Bullying Games

March 7, 2008 — Daniel

Games are, as we know, often picked on as being the cause of all that is wrong in modern society. When a McDonald’s chief blames games for obesity, we know that games come pretty low in the acceptability pecking order. And now the BBC has posted a piece about the new-edition of Bully being released (formerly released in the UK as Canis Canim Edit).

And it’s shocking stuff:

It features a teenager who adjusts to life at a new boarding school by harassing others, including teachers.
The abuse includes dunking pupils’ heads in toilets, photographing them naked and physically assaulting them.

Shocking indeed. In fact, given that the game has been playable since last year, I’m very disappointed that the BBC are happy to present the game as though the point of it is to become a bully and harass others – when as would be known to anyone who’s gone as far as actually reading a review of the game (a step the reporter ought to have taken), or possibly even play it, it’s pretty much the exact opposite…

(more…)

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Another defence of VLEs

March 4, 2008 — Daniel

Paperwork up to the eyeballs, and a to-do list somewhat longer than my arm, mean that writing my own defence of VLEs is still on the backburner. So here’s a link to recent posts on this topic – with particular relevance for the Scottish schools (5-16) sector…

John Connell answers “Why not just use Skype?“. There are benefits of single-sign on and collaboration with other authenticated users within a large scale environment. Again, this does not mean that other systems cannot be used, but a common system shared by all schools brings benefits that might not be realised by large numbers of teachers each using their own preferred subsets of Web 2.0 technologies. As one of the comments notes:

Glow isn’t going to offer a huge amount that’s not available to those teachers who are already using Web2.0 tools with pupils, but such teachers are a tiny minority now, and even their use of the tools in the learning and teaching process is often sporadic.

Web 2.0 technologies allow schools, classes, teachers and pupils to communicate and collaborate online. Glow gives Scottish schools, classes, teachers and pupils a place to do this – hopefully making it easier not just to conduct these activities but easier to make the connections required before such things can happen at all. There is also an extra hurdle in introducing new technologies if each one requires a new log in, and has the appearance of a new service, new brand and new UI. By collecting a range of features inside one environment, Glow has the ability to introduce new ways of working gradually and without teachers thinking they are using a new product each time they use a previously untouched feature.

Additional debate on edu.blogs.com .

Posted in Education, Technology. Tags: , , . 2 Comments »

Quest Atlantis gets Major Boost

March 3, 2008 — Daniel

Sasha Barab at Indiana University School of Education has secured a major grant ($1.8 Million!) from the MacArthur Foundation to expand Quest Atlantis – adding new content and support to extend it to many thousands more pupils. More here. This is a very significant grant, and will surely serve to further boost the perception of virtual worlds in education.

There are some good interview excerpts at the bottom of the press release, which I’ll freely quote here.

Quest Atlantis does not operate independently of the teacher, Barab says:
“They’re collecting data and having to make decisions about how to operate in these worlds. Well, the teacher’s role is incredibly necessary; in a lot of the research we looked at ‘What is the teacher’s role in these spaces?’ Because of the big fear of ‘Are the games going to replace the teacher?’ What we found is exactly the opposite. It’s really hard to make a game that a kid can’t click on and move through and kind of win with a cheat code. So what the teachers do is they really get kids to think deeply about what they’re submitting, about the questions that are going on in a space, about what science is necessary to make sense of it.”

Barab says the expansion of Quest Atlantis to many more students across the globe can help transform methods of learning acquisition:
“What’s exciting about being part of MacArthur’s views is changing part of media literacy is you feel like you’re part of something bigger than your own research. I just got back from a meeting at the MacArthur foundation and there was a sense that we were on the edge of something really big and they were trying to kind of break out of the box, to expose the world to new types of literacy, to new ways that kids can learn that ultimately could change us from the notion that there’s this kind of content that was done by these people who are now dead and your job is to acquire it. To switch us to tools to help kids become producers, to become critical creators, not just simply consumers of information that they’re taught not to question.”

Posted in Education, Games Based Learning, Technology. No Comments »
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