Excerpted from Eight Steps to Successfully Implement Blended Learning in Your Classroom. Download it today.

Having technology in your classroom can be a fantastic thing. It has the potential to expose your students to a world of information, hand’s on projects and game based learning, like our middle school science games. In order to maximize your classroom experience with blended learning it is critical to have a school culture that supports technology integration.

Getting Administrators & Parents On Board With Blended Learning

Making the shift from traditional learning to blended learning is daunting and impacts every stakeholder in a school community, including leaders, teachers, IT staff, students, and parents. As a result, the journey from old to new, from traditional to blended, must be a shared journey—one in which all stakeholders are engaged and all voices are heard.

For a blended learning initiative to be successful long-term, decisions cannot be top down or device driven. Instead leaders must carefully consider why they want to make a shift to blended learning and how that shift will benefit members of the school community. To get administrators and parents on board, use these two approaches.

Administrators

Administrators may hesitate to invest in blended learning because of cost or lackluster results. Overcome their concerns with detailed research and data that show blended learning’s past successes and your plans to implement the teaching model in the classroom.

Administrators also want hard numbers about projected academic performance. They prefer financial documents, implementation plans, and blended learning examples. The more data and documentation you can provide, the more likely your blended learning proposal will receive approval.

Parents

Parents care about academic performance on a more personal level—everyone wants their child to succeed. They want to know how their child is performing academically, and what you’re teaching in the classroom. They also desire to learn how to help their child improve test scores and study habits.

To reach parents, talk through how blended learning will motivate their student to learn and excel, they will back the initiative. Your conversation could prompt them to become advocates on your behalf and secure support from administrators, other teachers, and peer parents.

Establishing A Blended Learning Culture In The Classroom

Blended Learning Universe marks the importance of culture in blended learning success. The organization states:

Blended learning can sustain a bad culture or help create a new one. Culture is especially useful — or toxic — in blended programs because blended learning goes hand in hand with giving students more control and flexibility. If students lack the processes and cultural norms to handle that agency, the shift toward a personalized environment can backfire.

Start With Clear & Honest Communication

As such, your blended learning culture sets the tone for classroom instruction and assignments. It fosters the right attitudes in students, inside and outside the classroom. Culture can affect parents, too, causing them to encourage, rather than frustrate, their students’ blended learning activities.

To establish culture inside the classroom, begin with clear and honest communication with your students. Set expectations for your blended learning program, whatever it encompasses—classroom projects, edgames, student teams, at-home assignments, et cetera.

Use The “TRICK” Acronym

Also employ “TRICK,” an acronym suggested by Esther Wojcicki and Lance Izumi, authors of “Moonshots in Education: Launching Blended Learning in the Classroom.” The acronym stands for trust, respect, independence, collaboration, and kindness. When your classroom embodies those five traits, students learn, grow scholastically and personally, and desire to help their fellow students.

Outside the classroom, you should also focus on communication, this time with parents. Just because you got their initial buy-in doesn’t mean your work is done. Let parents know how their kids are enjoying and improving thanks to your new blended learning environment. Remember that some parents may not be familiar with digital technologies and tools, especially if you teach in a rural or underserved area. Share basic information about blended learning with these parents, and offer opportunities for them to experience it in the classroom. Showing parents how blended learning works can better convince them than a letter sent home.

Spread The Culture Across The School Campus

Finally, aim to spread your blended learning culture across the school campus. Your own success with the initiative often sells itself, but you should talk about it, too. Sharing results and personal testimony invites other teachers to participate in blended learning and make a difference in their classrooms.

Learn More About Blended Learning With LoL

Our online educational games at Legends of Learning works perfectly with and seamlessly integrates into blended learning models. For more information, give us a call at 888.585.1317 or contact us online today.

You can download the whole white paper Eight Steps to Successfully Implement Blended Learning in Your Classroom here on the Legends of Learning site.

Game Based Learning (GBL) and the blended classroom have become increasingly popular instructional options as teachers strive to improve teaching and learning. These two instructional forms complement each other well. Both serve the 21st century classroom by engaging students in their education and giving them opportunities to develop not only basic curriculum mastery but also critical thinking and problem solving skills.

GBL uses games to aid students’ learning. Although GBL can drastically transform instruction, as in the case of using World of Warcraft to teach humanities, GBL can be as simple as playing Jeopardy to review materials before summative assessment. Both applications involve games to complement or replace more traditional instructional methods, such as lectures, Q&As, and worksheets.

Most teachers employ some form of GBL. However, we must be careful not to confuse GBL with gamification. In gamification, a teacher incorporates the mechanics of game play and game design into the curriculum. Teachers who espouse GBL take a very different approach. They infuse the curriculum with games, and the games become primary methods to introduce, explore, explain, and reinforce material.

What Is Blended Learning?

Blended learning fuses online and traditional “brick and mortar” instruction. Some teachers assume using technology equals a blended classroom; however, blended learning should be viewed as more of a spectrum between traditional “brick and mortar” instruction on one end and online-only classes on the other.

Most truly blended classrooms feature 1) students who access some class content and instruction online outside of the traditional time and space of the classroom, and 2) a Classroom Management System (CMS) such as Edmodo or Moodle.

Game Based Learning & Blended Learning In Practice

GBL fits seamlessly into a blended instructional model. Games can act as bridges between the physical, face-to-face environment and an online classroom in at least three ways.

Independent Game Play Outside Of Class

First, a student could play games independently, outside the regular class time and setting. Sites like Quizizz and Quizlet have popularized this method. For this to be successful, teachers must possess some way to track student progress and learning. This usually occurs in the form of tracking time spent on the game and assessing students’ answers and feedback to questions.

Teachers Meeting With Students Virtually

Second, a teacher could meet with students in a virtual environment. Examples of such environments include Minecraft: Education Edition and Second Life. With this method, the teacher schedules a time to meet in a virtual space within the game. Students and teacher are therefore in different places but meeting at the same time. The mode of instruction varies depending on the virtual environment and game limitations. A lecture is possible in Second Life, for example, but not Minecraft.

Students Meeting & Playing Together In A Game Environment

Third, a student could meet and play with other students in a game environment without teacher supervision. The situation arises when students are assigned collaborative Minecraft projects or asked to compete against other students in some games found on ABCya!.

Benefits Of Game-Based Learning In Blended Learning Classrooms

GBL perfectly suits a blended classroom framework. With it, teachers meet students’ expectations—today’s students already “game” with other students. Teachers also overcome challenges found with typical homework assignments and assessments.

Games can reduce testing anxiety and increase student motivation to engage and learn. In fact, some teachers see students playing games outside of class sheerly for the joy of it. For those reasons and many more, game based learning will become a more common mode of instruction that extends learning beyond the classroom.

Scott Beiter teachers science at Rensselaer Jr. Sr. High in Rensselaer, New York. Follow his blog, Full Sail Science, to learn more.

The following is an excerpt from our new white paper, “Eight Steps to Successfully Implement Blended Learning in Your Classroom.” Download it today!

Do you ever find yourself leaving school at the end of the day thinking you could have taught your lesson just a little bit better? It is very natural as a teacher to take stock of your day and think about adjustments you can make for tomorrow. What if you could use tools like games to make a large scale change to your classroom that would lead to much higher levels of engagement and achievement? You can, and blended learning is the 21st century key to this kind of change.

Getting Your Classroom Ready For Blended Learning

You might be wondering how can you transform your classroom with a blended learning model? After all, the possibilities with tech based learning — middle school science games (hint, hint) — can be truly infinite given the right strategies.

Time To Rearrange The Desks

Whether you have a cart of iPads or a room full of Chromebooks, integrating technology into your classroom is a great way to engage students in learning. One facet, the classroom setup, is often overlooked. It might seem that just putting technology on the desk in place of a textbook will improve a student’s experience and engagement, but research has found otherwise.

Says Ramona Persaud, Edutopia contributor, “From the front door and school grounds to the classroom, the aesthetics of learning spaces impact brain function and influence how students feel when they’re in school—as well as how they feel about their school.”

You likely understand Persaud’s point intuitively. Students perform better when they feel comfortable, safe, and feel as though they belong. You might even have anecdotal evidence demonstrating the impact of something as simple as a desk arrangement. If classroom setup is instrumental in determining the success of your blended learning model, try something a little out of the box next year. Get a bunch of chairs and a couch and have your students use them during blended learning time. No room in the budget for furniture? No problem! Let students sit on the floor. Students simply do not have to be sitting at a desk in order to be engaged in learning.

Seven Ways To Set Up Your Class For Success

Check out this great list of recommendations from Blended Learning Universe on how to arrange your classroom for Blended Learning.

• Station Rotation – moves students from station to station on a fixed schedule, with at least one (if not all) of the stations featuring digital learning activities such as games, puzzles, or videos. The rotation can free up teaching time, allowing you to work one-on-one with students needing extra attention.
• Lab Rotation – looks similar to Station Rotation except that students go to a dedicated computer lab rather than an in-classroom station. Many teachers enjoy the flexibility of using an outside lab in terms of both scheduling and classroom layouts.
• Individual Rotation – provides students with personalized schedules and assignments. The students may or may not visit every work station in a single day, instead focusing their attention on completing assigned activities.
• Flipped Classroom – changes the classroom dynamic. Students learn at home via a digital curriculum and online lectures. They then complete teacher-guided projects and other activities in the classroom.
• Flex – gives the most control to students. It allows them to move through classroom curriculum and activities — both digital and traditional — on a fluid schedule. Teachers, in turn, offer support and instruction as needed. This model tends to use online learning to a greater degree than the previous four.
• A La Carte – allows schools to offer electives they can’t provide due to a lack of on-site resources. The model often supplements high school classes.
• Enriched Virtual – requires students to learn at home via online instructional materials and meet with a teacher face-to-face two to three times a week. This model tends to be less common than the other six.

No matter which approach you choose, remember that bringing blended learning into the classroom is a chance to approach student learning in a new way. Do something new this year with your class and get excited for a transformational 2017-2018 school year!!!

Try Our Games With Your Blended Learning Model

One of the best ways to get your classroom ready with a blended learning model is by using our online educational games here at Legends of Learning. For more information, give us a call at 888.585.1317 or contact us online today.

Don’t forget to download the new white paper, “Eight Steps to Successfully Implement Blended Learning in Your Classroom.”

$9 Million Raise to Support Team Growth, Market Expansion

The following is a press release issued this morning about Legends of Learning’s seed round of fundraising.

Legends of Learning closed its seed round of fundraising with a total raise of $9 million. The fundraising round follows the successful launch of our initial game-based learning platform that has been met with praise from educators and recognition by influential media organizations. The company was featured in a recent USA Today article that explained how its platform can overcome a barrier to “getting high-quality learning games into K–12 classrooms.”

Legends of Learning, which is co-headquartered in Washington, D.C. and Baltimore, Md., will leverage the funds to execute its long-term strategic plan in the education sector. The investments will allow the company to meet demand by hiring additional team members and expanding its platform to new school grades and subjects.

The company was founded by Vadim Polikov, a research scientist who previously started Astrum Solar, a top 10 U.S. solar installer, and American Journal Experts, a large academic editing company serving the international scientific research community.

Joining Polikov as co-founders are Larry Cynkin, chief technology officer, who was formerly with Comcast and Honesty Online; Aryah Fradkin, manager, Teacher Outreach, who is a former Baltimore City, Md., teacher; Joshua Goldberg, chief strategy officer, and an Astrum Solar co-founder; Geoff Livingston, chief marketing officer, who is an award winning digital marketing entrepreneur; and Sandy Roskes, chief operating officer, and a former Astrum senior executive.

“This team brings vision and experience to the table. The successful closing of this seed round will let us accelerate our focus on helping more teachers reach students with research-driven, curriculum-based education games,” says Polikov.

Legends of Learning launched at the end of March with a first-to-market approach of 900 curriculum-based education games for middle school earth and space science, life sciences and physical science curricula. The games, created by over 300 game studios, are based on rigorous academic research conducted in partnership with Vanderbilt University.

Unique aspects of the Legends of Learning game-based learning platform include:

• Short games (5–25 minutes) that align to middle school science curriculum standards to ensure content engages and helps students succeed in their studies;
• An intuitive platform similar to Netflix and Amazon that makes games easy and natural to use in classrooms; and
• A dashboard that allows teachers to observe student comprehension in real time, create game playlists for classes and individual students, and assess content mastery.

The company will demonstrate its technology platform and games publicly at the International Society for Technology in Education Conference & Expo June 25–28 in San Antonio, Texas.

Earth Day is coming up, April 22! This year, Earth Day Network, the nonprofit dedicated to growing the global environmental movement, asks educators, community members, and others to focus on climate change and environmental literacy. The site already boasts Earth Day ideas and science lesson plans for kindergarten through twelfth grade.

See our Earth Day Activities and Ideas page for free games, additional resources and lesson plans! Or, sign up and explore our full platform of games!

And of course, there are many learning objectives and games within the Legends of Learning platform that you can use to make Earth Day fun and engaging. But you might want to integrate other Earth Day ideas for your classroom, particularly if you’re using blended learning strategies. If that’s your case, we have you covered. We’ve got two giant lists of resources and activities to celebrate Earth Day.

14 Earth Day & Science Activities For Your Middle School Classroom

1. Conduct A Science Experiment

Some students learn by reading or seeing. Others learn through practical application. You can incorporate all your students’ learning styles and levels with Earth Day science experiments. Plus, science experiments give students real-world experience in developing hypotheses, exploring results, and correlating human endeavors to the ecosystem. You’ll want to focus students’ efforts; Earth Day covers a lot of science material. To be most effective, integrate your Earth Day experiments with the science curriculum and learning objectives currently being taught in the classroom.

2. Form A GREEN Committee

To make a difference in the local environment, form a GREEN committee of faculty, administrators, and staff. Next, create a corollary committee of students and parents. The two committees work hand-in-hand to organize and oversee environmental projects, such as a community garden or recycling program. The National Wildlife Federation offers an excellent resource for starting an environmental committee at your school.

3. Get Outdoors

Ted Wells, a fourth grade teacher, says students need to connect with nature so that they’ll be intrinsically motivated to protect it. With that in mind, get the kids outside. If you’re studying the water cycle or stamens, pistils, and petals, ask students to call out those things as they explore the outdoors.

4. Get Some (Pretend) Funding

Create student research teams and give them a special Earth Day WebQuest, courtesy of Education World. The students’ mission, if they choose to accept it, is to research a critical environmental threat and develop a solution that could win up to $1 million in funding from the fictitious “Help Our World (HOW) Foundation.” The project increases science comprehension and research skills and teaches students how to apply for grant money.

5. Get Some Google Cardboard

Virtual field trips on the big screen are one thing, but immersive ones are something else entirely. Invest in Google Cardboard headsets, then take students on a journey via Google Expeditions or The New York Times. Ms. Frizzle’s got nothing on you anymore.

6. Hear From An Environmental Expert

Microsoft claims a multitude of ecological experts, all who would be happy to join your classroom via Skype. Prepare kids for the conversation and, to make sure they take something away from the discussion, ask them to recap what they learned in a paragraph or two.

7. Join The PepsiCo Recycle Rally School Recycling Program

Up the typical recycling ante by participating in PepsiCo’s Recycle Rally. The free, nationwide program offers resources and incentives to “make recycling easy, fun, and rewarding.”

8. Partner With The Art Teacher

The usual Earth Day arts and crafts may be blasé, but don’t ditch the arts just yet. PBS offers some great Earth Day crafts, some of which can be used in science experiments or outdoor excursions. Plus, some of your students may absolutely adore the “Recycled Cardboard Rings.” If you only teach science in your classroom, buddy up with the art teacher.

9. Plant A Garden

Heighten the local aspect of Earth Day with something other than planting a tree. Plant a community garden instead and invite parents to participate. The long-term project will instill a sense of ownership in students and produce fruit and vegetables that can be sold at a local farmers’ market. Another good resource for this activity is KidsGardening, an organization committed to engaging and teaching kids through gardening.

10. Solve A Mystery

Give students a “mystery box” of supplies and task them with creating a product that solves an environmental challenge. The assignment will encourage creativity, critical thinking, dialogue, and collaboration.

11. Start A Recycling Program

Kids learn what they practice, so implement a recycling program this Earth Day. Accompany the effort with lessons about why recycling is important and how “reduce, reuse, and recycle” makes the world a better place for everyone. To expand the program across your school, check out RecycleWork’s guide.

12. Take Your Students On A Virtual Field Trip

If you can’t go to the desert or visit the polar bears, bring them to you with Discovery Education. You can view archived footage or join an upcoming Virtual Field Trip. You can even share science and engineering opportunities by taking your students on a virtual tour of 3M. Now that’s snazzy.

13. Turn Your Students Into Film Directors

Enhance students’ critical and creative thinking abilities by transforming them into film directors. With the Tellagami app, students can create animated videos about a local or global environmental issue and share it with the classroom on Earth Day.

14. Visit A Local Museum Or Science Center

Get kids out of the classroom for the day and take them on an exploration of a local museum or science center. Tie the trip to learning objectives to guarantee engagement and impact.

21 Earth Day & Earth Science Resources

If you want to do some Earth Day sleuthing, check out these 21 sites. They feature lesson plans, activities, and additional resources.

48 Days Of Blue

48 Days of Blue, backed by the National Aquarium, provides challenges you can use throughout the year. This is a great resource if trying to extend climate and environmental literacy to students’ home lives. The challenges also are great fun, including things like a “Lights Out Dinner” and “Beware of Vampires.”

American Museum Of Natural History

The American Museum of Natural History only offers a few environmental and ecological lessons, but they’re robust. Your students can explore existing case studies and scientific data to learn about scientists at work today, to analyze findings, and to grow their understanding about the relationship of man and environment.

BBC Science & Environment

BBC Science & Environment gives a global perspective on climate change and environmental issues. Not everything will apply to Earth Day or middle school science learning objectives, but you’re sure to find something to entice and inspire students—maybe, for instance, this article about air pollution.

Earth Day Network

Earth Day Network’s lesson plans, contests, and activities align with Next Generation Science and Common Core standards. You’ll find resources for all grade levels, as well as an abundance of Earth Day and general science concepts.

Education World

Education World offers more than 24 classroom activities, across several grades. Most of the activities coordinate with other subjects, helping your students apply their scientific know-how in different contexts.

Environmental Protection Agency

Environmental Protection Agency recognizes teachers, scientists, and citizen activists for their work to protect the New England environment. Your classroom could participate in an environmental activity, which you could then nominate for the EPA’s Environmental Merit Award. The application provides several criteria that can be used to define a classroom project. The EPA also offers a number of Earth Day events and projects that can be tailored to the classroom. And, if those two things aren’t enough, you can always look into the EPA’s Environmental Kids Club.

Get To Know

Get to Know contains a variety of educational resources related to Earth Day and science. The activities include raising tadpoles, converting salt water into drinking water, and studying fractals via “snow paint.”

Google Maps For Education

Google Maps for Education. You’ll love this resource. It’s so much fun! Google’s mapping tools allows teachers and students to “explore, create, and collaborate.” The combination of ecology and geography teaches students how humans and the environment interact and affect each other.

Green Education Foundation

Green Education Foundation focuses on “creating a sustainable future through education.” The site shares a couple of interesting ideas, including the organization’s “Adopt-a-Plant” contest.

NASA ClimateKids

NASA ClimateKids offers all sorts of resources and activities, ranging from online games to videos. The site even features a “dream” section, which teaches kids about opportunities to work in an environmental field. NASA ClimateKids also includes a number of lesson plans and ideas for educators.

National Education Association

National Education Association provides Earth Day curriculum resources that span all grade levels. The resources linked to here are for sixth through eighth grade. They include individual and group projects that help students develop investigative and collaboration skills.

National Environment Education & Training Foundation

National Environmental Education & Training Foundation offers a “Greening STEM Educator Toolkit.” You’ll want to give the resource a look if desiring to teach climate change and the environment as cross-curricular concepts.

National Wildlife Federation

National Wildlife Federation provides all sorts of fun resources and programs. For example, you can get students involved in the “Young Reporters for the Environment,” an environmental journalism competition for kids ages 13 to 18.

Nature Works Everywhere

Nature Works Everywhere is on a mission to “help educators teach how nature works.” The site includes everything from videos and lesson plans to garden tools. Nature Works Everywhere is another place to go for virtual field trips, too.

PBS Nature

PBS Nature offers a lot of video content that can support Earth Day and physical science lessons. The site boasts a number of films, with many of them exploring how humans impact ecosystems. Many of the videos come with supplementary materials that can be used in the classroom or home.

Project Learning Tree

Project Learning Tree offers suggestions for how to incorporate the environment into your science lessons, helping students engage in learning inside and outside the classroom. The program has received several awards for its work in helping educators, parents, and community leaders teach kids.

Project Wet

Project Wet provides lesson plans specific to water and conservation. The organization’s mission statement says it all: “We envision a world in which action-oriented education enables every child to understand and value water, ensuring a sustainable future.”

ReadWriteThink

ReadWriteThink offers lessons plans and parent and afterschool resources for just about every grade and learning level. Much of the activities emphasize writing and literacy. Visit this website if you want to strengthen students’ science, writing, and critical thinking skills.

ScienceNetLinks

ScienceNetLinks is another go-to spot for lesson plans and resources spanning all grade levels. You’ll want to make note of ScienceNetLink’s ““How We Know What We Know about Our Changing Climate.” It provides a wonderful introduction to climate change and the environment.

Teachers Pay Teachers

Teachers Pay Teachers offers 14 activities designed for middle school and high school. Many of the ideas are cross-curricular, as with the Scientific Notation and Water Conservation” resource and the “Financial Costs and Benefits of Going Green.” Some of the resources are free, but others require a nominal fee.

USDA Forest Service

USDA Forest Service focuses on national forests and grasslands. The site’s “Educator Toolbox” contains vetted resources and professional development opportunities. Some of the organization’s educational themes include climate change, exploring the great outdoors, and wildfires.

Reach Out To Legends Of Learning For More Information

With all the Earth Day ideas and resources listed here, you’ll have plenty of choices for tools to teach, engage, and inspire your students. Now, onward, heroes. Let’s be legendary this Earth Day by using some Google Cardboard or starting a community garden. For more information contact us online.

When it comes to digital education content, technology and tools, ease of use reigns supreme. If we don’t make new media and tech easy for teachers, they won’t use them in the classroom.

Good digital education tools can be tremendously beneficial in the classroom. They help teachers engage students AND reinforce the educator’s lessons. We know this. But as such, that tool must do more than simply entertain students, and meet a basic loose affiliation with curriculum topics. They must be intuitive and natural to implement.

This is a classic user experience conundrum. User experience (UX) concerns itself with making a customer happy before, during, and after using a product. Unfortunately, education content, games and tech products have been criticized for not meeting the UX bar in the past. Ease of use is one of the main culprits.

Creating a successful education UX requires understanding teachers’ challenges with technology as much as it does building great curriculum media for students. Teachers don’t receive as much professional development as they would in an ideal world. Many struggle with using the latest technology on a personal basis, much less figuring out how to deploy it in the classroom.

Content creators and developers should understand what makes a new digital tool in the classroom useful. Does the media reinforce teacher lessons, or is it a distraction? Can a teacher use the product as part of their core curriculum, or does it seek to replace them in some way? Will a teacher be able to use student data for productive analytics, or do privacy risks interfere?

“Companies often overlook the fact that younger students do not have email addresses, and that teachers are more likely to use technology if it is easier to set up class rosters with user names and passwords,” said Richard White, Science Department Chair, Griffin Middle School. “I need to be able to import CSV files and have the software generate the user names while I assign a generic password.”

It makes sense to engineer content and tools to work for the teacher as much as they work for the student. A happy teacher makes for a successful use of the new education tool.

Providing Integration

Making new tech easy for teachers to implement within larger district learning management (LMS) and student information systems (SIS) is a primary consideration. “Products need to have seamless integration within existing district technology ecosystems,” said Scott Beiter, a science teacher at Rensselaer Junior Senior High School. “A district won’t buy all new hardware just to adopt one wonderful product.”

For example, integrating into Google for Education allows teachers across the country to use digital tools. Similarly, working within other widespread and adopted education standards, both curriculum and technological, helps teachers use your tool.

“Two words: Google integration!” added Rebecca Beiter, a teacher at Bethlehem Central School District.

A Little How-to Help Goes a Long Way

Sometimes making a new digital tool work in a classroom is as much as about guidance as the actual tool itself. Not every teacher will pick up on how to implement a tool, no matter how well designed it is.

Many companies release their tools with video tutorials, webinars, professional development, and user support forums to make their tech easy for teachers. Some actively seek feedback from teachers and incorporate that feedback in their product evolutions (have you joined the Legends of Learning community yet?).

Secondary content such as lesson plans and evaluation tools can make a big difference for a teacher’s experience. Not only does the digital tool work, but the supplementary content helps teachers at least consider how to implement in the classrooms.

Going the extra mile can make all the difference for a new education tool.

Additional Teacher Insights

We asked our Legends of Learning community members what they thought about the topic, too. Several offered additional insights:

“Making tech media accessible to students on a free basis is crucial,” said Caitlin Unterman, a teacher at Bedford County Public Schools. “Also, including easy to read instructions, easy to manipulate sites, and allowing for manipulation of content, is key!”

“As an educator, companies need to follow CIPA rules and make student sign up easy and without emails,” said Bobby Brian Lewis, Bibb County Schools. “They can also make tech that can read to students to meet the needs of special needs students such as close caption. Tech companies need to be aware of the needs of students with special needs.”

“Companies should look to their local community to help schools improve their internet connections,” said Nancy Hoppa, Ingenuity Program, Baltimore City Public Schools. “Many school communities are in older buildings and just getting connected in the first place presents a no go situation. One in which we need to almost always have a back up plan just in case. Another big problem we are facing is using technology for engineering/stem based projects. We need tools to construct the projects we are designing online and training. This generation does not have nearly as much experience working with hammer, nails and saws!”

There’s no single best way to make tech easy for teachers. Doing so is crucial to enable students to succeed in the digital age.

What do you think?

In the post-truth era, American society has come to devalue intellectualism. Twitter wars and opining about “alternative” facts take precedence. This lack of commitment to reason and knowledge doesn’t merely turn adults into pessimists and skeptics with the attention span of goldfish. It affects students, too, and their ability to reason and discover what is true.

Without a genuine hunger for knowledge, today’s students will struggle to discern actionable information in their preferred fields of study and careers. That is true regardless of a region, state, or family’s politics. The hallmark of education is teaching students to use knowledge and thought to reason their way to conclusions.

But how can educators inspire intellectualism in a time of deep mistrust in public discourse?

Perhaps the top method is to combat boredom in the classroom with engagement. Note the word: engagement. It’s not entertainment. The distinction is critical. Students need to learn, not to be amused. You can have both in the same environment, but entertainment is not and must never be the primary objective.

“We need to get away from thinking that the opposite of ‘bored’ is ‘entertained,'” says  said Todd Rose, Ed.M.’01, Ed.D.’07, a lecturer at the Ed School and director of the Mind, Brain, and Education Program at Harvard University. “It’s ‘engaged.’” Successful education is not about pumping cartoons and virtual reality games into the classroom; it’s about finding ways to make curriculum more resonant, personalized, and meaningful for every student.

Engagement as a Precursor

With engagement, a true interest in pursuing knowledge develops. Lea Taylor and Jim Parson note note several forms of engagement in an article published on Arizona State University’s Current Issues in Education.:

• Academic
• Cognitive
• Intellectual
• Institutional
• Emotional
• Behavioral
• Social
• Psychological

While a variety of pedagogical techniques — including blended learning, problem-based learning, and, yes, game-based-learning — may inspire some forms of engagement, not all of them are guaranteed. Fostering intellectualism in students is a by-product of the right conditions. One thing is clear: Engagement, curiosity, and interest are precursors of successful learning.

Engagement Stimulates Learning and Curiosity

And learning is the point. It’s one of the reasons Legends of Learning ties curriculum to its edgames and focuses on shorter games. It’s hard to deliver an engaging experience that survives classroom interruptions. But when students engage in a meaningful experience, no matter how short, their interest in school subjects can grow.

That interest can lead to deeper understanding and application, what Dr. Mike Davis of the Colorado Academy terms “intellectual curiosity.” Students grasp what they know and use it to comprehend new concepts. Fostering curiosity through the exploration of new and unresolved situations, i.e., games, can be a tremendous spark for children, as well one in which both teachers and parents can participate.

“But what about those test scores?” you ask.

Engagement comes to the rescue here, too. The quality of engagement can also improve retention. “If the students are interested and inspired to think about things for prolonged periods, then memory is enhanced,” says Ben Johnson, an administrator. Engagement wins again and provides yet another reason to build blended classrooms that integrate teacher-led activities with engaging exercises and games.

Will an engaged classroom become an intellectual one? Perhaps, perhaps not, but it certainly brings us one step closer towards helping students think and reason for themselves.

Many educators hold notions about what constitutes an edgame. Some think it’s a game loosely based on the curriculum. Others believe edgames are quizzes, something to be downloaded from the iTunes store.

Still others suppose that edgames are commercial ones like Sid Meir’s Civilization, Minecraft, or Pokemon Go that are then tied to education goals. In other cases, the game may be a specific simulation, for example, the 1979 Revolution: Black Friday or The Body VR. Both serious games, one puts the player in the midst of the Iranian Revolution. The other takes a player on an Oculus tour of the human biological system.

The Experts Weigh In

“All of the above” is the correct answer. An Edgame can be a variety of things.

In his excellent book “Gamify Your Classroom,” Matthew Farber defines Jane McGonical’s definition of an Edgame. She believes that a game must have around four key factors:

• A Goal
• Rules
• A Feedback System
• Voluntary Participation

This definition would disqualify many of the electronic games currently used by educators. Matt Farber proceeds to have a conversation about the McGonical definition of games largely revolves around voluntary participation. He asks, “Does forcing kids to use a game for educational purposes destroy the intent of a game in essence violating the entire entertainment value of a game by turning it into work?”

Discover some examples of standards-aligned and engaging EdGames:  6th Grade Science Games for Your Classroom

James Paul Gee Responds

Farber’s search for an edgame definition unsurprisingly includes an interview with the godfather of game-based learning (GBL), James Paul Gee, someone we’ve discussed previously. We recently wrote up Professor James Paul Gee’s 16 Principles for Good Game-Based Learning.

But even though Professor Gee provides a lot of structure and regular commentary about what makes a good edgame, he dismisses many of the nuances needed to define one. For Gee, a game’s adherence to every aspect of defined games or every principle of game-based learning is irrelevant. What matters is that the game inspires learning.

Gee told Farber, “The issue is how do we get engagement by an affiliation, not whether we call it ‘play’ or a ‘game’ […] What we want to say is, ‘What’s the interactivity? What’s the engagement? What are the values?’”

EdGames Defined

In essence, good edgames or game-based learning platforms inspire children to learn. They involve students and capture their interest. As a result, they deliver exceptional educational value.

Most educators want supplementary curriculum tools that engage and help students master their studies. So whether a game is short or long, comical or serious, made for education or originally developed for commercial use is immaterial. To be an edgame for educators, it simply must meet the barometers of engagement and basic learning.

What do you think makes an edgame?