Video Game Playing and Literacy During the COVID-19 Lockdown in 2020

Video games can encourage young people’s creativity through writing, and playing video games can support young people’s literacy, creativity and empathy.

This research by the National Literacy Trust finds that playing video games can support young people’s literacy, creativity and empathy, while parents say communicating with family and friends through video games during lockdown has been helpful for their child’s mental wellbeing. These benefits were found to be strongest for boys and reluctant readers.

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      string(5717) "Wholesome – Out and About, a foraging life simulatorToday’s children are digital natives. According to Common Sense Media, currently eight to twelve year olds spend just under five hours with digital entertainment each day. If we cannot keep our children from the screen, we have to make sure that they spend their time with more meaningful entertainment. This is what Yaldi Games is all about. Our mission is to integrate knowledge intrinsically into popular game genres, creating games that are both fun and educational. Our game design follows recent research on how to increase information retention in a video game, by considering principles of affective learning, behavioural learning, cognitive learning and social learning.Bridging the gap between gaming worldsI am not a digital native myself, but I have been playing video games ever since I was 11 years old. I found that games generally improved my critical thinking and problem solving skills. They taught me to recognise patterns, learn from mistakes, and be creative and experiment. However, as a game designer I noticed a stark difference between educational and commercial games: the former focusing too much on education and the latter too much on fun. I always felt that it should be possible to create both, a fun experience with beautiful visuals and empowering narrative, and real information learned without effort.Our first title “Wholesome – Out and About” belongs to the genre of ‘life simulators’, peaceful games that simulate everyday life, that are popular with players of all age groups. It is aimed mainly at Key Stage 2 pupils and based on my personal experience as a gamer and game designer, as well as research of digital-based learning. It blends digital play, learning and traditional analogue skills, to create an inspirational range of interests including foraging, nature awareness, sustainability practices, healthy cooking and fun crafting. All set within a beautiful forest environment that features real world plants.Using games to encourage nature explorationWholesome can be played by pupils during IT lessons, after school/lunchtime clubs and at home to inspire social interaction outside the game through shared activities such as foraging, cooking or crafting. Wholesome’s mission is to increase interest in the natural world and to inspire outdoor activities and analogue craft and play. Through the game, pupils will learn about plants and mushrooms and discover their uses, benefits and dangers. The game is designed to encourage players to convert digital play into analogue action. Players will be able to cook wild food recipes (with the assistance of teachers or parents) and craft decorations based on factual recipes and instructions within the game. They can download them as a pdf and recreate long forgotten recipes using ingredients naturally found in the British countryside, like spruce tip jelly, elderflower syrup or hawthorne ketchup. We want to inspire children to pick up new hobbies such as felting or knitting and teach them about recycling and upcycling.Gaming in schoolsThrough Wholesomes’ interdisciplinary design, it can be used to support learning in a wide range of subjects, from nature classes and crafting to early maths and healthy eating. Discussions with educators led us to design a special school environment that lets teachers choose the most relevant plants and lets them define tasks for their students. There will be a school leaderboard and bi-monthly events which could turn into school wide competitions. Students can access the school environment through the App with either their own device or with a school device by means of a login. In order to provide these specific functionalities, we will offer a yearly based subscription model for schools. The school feature will be released in early 2022.The benefits for pupilsEncouraging, especially digitally addicted children, to spend more time with meaningful non-digital activities is one of our major goals. We want to inspire them to interact with each other and nature, making real memories together. As a study in Frontiers of Psychology 2 has shown, connectedness to nature will increase children’s sustainability practices, which in turn increases happiness.Once Wholesome is released (planned for Nov/2021), pupils can register and download the standard version of the game from the App stores for free and play it on their mobile devices (phones and tablets).Next steps for WholesomeWe have a long list of expansions planned for Wholesome, such as gardening, fishing, bird watching and bee keeping. 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Digital Learning

Using Gaming To Encourage Outdoor Play And Exploration

5 Apr 2021

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      string(5642) "Young Innovator of The Award Winner According to Common Sense Media, currently eight to twelve year olds spend just under five hours with digital entertainment each day. If we cannot keep our children from the screen, we have to make sure that they spend their time with more meaningful entertainment, which is what Yaldi Games’ is all about. Our mission is to intrinsically integrate knowledge into popular game genres, creating games that are both fun and educational. Our game design follows recent research on how to increase information retention in a video game, by considering principles of affective learning, behavioural learning, cognitive learning and social learning.Bridging the gap between gaming worldsI am not a digital native myself, but I have been playing video games ever since I was 11 years old. I found that games generally improved my critical thinking and problem solving skills. They taught me to recognise patterns, learn from mistakes, and be creative and experiment. However, as a game designer I noticed a stark difference between educational and commercial games: the former focusing too much on education and the latter too much on fun. I always felt that it should be possible to create both, a fun experience with beautiful visuals and empowering narrative, and real information learned without effort.Our first title “Wholesome – Out and About” belongs to the genre of ‘life simulators’, peaceful games that simulate everyday life, that are popular with players of all age groups. It is aimed mainly at Key Stage 2 pupils and based on my personal experience as a gamer and game designer, as well as research of digital-based learning. It blends digital play, learning and traditional analogue skills, to create an inspirational range of interests including foraging, nature awareness, sustainability practices, healthy cooking and fun crafting. 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They can download them as a pdf and recreate long forgotten recipes using ingredients naturally found in the British countryside, like spruce tip jelly, elderflower syrup or hawthorne ketchup. We want to inspire children to pick up new hobbies such as felting or knitting and teach them about recycling and upcycling.Gaming in schoolsThrough Wholesomes’ interdisciplinary design, it can be used to support learning in a wide range of subjects, from nature classes and crafting to early maths and healthy eating. Discussions with educators led us to design a special school environment that lets teachers choose the most relevant plants and lets them define tasks for their students. There will be a school leaderboard and bi-monthly events which could turn into school wide competitions. Students can access the school environment through the App with either their own device or with a school device by means of a login. 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Digital Learning

Using Gaming To Encourage Outdoor Play And Exploration

12 Apr 2021

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      string(2614) "toimprove fine motor skills and their social and technological skills. In the digital age, we must accept that the currentgeneration of children will undoubtedly already be spending hours playing gamesonline in their spare time. However, as educators, we can use this to ouradvantage to increase students’ engagement and enjoyment of learning.Gaming improves mental health and cognitive functionAccording to research carried out by Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health on 6-11 year-olds, high video game usage correlated with higher intellectual functioning and overall school competence. Results were based on data from the School Children Mental Health Europe project for children ages 6-11. The study assessed the association between the amount of time spent playing video games and children’s mental health and cognitive and social skills. ‘After adjusting for child age, gender, and the number of children, the researchers found that high video game usage was associated with a 1.75 times the odds of high intellectual functioning and 1.88 times the odds of high overall school competence.’ What was of equal interest was that there were no significant associations with any child self-reported or mother-or teacher-reported mental health problems and less relationship problems with their peers.However, the findings came with a warning. ‘Video game playing is often a collaborative leisure time activity for school-aged children. These results indicate that children who frequently play video games may be socially cohesive with peers and integrated into the school community,’ said Katherine M. Keyes, PhD, assistant professor of Epidemiology at the Mailman School of Public Health. The researchers caution against over interpretation, however, as setting limits on screen usage remains and important component of parental responsibility as an overall strategy for student success. Improved engagementThere’s a big difference between sitting with a mobile device in hand for eight hours a day on a just-for-entertainment video game and spending a set amount of time on a resource that is based on extensive research to ensure higher engagement and improved learning outcomes for the player. Thankfully, today there are many resources that offer versatile and intuitive interfaces that are extremely appealing to children, and therefore provide a great way for them to solve puzzles and problems while also being entertained. https://uk.splashlearn.com/maths-games"
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Digital Learning

If we want children to be confident mathematicians, we must get parents on board

18 Nov 2020

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      string(312) "... make the only meansof escaping a locked room the correct answer to the question. Hyperlinks can also be embedded to send pupilsto materials beyond the game.n Compose an original song using the music blocks, or recreate a famous one (the girls at Uppingham favourOne Direction). A quick search on ..."
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      string(5392) "Minecraft,you can see that it is possible to kill two birds withone stone; you can address some of the issuesin your school’s computing curriculum, and youcan encourage more students to collaborate andcommunicate. Before you know it, you’ll havecreated a class of independent learners who wantto find out more about what their learning tool cando for them. Why not try Minecraft yourself and seethe impact it can have on your pupils?Ray Chambers is a teacher and Head ofICT at Uppingham Community College inRutland. He is a Microsoft Expert Educatorand a regular speaker at the Bett Show. Hehas been selected as a finalist for the 2015Pearson Teaching Awards.Ray blogs at raychambers.wordpress.com.http://raychambers.wordpress.com/minecraft-computing-resourceshttp://raychambers.wordpress.com/minecraft-computing-resourceshttp://raychambers.wordpress.com/2015/02/01/bett-and-setting-up-minecraft-in-the-classroomhttp://raychambers.wordpress.com/2015/02/01/bett-and-setting-up-minecraft-in-the-classroomhttp://raychambers.wordpress.com/2015/02/01/bett-and-setting-up-minecraft-in-the-classroomhttp://minecraft.gamepedia.com/Modshttp://www.computercraft.info/downloadhttp://www.computercraft.info/downloadhttp://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2014/08/01/how-games-minecraft-are-helping-kids-autismhttp://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2014/08/01/how-games-minecraft-are-helping-kids-autismhttp://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2014/08/01/how-games-minecraft-are-helping-kids-autismhttp://services.minecraftedu.com/wiki/Teaching_with_MinecraftEduhttp://services.minecraftedu.com/wiki/Teaching_with_MinecraftEduhttp://connectedlearning.tv/real-world-examples-and-possible-future-applications-minecrafthttp://www.instituteofplay.org/awsm/playtime-online/illustrations-of-minecraft-as-a-classroom-learning-tool/https://raychambers.wordpress.come-Learning72Volume5.4nCreativeTeaching&LearningMore ideas for teaching with Minecraftn Build a creative landscape and write a story about it.n Reconstruct settings from a novel or story. Take it one step further by acting out the scenes that take placethere, then use a screencasting app to record the scene and turn it into a film. Alternatively, create your ownoriginal stories and films.n Foster collaboration and explore how communities evolve by stranding your class in survival mode. Pupils willneed to build a shelter and find food to stay alive; usually, they’ll start assigning roles, and a working communitywill gradually form. Will it be a democracy, or will it degenerate into scenes resembling the Hunger Games?!n Build quizzes to test pupils’ end-of-unit knowledge. Use your knowledge of logic gates to make the only meansof escaping a locked room the correct answer to the question. Hyperlinks can also be embedded to send pupilsto materials beyond the game.n Compose an original song using the music blocks, or recreate a famous one (the girls at Uppingham favourOne Direction). A quick search on YouTube will bring up many examples.n Practise ratio and proportion by building scale models of famous buildings and landmarks or even yourown school. Alternatively, explore historic monuments such as the Globe Theatre or the Roman Colosseum,painstakingly rendered in Minecraft worlds by devoted gamers. Import them to MinecraftEdu and send yourclass on a virtual world tour.Finding existing teacher-created contentThe MinecraftEdu Wiki is the place to go for lesson plans, activity ideas and resources, as well as practical adviceon installation and troubleshooting. The teaching homepage features a range of links to some of the best teacher-made content on the web6, including American teacher Eric Walker’s ‘Wonderful world of humanities’. This isa fantastically vast virtual environment which transports pupils back in time to learn about ancient countriesand cultures such as Egypt, Babylon, Greece, Rome, China, medieval Britain and more. Students can also exploreEuropean myths and legends in the Fairytale Forest, follow trade routes through Mali and the Sahara Desert todiscover oral traditions of middle Africa, and even travel to the future to settle a conflict between Ancient Scholars,who seek to protect artefacts from the past, and time-travelling Minecrosoft Agents, who wish to sell ancientartefacts to modern private buyers.The Edu Wiki also hosts a World Library, where teachers can upload and share Minecraft maps, accompaniedby lesson plans. Highlights here include:n Coordinate hunt – a treasure hunt in which pupils use coordinate grid skills to find a number of hidden items.n Swiss Family Robinson experience – pupils are stranded on a tropical island under similar circumstancesto the family in the book. The goal is not only to survive, but to learn how to thrive through cooperation andgood communication.n Viking world – students undertake a series of tasks which expose them to different components of Vikingculture, including exploration, trading and raiding.n Rainforest challenge – pupils are transported to the Ecuadorian Rainforest, an area heavily affected bydeforestation and erosion. The children work collaboratively to reforest the area.n Palaeontology dig – students work together to uncover, identify and preserve a buried dinosaur fossil.n ComputerCraft Code Academy – a mission-based map that gives children a chance to practise and developtheir programming"
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Creative Teaching & Learning

A teacher's guide to Minecraft in the classroom

23 Jul 2015