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(320) "With over 100 million users around the globe, block-building video game Minecraft is inspiring children everywhere to create, imagine and explore. But what is Minecraft, and how can the astounding creativity of this deceptively simple game be harnessed in the classroom? Ray Chambers explains."
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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

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      string(3642) "This new research from Digital Schoolhouse and the UK games trade body, Ukie, found that parents rated quite highly on their confidence to keep themselves safe online and their confidence in their child’s ability in keeping themselves safe. The report is a follow up to the 2018 report Online Safety: A Pupil’s Perspective, surveyed 2000+ parents about their approach, and perception of, online safety in the home.It found that 85 percent of parents speak to their children about the importance of online safety.It also found that 71 percent of parents use parental controls on their devices – including mobile devices, consoles or PCs – either sometimes or regularly, with 70 percent reporting that they are able to access the information they need about managing online safety for their children.The research also revealed the importance of schools to the online safety process. 75 percent of parents believe that online safety education is important and over half of parents use online safety information provided by schools.But while 55 percent of parents set and enforce time restrictions on use of screen time and online activities, such restrictions were reported by 19 percent of children in previous research [2] suggesting a disparity between perceptions of parents and children over screen time limits.The study also showed there was some difference between the responses of men and women in terms of their confidence with online safety, with 61 percent of men saying they could speak to their children confidently as compared to 51 percent of women.Finally, while most parents are using advice from school to keep their children safe online, nearly one in four have said that they haven’t been offered any advice by schools at all – emphasising that there are gaps in the provision of online safety information. Key Findings:41% of participating parents said that they considered themselves to work in the tech sector. Almost all parents said that they used computers and digital skills in their workplace.Parents had the highest levels of confidence with mobile technologies (rating their confidence at 7.9 out of 10), closely followed by social media. Differences between men and women were largely negligible but the greatest areas of difference where men rated themselves as significantly more confident than women were video games and computer hardware.When asked how many hours a week child spent online for leisure purposes, boys on average spend more time online than girls. This was a difference of approx. two hours for general screen time and almost three hours for online activity including games.Parents rated quite highly on their confidence to keep themselves safe online and their confidence in their child’s ability in keeping themselves safe.85% of parents say they talk to their children about online safety issues. 15% say they ‘hardly ever’ or ‘never’ speak to their children about these issues.55% of parents say they set limits for how much time their child spends online and enforces them. 76% of these parents say their children follow these time limits at least sometimes.71% of parents use parental controls on their devices either sometimes or regularly.Only half of parents are using advice provided by schools. With one in four parents choose not to use the advice and guidance offered and almost one in four saying that they haven’t been offered any advice at all.70% of parents say they know where to find information on how to play video games safely and responsibly online.Link: Online Safety: A Parent’s Perspective"
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Leadership

Online Safety: A Parent’s Perspective

25 Aug 2020

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      string(5632) "From dance crazes like the ‘Floss’ to films, songs and toys, there are a wide range of cultural experiences and interests students have that often seem disconnected from their classroom learning. As highlighted in this issue in ‘Why Pop Culture Needs to be a Part of STEM Education’ (p. 62), simple tweaks to subject content can make a significant difference in how students relate to a subject and get them emotionally invested in pushing forward to develop new skills. Although it can be overwhelming to think about where to start with pop references in the classroom and to come up with ideas that offer both enjoyment and depth of coverage, there are many resources available. In the following section, we’ve highlighted just a few of the available websites that are finding creative and innovative approaches to teaching subject material using popular culture. Many of these include lesson plans or videos that can be used in class, but others have online platforms that allow students to create videos or magazines, or engage directly with the material through quizzes or online assessment. It is clear that many teachers are finding in popular culture a way of keeping their own teaching fresh and ensuring students have a range of experiences in the classroom and we’re pleased to be able to share some of these ideas and approaches with you.Making Curriculum Pophttp://mcpopmb.ning.com/Making Curriculum Pop describes itself as “a resource sharing community for educators interested in better practices and teaching with pop culture”. It is a sharing hub with more than 7,000 members and groups that cover a wide range of interests and teaching ranges. The owner of the page, Ryan Goble, states that the site was set up because “it is hard for individual teachers to catch every cool website, video clip, song, study guide or comic but collectively MC POP is a forum where we can all share resources to reinvent our core curriculum and the larger dialogue on public education. So if you use popular and common cultures to reflect, refract, refocus and reinvent your core curriculum MC POP is the place for you.” Users can set up their own page and from there can connect to other teachers and any of the 87 listed groups. Group categories include subjects or levels as well as special interest topics like ‘Identity: Gender, Race, Sex, SES and Power’, ‘Graphic Novels and Comics’, ‘Adolescent Films’, ‘Making Music Pop’, etc. Members post all sorts of resources, including lesson plans, videos and articles, along with discussion threads and suggestions for primary sources. There is a ‘Week in Review’ section where top articles, links and threads are compiled, highlighting the main interests of the week. Members can post links to articles, videos and other web content and they can contribute to discussion threads and curate their own ‘playlists’ or write messages/content that would be of use for other teachers. For teachers interested in further pursuing the pop culture angle, the owners of the site have also published a book engaging with related teaching theory called Making Curriculum Pop: Developing Literacies that was published in 2015 by Free Spirit Pub.NuSkool – Real Life Learningwww.nuskool.comNuSkool is an entertainment learning platform that finds teachable moments in popular culture. Their aim is to help the audience find the hidden lessons in all aspects of entertainment. They see their job as showing the world that learning isn’t confined to a textbook and occurs both inside and outside the classroom, which is what they consider ‘real life learning’.NuSkool has a team of highly qualified educators, researchers and pop culture experts who produce videos, articles, standards aligned lesson plans, quizzes and other types of assessments. The lessons themselves can be accessed for free off the home page and include titles such as ‘X-Men: Are Mutants Already Among Us?’, which is a lesson on evolution and genetics, or ‘Will the Real Iron Man Please Stand Up?’, a Physics and English Language Arts lesson based on the public figures Elon Musk and Tony Stark. Other topics include Donald Trump, police brutality, Star Wars, prosthetic limbs, baseball, bullying, video games, and many others. The lessons include written aspects as well as videos and media content. Each one has a full lesson plan and assignment that the student can fill out on the website. The lessons and assignments are free, but the lesson plans are available via subscription. Subscription packages are affordable, ranging from $1.99 per day to $70 per year. Subscription access also includes access to assessments, quizzes and test prep exams, unlimited student accounts, the ability to create online classes and send lessons to students and the capacity to facilitate private group discussions with students on each post. This is an excellent resource for using pop culture in the classroom and is a great way to get new ideas for thinking about this approach to teaching. It’s OK to be Smart  https://www.youtube.com/itsokaytobesmartPBS Digital Studios has more than 50 original web series on offer that explore science, arts, culture and more. ‘It’s OK to be Smart’ is a YouTube channel that looks at science from unconventional perspectives, including through the lens of popular culture. 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Arts-Based Learning

Popular Culture Online

10 Oct 2018

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      string(353) "Ems Lord considers how you can enrich the maths experiences of the children in your classroom or early years setting, whatever curriculum or approach to maths you use. She discusses maths activities from NRICH – a collaboration between the faculties of maths and education at the University of Cambridge and part of the Millennium Mathematics Project."
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      string(4566) "graph represents the moment when the Fosbury Flop was introduced to the high jump? The graphs can also support the PHSE curriculum by focusing on the effects of drugs on performance in the 1980s or political boycotts by different countries too. The Olympic Records challenge forms part of a wider set of resources that NRICH produced for the 2012 London Olympics.Another set of resources for sports enthusiasts were developed with Arsenal Football Club. NRICH worked with the outreach team Arsenal in the Community to develop a series of videos and activities to engage all abilities. One of the challenges takes place at Arsenal’s training ground and features Arsenal player Tomas Rosicky. The challenge is to take ten shots at goal, add up how many goals are scored and see who wins. In another activity called Match the Matches, the children need to decide which charts and graphs represent the number of goals Arsenal and Manchester United scored in fifteen matches. This data handling activity is designed to get pupils talking meaningfully about maths, presenting and justifying arguments. So far I have focused on activities for working with learners during the school day. However, not every child enjoys their maths curriculum but is curious about maths. They want to explore without being restricted by their curriculum and current year group. Other children prefer to spend much longer on tasks and strongly dislike bite-sized activities which fit neatly into the school timetable. For these children, there’s a new website which offers them the opportunity to roam freely as they explore different aspects of maths. There are no restrictions on which topics they can study because there are no key stages visible on the website. So, a primary-aged pupil can explore the ideas behind infinity and a sixth-former can enjoy making their own set of pentominoes. NRICH’s wild side: online maths gamesWild Maths is aimed specifically at the children themselves. It had a colourful home page, based on the feedback from its young audience, which offers a fascinating array of mathematical ideas waiting to be explored. Perhaps the most popular of all of the pathways is ‘Play to Win.’ As the name suggests, this pathway features an assortment of online maths games. The player can pit their wits against the computer, adapt many of the games themselves using the interactive elements and share their ideas with others via the moderated ‘comments’ option. One of the most popular interactive games is Got It! Got It! Is an interactive version of a well-known game I remember playing with pencil and paper when I was younger. It has proved to be very popular with families, with siblings teaching one another to play. It has also attracted one of the largest number of feedback comments so far on Wild Maths as children share their discoveries with one another. Have a look and play it yourself, can you beat the computer? Can your learners?Wild Maths is proving to be an incredibly popular resource across a wide range of abilities. During its evaluation phase, the resources were trialled in a range of different settings. One SEND student, who was a reluctant learner, was involved in the trial. Rather than sit back and let others take the lead, he had been inspired to play each of the games and later led the feedback discussion with previously unseen enthusiasm. Even now that the trial period has finished, his school reports that he is still enjoying the Play to Win games. In this article, I have shared some of the activities that I valued as a classroom teacher when working with children with additional needs as well as some new developments too. Again and again, as a teacher of learners with additional needs, I looked for engaging LTHC tasks and often found them at NRICH. As my career developed, I joined my local maths advisory team and became a lecturer working with trainee teachers. My new roles offered opportunities to work alongside the NRICH team who had developed those LTHC activities. Today, I am the Director of NRICH. Our team continue to develop LTHC resources and we still welcome solutions to our tasks. Perhaps your learners will also enjoy our tasks, submit their solutions and explore Wild Maths too. I hope they enjoy our resources as much as we have enjoyed bringing them to you.Ems Lord is the Director of NRICH. More about NRICH and these activities for enriching children’s maths experiences can be found at their website: https://nrich.maths.org/ "
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Gaming and Play-Based Learning

Nurturing young mathematicians

20 Jun 2017