Benjamin Perry

3/30/2019
EDTECH 592
Reflection/Research Paper

Then and Now: An Educators Tale

Introduction

Just as Bilbo Baggins’ adventure changed and awakened him to the wider world, so to

have I been made aware of the wider world of education. In the EdTech program at Boise State, I

have had to reflect on and reevaluate my ideas on learning. The uses of technology in education

has led me to change the way that I teach as well as the way I evaluate my students. Technology

in the classroom has huge potential to improve my teaching experience as well as my students.

By staying aware of current technological trends, I can ensure that as I collaborate with other

educators, we are all able to take advantage of the most effective methods of teaching and

encouraging our students.

Lesson One: Reflections on Learning

Before entering the EdTech program, I was a young teacher ready to be exciting and

engaging for students. However, as I have spent more time in the classroom, I realized that as

exciting as a teacher may be if the students don’t find a reason to engage with the curriculum,

they won't. Some students come with a desire to learn from home, a fire already lit beneath them.

The majority of students in my classroom though, don’t come to school with this. They often see

school as the stick to avoid not the carrot that encourages forward movement. This has been my

greatest challenge to overcome, but I believe that the EdTech program has helped me as I work

to overcome it.
 Throughout multiple classes here at Boise State, I have seen the power of game-based

learning. By bringing in elements of fun, student buy-in is increased to the point that even

reluctant learners have a hard time saying no. As stated in Teaching Online A Practical Guide,

“Games and simulations, whether low-tech or highly sophisticated can be valuable active

learning strategies” (Ko, 2017 p. 194). Few students can effectively be passive learners and that

number is only matched in the number of students that actively resist games in the classroom. I

have seen this even as we approach the annual challenge of state testing. Rather than reviewing

with mountains of memorization or tedious worksheets, I’ve taken to making the curriculum

review into games and challenges to engage my students. This has resulted in several students

that are wildly competitive, yet stubbornly defiant to shake off their resistant outer layer and

participate in learning to a much greater degree.

Having fun does not guarantee student success and increased learning. Activities have not

been the only thing that has had to change in my classroom I have as well. As I have begun to

use games to encourage learning. I have had to accept the truth that, if I as a teacher am not

competent in the material as well as the methods I use, the novelty of my methodology will be

just that, a novelty. “promoting game-based learning at school can be sustained ... in cases where

teachers' knowledge of games and their curricular relevance is sufficient” (Nousiainen, 2018 p.

86).

There is a balance that must be kept. I can’t rely as I did in the past, on being an animated

teacher. Nor however, can I lose sight of the fact that entertaining education will only have short

term appeal if I cannot keep the enthusiasm with which I came into the field of education.

Lesson Two: The Art & Science of Teaching

 During my time as a graduate student, I've come to learn several things about teaching

and the education process in general. Before beginning this journey, I was encouraged to grade

students on their work and told that this would give students an idea of how they are doing in the

class. While this ideology may tell me how well I am doing in a class, it fails to tell me how I am

doing in the topics of a given subject. Then I was hit with a realization put best by Dr. Chris

Haskell:

"Teachers in a quest-based approach do not assign letter grades to completed quests.

Dismissing the industrial paradigm approach in favor of a digital age sensibility, teachers

either approve a quest because it meets all expectations or return the quest to the student

for revisions and resubmission. Just like video games, quest-based learning supports

multiple attempts without punishment to promote learning from mistakes (Haskell,

2013)"

I've come to realize that, to me, it is more important that a student learns the material than that

they learn it by a certain date. As such, I've worked to shift my teaching and grading system to

more closely resemble that of a quest-based learning program. Due to district restrictions, I still

must give regular tests, but I've broken them into smaller quest sized chunks that students can

take and, if necessary, take again if they did not achieve a satisfactory result. Before the retake

can occur, remediated ‘quests' on the topic are required, but I am able to emphasize to the

students that comprehending the material is the most important aspect of the class, not meeting

some randomly decided timeline. As a result, student stress on tests have diminished and the

necessary remediation and retesting has decreased.

 Similarly, this has helped to guide me to better understand the advantages of proper

instructional design. Rather than planning from start to finish, I work backward. As stated by

William Rothwell, we must "analyzing human performance problems systematically, identifying

the root cause or causes of those problems, considering various solutions to address the root

causes, and implementing the solutions in ways designed to minimize the unintended

consequences of corrective action (Rothwell, 2016)." To be an effective teacher is to follow

some variation of this formula.

We establish what students need and how we will verify the need has been met. Only

then can an effective plan be built, working backward and addressing common pitfalls to ensure

that most students will understand the content the first time through. As needed, remediation is

provided, like side quests that further develop a character and ease the difficulty of a given

challenge. So to, must we help students that need more corrective action than others.

Lesson Three: The Design and Evaluation of Instruction

Before working and studying in the EdTech department, I had followed a very ineffectual

piece of advice. As a young teacher, I was encouraged to steal shamelessly. This was not a call to

crime, but a call to absorb, copy, and use anything that I could get my hands on that seemed to

have a connection to education.

Since then, I have learned that this is only half true. While it is useful to learn from the

success of others, it is also important to acknowledge that success with one person does not mean

success will happen if others use the same materials. Rather, the content and application should

be evaluated, and a determination should be made about whether the ideas would be a good

addition to one's own classroom. “Evaluation might … present an opportunity to identify new

audiences and applications for a program or to single out audiences that are no longer
appropriate or in existence” (Boulmetis, 2011 p. 34). Ideas, as well as how we teach them, need

to be regularly evaluated and adapted. This was especially evident during Interactive Courseware

Development as we worked to constantly develop, share, and critique each other's work. Regular

analysis of the material to be used in the classroom, whether of your own design of another is of

the utmost importance.

Even when we don’t have months and months to evaluate, that does not mean evaluation

should not happen. In Educational Games and Simulations, I was able to create sample projects

that were later employed in a real classroom. I was given the opportunity to teach an after-school

creative writing class for 7th and 8th graders that focused on character and plot development.

This was done using a variant of Dungeons & Dragons. As students encountered challenges, they

would handle them in character and write about their adventures. Some students moved faster

than others and as a result, I had to adapt. Lee Sheldon wrote, “The key is to be flexible. Expect

the unexpected. Modify. Fine-tune… be prepared to be creative in real time” (Sheldon 2012 p.

257) Design and Evaluation are not static events that happen before and after teaching. These are

tasks, not events, and should regularly be taking place.

Lesson Four: Networking and Collaboration

The idea of networking and collaborating is successful when all involved parties are

open, engaged and available to each other for feedback. Without regular connection, the results

of any amount of collaboration will be disjointed at best and at worst, an utter failure.

Throughout my time in the EdTech program, I have had the opportunity to work with a variety of

individuals with whom I could compare notes on projects and provide, as well as receive, regular

feedback that helped to improve the overall results everyone achieved.

 This lesson was especially important and self-evident as I collaborated with a small group

of cohorts to develop an educational gaming experience in Minecraft. I can be honest in saying

that initially, we struggled. We attempted to divide the work in a way that each person was

responsible for equal amounts of every aspect of the project. While this may seem fair on the

surface, our varied strengths and weaknesses resulted in a very haphazard start. After convening

and discussing how to best move forward, we realized that assigning group member tasks by

skill set made the project much more accessible. Having the most experience working with

modifying the underlying game code and servers as well as our chosen topic, I oversaw the

technical aspects ensuring all the applications worked and were available for everyone to use as

well providing some basic training in calculating directional forces. The others were responsible

for storyboarding and developing a specific lesson that could be integrated into our digital world.

By no means did this mean that we would leave each team member on their own, in their own

section of the work. Rather, this allowed us to have someone who we knew we could go to if we

had an issue or concern with an aspect of our program. The resulting program was successfully

engaging and informative to the point that students as young as eleven and twelve years old who

were invited to the server were able to understand the concepts being taught in spite of the rigor

of the curriculum typically being assigned to students in advanced high school classes.

After this and other experiences in the workplace and the EdTech program, I can see that

collaboration, while not required for success, can result in improved results for everyone

involved. “[H]aving other teachers … to collaborate with, and having a ‘go-to person’ to

approach when there were questions, as well as having sufficient resources available at the

school were all identified as important elements for successful implementation of new

curriculum” (Gibson 2012, p. 18). Collaboration will be key as I work to better implement new
methodologies and tools into my classroom and improve the quality of learning provided to my

students.

Lesson Five: The Research-Practice Connection

As a young, naive educator, I knew that there could be better ways to teach and learn the

material I set before my students. However, until entering the EdTech program at Boise State, I

was unsure how to do this, it was not until passing through the first semester of courses that I

realized that, “improvements in student learning and educational outcomes depend on the wider

use of reliable evidence in classroom practice” (Masters, 2018). Either I would have to enter the

arena as one who added to that evidence, or spectate, and hope someone else found something

that would work for me. Building on the backs of others has, ironically, allowed me to do both.

In some of my earliest experiences here, I was reintroduced to the idea of learning

through play via specific parts of or a game as a whole to teach desired learning objectives

(Hulstrand, p.8). I remembered its idea in technologically ancient games like Math Blaster and

Jumpstart. By introducing elements of fun, even if over thinly veiled worksheets, engagement

improves. As student buy-in is one of the larger issues I have experienced in the education field,

this style of teaching quickly appealed to me.

Throughout the EdTech program, I have had the opportunity to study and apply the idea

of games in the classroom from the theoretical standpoint in this program to the practical

application in my own classroom via the retro game, Minecraft. While the challenge of game

modification has discouraged many researchers away from the ideas of gamification, Minecraft

open source ability for modification and sandbox style in many ways bridges that gap (Nebel,

p.4).
 In multiple classes, I have seen students apply Minecraft to their field and have had the

opportunity to test their, as well as my own. For me, this began in Educational Games and

Simulations and has carried with me through Teaching & Learning in Virtual Worlds, Quest-

Based Learning Design, Educational Game Design, and even into Online teaching Adult

Learners. Throughout these classes, whether they were targeting Minecraft or not, I gleaned

ideas about how I wanted to integrate Minecraft into my own classroom. After expressing

interest in the gamification of education to my local school district, I was able to help guide them

as they transitioned from a traditional method of teaching coding and computers, into one that

implements the use of games, with Minecraft at the forefront, as the medium of choice.

Before entering the EdTech program, I would have just kept on plowing through the

ideas and research fed to me by my school district. Now, I can be a voice in the paths we take to

improve student experience and learning.

Closing Thoughts

By no means am I a perfect student, nor a perfect educator. However, my experiences in

the EdTech program have helped me to improve and be better both as an educator and as a leader

in my school community. No longer reliant on the methods and plans of others, I am a

contributor to the enhancement of my rural school district as we move into a more technological

time. From application directly in the classroom to evaluation of the materials and tools we use, I

know that I am a better educator because of what I have learned here.

References

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