Learning through Angry Birds

Spending time with friends and family over Christmas really got me thinking about the power of computer games. The most successful app of our time, Angry Birds, seemed to be everywhere, even though it has been released for a couple of years. My mother in law was given a Kindle Fire tablet, it was the first thing she downloaded (one of over a billion downloads of the franchise in its various formats), my 3 year old son was given Angry Bird cuddly toys that could be thrown through cardboard targets and we all spent some good honest family time playing the game on our phones and tablets. I started to worry that I was allowing my children to fall into the computer game trap which would result in them becoming desensitised and aggressive, so I started to consider ways of justifying Angry Birds as a constructive and creative past-time, just in case Social Services paid us a visit.

Here's my list - I'm sure there are many other possible uses, but these 14 certainly gave me enough reason to download Angry Birds: Star Wars, safe in the knowledge that my children will be all the better for it and if Rovio need a new marketing consultant then I'm open to offers.

Learning Through Angry Birds
1. Fine-motor skills - it is very important for children to develop their dexterity in terms of using their hands, wrists and fingers. My son, who is left-handed, used to fire the birds to the left when he started playing the game. He has since learnt to head the birds in the right hand direction, a useful precursor to him learning to write. The accuracy of flight requires a steady hand and delicate adjustments, especially when played on a phone.
2. Puzzle-solving - developing logical reasoning is considered a vital aspect in developmental theory and as one progresses through the Angry Birds levels success cannot be achieved through a simple 'fling and hope' approach. Anyone who downloaded Angry Birds Seasons will know what I mean.
3. The Laws of Physics - there's nothing like introducing your child at a young age to the concepts of gravity and ballistics. The science of the sling-shot can get quite involved, especially when replicated in real-life experiments - Beano readers take note.
4. Artistic design - the Angry Birds worlds are a triumph of art and design. The Angry Birds characters have recognisable personalities and attributes and the scenery is, at times, exquisite.
5. Programming - Maybe a little bit beyond my 3 and 6 year old children, but young people are certainly keen to learn about how games and apps are created and there are huge possibilities for them to create their own using simple programmes or devices such as the Raspberry Pi.
6. Concentration - possibly a bit controversial but parents with young children will be able to appreciate those golden moments when a previously frenzied child becomes calmness personified when presented with Angry Birds. The game requires concentration and patience - undeniably useful traits to encourage.
7. Concept of Conflict - 'why are the birds angry?' 'because the piggies have stolen their eggs'. Simple basis of conflict - wars have been fought for less.
8. Demand and supply - 'why do the piggies want the birds' eggs?' 'because they've sold out at the shops'. Simple basis of economics - recessions have been caused by less.
9. Marketing - Toy shops are awash with Angry Birds spin off merchandise - this is clever marketing. Rovio know that the game is played by children on their parents' phones and tablets - the cuddly birds and pigs are not aimed at me
10. Mathematics - see point number 3, but also more basic mathematics - 'how many piggies/birds are left/dead etc?'
11. Cultural awareness - Angry Birds Seasons travels the world and celebrates various cultural events in the calendar, such as Chinese New Year.
12. Business acumen - Rovio Entertainment Limited, the Finnish video game developers behind the Angry Birds games had a net income of $48 million in 2011.
13. Sound and music - Similar to point number 4, the music is almost as recognisable as the Intel jingle and the sound of angry birds and arrogant pigs is another lesson in simple ideas beautifully executed.
14. Sharing - Another tick in the social and emotional development box. If you have more children than Angry Birds enabled devices then they have to learn to share and to take it in turns. More advanced children may also appreciate that Mummy and Daddy might also need to use their phone at some point.

Learning through computer games? I think so...

HMV - lessons for education

Woolworths, Comet, Jessops and now HMV. The list of retailers disappearing from out High Streets is rising as a result of the recent economic difficulties and the failure of these companies to adjust to modern, online spending habits. Are there any lessons for education?

It has been widely reported that the failure of HMV to develop an online operation in the late 1990s and early 2000s has significantly contributed to its demise. A strong brand name is no longer enough in an industry that is dominated by giants such as Amazon and iTunes. We may all feel quite nostalgic towards brands like HMV but we tend to choose price and convenience over nostalgia when it comes to shopping. Reports last week show that the food chain Morrisons is under similar pressure without an online option and that it is perhaps too late to enter this market now.

Schools, like retailers cannot afford to persist with 20th century models in the 21st century. Schools, unlike retailers will not live and die by market forces as our customers cannot so easily swap brands. The cost might not be financial but the opportunity costs could be very high if we don't embrace modern technologies. Universities now have lots of online content, children, as digital natives, have access to mobile devices and broadband-enabled computers and social media offers largely untapped opportunities for meaningful and collaborative learning.

We might not get closed down but can we afford to think that we can hold back the tide?

Game Changer: Learning through computer games

In the 1980s I was the proud owner of a Commodore 64 and spent many hours shut away in my room playing games and even more hours in my room waiting for games to load. We are told that children today spend longer playing on games than they do watching television and the games they play are in many ways unrecognisable from those which grabbed so much of my attention as a child. Many see gaming as a pursuit largely followed by teenage boys and socially-challenged men and educators are often very dismissive of gaming focusing more on the damage it causes through exposure to inappropriate material and the loss of time that could be vastly more productive. But can computer games actually be embraced by education? Should we not be tapping into this medium which motivates and engages young people so effectively? Was it Benjamin Franklin who said, ‘we do not stop playing because we get old, we get old because we stop playing.’?

In an interesting article in The Guardian ‘News as Games: Immoral or the Future of Interactive Journalism’, Keith Stuart explores how more interactive approaches could be used to engage the public in current affairs instead of the more passive forms of traditional reporting. The stumbling point with journalism seems to hinge on the moral issues of encouraging people to play games that relate, for example, to the complicated situation in Syria. But complicated and moral issues have been the subject of computer games for generations, and the potential to learn from these is quite exciting.

I remember playing lots of games in the 80s which either directly (Missile Command) or indirectly referenced the Cold War. I learnt more about this topic in front of my computer than through any activities at school.  I learnt about the American Civil War by playing a game called North and South which I didn’t spend my hard earned paper-round money on because of its historical connections, but through playing the games I picked up on the industrial prowess of the northern states and importance of the railway for communication. Ollie Bray (@olliebray) has talked about the importance of designing ‘contextual hubs’ for learning by building educational opportunities around computer games rather than on simply expecting games to educate without any structure and support from the teacher. James Gee, author of Learning Theory, Video Games and Popular Culture believes that gaming can introduce students to more complex and rich information than they could ever learn in a traditional school setting.

The explosion of online games and mobile apps means that gaming is not reliant on expensive consoles which schools are unlikely to purchase in large numbers. Educational games have always been eyed with suspicion by both students and teachers, perhaps because of the misplaced concept of what constitutes a learning tool – surely games have no place in servicing learning? But if the game is part of a carefully constructed series of teaching episodes it could be a valuable asset. I am currently teaching a Year 7 History unit on Medieval Conflict and intend to try out some of these ideas. I have come across a game created for Channel 4, www.1066online.co.uk, which puts the player in charge of the Normans, Saxons or Vikings during the key battles of that year. This could reinforce learning about the techniques and tactics used and even lead to a richer understanding about what motivated people to fight and the wider implications of such conflict.

Teachers should tap into this potentially valuable learning resource and remember how important game playing is to the development of young people. Children spend hours playing video games, most adults don’t and sometimes we can be too quick to dismiss the link between gaming and learning. Social media opens up so many varied gaming opportunities; we would be foolish to continue to play the wrong game.

The Flippin' Classroom

Thanks to the Twitter community I have returned to school this term with renewed energy and enthusiasm to experiment. One idea that receives a lot of attention and is frequently revisited is the flipped classroom - where content learning takes place prior to the lesson allowing more opportunities to apply the learning in the class. This is by no means a new idea, setting homework as preparation for lessons has been around for years, but with the advent of social media this is fast becoming a powerful learning tool in the 21st century school.

Breaking away from the delivery of content in the lesson is a positive and refreshing move. In many respects classrooms are not ideal learning environments because of the large numer of people in one room. Learning can sometimes be restricted by the very person who is meant to be facilitating it. Didactic teaching, however engaging you might be, is not an effective technique for most learners. The notion of wise teachers filling up young minds with knowledge can stay with Mr Gradgrind. Knowledge is no longer the captive of the educated - a swipe and a search on any smartphone will set free most of the world's wonders which had previously relied on educators to allow students into the secret. Teachers should facilitate learning and structuring activities around the concept of the flipped classroom takes more preparation and thought than a didactic monologue.

Frequently preparatory tasks are paper based, as in, 'read this before the next lesson', resulting in very little engagement or learning. The teacher is still required to go through the content essentially in the same detail as they would have done without the reading. Access to social media allows this content learning to be more interactive, meaningful and therefore effective. Videos, especially created by the teacher, are an increasingly common tool for the flipped classroom. The Khan Academy and other video sharing sites (see earlier blog) are well-suited for this kind of activity. But it becomes most effective when the teacher starts to plan tasks around the stimulus material such as questions relating to the video or collaborative online activities using, for example Google Docs. This also allows the teacher to have a better grasp on whether the students have actually engaged with the material and can also inform their planning for the forthcoming lessons.

With more teachers embracing social media and the innovative strategies that they complement the flippin' classroom might just have got a little bit more exciting.

Using Twitter to Transform

So my sortie into the world of Twitter (@jez_scott) is now into its 4^th day and my experience has been wholly satisfying and refreshingly inspiring. Having avoided Twitter for so long as a result of my natural caution and all-too frequent experience of its underbelly, I want to kick myself for not having made the jump sooner.

I opened my Twitter account of 2 January and started to find people of interest who I might want to follow. This started with celebrity wits such as Stephen Fry (obviously) and David Mitchell and then moved to authors and journalists who I have come across in my research on social media and futures thinking such as Keri Facer and Evgeny Morozov. Very quickly I started to find educators who were clearly well-established Twitter users such as Simon Warburton, Tom Sherrington and David Didau and a community of positive, forward-thinking school leaders began to emerge. It didn’t take long before people started to interact with me in relation to my posts and this encouraged me comment on and retweet others’ posts. I had viewed Twitter from afar as a bragging tool whose main purpose was self-promotion, and this aspect clearly exists, but what I also found were professionals who were using Twitter as a genuine tool of collaboration and communication. All teachers benefit from talking about their practice and uncovering new ideas about inspiring young people – this works within schools and it clearly works very well on Twitter. The opportunities to share ideas in school is dependent on the culture of the school and the time that is available for such activities – on Twitter there is a vibrant community of interested and interesting teachers which can be dipped into when it is convenient – anytime, anywhere learning should be for teachers as well as students. The potential that Twitter has for aiding effective professional development is very exciting and one which I will promote within my own school and when I talk at the BETT Conference on 1 February.

Reservations about using Twitter persist but they are perhaps different from my earlier assumptions. I wasn’t quite prepared for the emotional consequence of writing my first tweets and exposing my blogs to a wider audience. Is it normal to become rather obsessed with responses and the number of followers I’ve got? I was hoping to avoid this kind of arrogant reaction but I guess it is part and parcel of the experience and is likely to abate with time (and a more complimentary number of followers!). The obsessive nature of Twitter can therefore start to eat into time; the more prolific bloggers and tweeters must be almost permanently attached.

Can Twitter transform? I have suggested before that schools and teachers need to transform the way they use modern technologies and specifically social media. Twitter is the most frequently used social media service by young people – not always in the positive ways which I have outlined above. Young people need to be educated in the appropriate and effective use of social media and teachers are best placed to do this. To educate one needs to have experienced and therefore being involved in Twitter has obvious advantages. But most importantly, Twitter opens up communities of support and expertise that would benefit the continuous professional development of all teachers. It encourages people to reflect on their practice and to keep up-to-date with new developments.

So I will continue to tweet – not with my friends and family, I still think it’s best to talk to them – but with those who wish to improve education and give meaningful opportunities for young people to learn about this increasingly vital area of modern life. I may be late for the party but I bring Tequila.

Why is education stuck in the past?

A friend of mine who works with the media industry made the interesting point recently that traditional journalists are now expected to have some kind of on-line presence, usually using social media and most frequently Twitter. A quick search will find an active community of journalists, covering all areas of journalistic interest, including the famous and the unknown, who share information and ideas rather than insults and the inane. Twitter tends to make the headlines when an ill-considered tweet is coughed up by an overpaid and overhyped footballer, but millions of people use it and other social media forums to extend their knowledge and awareness of areas that matter to them and to collaborate with people they might otherwise have never met.

So I have taken the plunge and joined Twitter (@jez_scott); literally just now. I got quite excited when I noticed that I had one follower almost instantly but rather disappointed to find it was someone called @Q9bbGzMeoNHo02E reminding me that 35% of followers of the average Twitter account are not real people. But I am now there and I’m determined to make use of Twitter, even if that is more about following others rather than making my own grand pronouncements.
Why has it taken me so long to engage in Twitter when I travel about the place promoting the use of social media? I can only think that it is a reflection of the rather peculiar resistance to change that pervades most educational institutions and educators. I am seen as something of a maverick because I write a blog and condone the use of social media in schools. I find this surprising and more than a little disconcerting. Unlike journalism and other competitive industries, schools do not have to worry about losing their customers – however out-of-date or irrelevant your provision might be the children will still turn up at the school gate each morning. This means that schools do not have to keep up with even the seismic changes in technology and society. We can continue to educate young people within the confines of Dickensian institutions with our rigid timetables, school uniforms and didactic teachers – and the most frightening part is that almost everybody thinks that this is just great. Parents and policy-makers remember their schools being like this and so they seek schools which promise to maintain strict discipline or introduce initiatives which show no initiative. Schools are perhaps the worst of all institutions at gripping on to some kind of perverse image of educational utopia.

Transforming schools and educational policy is therefore a difficult task which has frustrated generations of more forward-thinking educators. The answer may be found in the growing communities of like-minded school leaders and teachers who are starting to look at educational provision in different ways which are truly aimed at equipping young people for their futures. These communities cannot be unlocked within local consortium arrangements, academy federations or even national associations. These communities will grow online and Twitter seems as good a place as any to get things rolling.