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so uh we're going to talk a little bit about video games and just games in general and so um you know over in the chat there if you're somebody who plays games board games card games video games whatever it may be uh let us know in the chat maybe the types of games you use uh you know you play or maybe use in your classroom and today we're going to think a little bit more kind of like big picture so instead of focusing specifically on here's a way to implement a game into the classroom

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we're going to think a little bit more about what it takes um for for video games to really like grip players and make them want to play and are those tips and tricks that games do and and use so well can we use them in our own classroom so uh you know starting from there let me uh share my screen here so everybody can see there and maybe uh over in the chat you can let me know if everybody can see that so hopefully you can see that there all right and so yeah let's talk about this a little bit so you know one

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of the things I think is first Mo most important to think about here is video games really are like a literacy right in the same way that you know we read books or we listen to music or watch movies you know we can understand how those things work uh video games are also literacy so you know if you have students who are really video game literate they may know a large amount of information about games that be new to you or vice versa you know you may be introducing students to games um there's

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a little bit of a learning curve there so we can think about that a little bit and one of the things I like to think about when talk about video games as a literacy is that you know in the way when a teacher goes to their bookshelf and says okay today I'm going to be teaching the past perfect we're going to pull that book off the shelf that says okay this is the best book I've got for this topic we got to be able to do that with games too you know thinking about games is like a a storytelling

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experience you know having a depth A literacy of games it really step one you can step back and think okay here's what I want my students to experience today and here's the learning I want to scaffold that experience what would be best it might be you know cahoot it might be something big like fortnite it might be a board game even like settlers a Kat so really important there to have like a wide birth of uh you know games to draw from and think about here's what I can use so really you know what I'm

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saying here is for professional experience and professional development play more video games that that's the rule and so if we think about this you know what are are those things though these games do really well and so if we develop out that literacy and we can really start to understand where games can kind of fit into our classroom and start to tap into their psychological motivations they have on players and I really like to tie this into blooms taxonomy you know if I'm wanting my students to remember or understand

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something I'm not sure games might be the the best approach but what games do really well and when they really entice players is when we push up further into Bloom's taxonomy and they can really provide a place for students to create evaluate analyze really difficult kind of problem solving based approaches to the classroom activities right so with that you kind of think about Bloom's taxonomy there but also uh quent and duro is a researcher who came up with the samur model it says when we bring

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technology in the classroom technology can do certain things it can substitute it can augment but what games also do really well is they can help redefine or modify what we could do in the classroom so basically can we do things in classrooms with games that we couldn't possibly do before and again could be a paper based game could be game so kind of thinking about this a little bit uh a great example here is this uh game quandry great game and has a ton of great teacher resources on the web page for you to use too but quandry

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is basically just a debate you have to separate fact from opinion and come up with a consensus amongst a group of people it's really just kind of a debate activity that we might do in a classroom but it lets us modify it so it there's a level of attraction there sometimes students might have difficulty talking about something that's um close to them or personal to them but we give it this science fiction overlay same idea but they're given this abstraction Let's us modify the activity a little bit more so

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games can do that give us a new situ in which to explore ideas that students may be um unfamiliar with or uncomfortable with so something else here you know thinking about games or technology you know redefinition under the samur model you know we could use VR and something like Mission ISS which lets students explore International Space Station this will be a radical redefinition of what's possible in the classroom but it pushes what students can do further up into that Bloom's taxonomy model here now

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they get to explore and create and identify and you know discover um so how can we think about that you know I like to say the foundation of good games in the classroom are strong verbs and our learning outcomes right and we'll get into that a little bit more and so one of the things also that's really important from a player psychology point of view is there lots of reasons that people play games and you know sometimes that could be very they're action oriented they want to win um other times people just

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want to create on the far far end of the spectrum it's what if I just built this thing what if I made something so you know you may see your students all playing a game like fortnite or something like that where it's all about you know competing and winning and being first person um but Others May play something a little bit more like a stardew valley where they're just immersed in a world and they just want to experience a little world so you know game and gamer motivation a One-Stop

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shop there's lots of different things to do things um so kind of thinking about that you know we have games where people just want to create like The Sims or you know they just want to collect all those achievements and you know other games like World of Warcraft where people just want to explore and that's really a powerful motivator for players is that ability to choose what they want to do and then act on that so if we think about the best way to kind of grasp our players in the classroom is to give them

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more autonomy let them make choices um and that can be really tricky you know as from a teacher standpoint you know if we have 24 students and they're all making different choices about what they want to do in their game um it could get out of hand but where could we provide them a little bit of opportunity in the class activity this could be something as simple as you know taking this game psychology approach if students are supposed to give a report could they give a report could they make a podcast

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could they give a speech could they make a comic book as their report so what are those ways that we could diversify the way students show Mastery over a topic um that's really what games do really well and that's why we love to play them um and I think this is a great example of what Will Wright the game designer of the Sims you know he talks about when I make a game he says I'm dealing with the technology the game I'm making but I'm also dealing with the player's imagination and that's something we can

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really think about as teachers too is how do we tap into that player imagination component of you know what we can say is I design a problem as a teacher and the players solve it using their experience and that's from a game designer perspective and someone who makes educational games I'm always thinking about what is the player doing so here's the activity or here's the problem what's the player doing and more we can think about that as teachers of in this activity what are my players doing and

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again if they're just lower on Bloom's taxonomy and well they need to remember this and they need to learn that that it's not going to have that same sort of motivational hook that we would have if we say well I want my players to explore this topic I want them to create blah blah blah blah blah blah you know um I really like this quote from constant Stein cooler is a games re researcher and she says games are well-defined constraints with ill-defined Solutions and I really it's

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it's not easy but I love making my class activities like that I love to say okay if I give my students these constraints and I say I don't care how you solve it just solve it um it gives them lots of ideas and opportunities there and of course one thing to note is this works really well with like a rubric based grading system too if we push students towards more problem-based experience then you know we need things like rubrics um that can really kind of capture the the flexibility of how they

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may submit an assignment and so kind of thinking about this a little bit more this also Taps into um what we know about adult Learners and so you know with games they're presenting a problem players have to solve it and that's what adult learn Learners really love in their learning they love things that are problem- centered rather than content oriented so um you know I don't necessarily want to sit andiz some grammar I'd like to use that in a business presentation because that's the

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job and that's why I'm learning a language perhaps um you know going over this too you know we look at number two over there in the uh upper right we also want to think about how can those problems be solved using the learner's experiences adults love love to be able to tap into their own experience and bring that experience into a problem um including the mistakes they've made and I think again psychologically and talking about motivation of games one thing games do really well is if I fail

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I get the try again if I fail I get to try again over and over and over so how can we give students that opportunity to try something use their experience to solve the problem if it doesn't work they get to try again so that balance can be um really tricky to hit but we can get there with a lot of um You Know well-designed lesson plans and you know something here when we think about this too of using games in the classroom is there's different types of games and you know if we think about this uh Quant Foundry is a

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research company that kind of looks into the types of games people play and they break it into this little quadrant here and you know many times we think about games we think of you know fast-paced competitive activities um you know competitions or races that we may have in the classroom and that's very kind of player kinetic and what that means is lots of activity amongst lots of players uh but there's a whole other type of activity around games and that's often when we talk about people getting lost

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in a video game or spending hours and hours and hours in a video game it's sometimes these slower more problemsolving type of activities that they really love the more cerebral and the more World type of activities and so that balance is really important you know talk to a lot of teachers with games something I do as well is I think about games that that shot in the arm to boost motivation you know at the beginning of a class and get everybody excited um but often that motivation could be shortlived um because once that

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kinetic activity is over the students are starting to lose interest um but what are those bigger maybe longer problem solving activities that I can do and you know what's interesting about this is the research into gamer psychology shows that this is the case that that type of gameplay the slower more cerebral gameplay is as evenly distributed across the world as the the kinetic action-based gameplay um whether it's you know Australia New Zealand uh southeast Asia South America Gamers all

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like these different types of games so what can we do you know and it may seem if you're new to games kind of counter intuitive but often a good game can slow our students down um because that gives them the chance to think and reflect and then as they're thinking and reflecting language can be in there right um kind of you know moving on with this a little bit more what's really kind of critical here and to summarize everything so if you could think about you know one key point this this presentation is

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self-determination Theory um and this is a strong underpinning of games and when we make games whether whether they're for education or more commercial games we're always thinking about three things what are competencies that our players can show us and how can we let them show them what's the autonomy that the players have in terms of making their own choices and what is the relatedness that they get to show with other people now you know probably uh everybody watching this is looking and saying like

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well that's just a good classroom and exactly I think one of the the fun things having a a hand in game development and a hand in teaching is I often see the same discussions but just with different vocabulary um so you know we can really think of what a game does really well a good classroom also does really well and so you know designing class activities we have to think about those competencies right can we give students challenging or bonus objectives can we give them controls that are easy to be

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mastered um same thing with autonomy can we give players Cho es uh are there rewards as feedback or encouragement and then um you know relatedness that idea of um interacting with others and I think this is really critical is often you know with video games especially we may think of player and game and that single interaction between player and game but it's often player with game player with other player player with the internet they're they're moving across spaces to interact with other people and so

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can we make that possible for for them to really get a deep level of Engagement um you know the short answer is as humans we love to solve problems and we love to Stew on problems um how can we make good problems for our classroom and you know thinking about this a little bit more it goes same into gamification and you if you're unfamiliar with gamification it's basically taking game ideas or game mechanics out of games and putting them into the real world or different situations and of in the classroom we

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see gamification as uh you know what they say is points Badges and leaderboards right you know students do something they get a point or they do something they get a badge um but that type of gamification can often have a um a negative effect actually Graham Stanley uh educator worked for British Council last I checked um did some work into this and he found that his students got super engaged at the beginning of gamification and then itly started to drop off the following semester because um the points Badges and leaderboards

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were great for an initial boost of Engagement and then they lost out uh but what we can think about as teachers is how do we push those gamification elements in our classroom towards more what we would maybe call positive gamification you know so positive gamification are those things of feeling a sense of accomplishment right uh epic meaning what it's like I want to do this because it's bigger than me and it's something I can contribute to or creative you know feedback and that idea

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of being able to participate in something make something get feedback on it share it with other people um those are much more of the hooks that we have in games that players really resonate with um whereas those uh those scarcity ideas the points the badges and leaderboards those are what we kind of call negative gamification loss and avoidance like oh if I don't do this I'm going to lose out or I've got to get that badge before someone else does that scarcity um those can often be short-lived bonuses so instead you know

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thinking about again going back to how get my students to feel that self-determination of I've made choices I've interacted with others and I've shown my skills and ability so as we work through this these are the ideas we can kind of like kick around and play with a little bit you know and it's not easy you know thinking about you know baking these into our our classrooms um games you may make one game every two years but as teachers we have to make six lesson plans a day um so it can be

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hard to kind of do this all the time but you know thinking about what are those activities that we can make in advance that are really rock solid and really amplify a lot of this that we can bring into the classroom when it makes sense um and this goes into if we could kind of like truncate this all down we can talk about the different player types there's a Bartles is a researcher who identified basically four main types of players and says look they're socializers they just want to like hang

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out with other people and interact you know um explorers like that not really play with the other players they want to go off and like explore this environment and go see what's going on um Achievers badges points that's what they want they want to you know get that notoriety um and the last one is called killer which is a little bit of a misnomer but Killers just basically like to win against other people you know they want to be the best against all the other players and you know we think about big

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games again you know that idea of fortnite or Call of Duty we may think all Gamers are's that killer archetype uh but really you know Bartles found that basically one to 10% of players really fit that description of winning over others kind of the core you know gamer base so to speak um but socializers are by far the biggest group of Gamers and then of course we have Achievers and explorers as well so when we think about bringing games to the classroom we might want to think Beyond just a you know a game that has

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one or two students win but what's a game that players can socialize around what's a game where players can explore and you know if we think about this again going back to Bloom's taxonomy you know there are those verbs perhaps we could think about with different types so you know I'm going back to my shelf of games you know thinking about that literacy like I want a game that gets my students socializing my learning objectives or learning outcomes that I'm thinking about I want things like students will

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be able to contribute students will be able to construct students will be able to help um if I'm looking at those explorers and thinking what could I do to get my students exploring a world I want to use things like choose and discover and locate so again you know matching the right you know game to the right learning outcome can be super important because you know games can be fun in the classroom but students still want to know why are we doing this parents especially want to know why are why are

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my students or my children doing this right and so you know if we can really concrete concretely tie it in you know say hey we're doing this game because it's going to let us you know do these language activities or do this learning activity um it gives us a much solid more solid foundation to to build upon right and so again this all kind of ties back into this idea of you know before we use a game before we go up to our Shelf and pick what we're going to play um success really kind of starts with

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with backward design and with planning you know often we may think about from a game it's like oh that game will really motivate my Players let's play it um but why you know and so when I work with games in my class when I work with other teachers on games in their classrooms I always start with those course goals right how will my students be different by the end of the course how will my students be different by the end of the game or the end of the activity How will I know they have changed what are those

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competencies that we talk about in self-determination Theory um what are they demonstrating to me to show me that they've changed you know the learning outcomes right what my students what must students be able to think or do to be successful I want to make sure that those learning outcomes are clearly mapped to the types of things they can do in the game right and then you know finally that's what I'm going to pick the game right so I go through my course goals my final Tess my learning outcome

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I'm like okay you know quandry be a great game here um maybe something as simple as wle hey I just want to use wle that'll be a really great way to to kind of set this up and so you know thinking about these sorts of things can really kind of elevate game past um just a simple activity into something a lot more you know rich and I think kind of you to wrap this up and kind of wind it down what should we do talk about games and and using Game psychology to hook players um here's what games do really well they have a

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story that justifies what happens next right why am I doing this oh because I need to go do that and then that and then that and then then I win um and then those long-term goals could be broken down right into short clear goals right so I know I need to get way over there but along the way I've got to you know get the magic sword I've got to you know um make a friend and start developing my party for my adventure those little one more goal things and then along the way I'm constantly

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feeling that Improvement right I'm getting better and better and better um and finally I think what games do really well is their experience and you know games don't teach you know that's that's I'm I'm going to stake that claim I don't think they teach but they provide experiences that we can teach around right and I think what's really fun about this you know thinking about this from a perspective um all the things that I just listed here it's what a good classroom does right you know a good uh

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classroom lets students know why they need to know this right hey here's why you need to know this information our long-term goal is this and here's how we're going to do that along the way to make sure you can meet that goal right and then a slow steady progress where we can see hey I am getting better at this I am you know making improvements so again you know a lot of uh game game design is is really good teaching that's something Ken Bane talks about with the best college teachers do

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it's it's a great book and really lays out this idea of you know there are ways we can approach things for our classroom to really get students kind of hooked and motivated and it's what games do and I think um the more time we can spend really thinking carefully about our activities in the classroom uh the more that we can kind of like you know lay this out and get that practice and get that development some uh checking out the chat here just a little bit as as we wind down the uh the session here but um

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you know I'm curious to know what are some of the games and activities that people play in their classroom is um I see uh ninski says Dungeons and Dragons tabletop game would be cool in a language classroom something like that would be fantastic um this goes back into this idea of you know uh students being able to like build a character and tell stories right uh if you never play Dungeons and Dragons it's basically like a role play everyone assumes a character and there's some math involved and things like that

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but great example of a narrative World building that gets people you know hooked right off the bat right um looking around here too let's see Jeopardy so again you know jeopardy is one of those great games that you know all teachers use right because it gives us that quick thing achievements right I'm winning I know more I can show my competency because I know this information um you know oh you know cahoot I see cahoot in the chat that's a great example if we go back to that samur model um really it's a

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substitution right um maybe a little bit of modification there Cahoots just a multiple choice test right what makes it so special the engagement I get to see the other player scores and and we get to see how well I'm doing against them you know it's something that we can do all do collaboratively there's instant feedback um so you know that idea of like building out a little bit of material there um I say munis is U minecraft excellent game for the classroom because it's just creatively

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uh people can do all sorts of different things there in that and so you know pick your game I think that's the best advice I can give is people are looking um lots of great ones in the chat you can start to research and look around um bamboozle seems to be a popular one there but pick a game you're comfortable with pick a game that works for your classroom um technologically I know you know sometimes we maybe talk about a a game and it's like well I don't have computers in my classroom an example

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might be there's a video game called Among Us where you have to find a spy um Among Us is a video game but there's another game called resistance same game but card-based uh there's another game that's completely paper based exact same game called werewolf and so you can kind of pick depending on your technology level for your classroom same game same kind of learning outcomes you can get out of your students um and again enhancing our games literacy can really help us make those decisions on on what

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games to to pull off the shelf and and what not um so kind of with that you know we can wrap this up and do some questions but I just want to say thanks to everybody real quick um my email is here it's kj1 oh. edu if you have any questions or anything like that um I'm also back on social media so you can find me at j72 BL sky. social uh I just opened that up so um that's new