (google translate works!) Now he/we have students training for the Olympics.

He also convinced me, we should start an e-Sport school tournament! Yeps, so now we're in the middle of that one. But as it's lots of learning possibilities with that, it will be arranged by students and so far we have been able to connect the tournament to four different courses!

As there is so much learning involved when you are about to arrange a tournament we want the students to do as much work as possible. We now have them collaborating with four other students groups/educations. 

Business Information Technican (Swedish: datanom)

These are the students we test the e-Sport concept with, they also arrange the tournament. They also take care of all the matches and the servers.

Electrician (Swedish: elmontör)

We'd need a lot of power to do this!

Business and Administration Clerk (Swedish: merkonom)

Product demonstration of sponsors goods and maybe selling collaboration partner's merchandise.

Media Assistant (Swedish: medie-assistent)

We wanted them to do a "TV-production" of the event. Turned out the national TV is very interested to stream it out via their channels...

Waiter/Waitress (Swedish: servitör)

Will take care of all guests and also our players!

Today we also started to think what if we could get another education envolved

Practical Nurses (Swedish: närvårdare)

As e-Sport more and more turn out to be a wellbeing project, what if we could have some information about nutrition and why not a first aid group?

How do we connect e-Sport in education? 

Well, besides having them in gym every week we also can use the magic of e-Sport and teach different subjects which they otherwise wouldn't be that interested in. They have all installed servers in virtual box but not for real. Last week one great learning opportunity came across.

Our students asked what if the rented server goes down? 

what if the ping isn't good enough in the final? 

Would it be possible to set up one own? 

I replied, why don't you list what's needed and ask my colleague in the lab? 

Turned out we didn't had the parts, but my foreman gave us a go to invest in one because we anyway need one, but only if the students could pick the parts and also explain WHY and WHAT benefits we would have of that server except as a game server.

They started with that task and managed it well. The server parts was ordered and yesterday the rented server actually went down in the middle of one match. But our serverparts came this morning so our students have been sitting on overtime (my lessons stopped 14:45 and they ran home at 17:15) trying to config the server. I'm very impressed and very proud of them!

Just when today's matches should start our own server went down and the rented server got up... So they are highly motivated to come back to school tomorrow and fix the server! And also document the process, as they were too stressed to remember that today :D

Documentation
Here you can find our experiences so far about e-Sport in education.

eSport and education

Since September I've been working with a new project: e-Sport (in education). 

Instead of forbid gaming, what if we take advantage of our student’s interest?

e-Sport happens to be the news of the year in Swedish schools this autumn, where sports college and national sports schools in the same way as they train football players, hockey players and so on also now has the focus e-Sport.

In the Finnish vocational school and our curriculum, we can’t ourselves replace a qualification module toward something we want just like that. However we have a small part free courses which students themselves choose, where we can offer studies in e-Sport. To be able to do this, as those free courses also should strengthen professional skills, we have to ask ourselves: What do you learn in a game that would be important skills in both classrooms as in working life?

Now I happen to have one course, this mission, right now, to teach the students to define, plan and document problems. It seems this is very hard and they also give up in an early stage. But, surprisingly, they do exact the same thing when they play a computer game, but in the game they refuse to give up! Why?

For example

At Sunday evening, your team will have an important CS:GO match and it turns out you will play a new custom made map. How do you solve the problem? 

You have a problem, a new map. You search every possible forum of any threads or clues until you get the map. If possible you install it on a local server and you gather your team, you play and explore, you evaluate the teams experience. Maybe you even write down your thoughts and game plan.

This is exactly what we want them to do in the classroom.

What if we confirm this skill in a safe environment? 

Would they be able to take that skill out in the classroom and to working life?

I don't know.

It's worth a try.

And we - Yrkesinstitutet Prakticum - happen to be first! No one has thought about this opportunity before us!

We have put together a mind map, things we believe you would be able to learn through games and e-Sports. All we have to do: stop see problems, start to see possibilities! It sounds easier than it is. Again, the feedback we get from this mind map confirms that we are thinking in a whole new way!

We started this as a learning project within the field of our Datanom (Business Information Technician) education in Porvoo (Borgå) but it quickly changed to something complete different:

A wellness project!!!

SESF, SEUL and Team Menace are all experts we started discussions and collaborations with and they all emphasizing the importance of well-being and physical health: fixed routines, structure of everyday life, diet, sleep and exercise is at least as important as in any other sport.

Teijo Sepponen, CEO of Team Menace gave us this most valuable feedback:

We now have 23 students in this project, people from four different classes. We have one CS:GO team and two teams of LOL (League of Legends). They practice and play matches from home and they get theory and exercise with a personal trainer in school. Both activities generate study points. Everything they do within the project they put in a notebook, a training diary. These three e-Sport teams are also our school teams on equal terms as all other school sport Team Prakticum compete in.

We do have some challenges and it's not strange since we started this directly without directly planning, but with an idea that we learn by doing. We, the two teachers involved (the school's athletic coordinator and I) have also had fully booked calendars with no extra time to start the theory lessons or workout with a personal trainer. As in any other school athletic teams you have both less and more experienced players, add the fact many of these students never been in a team and therefor don't know about team spirit.

For example: 

What it means to be in the school team? Yeah that although you do not have the desire to train, you must still come. 

Today I talked with the third graders (last year students) and they do handle way more than I thought or anyone has thought. They have also taken on the role as educators, to help or explain the younger students. To be able to achieve this normally you have to promote some students as a tutor, here it happened automatically. It does happen a lot between 15-16 years old and 18-21. 

A couple of weeks ago I talked with one Finnish CEO, what kind of skills he want us (Vocational institutes) raise, create and produce. He had a wishing list like this:

One wish is that we train our students so that a worker has not only rights but also obligations. 

This is actually straight from the above example of what to do when you’re in the school team.

He wants to hire positive team players who can think for themselves, they must be deployable, flexible and loyal. Furthermore understand that the big picture is important and that one can take in and do almost anything. Just because one is employed to program, you might sometimes need to stand on the factory floor. 

This is interesting, because it’s just what happens in a game and e-Sport. Without listed skills above you won’t make it in game. When you get two players out in an ice hockey match, you’re dead. When you get two players out in e-Sport you know you still have a fair chance to win. With two tanks dead in game, the rest of the team change roles to master the new situation.

Again.

What if we confirm this skill in a safe environment? 

Would they be able to take that skill out in the classroom and to working life?

I don't know.

It's worth a try.

We have received funding for this year. We now have the opportunity to put our plans into reality. Our players have got (1) a discount card to the city's swimming pool, along (2) with a personal trainer they shall start training at the gym once a week (and (3) get breakfast afterwards) and we’ll also (4) dress them up as a team. Furthermore hire interesting (5) lecturer, hopefully (6) send them to Assembly (with no stress of winning, instead having fun!)

We also like to plant some ideas of sports psychology, goal setting and goal monitoring and team spirit. 

• What else do you suggest? 
• Do we miss something important? 
• What have we not thought of?

Take advantage of computer games interest

Today, Friday morning, I realized I have some problems to get the class focus on the task. I also had to ask myself, what is important? what do I want them to learn (especially in this course)?

For a business information technican (datanom) (vocational students), of course a programming skill as PHP or Lua is far more important than to know how to play a video game. But again, what's the purpose of this specific task?

I want them to understand the importance of why you must do a proper documentation and they also have to practice 

• analyze problems
• information retrieval
• plan
• documenting
• test
• evaluate
• report

Therefor I used a twist, 

I took advantage of their gaming interests as they anyway where playing both CSGO and Hearthstone. When they realized I saw, they tried to quickly change windows on the screen. Instead, I surprised them: continue play but start make documentations of your gaming.

When play CSGO: 

you must play as a team and the team must be classmates. You must communicate, must put up with a strategy and you must make a report of it. You must evaluate every match and you must evaluate your own learning.

Hearthstone

almost the same but either you have a random opponent or a classmate. It's easier to evaluate when you play against a classmate as you both have the same experience of the recent game. But again, You must evaluate every match and you must evaluate your own learning. Same as above.

it was long ago it was so quiet in the classroom and focused students. Once I also promised that we can do the same thing another time, another classroom, if they just take the task seriously they also tried to make the best of it. 

It will be interesting to read their reports afterwards.