The fol­low­ing post was pre­pared by Elaine Hirsch, and it pro­vides a quick overview of some of the research around gaming.

Elaine Hirsch is a jack-of-all-interests, from edu­ca­tion and his­tory to med­i­cine and video games. This makes it dif­fi­cult to choose just one life path, so she is cur­rently work­ing as a writer for var­i­ous education-related sites and writ­ing about all these things instead. She can be reached at elainehi86@gmail.com.

Research has shown that edu­ca­tion­ally mod­i­fied, computer-based video games have the poten­tial to increase play­ers’ basic knowl­edge reten­tion. This directly con­tra­dicts the preva­lent assump­tion that video games are merely a dis­trac­tion from “proper learn­ing.” More­over, these find­ings sug­gest games can be used as pow­er­ful tools to advance learn­ing from online PhD pro­grams to kinder­garten classrooms.

The Uni­ver­sity of Kansas con­ducted research that sug­gested games can be used not only for the pur­pose of advanc­ing learn­ing, but also to impart very spe­cific knowl­edge in their play­ers. Three groups were admin­is­tered a test of their abil­ity to recall cer­tain his­tor­i­cal events. One group pre­pared by view­ing a Pow­er­Point pre­sen­ta­tion and the remain­ing groups pre­pared with the aid of video games.

The two groups that used video games to pre­pare demon­strated a marked increase in knowl­edge reten­tion. The increase was attrib­uted to the psy­cho­log­i­cal effect of par­tic­i­pants being able to engage their minds to a greater degree than that of the group that pas­sively observed the Pow­er­Point presentation.

Andrew Moshir­nia, the author of the study, con­cluded that when video games are designed to include spe­cific edu­ca­tional for­mats, they can be effec­tively used by edu­ca­tors as learn­ing tools for their stu­dents. His study showed stu­dents who were exposed to these types of edu­ca­tion­ally mod­i­fied video games improved imme­di­ate knowl­edge recall.

Mean­while, Boston stu­dents have found video games played on mobile devices rein­force infor­ma­tion learned in biol­ogy classes. Sim­i­larly, a group of New York City 8th grade stu­dents who played Nin­tendo DS were able to over­come mis­con­cep­tions about the processes of pho­to­syn­the­sis. Stu­dents in Texas have also been shown to visu­al­ize physics con­cepts bet­ter when they were exposed to a library of online simulations.

The National Research Coun­cil explored the poten­tial of edu­ca­tional video games for sci­ence learn­ing. The study was pre­sented to a group of edu­ca­tors, one of whom was Daniel Schwartz, a Stan­ford Uni­ver­sity pro­fes­sor of Edu­ca­tion. Schwartz sug­gested the use of edu­ca­tional video games in an alter­na­tive way when he remarked about how the games can col­lect large amounts of data about their play­ers, and how those data can aid edu­ca­tors in under­stand­ing how stu­dents learn.

At present there is insuf­fi­cient empir­i­cal evi­dence to demon­strate a def­i­nite improve­ment in long-term learn­ing reten­tion through the use of edu­ca­tional video games. How­ever, sci­en­tists attribute this more to the fact that video games are still too newly an object of sci­en­tific inquiry for ade­quate long-term stud­ies to have been con­ducted. Many short-term stud­ies have pro­duced pos­i­tive results, with stu­dents respond­ing very favor­ably to the video game for­mat. Chances seem good that video games, once con­sid­ered only an obsta­cle to get­ting home­work done, may take on an impor­tant role in edu­ca­tion in the near future.

This morn­ing I read a post from Edu­ca­tional Tech­nol­ogy Guy focused on the tech­nolo­gies he uses on a daily basis (If you don’t sub­scribe to his blog, you should!). His post inspired me to do the same with a lit­tle twist. I’m going to focus on those tools that I use when lead­ing work­shops. My list includes ten tools that I use in many of my pre­sen­ta­tions. You’ll notice that the tools I use with par­tic­i­pants don’t require memberships.

1. Wiki’s–Wiki’s are an extremely easy place for me to store resources for par­tic­i­pants. I always like wiki’s because they are easy to change, and mine typ­i­cally change with the needs and requests of the group. At the com­ple­tion of a work­shop, the group’s wiki has almost always been changed.
2. Google forms-Google forms are a fan­tas­tic way for me to col­lect data from my group eas­ily and quickly. Like most of the tools I use, par­tic­i­pants don’t need a password.
3. Wor­dle–So yes, some think Wor­dle is a lit­tle cheesy. Per­son­ally, I often use it as a way to visu­ally rep­re­sent the views of a group. I will fre­quently ask a ques­tion on Google forms, and copy and past the responses into Wordle.
4. Titan Pad–Another tool with­out a sign-in required. It is my favorite tool for col­lab­o­ra­tive note tak­ing between participants.
5. Google Docs-I also fre­quently use Google spread­sheets with open pub­lic access. I pre­fer Google spread­sheets when I have mul­ti­ple groups work­ing on dif­fer­ent tasks.
6. TodaysMeet–Again.….no sign-in pass­word required. This tool can be a great way to intro­duce a back chan­nel to individuals.
7. Skype-I fre­quently Skype oth­ers into my pre­sen­ta­tions. Nobody wants to hear me all day!
8. Flickr–When design­ing pre­sen­ta­tions, I work hard to find visual images to strengthen my mes­sage. Unfor­tu­nately, I often spend way too much time search­ing once I get to Flickr!
9. PowerPoint-Personally, I haven’t become a fan of Prezi, and I still pre­fer pow­er­point. I try to adhere to the guide­lines in Pre­sen­ta­tionZen when devel­op­ing my pow­er­points. I would strongly rec­om­mend the book to those of you who present frequently!
10. Twit­ter–I often post ques­tions on Twit­ter when seek­ing resources for my pre­sen­ta­tion. I’ll also post par­tic­i­pant ques­tions on Twit­ter. Those not famil­iar with Twit­ter are amazed that it can actu­ally be used in pos­i­tive ways!

Like many of you, there have been times that I have heard some­one say some­thing that has really left me frus­trated, angry, or absolutely bewil­dered.  Over the past three years, I’ve also heard those same types of state­ments in ref­er­ence to one-to-one schools. My list of things that make me scratch my head are listed below in no par­tic­u­lar order. These quotes cer­tainly don’t nec­es­sar­ily rep­re­sent com­mon beliefs, but they do exist. My short com­men­tary is beneath each quote.

The iPad (or insert another one-to-one device) com­bats the phys­i­cal bur­den that stu­dents suf­fer from hav­ing to lug around text­books on their backs.

I actu­ally don’t dis­agree with this quote, but I still hate it! If schools are mak­ing the move to 1:1 to lit­er­ally lighten back­pack weight, it is a REALLY bad investment!

I worry that I will no longer be the cen­ter of the class if we move to 1:1.

Ugh! I can’t believe I heard this com­ment in a pub­lic meet­ing with 40 other educators. I hope, and believe, this remark came from some­one in the very small minority.

Stu­dents are going to be very dis­tracted with one-to-one.

Schools across the coun­try are cur­rently doing a very poor job engag­ing stu­dents. One-to-one by itself isn’t the solu­tion, but it sure has the poten­tial to help in numer­ous ways.

The tech­nol­ogy really doesn’t matter.

I don’t think we can ful­fill our role as schools in 2011 with­out ade­quately edu­cat­ing our stu­dents about how to use tech­nol­ogy appro­pri­ately and effec­tively. In order to do so, schools need tech­nol­ogy that stu­dents can access on a reg­u­lar basis!

Good teach­ing is good teaching.

I under­stand the think­ing behind this state­ment, and agree with it to a point. How­ever, I don’t believe tech­nol­ogy can any longer live as some­thing sep­a­rate that class­rooms can choose to ignore. I’m not argu­ing that tech­nol­ogy needs to be used every minute of every class, but ignor­ing it shouldn’t be an option either! Stu­dents WILL be expected to leave schools and know how to use tech­nol­ogy in their per­sonal and pro­fes­sional lives.

My point in post­ing this list is more than just vent­ing (although I won’t deny a bit of vent­ing). Hear­ing these state­ments rein­forces how impor­tant it is that schools com­mu­ni­cate their mes­sage. Do all of your stake­hold­ers know WHY you went one-to-one?

Are there any quotes that you could add to the list that really get under your skin?

Nick Sauers