Hay Day

My latest thought about games in education is Hay Day. It hit me when I had a discussion with one of our principals that didn't understood the power of Minecraft. So many adults believe they don't play any computer games but they don't see themselves as doing so, this because the games are on their iPad or iPhone.

My mom is an excellent example of someone who doesn't play video games but probably sitting there with a dozen games of "Words With Friends". She has even invented new own rules: we can not change tiles and if someone accidently pass the other part have to return the game with another pass.

WHAT unintentional learning takes place here? 

English vocabulary (meaning and spelling)

WHEN do we learn it? 

When we try to find new words.

WHY do we learn? 

Because it's fun. And it's multiplayer. You stay in touch with friends...

So, in my colleagues mind they don't play games. Only Angry Birds, Candy Crush Saga and HayDay everyday, but no real games. I asked the principal if she had had a second thought what she really learn while playing Hay Day, and she responded right away; I learn nothing!

Yeah right! But indeed an awesome start to discuss what you really learn from Hay Day and soon we could agree on math, problem solving, language and collaboration.

In Hay Day there is already a functioning economy, there are prospects for a cooperative farm (collaboration part). You can complete (and enhance) your finances by having real money to buy in-game money (or diamonds) only for this game (consumer education)

Since there is a cap of each product you will soon learn to see where you can earn extra by, just like the stock market, buying products cheaply and sell expensive. Or if it is really worth investing in. (Economics)

Challenges in the game, fictitious villagers or goods delivered with deadlines and special rewards require you to plan long term. Sometimes you have to estimate the probability of whether it's even possible to meet a challenge because everything has a production time (math).

Some of these challenges is possible only with cooperation with other neighbors. Derbies are limited events that occur in neighborhoods once a week, those which complete tasks listed on the Derby Stand will rank up and work towards special prizes (collaboration).

Of course there are wiki's and as "the game is horribly addicted" you most probably end up search for information at least once (languages).

So why is this important?

What I'd like to do is make my colleagues, teachers, enlighten of the power of games in education they might start with it. It doesn't need to be more complicated than this and most probably it's a game many teachers already know a lot about.

So, when you use a computer game (in this case, Hay Day) it differs from traditional teaching in the classroom. Suddenly we have gained access to a concrete case in which our students can perform financial transactions that affect their way of understanding how financial markets work from a digital, social and educational content that both affect and are important to them. 

Where are we according to SAMR?

By the digital world as Hay Day adds, we can execute trades in a way that had not been possible with just paper and pencil because there already exists an economic system in the game that students (and teachers) are interested of (third level of SAMR: Modification).

Even beyond our educational mission the idea is already alive and exist, it creates entirely new conditions that would not be possible in a regular classroom situation (fourth stage of SAMR: Redefinition).

Turtle Canyon

Yesterday my principal asked me (you can say 'yes' or 'yes sir') to be a replacement for a sick colleague. The class should do some programming in C++ - and how fun is it to try to have a subject you don't master?

80% of the class also told me, as first thing, they don't know what to do and can't work on their projects without help. And that without even opened their computers. They were determined. It was too difficult. Too hard to even try.

After 30 min of watching them play different games and watch YouTube I asked if they'd like to help me, to test something I've never tested before but I need the experience. Sure, why not? what have we to lose?

Away to the computer lab and Turtle Canyon - A ComputerCraftEdu Sandbox...!

If they don't have any interest of C++ they might be able to learn some code anyway today. I know, Lua isn't the same at all, but hey! If C++ is too hard you might have started a bit too high, a bit too difficult?

Suddenly there was some magic happen, that don't occur normally in this class.

• They were silent.
• They concentrated on the game, plot and mission.
• They stopped to ask when we would have a break.
• They stopped doing other things.
• They ended up tinkering on their phones.
• They began to ask for help.
• They began to collaborate and problem solve.
• They dare to do wrong.
• They stopped to tease, or more exactly: with the turtle's help, they pushed the bully of a precipice...

Most fascinating, as always, the student with diagnosis and usually have difficult to understand, suddenly became normal and started to explain code to the others.

Unfortunately they spend a little bit too much time to quickly get up than to explore, analyze and program their way out. They use the opportunity to accumulate an unlimited number of turtles instead of collecting block.

Yet when they were asked, they could reflect and think. Maybe they used while loop or something else, they realized they still had had to construct some sort of code to be able to come up.

When they came to the surface and didn't find anything, they jumped back down to do it right the second time.

You are doing it wrong dad!

Doing it wrong?

According to who?

I still don't now what she - AquaVera - meant by that. Or, is it possible that learning can't be fun??

As I want to encourage her to read more I'd set up some tasks, a school, in our Minecraft world. Her teacher want the kids to practice reading for 15 min a day. So I told her the great news: "I've set up some reading exercises for you!"

And she started to scream: 

"Noooo! It's Saturday!!! I don't want to do homework!"

"OK", I told her, "if you change your mind later we can start Minecraft"

1. "Minecraft!? wait! I'm coming!!"
2. "You have to join me! Come! With YOUR computer dad...

But she did also let me know, I'm doing it wrong! And wrong, I have another approach to the problem as the teacher has ...but as she didn't want to hurt my feelings she tried. 

(Kalle (dad) is building a school)

But how to tell dad, the words were too long...?

She wanted to show me, rather than just tell me, what the problem was. 

"You see dad, we started with 2-letter words, then we continued with 3-letter words and now we try to learn 4-letter words!"

So I had to read the sentence, she corrected me and we discussed it in three (3) languages as she tend to start talk English in Minecraft. (She rehearse to be able to join Wizard Keen in a WonderQuest episode).

Then she started to do the reading exercises. "Kaksi lehmää" (two cows) and she found the right (cow) eggs. We continued to the sauna, kitchen and bedroom. She was confused. Every single room was empty, only signs on the wall.

We went out again, outside the room. Spelled S-A-U-N-A and entered the room with new courage: she understood the signs described what to build inside the sauna.

Benches wasn't a problem but the heater, or more exactly, the way she built the heater. Lava and wooden floor ain't a good solution, so she had to fill the room with water... When she had to build the shower, she went out to a test area just to be sure nothing more unwelcome should happen. I think her shower is brilliant, it's working in her fantasy and she has also both warm and cold water. And even if you don't have water you still need the edges.

By practice reading there's a lot of unintentional learning that occurs: 

• lava = fire, you must be careful with fire
• water extinguishes fire
• experience changes the method
• languages
• math

So I started to wonder: 

What exactly is she learning?

Or even more interesting:

What does she feel she might be learning?

Is she aware of the learning process?

WHAT do you learn, WHEN do you do it and WHY do you learn? Big questions, but interesting ones.

AquaVera: 

I learn to read, when I practice, discuss and build. I learn because its fun and I can build it."

And I asked myself the same question: 

"I learn Finnish words, how they are pronounced and spelled. I learn when we are discussing and I learn because it is fun."

But again: How could this be wrong????

Is there really only one right way to learn???

Can't learning be fun???

The reading homework

AquaVera has started first grade and they have homework every single day. In addition to mathematics and spelling, they must also practice reading for at least 15 minutes.

But as the language they learn is Finnish (which I struggle with) my wife (AquaVera's mother) does that part. Yesterday I started to thought how I could help, relieve my wife and give my daughter another way to practice.

Minecraft.

How can we benefit from our gaming interest?

First I tried this and failed:

• Lots of text in one sign was too hard.
• One word at one sign didn't make sense, she didn't put together the words into sentences.

Instead, I started to make those animal pens. The keyword with both uppercase and lowercase letters and in her (second) mother tongue Finnish.

So what happened?

She began to spell out the word, pronounced each letter and put together words. The reward attracted, it was something as simple as put out the right block in the animal pen.

Suddenly she had cracked the code:

"L-A-M-M-A-S! Lammas! Det är ett får! It's a sheep dad!"

With traditional methods she was learning one (1) language, with game based learning she connected three (3) languages! The Power of Minecraft...

Minecraft Math

My very awesome colleague Edward starts to be a really splendid MinecraftEDU teacher! He really thinks out of the box and for example one of the first thing the students should build was a hexagon. 

And I thought for myself: 

How on earth will they succeed with that and at the same time learn Pythagorean theorem?

I had not had to worry about.

They wasn't supposed to build the line but finding the correct coordinates. When find the right spot put a sign with the groups name on it. At each hexagon corner each group started to build their own math area.

As you rarely starts at the coordinate (0,0) the first thing you had to do was to find origin. The class did chose themselves to each side (of the hexagon) would have the distance 100 and therefor the height should be approx 87 blocks.

Away you (they) go to find the location...

Out of the box thinking

Coordinates, not lines of blocks! 

Why havn't I thought of that??

One other thing that's truly amazing and also serves as a good example of minecraft tend to be cross curriculum. 

We're not only learning geometry (what's this course is usually is about) but also the coordinate system (the next math course), programming (python) and a foreign language (English (vocabulary))

He made the class to navigate where to execute python online! Copy-paste this code:

It's a formula for the length of the hypotenuse of a right triangle with cathetus x and y, the distance between the two points (x_1,y_1) and (x_2,y_2).

Also, he and the class, also found this awesome tool Mineconics where you can draw geometry figures with an online tool and later build the same inside Minecraft, like lines, rectangles and circles.

Math with MinecraftEDU

Yesterday a 18 yo student came to me and asked "are we going to play Minecraft the whole course? You see, I've grown tired of play Minecraft (and now play CSGO)" and of course this student had arrived an hour late so he had missed my lecture. 

My first reaction:

Play Minecraft?! Am I really that unclear or don't you listen at all? The Minecraft part of this course is to have a real code project to analyze, problemsolve, plan, make pseudocode, flowcharts, document, test (inside Minecraft and ComputerCraft), evaluate and report. If you're only playing Minecraft you're doing wrong! And the first step to do right is to start listen.

Second reaction:

Unfortunately it came one hour later, but really? Do you have the guts to go to your other teachers and say the same thing? Hey you teacher, I'm kind of tired of using paper and pencils, I don't want to do it anymore!!! Good luck with that...

Solution:

If you had followed my lecture you would have known there's two ways of practice this task, to learn make documentations. Either Minecraft or Codecademy - your choise! 

Everyone else who had choosen Codecademy learn php (as it says in the task) but this student learn html/css instead. Nope, 18yo and can't read nor listen. But still, he's doing something.

Minecraft in general

To use Minecraft in the classroom really is a challenge and because of two things 

• Youth of today move between games really fast and this autumn CSGO (from 2012) is a much more popular game.
• Teachers have just taken the giant step, from paper and pencil to a game learning enviroment.

Therefor, as the enlighten teacher, you have to make the students understand to accept a boring (?) game and to encourage the teacher to continue try new pedagogy ways.

Math with MinecraftEDU

We, the upper secondary vocational institution where I work, has this fall started to participate in a university study, we have the control groups and Åbo Akademi University (Special Education/Faculty of Education and Welfare Studies) collect the data and will present it in a master's thesis. Because there are no, or very few, studies it will be exciting to see what this leads to.

The purpose of the study is to examine how a game (Minecraft) in education affect students' math skills, interests and anxiety.

As I'm the one teacher with experience of the Minecraft environment I also participate in the classroom. It's a bit of a challenge and slightly exhausting, at the same time as I coach the teacher in the game environment I'm also an extra teacher, for the students, in the classroom.

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.