Gaming and Math with Xbox

game 4

I’ll admit that it has been awhile since I’ve used the Xbox in the library.  When you are juggling so many things, it’s hard to keep everything up in the air at the same time. I was so excited when one of our resource teachers emailed me recently to ask if I could do an Xbox lesson with her class. She had heard that we could weave some math into our gaming time, but she wasn’t sure what to do. The request also came from her students, which I loved. We put a time on the calendar and she brought her group of 7 students to the library for some gaming fun.

game 3

For this lesson, I chose to use the Kinect Sports game and put it in “party mode”. This mode allows you to split a group into two teams. Each team chooses a mascot and players take turns competing in six rounds. I really liked this mode because it gave a very dependable structure for taking turns. It alternated between the red team and blue team and students kept track of the lineup within their own team and consistently rotated through that same lineup. The Xbox chose which game would be played in each round.

game 2

We didn’t do math every time a student came up to play, but we did pause throughout the game to do some mental math as well as work out more challenging problems on paper. The team scores increased by hundreds and fifties so it was easy to do a mental comparison of how many more points one team had than another. We did this in between rounds.

game 1

For the discus game, it measured distance in meters. We took the two distances and saw how many more feet one student threw the discus than another. This was a perfect tie in to what students are currently working on in math because it gave them practice adding or subtracting decimals as well as reading decimals with tenths and hundredths.

In bowling, sometimes we did a comparison of the two totals of pins knocked down and other times we had students see how many pins both teams knocked down together. This gave them some practice with 2-digit addition.

Each student used his or her own strategy to solve the problem. The teacher and I walked around and checked in with students while they worked, and I muted the screen so that the game was paused and not distracting them. If students reached a frustration point with the math, I started writing beginning steps onto the board to nudge them forward.

Since this was the group’s first time trying this out, I didn’t want to push too much math at once, so we were careful to balance play with work time. There’s certainly many more math problems that could be done using the scores, distances, and times in a game.

There was also a lot of other things going on during this time that I was reminded of. First, I was reminded of the amount of energy that is released during gaming. With the Kinect, students are actively jumping, kicking, running, and swinging throughout their turn. Even the students who aren’t playing are being active because they are jumping up and down in the background to cheer on their teammates.

I was also reminded of how much cooperation it takes to pull off this type of gaming.  Students had to take turns, deal with messing up on their turn, handle “losing”, and working through frustrations. We talked about these things before we played, but we saw the students really working through all of these potentially frustrating parts of gaming. It’s interesting to see students handle stress in gaming differently than they might handle stress in another environment or situation. It caused me to really ponder how we can make those connections or create similar environments in the situations where students have more difficulty responding to stress. I, of course, don’t have any answers at the moment, but I’m thinking.

I told these students that I hoped they would spread the news of their gaming experience back to their classrooms so that other teachers might try this with their class. I definitely need to throw the gaming ball back into the air and nudge classes to try this again next year.


Gaming in Education w/Xbox: NatGeo TV

This year, we are exploring ways that gaming can be used in education.  I’ve previously mentioned that a group of 14 boys are exploring the xbox, Nintendo DS, and Minecraft during an enrichment cluster.  This week, a 5th grader used our xbox 360 with Kinect to research wolverines for his animal research project.

One of the games that we purchased for our xbox is Kinect NatGeo TV.  This 2-disc set includes multiple NatGeo 30-minute episodes on a variety of animals and places.  As you watch the episode there are sidetracks where you can take pictures of the animals, discover hidden facts, take short quizzes, and play games that help demonstrate an animal behavior.

Henry is a 5th grader who did not find a book in our library about his topic, wolverines.  He has been relying on digital resources, databases, and encyclopedias to get his information.  I was so excited when I looked at the table of contents on the NatGeo TV game and saw wolverines as a topic.  Mrs. Mullins, a spectrum teacher, worked out arrangements for Henry to come to the library during language arts to do his research on the xbox.  I setup the machine, dimmed the lights, and helped Henry get setup with his notecards and floor space to interact.  As he watched the episode, he added several notes to his notecards.  When a sidetrack popped up, he put everything down to interact.  I was impressed by how the facts in the episode were reinforced through the games.  When Henry learned that wolverines dig through snow to locate dead carcasses, he was able to practice digging by becoming a virtual wolverine and digging through snow to find meat.  When he left, this was a fact that stood out to him.  It made me wonder about how we can bring facts to life for students when they discover them in books, websites, videos, or other resources.  The active game element seemed to reinforce the facts and help Henry retain them.  I know that the amount of NatGeo content on these discs is limited and will only support specific students and projects, but the concept makes me think beyond the xbox and how it might inform future lessons.

Game On: Gaming in the Media Center

Enrichment clusters have kicked off again and this year our clusters will meet 14 times across the entire school year.  During enrichment clusters, teachers offer topics on a variety of topics.  Students self-select their top choices, and then they are assigned to one of their choices.  The clusters are student-driven, so although the teacher offers the topics, the students are really the ones that make the decisions about what takes place.  During clusters, students are expected to make a product, service, or performance related to their topic and they also showcase their learning at a cluster fair at the conclusion of clusters.

This year, I am offering gaming in education as a cluster.  We now have an Xbox with Kinect in the media center thanks to profits from last year’s book fairs.  This gaming system will be available to all students in the school, but my cluster will specifically look at how this system and others can be used in education.  Our cluster is made up of 14 boys in grades 2-5.  We had an overwhelming response from boys, so it was decided to keep the cluster all male.  I definitely don’t want the girls to be left out, so we’ll be looking at ways to create opportunities for girls as well.

Today, the boys introduced themselves and shared their own experiences with gaming.  We named a few ground rules we should consider as we play video games in the library.  Many of these ground rules had to do with safety such as no body contact with others and keeping the gaming area clear.  We also talked about what it means to take turns and how we handle the adrenaline rushes we sometimes get when we play games.

Students each had a chance to play Xbox sports.  We chose a mini game of soccer to give every student a quick chance to play.  Then, we met back together to discuss how we handled our ground rules and what we need to remember for next time.

I have a couple of students who are already excited about the possibility of other kinds of gaming, specifically Minecraft. There are several schools who use Minecraft in education, and I think the boys that are interested in this are going to do some great things over the next 13 sessions.

At the next cluster session, we will Skype with the busy librarian, Matthew Winner, who already is well-established with gaming in his library.  He will share his expertise and students will have a chance to ask him questions.

I’ll post more as things develop.

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