Hi everyone,
My name is Jackson and I have been living in Vancouver for all 26 years of my life. This is the 7th course I am taking for the MET program and I am also working full time with the Vancouver School Board as a permanent TOC. This is my third year teaching and I like to think I still have the fire from when I first started. I specialize in English as well as ELL; I’ve recently discovered a passion for Career Life Education and technology courses too ever since I’ve started this program. Maybe it is rubbing off on me.
I loved playing video games and still do. However, recently I’ve had to go on breaks because of my carpal tunnel. To make up for this, I’ve been transferring games into the classroom for students to play for me. My recent works have been trying to put games into my English classroom. I’ll plug some thumbnail cover images I have of the games I used and made resources for.
I took this course partially because I have a dream to create a classroom with 15-30 gaming computers with complete Steam libraries for game-based learning. I would love to create an offline carpet space for discussion and see how games may influence students the same way they have influenced me. I’ve done small things such as creating a Teachers Pay Teachers, notebook business on Amazon and such, but I would love to brainstorm a venture that can take become a keystone for my future.
From this course, I would like to engage with innovation and throw ideas around with peers to see how things can be polished.
I look forward to working with all of you!
Jackson
Hey Jackson, I appreciate your creative ideas and look forward to working together in the course!
Thanks Alexis!
You too
Jackson
This is amazing, talk about putting in the work for your students. With a lot of theoretical work around DGBL one of the biggest obstacles I have come across is that good games are designed with the purpose of learning, and those that are are not “good”. One of my summer projects for 2022 is to teach myself these skills so that I can independently build a repository of games for my future students. Well done. Have you found the learning outcomes from using these games was worth the effort in building them? Is there a subject that has a better return?
Hi Kyle,
I find with games that there is a fine balance to uphold between educational value and fun value. Commercial off the shelf games are usually the best for me as long as I can correctly make resources to direct students’ attention to particular phenomena.
Personally, I found the games were worth building resources for because games are inherently easy to play and learn. In many cases, the resources I build are suitable for many grades; the only thing that changes is assessment and how much detail and nuance I expect from their answers.
Many games have strong looks at themes so subjects such as Social Studies and English could work well. There are also many niche games that fit in Science such as Creatura and Kerbal Space Program. I am also making my own repository so it’s nice to see someone else thinking of it too 🙂
Hi Jackson, really like your poster designs! Also appreciate the Ace Attorney reference, it’s one my favourite series.
Out of curiosity, have you ever encountered students or colleagues who were against the idea of Gamification/GBL?
Thanks John! I had an educational assistant/SSA that disliked the content of the games I was sharing; a double-edged sword of games is that it is supposed to be more visually visceral and at the same time, more emotionally intense.
I didn’t have many students who were against the idea. In my first year trying GBL, I had students write in their surveys that they would have liked more collaboration and opportunities to speak to peers (which is honestly hard as students are watching someone play). I’m working on a balance of half gameplay half offline groupwork to circumvent that!
Hi Jackson,
How have you adapted learning through gaming for ELL learners who are very new to the English language?
Hi Cindy,
I find a lot of success with games that are largely nonverbal and having them “fill in the blanks” using the language they know and the language they acquire. Games such as Florence and vocabulary building games like Scribblenauts are my ace!
Hi Jackson,
What a neat goal! Have you taken ETEC 544: Digital Games & Learning yet? I did the Summer Institute version and was planning on taking it as a second course this semester (you can take the Summer Institute and then 544 but not vice versa for those of you who don’t know that…). It was one of my favourite courses. I sadly ended up dropping it because I don’t think I can handle 2 courses with my workload and got approached with an interested ETEC 580 idea for later this year.
I hope that carpel tunnel eases up!
Mev
PS. I love that Career Life Education curriculum, I almost went back into teaching K-12 because of it. I was an industry representative for MoE meetings during its development.
Hi Marie,
I did not (yet) but will keep that in mind! I did the Summer Institute though. I also love the CLE curriculum. It opens up for a lot of flexibility!