Kidaptive - Educational games for kids

In my first blog in the topic of Game-based Learning, I want to introduce a iPad game called Leo's pad. Leo is short for Leonardo da Vinci. It is a free game, you can find it in App Store.

Here is a video introduction about the parent's pad from its official website:

Parent's Pad from Kidaptive on Vimeo.

Parent's pad is as its name, for parents, whose kid are using Leo's pad. In fact, Parent's pad is a build in assessment tool that help parents support their kid's learning. By using it this tool, parents could know how their kids perform in this game.

Are you kidding me? It is just a game! Why parents need to know how their kids perform in it?

I think that is because it is an educational game. On Kidaptive's website, they said their goals is to "support kids (ages 3-11) and their parents (and eventually teachers) through the children's entire early-learning trajectory".

Okay, let us see what they have invent to accomplish their goal.

Leo's pad is consist of a serious adventures of Leo and his friends. Once you begin the game, you are Leo's friend too. Now it has 4 appisodes:

I have tried Appisldes 1. The story is Leo's friend, Gally, whose birthday is coming. Gamers need to prepare a birthday present with Leo together. During this process, gamers need to finish a serious of tasks which include identify colors, shapes, numbers and letters. It also contained drawing or writing tasks and introduced the structure of a telescope. For example, the gift, Leo want to give Gally is a telescope, as Gally love to watch stars. Then, Leo asks the gamer to assemble a telescope with him.

When the gamer touch any part on the table, Leo will pronounce the shape's name. When the gamer move each part, Leo will give the gamer some suggestions about whether it is suitable or not. When the gamer finished the optical tube, the screen will present the whole telescope and tell the gamer which part they just assembled, then move to the next.

For me, I feel it like the activity I have had when I was in kindergarden.

That is the final purpose of the founders of Kidaptive -- they hope their product can be used in formal education. Not only for parents and children play casually, but also for teachers in the school.

This is Kidaptive's early learning curriculum Framework, which includes "control yourself", "figure stuff out", "acquire physical routines", "be creative", "knowledge", "love learning", and "interact with others". They thinks these skills could promote future learning. Under each part, there are more specific categories.

All the tasks within the game are designed based these skills. Parents could use Parents' pad to monitor the achievement their children get from playing games.

What's your opinion about this game, if you were a parent, would you like your kid to play this game? If you are a teacher, would you like to use it in your classroom?

Honestly, it does not feel like school.

The title today comes from the girl in this picture. Remember the blog I write in the second week? Quest Atlantis! This girl just finished the class with using Quest Atlantis, and she said, it is fun, honestly, it does not feel like school. (Click me, if you want to see the whole video.)

So, why "does not feel like school" is fun? Is this mean that school is not fun? So, is school fun that important?

Most research about Virtual World I have read nearly all mentioned they try to use virtual world to motivated students and more engaged students. It seems that students hate school and do not want to involved in class activities. And look at what they are doing outside school, they are creating fan fiction, video or games, or just surfing the internet, playing games and watching TVs. Consequently, researchers thinks whether we could bring what these children like into classroom, so they will love learning math or science.

Here is my question, why? Shouldn't learning be painful? And it is because of the pain in leaning, learning makes me happy when I learned.

Oh, that's not the question. Some research might said, it is not only the motivation or fun things, it is also about knowledge. Assessments are scaring and exercises are boring, and all these are totally different from the real world. Scientists do not recite physics laws, they understand it and use it to solve complex problems. That is the reason why we spend huge money and time to develop virtual worlds like Quite Atlantis, we want to students have the experience of how scientists do research before they say "I quit" in science class.

It seems that makes sense.

We use these fancy technology is not because students like them (oh, maybe part of is this reason), we choose to use it is because it could offer a possible solution to our problem, for example, how to avoid knowledge inertia, how to give Chinese students chance to practice English with American students, how to let distance students feel like in the classroom.

So, what we bring into class and school should tightly connect to our purpose and solve our problems.

Finally, thanks for reading my blogs and leave comments! Hope you now have some knowledge about virtual worlds in Education.

Active world

Today, I want to introduce an aged one -- Active World, would you like to guess in which year it lunched? Active world is a 3D virtual reality platform, which means you can use it to build your own virtual world.

Here is an example of how educators used Active World as an asynchronous formal learning environment. Researchers from University of Colorado-Boulder, use Active World as part of the Immersive Interactive Learning Environment for course: the Business Computing Skills 1000. The goal of this course is to develop students' business computing skills within a business-related context. And this course not only have this 3D virtual world, as a entry level course for undergraduate students, but also combines with the traditional classroom setting and the web-based environment.

Let us take a close look at what role does the 3D virtual world play in this course.

Just imagine when you click "Weekly Materials" in Blackboard under IDE611, and what you see is the virtual SU campus, when you "walk into" each building, you can find the web-link resources to aid you finish this week's discussion. And to the rear of each building is where you can talk and discuss with other students from IDE611, certainly not in person but through your avatar.

That is what Active World does for Business Computing Skills 1000. Each building in the virtual worlds stands for one application students need to learn in this course, within building is the resource they can use and  the assignment for this application, there are public places they can talk about their assignment and cooperate to finish it.

Now we know that researchers in this project try to use Active World to organize materials of this course. For example, the location of each building has been placed stands for the learning sequence for the whole bunch of application students need to learn. And when students meet in open patios they can easily access the provided resources, just "walk" into the building. So students can read the same materials at the same time -- when they use the chat tool to communicate.

Some students in this course said they like this course because they do not need to go to school. But many students expresses when they study in this environment they feel like they are "at school" or "actually there". 

After using Active World as part of the environment, this course become more popular and fewer students drop this course then before.



CLICK ME, if you want to know more about this research.

Second Life

Second life is a famous virtual world. The difference from virtual worlds I introduced before is that this virtual world is not design for education. Even so, there are still educators who try to use it in education context, especially in Language Learning. In this blog I will introduce some example of the using in education. For the virtual world itself, you can learn more from their official website and Wikipedia.  

Since Second life is not an educational virtual world, it doesn't include activities designed for specific instructional goals. Most users in Second life are general players, they communicate with each other and live the life they may not have in the real world. As a result, it is a challenge for educators to explore the possible use of Second Life in their own class context. 

Mihwa Kim from Teachers College of Columbia University had used Second Life in high school history class to investigate how using a virtual environment impacts student learning with collaborative activities. She used Second life as a collaborative space, students in the same group worked together to solve two problems about Korean historical events and concepts. During the activities, students would explore this 3D environment and discuss with other group members, and share their findings with other groups. Her study showed, using this 3D virtual world positively effected students' learning. Interactive, collaborative, embodied, and exploratory features in Second life led students learn more.

Also, there are researchers using Second life to change students' attitude toward science and science related careers. Selen Turkay from Teachers College, Columbia University, used Second life in a high school located in New York city through a whole semester. Students played to be as scientists. Major science activities took place in SL and were strengthened with classroom discussions led by the teacher. What should be noted is that the specific unit environment used in their class is installed in Second Life by content developer. Remember, Second Life is not an educational virtual world, so educators who plan to integrate this virtual world in their class should develop their own suitable unit environment.

In regard of Language Learning, there is an example of a group of American and Chinese researchers using Second life as a virtual learning space where a EFL program taking place. The participators of this experimental EFL program came from a state university in the southeastern USA and a provincial university in Eastern China. The American students are freshman from different department and took a basic computer skill course. The Chinese students are 20 full-time sophomores majoring in English. The learning activities included in this 5-week program are a lecture, virtual tours in group and one-on-one with SL partners and individual presentation. The learning tasks of each week are 1 hour learning activities in SL, blog writing consisting of reflections on their learning experiences in SL and language preparation for learning activities in SL for the subsequent week. According to their study, the study participants perceived the SL_EFL Program to be interesting, effective and helpful in the EFL learning.

   

Although researchers find some advantages of using SL as a virtual learning space, there are problems perceived from their research, such as distracting objectives, uninvited people suddenly came out and so on. Even so, I think it is good that teachers, educators and researchers try to explore how to use Second Life in education.