UTS Digital Generation – Danny Mavromatis

My partner and I chose the elective ‘E’ with the immersion task of analysing a couple of games in our KLA of Mathematics. This seemed like it would be a fairly straightforward exercise. We both read “Game-Based Learning” by Richard Van Eck and were enthused to find some Maths games to play with. The article breaks the educational approach to games into three areas:
(1) Have students build games from scratch
(2) Have educators develop the games
(3) Purchase commercial off-the shelf (COTS) games

The article focuses on the latter as the best solution, at least in the short-term. However, that was clearly not an option to us because of the costs involved. So we decided to investigate if there were any free internet games that had mathematical content. First starting point was this reference in the Van Eck article to Prensky’s list of 500 “serious” games that can be used to teach different content. It turns out that there are only about two hundred games listed on the web-site and only 40 are educational. Out of those 40, there are three relating to Maths:

Algebra – The Algebots: Beat the Game, Pass the Course
Agebra – DimensionM
Math – Green Globs and Graphing Equation

The first game is “under development” and the other two require paid subscriptions. No luck there. The game DimensionM looks very promising from the screen shots and might be worth investigating in the right school environment. It is American and seems to be aligned to their curriculum but, nevertheless, it could be a useful resource.

The next possibility was to try locating suitable games for ourselves using Google with search words like “math game educational”. This took literally hours of time trying to track down promising software. In the end the results were very disappointing. We could only come up with these fairly trivial examples:

Golf – A SuperMath Game
Quadrilateral Quest
Nim Skulls

Golf seems like a simple golf game where you need to put in angles and estimate distances to play a game of golf. The documentation says that It can involve decimals and fractions but I couldn’t see that when I played it. However, it is very good for getting the students used to estimating and applying angles in a full revolution. The golf scoring system itself is useful arithmetical practice too. The game is very limited and has some design flaws. However, it could possibly be used in the Stage 4 Measurement and Space & Geometry units.

Quadrilateral Quest is, again, a fairly simple game for testing student’s knowledge of quadrilaterals (four sided shapes). It is a drag and drop Flash game where you need to match shapes with their properties and are provided with positive and negative feedback. It is more of a “drill and kill” game and very limited in its scope. It is applicable to the Stage 4 Space & Geometry unit.

Nim Skulls could not even be classified as a game. It is fairly deterministic — it’s actually more of a puzzle than a game. (Once you’ve solved the puzzle, you can win every time). It could be set as a one-time challenge in the computer lab but that’s about it.

Overall, the experience of searching for appropriate digital game-based learning (DGBL) software for Mathematics has been very frustrating. It involves way too much time for too little reward. I don’t think the average Math teacher should be expected to shoulder such a load. My feeling is that if DGBL is to be introduced in schools, in needs to be a top-down approach. DET would not to do the research and “push” any relevant resources down to the schools. Such an approach would also avoid problems with software licensing/installation and ethical issues associated with playing games as a means of gaining knowledge and skills.

The Van Eck article mentions a study undertaken in the USA in 1985 to examine how games could be used to teach varying learning levels. A total of 11 games for different grade levels were developed for the study. I wonder what became of these games? Why aren’t they around today in some form as part of the Maths syllabus? It is disconcerting and disappointing to think that no apparent inroads have been made by DGBL in the intervening 23 years.

I come from a background of having had a long professional career as a software developer which means that I am tech-savvy in most respects. (The use of multi-media might be an exception where I probably haven’t kept up with the latest developments. However, I embrace new technology where I can see it adding something to enrich people’s lives). The Internet is an extremely valuable information resource (Google, news), a convenience (banking, paying bills), and a source of entertainment (Facebook, games).

Having said the above, in my KLA of Mathematics, we have barely touched on the use of digital technology apart from scientific and graphics calculators. The emphasis in our coursework has been on the style of teaching (constructivist – learning mathematically) rather than any technology aids.

In my first practicum, my co-operating teacher used a Smartboard to deliver his content to his class and I did the same. The teacher mailed the lessons to his students to serve as their study notes. Whilst I saw some positives out of this approach such as being able to make the content brighter and more appealing with diagrams and so on, I came to realise that there were also drawbacks. The students did very little writing in class apart from working on exercises and I have concerns about mathematical literacy and the learning and use of a maths vocabulary.

In terms of my next practicum, I have no fixed ideas about strategies to incorporate technology into my lessons. It will very much depend on the resources available at the school and what I may learn from the remainder of this subject. I am open to ideas but I have to be convinced that the use of technology is more than just window dressing, but serves a real purpose in engaging the students and producing better educational outcomes.

There is a general concern in the literature about the lag in use of digital technology in the classroom compared to the informal environment outside of the school. For myself, I believe in evolution not revolution. Let the situation evolve slowly and avoid the danger of “throwing out the baby with the bathwater”. For instance, I found much of the article “Listen to the Natives” by Marc Prensky to be hyperbole. Here are some quotes:

“We in the United States need to join them [UK educators] and overcome objections that students are ‘using them [cellphones] for cheating’ (so make the tests open book!) or for ‘inappropriate picture taking’ (so instill some responsibility!)”

“Why shouldn’t our students have the same option with their education [voting with their feet] when educators fail to deliver compelling content?”

“How can we make our instruction more adaptive and, as a result, far more effective? Just ask the students; they’ll know.”

I find comments such as the above a little naïve and, frankly, disrespectful to the vast majority of existing highly professional teachers. The implication seems to be that now that new technology has surfaced in society, we have to suddenly abandon all the established methods of teaching as no longer being good enough and jump aboard the technology bandwagon.

To my mind technology is just another tool in the teacher’s toolbox that he or she can pull out as the situation requires. I have seen in my first practicum earlier this year what happens when computers are ‘thrown’ at schools and teachers not provided in-service training are asked to make use of them. They become, in effect, a ‘bludge’ lesson for teachers on Friday afternoons where they are sat in front of a PC with an Excel spreadsheet workbook and told to complete an exercise. If they finish quickly they are allowed to play games. (To be fair, the school also had access to “Mathletics” which had good ‘Flash’ based software to drill the students and ensure that they had absorbed the in-class material for a unit of work).

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There is not much doubt, from the research that has been done in this area (Truly, Madly, Deeply Engaged: Global Youth, Media and Technology, 2007) that we, in the developed countries at least, are deeply immersed in a digital culture. The article in our readings by Lee Rainee confirms that teenage culture (the Millennial generation as he calls it) has embraced digital technology. (The only surprise to me was that the United States seemed to lag behind other comparable countries). It seems that teenagers are taken aback if you question them in relation to technology use as they consider it a part of the fabric of their lives – taken for granted.

The sheer amount of mobile phone and text messaging that goes on between teenagers is a never-ending source of amazement to me. Even in the early days when telecom pricing for mobile use was very expensive, I can remember occasions on my daily bus journey where teenagers would make 5 or 6 phone calls in the space of 20 minutes to arrange a rendezvous somewhere with their friends. Nowadays, even children in junior high school carry mobiles and MP3 players.

My concerns with digital culture relate to cost and content. It seems that the telecommunications companies are trying to add more and more features to their phones and entertainment devices to increase usage frequency and bandwidth thereby increasing their profits. Whilst I have no problem with providing more functionality, it seems to me that the prices charged to users are not in line with the underlying cost of the technologies. In terms of Internet use, I have the concerns of most parents: to protect their children from inappropriate content in the form of pornography and violent or disturbing material.

I have just finished watching the two ABC commentaries “Growing up in the digital age” and “Concern over teen Internet habits“. Previously I had read “Want to be my friend? What you need to know about social technologies“, so I thought maybe I should just have a look at how much social networking was occurring between adolescents in my area.

I first went to www.ratemyteacher.com and searched for the high school that my son is attending (year 7). There were only about a dozen entries (one per teacher) in all. Each teacher only had one or two comments and, in general, they were quite short and mostly positive. I then tried the high school at which I did my first practicum and it was a similar story. In summary, there did not seem to be much use of the Internet in this area.

I then logged in to www.facebook.com and searched for my son’s high school under groups. There were a couple of entries with about 50 members each, mostly ex-students or “the class of year xxxx”. Again, there didn’t appear to be much social networking occurring amongst current students.

From my own experience, my son’s main use of the Internet is for online research for assignments, and for playing games such as Runescape with his school friends. Mainly the latter! He has a small circle of boys in his class that he phones, or they phone, so that they can coordinate being online at the same time. They are also starting to explore using IM to avoid making the phone calls.