Alternate Reality Games and Education

I have recently been reading WIRED magazine thanks to my Coke Rewards points cash in and found a really interesting article in January's edition called And Now a Game from our Sponsors. The article explores a new type of marketing technique called alternate reality games. Basically this is kind of a world-wide scavenger hunt with clues that, when sown together tell a story. It seems that these games aren't meant to be solved individually, but rather in a collaborative sense with the web being a key component to help in sharing clues and information. This is not really a "Virtual" reality game since it rarely involves being in one computerized world as some avatar, but involves using real world and web based clues to tell a story. Some examples they gave in the article involved a concert goer finding a disk-on-key in a bathroom that contained an unreleased song with the coded message. The message, once decoded indicated a cellphone number that, when called played wiretapped voice message giving the next clue. Without going into detail you can see how complex but engaging a game like this might be.

The reason I have blogged about it here is because of two factors: the engaging aspect of the game and it's collaborative nature. I wonder, as educators how we can harness that kind of enthusiasm to encourage our students to "find the story" in our work. For example, instead of the chronological march through the Revolutionary War, why not present students with the story of those revolutionaries by asking them to follow their story or to uncover findings? I know that teachers don't have the resources to make the games in the scope of those in the article, but I think there could be possibilities here.

Another thought I had was about using this ARG idea to explore characters in a novel. What if the students created their own kind of ARG/alternate story for a subordinate character in a work? Would that allow them to engage more in the text? Understand the characters better? Gain an insight into the author's purpose? Maybe.

I've often heard education technology gurus talk about using games in education (mostly in terms of simulation games) which I think have some merit. But I wondered how realistic it was to expect a software developer to create that Romeo and Juliet Simulation for the X-Box. With technology specific simulations, we are bound to what ever is being brought to market for the technology we have. However, if teachers could do more to create the game mindset in their classrooms, I think we would find student interest skyrocketing.

For example, I work with a colleague who, for many years, has taught Macbeth and Lord of the Flies by doing competitive group competitions. Students who otherwise could care less about Shakespeare or Golding thrive in these activities as they try to win "blood points" from rival "clans" to prove their knowledge and meet the challenges before them. (Thanks Meg for the ideas)

At any rate, I think this type of game model opens up something for educators to consider beyond the "lets play hangman with vocabulary terms" type of game. That's why I'm trying to play one of these games myself. I hope to be able to understand how they work and design a small one for the fun in hopes that I could effectively develop one for a specific educational purpose. If I ever get there, I'll invite you all along.

Authenticity

I have been doing a lot of thinking lately about what my next post ought to be and I was weighing my options between a few choices, one of which was a lengthy rant about SATs, standardized testing and No Child Left Behind but I decided not to be such a Scrooge in the holiday season. No doubt by the time some dismal day in March arrives, you'll hear an earful on those other things.

I have been trying to answer the question, "What motivates students to learn?" This is the million dollar question that often connects to other educational conversation from measuring student progress, to curriculum and assessment. I started trying to answer the question by looking in two places. One, when I was a student, what courses, teachers or projects interested me and why. Two, what do students seem to be intrinsically motivated to do in our school.

Looking back at my own educational experiences, I can outline several examples of my own intrinsic motivation (extrinsic examples like parents expecting good grades or bribes of Driver's Education aside). I was very motivated in my music classes. I was involved in band, jazz band, marching band, brass quintet and even participated in several regional and state band competitions and music summer camp (yes I was that much of a geek). What motivated me to get this involved? Several things. One, it aligned with my "social network" (I had many friends in music who shared the same interests). Two, learning was important because it had a real audience. If you thought you'd get away with not practicing in a five person music group, you quickly learn that you can't hide in a performance, even behind the tuba. There are many other experiences I can recall were I was truly intrinsically motivated to learn (a mock trial in Social Studies for example) and I realized that the common factor was a real audience, not even necessarily a social group I was with.

When looking at courses and experiences where students in our school show a true motivation to learn, I hear of things like vocational programs (nursing, carpentry, automotive) music programs, athletics, and service projects like our students going to New Orleans to help Habitat for Humanity build houses for Katrina victims. These all have a REAL purpose, a real audience.





Most often in education the audience our students work with is an audience of one-- the teacher. When you consider this, there is no wonder that the motivation is low. The teacher creates the assignment, stipulates how you will complete it, usually gives you the materials to do it, and is the only one who will be reading it, scoring it and giving feedback. I cringe when I see students filling up my trashcan with their writing papers I have just handed back, but I understand why. You do what the teacher wants you to, you say what they want to hear, and if you are close enough, then you'll get the grade and forget about it tomorrow. This is not the kind of learning model that works and we know that.

This is why it is important for teachers to try opening up student work to an audience. The more authentic the better. These can be through blogs, wikis, videos and webpages, but, as some of the examples above prove, they don't have to involve technology.

So I've resolved to try this in some of my courses. Here's how. In my video production course, we will be working with the language classes to help them create a video postcard to their sister school in Lac-Megantic, Canada. Each group will get the same video footage (scripted by the language classes) and their responsibility will be to edit the video in a way that best suits the purpose. In the end all videos will be shown in the language classes and the class will vote on which one will get sent out to represent them.

In my writing and literature classes, I'm going to try to find ways to post student work for comment by other students, have them podcast and comment on each other's work and I've even tried to have a book discussion using Voicethread.

I hope to continue sharing this implementation so that I can document this journey and gain insight from reader comments as well (HINT HINT).

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