Fun and Games and Learning

Harnessing Technology to support learning a seminar to demonstrate novel ways of using IT.

An ESRC/EPSRC/DTI People @ the Centre of Communication and Information Technologies Programme (PACCIT) /BT Seminar

Thursday 13 October, 2005, 9.45am – 4.30pm
BT Centre, 81 Newgate Street, London EC1A 7AJ

The government’s e-strategy for education, “Harnessing Technology”, suggests borrowing ideas from interactive games as a way of motivating reluctant learners to practice complex skills and achieve much more than they would through traditional means. This conference sought to survey some interesting projects that look at ways in which games technology can help transform teaching and learning.

Set in BT’s state-of-the-art conference facility in their City of London HQ, the conference organised by DTI, various funding councils, the Centre of Communication and Information Technologies Programme based at Glasgow University and BT. All the projects presented had research funding and all presenters pointed to the Harnessing Technology themes they were addressing: engaging hard-to-reach learners with special needs, more motivating ways of learning, personalised support to learners, helping with all stages of education and with progression to the next stage.

HOMEWORK: Roland Tongue (Open Mind Productions), Dr Rose Luckin (University of Sussex), Simon Fuller (Channel 4)

This project looked at how technology could create a closer relationship between primary school and home. The technical heart of the project is “an adaptive interactive learning environment for home and school using a Divergent Television model for the delivery of multimedia resources to a combination of interactive whiteboard and tablet PC technology.” The children in the primary school class were given a small, robust tablet PC that has all the ICT activities they are currently undertaking in class. They are able to take the PC home to undertake activities with their parents or carers. The learning environment allows the teacher to make only certain activities available, thus ensuring that the children do not jump ahead of the class work.

The presenters showed a video of children highly motivated by whole class work using the interactive whiteboard and taking their PCs home and enjoying homework with their parents and friends. All teachers, parents and children interviewed were positive about the experience.

Content on the PC included songs, videos and simple interactive games, with a focus on word and number activities. It was interesting that they gave children a PC to take home, rather than just giving online access to parents at home. This had a number of advantages, such as the ability to give children rich media content, to create a sense of ownership of the technology by the children and, of course, ensuring that all children have equal access. Were such a scheme to be adopted across education, I am sure it would raise some interesting challenges – problems for children without supportive home environments, lost or stolen laptops and, inevitably, very high insurance premiums. Putting the challenges aside, this research project painted a clear picture of how home and school could be more closely integrated to provide education without boundaries.

MAKING GAMES: Professor David Buckingham (University of London), Dr Andrew Burn (London Institute of Education), Caroline Pelletier (London Institute of Education), Jeff Woyda (Immersive Education Limited)

This project required the development of a sophisticated games authoring tool to allow pupils and teachers to create their own games. The authoring tool allows the user to choose environments, objects, characters, voices and behaviours. They can then add rules of games play. The game is then rendered into high quality 3D. We hade a very impressive demo from Jeff at Immersive, who created a simple games in just five minutes. This involved wandering from a medieval castle into a space rocket and then a Wild West environment, getting some clues from a mad professor and then blowing up a barn. It was certainly fun.

As for the educational value, educationalists have long argued for the creation of media as a way of understanding media. Most schoolchildren now have the opportunity to create videos as a way of making them more informed consumers of TV. Similarly, being able to create games is a way of allowing them to become more informed (and critical) users of games.

top

As well as teaching game literacy, the approach also suggests improved text literacy is an outcome. I can well believe this as my 13 year-old son maintains that he learned to read from Zelda, the Nintendo adventure game. I was a bit surprised that the project focused on girls - the suggestion being that girls could warm to games using this approach. There were two reasons for this: firstly, boys are currently underachieving in literacy and this is surely one way of engaging then; secondly, there is a general feeling that girls are less interested in games than boys – not something I am aware of as my ten year old daughter and her friends are all keen game players. That aside, this project showed an innovative use of games technology that could find practical application in schools. The challenge will be to take the product to market and make it a commercial success.

E-DRAMA: Professor John Barnden (University of Birmingham), Jonnie Turpie (Maverick Television), Amanda Oldroyd (BTexact Technologies)

This Birmingham-based project involves a virtual environment in which a teacher can set up a scenario where children anonymously role-play online. Generally, the activity would take place in an ICT suite. Each child adopts a virtual character and the teacher then sets up a situation as a way of discussing a difficult issue such as bullying.

The teacher is also a character, able to observe the interactions and to guide them when they start going off subject. The text is typed in by the child and appears above the head of their virtual character as a speech bubble. There are many obvious advantages to doing things anonymously – children are free to adopt and explore a different personality to their usual one and they can say things that they would not otherwise say. Teachers have enjoyed the approach but have found it demanding.

As a result the team have been looking into creating virtual characters that are not controlled by a person but by artificial intelligence. These characters are able to pick up what is being discussed and to make comments. The team demonstrated some interesting work they have been doing on how to show mood through body language. Given, that much communication is physical rather than based on what we say, this adds a very interesting dimension to the exercise. Computer-operated characters have potential to make this project scalable; the use of body language will ensure that the interactions more closely mirror reality.

Project APPLE: Andy Minnion (University of East London), Professor David Nicholas (City University), Dr Karen Bunning (University of East Anglia), Rod Paley (Xtensis), Bob Regan Jr. (Macromedia), Claire Brown & Fred Heddell CBE (Royal Mencap Society)

This project looked at the new opportunities e-learning presents for people with significant learning disabilities. Images, sounds and movies engage learners who have difficulties with text and speech; cameras can be used to evidence and reinforce learning, to capture, organise and communicate the thoughts of a student who cannot speak. Project apple is developing a Learning Environment designed specifically to exploit e-learning's potential for 'hard-to-reach learners with special support needs'. The presentation showed a system deploying personalisation and individual e-portfolios for learners with cognitive disabilities. This was a fascinating insight into the way technologies can be harnessed to transform learning and service provision for children and adults with learning disabilities.

So, what can we learn from interactive games? Games give some important lessons to how we can make learning fun for our children. This seminar explored some of those lessons and gave an interesting glimpse into the future of e-learning in education.

top