Insight Blog

The eMapps.com [http://www.emapps.info]final project conference took place 12 February 2008 in Prague. The aim of the conference was to share the results of the project, which started in 2004, with policy makers, academia, teachers and other interested stakeholders. 67 participants from 17 countries including 11 policy makers attended.

eMapps.com is demonstrating how game activities based on mobile technologies provide new and enriching experiences for children in the school curriculum and beyond. The work concentrates on Europe’s New Member States and school children in the age group 9-12.

Project findings show that new ways of learning integrating mobile devices and games in formal education are worthwhile and lead to learning. Contributions to the conference came from university experts, policy makers and project partners. They looked at what we currently know about games in education from a research point of view, how game based learning is used as a driver for education in Slovakia and the impact of emapps.com on learning and policy making. Furthermore, the emapps.com platform was presented and two schools from Hungary and the Czech Republic illustrated their games. Finally, issues for further mainstreaming emapps.com activities were addressed.

What do we know about games in education?

Prof. Dr. Maja Pivec from the Johanneum in Graz (Austria) presented an overview of what we know about games in education?

Even though gaming is often associated only with fun activities and not regarded as “serious learning''?, there is evidence that children do learn when gaming:

Gee (2004) suggests learning is: (trust children)
• Empowering learners
• Problem solving
• Gaining understanding

Clark (2004) suggests that games provide:
• Low risk environment
• Cognitive upskilling

But why do educators then not use games more often in classroom?
The research indicates that games are motivating and raise students´ interest in subjects, but evidence on effective learning is relatively unclear.

Maja Pivec compiled feedback with teachers and students, which show some of the barriers for low uptake:

• Low tolerance of the environment for the games
• Perceived as an unserious activity
• Fear not to reach learning objectives
• Lack of technical resources
• Quality of games as learning resources

See

Game based learning in education- from a political point of view
Beata Brestenska from the Ministry of education in Slovakia and Vice Dean of the Comenius University, Bratislava presented the political point of view for game based learning in education.

A game can be defined as a structured or semi-structured activity, usually undertaken
for enjoyment and sometimes also used as an educational tool. Key components of games are goals, rules, challenge, and interactivity. Games generally involve mental or physical stimulation, and often both. Many games help develop practical skills, serve as a form of exercise, or otherwise perform an educational, simulational or psychological role. Games are known to have been played as far back as the 30th century BC and are a universal part of human experience and present in all cultures. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/game).

Within the national ICT programme Invovek (Infoage) Slovakia, http://infovek.sk, which ran from 1999-2006, games were developed for students and teachers. Focus was on those companies that work with teachers. Innovative teachers were invited to prepare games for students. Education with games in Slovakia targets at all: students, parents, older people working together. A special theme is presented on the Invovek portal
each month between 2003 and 2007 including competitions http://infovekacik.infovek.sk/archiv.php
http://infovekacik.infovek.sk/2008-januar/index.php.
Games are seen as a way for teachers to change towards a modern school. Slovakia is just launching a school reform, 2008 -2013, with a focus on reaching a critical mass of innovative teachers and increase the quality and competition an all levels of schools in Slovakia.

see the presentation (pdf)

The game’s platform
Marco Papic, the technical partner of the emapps project (University of Ljubljana), presented the emapps.com platform on which the game can be played. http://emapps.com/
There are three different roles in the game, a game master, the game base (player team at the desktop computer) and avators in the field.

The game is played in real time, the teacher is the game master and has a complete understanding of the game (story, mechanics, goals) and needs to be familiar with the virtual environment. He motivates, tracks progress and assigns grades. Both, the base and avators have to works together on the task. The avators in the field help the game base to find information, they submit the tasks by uploading documents and communicate via chat on the platform. Overall more than 30 games were played during the project. Crucial components for success include:
• Game story: has to be appealing, in accordance with the curricula
• Narrative (telling the story to the player) independent of the technology used
Teams from Hungary and the Czech Republic presented their games. They can be investigated at the “Living map of Europe''? This ‘layer’ link of eMapps.com website enables the visitor to access the different countries and games developed in the project, through an interactive map of Europe based on Google combined with Web 2.0 features.
http://www.emapps.com/index.php?id=67

Learning Impact
The project shows important outcomes as regards to learning impact. Manchester Metropolitan University, which was responsible for the pedagogical validation, highlighted comments from teachers and more theoretical findings. Teachers and children perspectives are quite different concerning the effects of the games. Parents involved saw it as an activity widening the experience of their children.

Playing the game increased technology capability and skill such as the use of mobile devices and GPS, but also improved achievement and depth of learning in specific curriculum areas such as history, geography, biology. Other skills developed were:
• Investigation of the ‘real world’ through access, analysis and interpretation of
information sources:
• Problem-solving, goal-related behaviour;
• Communicative skills;
• Collaborative skills;
• Softer skills: e.g. resilience and persistence;
• The emergence of mentoring and teaching skills among children
• Team work and cooperation
• Collaborative and individual decision making
• Negotiating

Unexpected outcomes:
Passive children emerging as leaders
Some children achieved more than expected
Shy children especially girls spoke up

Positive findings: but some issues remain to be solved:
• Time (of teachers in developing the game, involving institutions, museums, science centres)
• Cost (marketing penetration of devices is moving rapidly)
• Safety (supervision is needed by going outside)

See the presentation (ppt)

Contextual analysis and recommendations for policy makers

European Schoolnet undertook a contextual analysis with focus groups of teachers, headmasters and national coordinators validating the project against 6 dimensions, the systemic, institutional, pedagogical technical, ecomomic and cultural (according to the SIPTEC framework) for assessing the potential adaptation or innovative impact of the emapps activities. As a result of the analysis we offer 14 recommended actions for policy-makers wishing to create favourable conditions for integrating game based like activities such as empps in schools.

Recommendations at system level include:
• Support pedagogies and a curriculum that support active learning and project based learning,
• Ensure that such pedagogies form part of teachers’ initial and continuing professional development (plus eskills updating)
• The better fit of games to the curriculum and age, the higher chances of their use
• Open up schools and link them to informal learning places (e.g. libraries, museums, science centres, leisure centres)

Recommendations :

See the presentation

Mainstream emapps activities in schools
Issues for future exploitation of the project were addressed by Rob Davies (MDR partner UK).
One major issue is time and management:
• Learning about and using platform in prototype unrealistically time consuming
• Time unlikely to be found during school hours to play the game
• Platform reengineered to greatly reduce time consumption in game development
• Flexibility in length of game play
• Promote potential for extracurricular activities

The emapps.com platform was reengineered to greatly reduce time consumption in game development. The new platform will be available by the end of the project end of 2008.
Malta, Rumania, Turkey, Bulgaria and Portugal have a high level interest in piloting emapps like activities. Beyond the eMapps.com approach, where teachers and children are involved in and responsible for the design of the games, using a common platform, there remain variant
approaches to the implementation of games in school-based learning. It remains a possibility that commercial ‘off-the-shelf’ games can be successfully packaged and integrated into the curriculum in a cost-effective way which capitalises on the investment made in the quality of game ‘design’ and ‘flow’. However, it appears more likely that the eMapps.com approach will produce games which are closely aligned with curriculum course content frameworks and syllabus.

See the presentation

Posted by Anja Balanskat at 05:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Jan Figel’, a long time supporter of eTwinning (this is the 4th time he attends an eTwinning event), opened the eTwinning conference in Bucarest. Commissionaire Figel' is in charge of education, training, culture and youth in the European Commission.

Later today the eTwinning awards are going to be handed out to reward teachers hard work throughout the year, and to bring interesting and innovative projects up to the limelight.

More about the event:

Blog: http://blog.eun.org/etwinningconference2008/

http://www.etwinning.net/ww/en/pub/etwinning/news/articles/annual_etwinning_conference.htm

Posted by Riina Vuorikari at 02:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The Serious Games Round Table brought together in Brussels on 6 March representatives from the game industry, ministries of education, experts around the topic of games in teaching and learning. The theme is still rather new and the uptake of using games in learning still faces many challenges and misconceptions. This roundtable is therefore timely especially as a major games in education project is coming to a close (emapps.com) and EUN is starting work with the Interactive Software Federation of Europe (ISFE). During the event examples were given to fuel discussions on the benefits of using games in learning and how to bring about a change of attitude at the level of policy making and curriculum development.

Round table discussion – some key points
1: There are many myths about games that have to be dispelled amongst teachers. This could be done through an EUN overview of the topic, video clips of examples of practice and clear curriculum links
2: Industry won't produce the pedagogical arguments and ideas; it has to be education. The games industry 'doesn't know how to sell games to education'.
3: Games develop soft skills that are hard to assess and often not assessed at all.
4: Games have value in cross-cultural work and can overcome age differences
5: There is a need for a games in schools incubator to experiment, explore and pilot new ideas
6: Games should feature in initial teacher education programmes
7: Licensing issues make games adoption in schools difficult, why is an institutional licence not possible? No exceptions are alowed to the EC software directive unlike other products. Can supppliers vary contracts in the case of educational use?
8: Primary schools can use off the shelf games products.
9: All games need to have challenge, reward, mastership – they need to be motivating. Teachers should discriminate between games as child-minding and educationally valuable uses. They should be prepared to justify that learning can come through fun.
10: Children and young people can learn through:
• A game within a gaming context
• A game being used as a tool in a broader learning activity
• Making a game
11: The primary audience for such games are the “new millennial learners''? who
• Learn in different ways from earlier generations
• Are highly motivated by (instant) feedback and reward
• Are adept at using the technology
12: How to raise awaress in ministries of education and then how to reach classrooms? There is enough research showing the benefits. One way could be to set up communities of practice linking together the hotspots of innovation. Another is to establish a games category for the EUN Elearning Awards in December 2008.

Conclusions
1: Research must continue
2: Consideration needs to be given as to how we can move this motivational technology into the classroom in more effective ways
3: We need to evaluate the impact and consider how to build on what is already being done
4: Next steps could include the collation of teacher stories and case studies
5: Teacher trainers are a crucial target group
6: The traditional curriculum does not cater for new and emerging technologies and the issues that they bring. The key competences agenda could be a vehicle for promoting greater uptake of games, particularly in how they support trnasversal skills that are difficult to teach, eg democracy, lifelong learning, digital literacy, interpersonal and intercultural learning, citizenship and entrepreneurship.
7: We need to link pools of enthusiasm across national boundaries and exploit the visibility of other pioneers within this area.

Playing games, and playing games in schools: what is the difference? Mind the Gap, from leisure to learning
Download file (0.5MB)
Janice Richardson from INSAFE, the safer internet network coordinated by European Schoolnet, mentioned several surveys showing the perception of the use of games at schools from the pupils and the teachers' perspective. It appears that using games do not feature among the priorities areas with only 22 per cent of teachers seeing games as a priority and 33% saying they lack confidence to deal with games in class. Additionally, teachers and students have a very different use of the internet. While teachers and pupils both use the internet to search for information, teachers do not play games online while kids do (70 per cent in UK, 90 per cent in Scandinavia); which shows a strong difference in practice. This gap is also reflected in a perceived lack of confidence from teachers for discussion in class about online gaming. Furthermore 39% of UK youngsters play games on their mobile phone (44% of them girls). Playing games decreases after age 17.

Janice mentioned some of the main assets of using games in learning. For instance, games contain rules and structure, something important for young people, and everyone is on an equal footing. Other characteristics include learning about democracy, placing children and teachers on an equal footings, fostering creativity, interaction and sharing. Among the skills games can develop are improving motor and special skills (for instance in the case of the Nintendo Wii), develop strategic thinking skills (in the case for instance of strategy games) and they can be integrated in all areas of the curriculum.

The other side of the coin and some of the criticism the education world has about games are that they create an addiction, contains racial or gender stereotypes (as mainly developed by an industry dominated by male influence), contain violence (although the link between violence in video games and impact on young people has never been demonstrated. Online games raise the risk of 'stranger danger'.

In conclusion Janice asked 'where are the gamers'. They do not seem to be in the teaching profession, hence the lack of confidence, the gap between pupils - who are game-savvy - and teachers who lack the confidence to use games as a learning tool.

Following this, Karl Hopwood, an independent consultant presented the UK's perspective on games in learning. He pointed out that Futurelab has made research in this field. Their research show that: