David Fuerst Ackles

Pre-service Teacher. Student. Dog Dad.

Category: EdTech Inquiry

Ed-Tech Inquiry: AC: DT Questions part 2

December 2, 2019 / / 0 Comments

book lot on black wooden shelf

Photo by: Giammarco Boscaro on Unsplash

One thing I wanted to consider were future applications of the game. I think that Ubisoft is doing some really great work with the Discovery Tour series and can see the potential for a wide range of content. Currently, the Discovery Tour mode is only available for Assassin’s Creed: Origins and Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey which means that the only 2 locations available for exploration are Ancient Egypt and Ancient Greece. Both of these places have a great depth of history and content to explore and you could conceivably spend whole terms on just one of these locations.

However, when you look at the whole Assassin’s Creed series there are so many potential locations and historical figures to explore and interact with. I went through each title and pulled examples of both:

-The Holy Land 1191 AD: Jerusalem, Acre, Damascus, Masyaf

-Renaissance Italy 1476-1511 AD: Rome, Venice, Florence, Monteriggioni, San Gimignano, Naples, The Vatican, Rhodes, Constantinople, and Cappadocia

-Colonial America 1754-1783: New York, Boston, The Frontier

-The Caribbean 1715-1737: Havana, Kingston, Nassau, Port-au-Prince

-Revolutionary France 1776-1800: Versailles, Paris

-Victorian London 1868: London

 Historical Figures: The Borgias, Leonardo Da Vinci, Caterina Sforza, Niccolo Machiavelli, George Washington, Charles Lee, Benedict Arnold, Benjamin Franklin, Paul Revere, Mary Read, Blackbeard, Anne Bonny, Charles Dickens, Alexander Graham Bell, Florence Nightingale, Arthur Conan Doyle, Charles Darwin

If or when Ubisoft extends the Discovery Tour mode to their other games, all of these will become explorable museums with real historical figures to interact with- the possibilities are almost limitless!

Ed-Tech Inquiry: AC: DT Questions

December 2, 2019 / / 0 Comments

maps lying on the floor

Photo by: Andrew Neel on Unsplash

After doing some more research I have been able to answer some of the questions I posed in my last post. I focused on the first two questions for this first round of research and have found some really interesting articles that explore how AC: DT has already bee implemented in the class.

Has the game already been used in classrooms? If so, how?

Short answer: Yes it has.

Long Answer: I found a study done by the University of Montreal (Where Ubisoft has a large office) looking at the game with 300 high school students across eight schools and 40 classes. They found that students’ grades jumped a significant portion when they used the game as an independent learning tool (22%-41%) and even more when the game was used by the teacher as a teaching tool (55%).

The study concludes that a balanced approach is key to using the game effectively. “The teacher could do things with the game they cannot do without it,” Éthier said. “They can show much clearer images of Alexandria, as re-created by Egyptologists, so people who know it well. It’s another resource in the teacher’s toolkit.”

What are the potential uses for this game in the classroom?

I haven’t found a lot on how the game was being used in classrooms but I can certainly see it in History or Socials class. Being able to explore the world you are studying could be a huge interest and engagement booster for students. I could also see the potential for uses in English and Science classes in the future. The technology isn’t there yet but because of the range of historical figures and location covered by the game series as a whole there is potential to interact with famous authors and scientists to learn about their processes or the worlds they lived in, but more on that later.

EdTech Inquiry: Assassin’s Creed Discovery

November 13, 2019 / / 0 Comments

Photo by: Nicolas J Leclercq on Unsplash

After meeting with my group last week, we have decided to shift focus slightly away from Digital Roleplay and focus more on Video Games in the classroom. We each chose one game or program to focus on and learn how it could be used in the classroom. My pick was Assassin’s Creed: Discovery Tour.

I decided to focus on this game for a few reasons. I am a huge fan of the Assassin’s Creed series and one of my favorite aspects of the games is an immersion into a detailed historical world. The games are well established and I think that is an advantage in terms of getting students to engage with the game. And finally, I have done a little bit of research into Discovery Tour previously and am excited by the potential it offers.

From here I plan to do more detailed research in the game in order to answer these questions in more detail:

  1. Has the game already been used in classrooms? If so, how?
  2. What are the potential uses for this game in the classroom?
  3. Does the game help students meet curricular competencies?
  4. Are there any issues or problems teachers should be aware of?
  5. What future applications does this game have?

I am looking forward to learning more about the game and how it can be used to promote learning.

EdTech Inquiry: Digital Roleplay and Classcraft

October 12, 2019 / / 0 Comments

person holding polygonal die

Photo by Alex Chambers on Unsplash

Classcraft was brought to my attention by one of my group members, Andrew, who was introduced to it during his observations at Belmont Secondary. Classcraft is a tool to Gamify the classroom using the video game elements of avatars, objectives, rewards, and punishments. Each student creates an avatar and as they achieve certain goals, they receive points which they can use to level up and customize their avatar or gain new powers. These powers include things like the ability to listen to music in class, skip one homework question per day, or get the answer to one question on a test. There is a built-in system for the teacher to hand out rewards for predetermined things such as asking insightful questions, listening well during a lecture, or completing an assignment and also for issuing punishments (sentences) for things like interrupting, late assignments or bullying another student.

Overall I’m not sure how I feel about Classcraft. I think it’s a great idea and could work really well in an elementary/middle school setting and possibly even into high school but it definitely has an age engagement limit. This point was brought up by Andrew as well who mentioned that the teacher in whose class this was used hoped that the designers would soon come out with a new version aimed at older students. I also am also unsure of how I feel about the punishment system. It is not clear from my exploration of Classcraft whether it is a private system, meaning only the student who is receiving the punishment can see it. If it is not and everyone on the student’s team knows when someone gets punished and what for, I would have issues with it. It would be too close to public shaming and I don’t think that promotes a safe and inclusive classroom.

That being said, I think there is potential in Classcraft. I like the idea of students being able to create their own avatar and using in-class rewards to upgrade and modify their character. This form of motivation I can see being very effective so long as students buy into the overall premise of Classcraft. Using videogame style objectives to get students to engage in classwork is also something I can see working well. Having a sense of progression and purpose to learning would certainly increase student engagement.

In summary, I need to learn more about Classcraft and how it works before I can make a final judgment but in terms of bringing roleplay elements into the classroom I think it is a great place to start. We know that kids love videogames and the more we can bring those elements into education, the better.

Gaming and Gamification in Education

October 12, 2019 / / 0 Comments

Disclaimer: This blog post is adapted from another post I made for a Multiliteracies assignment but I believe it applies to Ed-Tech as well.

Looking forward at the course syllabus, something I am looking forward to exploring is the role of video games in education. I have not played Minecraft beyond exploring the version of the game a little on our class computers so I am excited to see how it can be used in a classroom setting.  Another quick disclaimer: I do not consider myself a “gamer.”  I wasn’t the kid with a Super Nintendo or an N64- I was the kid that was always coming over to your house to play on yours. I got my first console, an Xbox, when I was 14 and since then I’ve always had access to games but I’ve never been the type to play for more than 3-4 hours at a time.

Despite all this, I have always loved video games. They allow the player to do and see things in ways that other types of texts do not. Like a novel, they can contain complete worlds, rich with detail. Like movies, they are visually stimulating. Unlike most other texts, they give the consumer agency. Modern video games, in particular, have managed to create an entirely novel and immersive experience for the player. An example of this is the 2018 Rock Star Games release Red Dead Redemption 2. I won’t go into too much detail but suffice it to say it is a game that gives you unprecedented control over the smallest of details: hair/beard length, horse cleanliness, weapon engravings, your character needs to eat or they will die, if you eat too much you will gain weight etc. These are details that do not affect the game at all and yet the player is given control.

So where am I going with this? Video games are immersive and have the potential when introduced into a classroom to create incredible learning experiences. I recently came across a TedTalk by Scott Herbet, and educator from Fort Saskatchewan titled The Power of Gamification in Education. In the video, Scott talks about how around grade 5, fun is removed from the classroom and school becomes more about worksheets, desks in rows, and rote memorization. While this is probably not the experience of a student in BC today, it was certainly my experience for the most part. High school was a significant source of stress for me and while I survived and thrived, I sometimes wonder: What if school had been more fun? What if I could have learned without taking learning so seriously? Scott’s TedTalk is not explicitly about Video Games but the idea of gamification, that is, applying the principles of game design to areas where no game is present. I believe there is a way to combine this idea of Gamification and literal video games.

Looking into this idea, I found an article on The Guardian online: What video games in schools can teach us about learning. The article focuses on a primary school in West Sussex, England where they are using the Nintendo Labo to teach principles of engineering. The article also touches on other video game companies that are creating content specifically for classrooms.  The most exciting of these is Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed: Discovery Tour, This is an update for the existing game Assassin’s Creed Origins which “removes all combat, missions and story from Assassin’s Creed Origins, leaving you free to explore its detailed recreation of ancient Egypt at leisure. It also adds in 75 interactive tours, written in collaboration with Egyptologists from around Europe, which teach you about everything from mummification to the city of Alexandria.” One of the things I’ve always loved about the Assassin’s Creed games are the historical settings and exploring them. So this update and its classroom applications are something I find very exciting. This is an area of education that is growing rapidly.

I am not sure what video games in the classroom looks like yet, or how I would use them but it is a topic I am excited to explore, both in this class and in my future classroom. With the possibilities that the new curriculum offers I am certain there is room for all types of games in education and that by embracing them we will be able to make education an immersive and novel experience for our students.

These ideas also have applications for my group’s Ed-Tech Inquiry project on Digital Role Play. With things like Discovery Tour and VR technology I can see the potential for completely immersive educational experiences where instead of simply reading about, for example, Rome, a student could take on the role of Roman Citizen and “physically” explore the city and interact with historical figures- literally bringing history to life.

Red Dead Redemption 2 Gameplay Trailer:

THIS VIDEO CONTAINS SOME GRAPHIC VIOLENCE, PLEASE TAKE HEED.

The Power of Gamification in Education- Scott Herbert:

Nintendo Labo First Look:

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