Video Games for Learning
Course
Games Make Us More Creative Problem Solvers [6:24]
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About
Stress allows our bodies to be pushed to a greater limit. This happens in video games and causes gamers and people who play video games to be more creative problem solvers.Transcript
A stressed brain is a good thing. Perhaps not all the time and perhaps we could talk later about being overstressed, but there is most certainly such thing as the right amount of stress. And this happens in video games and causes gamers and people who play video games to be more creative problem solvers.
Think if we are providing enough opportunities in our library for creative problem solving. Certainly, one can make the argument that this takes a lot of time to set up and for students to explore. It's much easier to put something in front of them where they have one answer to solve the problem or one direction to follow in order to reach the goal. But putting yourself in a situation where you are providing the students with too many resources, they may have to choose, evaluate which ones are the best resources to use.
Or perhaps, not enough resources and they have to make a case for why some resources are needed and some may not be relevant. That sort of work is causing them to think about the problem and, more importantly, to think about the way they will solve the problem. Many paths to the same or varied conclusions can have really amazing results in your classroom, but again, it does take time to set up.
So as a librarian, you need to think are our students comfortable with taking risks? And am I providing a classroom culture that's built around risk-taking? Let's take a look at risk-taking in video games. In a video game, you often get multiple saving points, and sometimes, multiple lives. And this can affect how conservative or aggressive you play. If you have an unending amount of lives, you will be more likely to allow yourselves to take a risk and die, knowing that I can get back up and try it again.
If you have multiple saving points, again, you can take greater risks when you play, take more chances, knowing that, "Well, if it doesn't work out, I can always go back to that save that I had before." But they add that stress which forces you to think on your toes. Often, the stress comes in the form of time counting down. You only have a certain number of minutes or seconds to finish a level. Or limited resources, you have this power up item or you have a certain number of bars in your health. And once those run out, so does your opportunity to play that level or you'd have to restart.
There are also games such as Super Mario Brothers where there are hidden items, such as hidden coins or warp pipes that take you to new places, where you need to be able to risk the fail that could incur in order to discover that missing coin, that missing opportunity. There are people in the video game culture, they call themselves "completionists" and those are the people that strive to accomplish every single task possible in the game.
Imagine what it would be like if our students were faced with a tough problem in our learning environments and they wanted to be completionists. They wanted to not only solve the problem, but find every possible solution and try out those ways as well. Risk-taking to a gamer causes you to question, "Is the prize worth the risk?" So when we're making our instructional lessons, we need to think, "Am I making the payoff worth the challenge for the students?"
When you play a video game as well, it's all within an abstraction of reality. This isn't happening in the real world. There's something off about it. We're playing in a game. Maybe in the game, we're playing with characters that couldn't possibly exist in the real world. Or maybe we're playing a situation that we know isn't real because it's a game. And yet, we believe in that abstraction and that's what allows us to be creative problem solvers within that game.
So let's take what we've just discussed about problem-solving in games and let's consider what this could look like in your library. Are you providing time for students to explore new concepts and struggle with new ideas? This could be as simple as inviting your students to consider how you purchase materials for your library and which items you purchase, based on a limited budget. You face stress all the time and you face those problems all the time when you're purchasing materials.
"Do I buy items to replace those that I've had to weed? Do I buy these new materials like video games and e-readers that we haven't had in our library before, but means that I won't be able to buy other books?" You have to make those decisions all the time and think about what is best for your patrons and that causes stress and you often don't know what the result is going to be, but that's sort of the fun that we like about video games too. I don't know what the result will be, but the chance, the risk I have to take, makes it worth it.
There's a great classroom activity that I've seen going on around the country called "20 Time" which is the notion of giving your students 20% of the time to work on a passion project. I see it a lot happening in high schools. Allow them to work on any project that they want, any curiously they have, and just work openly. You'll help them find the resources, you'll help guide their inquiry, but you're allowing them to be in charge of their learning.
Again, through the context of you, the information specialist who's going to help and guide them and not let them flounder. Are we giving our students, our patrons, the people that come into our library, whether they are the ones we teach or those who are also teaching in the building, are we giving them an opportunity to be more creative problem solvers?
Activities
Videogaming involves calculated risk to get rewards, like attaining new levels or finding a hidden item. Various scenarios that include time limits, opportunities to try again, and consequences of potential losses in the event of failure all inform players' risk. In instruction, teachers and librarians would be likely to say that risk-taking in problem solving is encouraged. However, without some of these factors, such as time and opportunity to take multiple paths or a valuable "payoff," as in a game, students may be less likely to try something risky or creative.
The article "Gamification" (in the Resources below) offers useful background for framing our learning about problem solving and other educational parallels and outcomes of videogaming. Read the article, and as you read, use the graphic organizer below to compare learning, perseverance, and other concepts in gaming and in education. Then in the "so maybe" column, construct a conclusion, note potential ramifications, or perhaps write a question generated by each comparison as it pertains to your own teaching practice.
Entry ID: 2122883
Additional Resources
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MLA Citation
Winner, Matthew C. "Video Games for Learning. Games Make Us More Creative Problem Solvers [6:24]." School Library Connection, ABC-CLIO, November 2015, schoollibraryconnection.com/content/course/1985413?learningModuleId=1980803&topicCenterId=2247903.
Chicago Citation
Winner, Matthew C. "Video Games for Learning. Games Make Us More Creative Problem Solvers [6:24]." School Library Connection video. November 2015. https://schoollibraryconnection.com/content/course/1985413?learningModuleId=1980803&topicCenterId=2247903.
APA Citation
Winner, M. C. (2015, November). Video games for learning. Games make us more creative problem solvers [6:24] [Video]. School Library Connection. https://schoollibraryconnection.com/content/course/1985413?learningModuleId=1980803&topicCenterId=2247903
https://schoollibraryconnection.com/content/course/1985413?learningModuleId=1980803&topicCenterId=2247903
Entry ID: 1985413