Irish Conference of GBL

I am attending the 6th Irish Conference of GBL in Trinity College Dublin.

Derek was the keynote speaker today. He shared his experience and passions in promoting GBL in Scotland. Too bad, he said the Consolarium was closed down. Luckily, he hadn't given up.

He is still using games in classrooms. Nonetheless, one thing worried me: how about the attainment of intended learning outcomes? And whether the targeted learners were made aware of what the intended outcomes of GBL or not?

After years of promoting and practicing GBL myself, I believe that there is a need to make intended learning outcomes explicit. Else, teachers and students might not be using games at the right time and use the right approach. After all, teachers are accountable for students' attainment of learning outcomes and experience.

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In the first parallel session, I noticed a skewed usage of one reward type, which might lead to gambling instead of game playing. Also, I mentioned the need to afford teachers in doing Gamification and practicing GBL for them to enjoy teaching using games.

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During the break session, I spoke to Judith Gordon, the owner of Money Coach (MOCO) Ltd. Judith is designing a finance education game. She is forming a team to gamify and develop the game. I shared the five-steps of gamification for education with her, and she said she will introduce my book in Malay to her relatives in Malaysia. Thank you!

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Michael shared the idea of smart analytics for personalized learning analytics through LEA's box. Knowledge space theory (grey theory and the colorful theory) he is working on in Graz University of Technology.  

Google For Education Community Meetup

I attended the first Google For Education Community Meetup today. The event was hosted by Google Malaysia at the KL Sentral Office, which does not look like a conventional office to me.

This two-hour meeting was chaired by En Amir, involving 30+ people, ranging from preschool, primary and secondary teachers to public and private university lecturers (IPG, UPSI, SEGi and Taylor's).

After an hour long of self-introduction of every attendees, groups were formed to generate ideas on professional development (PD) training programs needed by educators in Malaysia for using Google for Education Apps.

I was proposed by other group members to synthesize and present outcomes of the discussion. I classified the outcomes into the TPCK model. Herewith the outcomes:

Contents:
1. Should cover the whole spectrum of education, i.e. early years, primary, secondary, tertiary and lifelong learning.
2. For specific subject matter e.g. Add Maths, learning apps should be made inclusive cover multiple topics to afford active, fun and creative learning activities.

Pedagogy:
1. Pedagogy for personalised and eaningful training experience.

Technology
1. In terms of affordance, post-training and just-in-time support should be made available to trainees.
2. Technological knowledge on using apps should be structured into three levels. The basic level would expose educators to the technologies; the intermediate levl should be demonstrating how to optimize the usage of existing apps, while the advanced level should focus on turning educators into apps developers.

I have shared the following formula to my group members:
Results = Personal Capability x Personal Knowledge x (1+method)(1+tool)

Also, a spider web visualization could be used to determine the types and topics of PD needed by individual trainees.

During the discussion outcome presentation, interesting ideas were suggested by other groups, including:
1. Setting up Google+ community to share teaching materials.
2. Sharing of short video clips, ideally 5 to 10 minutes per clip, like Brainwave Video Selfie on what you did in the class
3. The need for quality control and content curation.
4. Uploading Qs encountered in using the apps.

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My reflection:
I should use Google Apps in my teaching and document success and failure stories.
Training provided should be subject matter specific.

寓教于乐在教育里的潜力：从游戏中的学习来探询中华智慧

探询透过玩游戏来学习的中华智慧

The Potential of Game-based learning in Education: Exploring Chinese Wisdom in Learning through Game Playing 

As a Malaysian Chinese, I always wonder how Chinese in other regions perceive the potential of games in education. 

Playing Chinese chess (围棋 or Go) for example, has been regarded as one of the four arts （四艺） for being a scholar under Confucius ideology. 

Types of Learners (personal notes made in 2003 and reflection in 2016)

Three main types of learners:

1. 海绵型（sponge): absorb whatsoever taught or talked by teachers. Good in digesting contents but lack of analytic and differentiative skills.

2. 过滤网型 (filter): analyze whatsoever taught or talked by teachers. Good in absorbing and memorizing essence and main points but slow in digesting contents.

3. 黑炭型 (charcoal): hard in nature but not really bad. Lack of absorbing, digesting and memorizing skills, thus not interested in teaching and learning. Assume escapism as the only problem solving measure.

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Reflection in 2016

I believe all students could be nurtured to become various types of learners. 

Teachers should afford students to become ALL THREE TYPES of learners mentioned above. 

For essential and core learning contents, students should become sponge learners, in which mastery learning approach should be applied, because the construction of fundamental knowledge and skills would set the foundation to acquire intermediate and advanced knowledge, skills and values.

For technical or specialized learning contents, students should become filter learners, in which individual students should contextualize whatsoever contents provided by teachers to suit personal needs and requirements, instead of grabbing all contents.

For negative contents which are against the social norm, e.g. terrorism, corruption, violence, vandalism, etc, students should become charcoal learners, in which they know why and how to say no when they are exposed to or have to encounter such contents. 

Mastery Learning via game playing

Mastery learning offers sufficient time, attention and help from tutor or lecturer to every student. GBL without time-pressure challenges can also offer sufficient time and attention to each student, while transferring the role of helpful tutor to either a programmed virtual tutor, or a game master who knows how to facilitate game playing sessions.

Mastery learning was accused for causing Robin Hood effects, in which additional time and support were given to students who are relatively slower in knowledge and skill mastery, at the expense of quick learners' time. GBL with benchmarked standard (good enough mastery) and enhanced standard (excellent mastery) can overcome the issue of Robin Hood effects. A rubric which explicitly defines and describes both standards can be shown to all students. All of them are encouraged to achieve the enhanced standard, which would involve supporting weak learners to master specific knowledge and skills. Those who achieved the enhanced standard would be regarded as "master", a status given to people who can teach (see the origin of Master's degree).

Criticism on mastery learning and how to counter back:

Mueller (1976) asserted that mastery learning:

(a) takes much of the responsibility for learning away from students, who may end up not knowing how to learn independently; 

$$ in GBL, students have to play game or make games themselves, experience learning, construct knowledge and develop skills in the games.

(b) requires non-fixed-time instructional units or greatly liberalized time allocations; 

$$ this is actually a strength of GBL, through flexible education, learn anytime anywhere.

(c) makes faster learner "wait around" while slower learner catch up, unless the faster learners are motivated to spend their time achieving objectives beyond the pre-specified ones; 

(d) commits a major part of finite instructional resources -- corrective effort, teacher aides, peer tutoring, and alternative learning materials -- to slower students and 

(e) assumes that everything in an instructional unit must be learned equally well by almost all students, although beyond basic skills and hierarchical subjects (such as mathematics) this assumption is hard to defend (p. 467).

Gamifikasi dalam Pendidikan: Pembelajaran Berasaskan Permainan

A few days before I left for Christmas holiday, I was informed by Penerbit UPSI that my first book written in Malay language has been published--Gamifikasi dalam Pendidikan: Pembelajaran Berasaskan Permainan.

This book was written for Malay speaking teachers and trainee teachers in Nusantara, particularly those in Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei and Indonesia. The graphics of the book cover were taken from Fight For Future 2.0 and TRIZ Puzzle game which I published on Google Play Store. Now the book is available at Penerbit UPSI and UPSI Education Research Laboratory at 20% discount: RM38.00 RM30.40.

Forgotten notes

Minecraft offers affinity space.

There's something for everyone.

I need the culture to be there first before talking about DGBL.

Keep the game modifiable.
Get back to the sense of playing we lost a lot in the content-based learning.

Different thematic activity over the year.

Horizontal learning space.