Continuing Adventures in Code Club (Week 5)

For some background to this please see my first post about Code Club...this post updates you on the next 4 weeks!

In week one we got most of the way through the first Code Club Scratch project, in week two we finished that and started project 2, in week 3...well you get the idea. By week 4 the kids were getting fairly staggered in where we were up to - a few had missed a week, and some were just generally working slower or struggling. Time to rethink how I managed the class.

By week 4 nearly all the kids had finished the first three projects which meant they could be awarded the Level 1 certificate:

This was a lovely occasion, and a chance to stop and review progress. It was also the time we realised we were a bit Scratch-ed out! So I decided to do something a little different for Week 5 onwards. They have all been given a letter to take home about how to download Scratch so they can carry on that way if they wish.

Week 5

I attempted to start the session with a Game Show with prizes via Zondle (which was to allow me to gauge whether they had learned anything!). Zondle is an online tool to make games out of multiple choice questions, based on the neuroscience of learning. There was already a good set of 10 questions around Scratch I could use. However due to a technical issue I haven't figured out yet the voting via the school netbooks didn't work and I hadn't prepared a lower tech option so this activity will be parked until we meet again after half-term.

I introduced the software 2DIY from 2 Simple Software as the main activity for the session. It offers a selection of game templates (platform games, mazes, driving games) as well as other activities. Each is supported by about 3 introductory tutorial videos, well pitched to years 5 and 6, which makes your job as the teacher easy (I found time to take a photo at last)! The kids very quickly get to grips with designing their games. We made a platform game today and the support required from the adults was noticeably lower than with Scratch.

A video introduction to 2DIY before we start

The rest of the hour flew by and they had all just about managed to complete a game including an introductort instruction screen and a chance to play each others games on the whiteboard. A quick vote at the end of the session, and 5 very clearly preferred 2DIY to Scratch - it was easier, with less instructions to read. Only one voted that they preferred Scratch - interestingly because he had understood you were actually programming, and could make it do anything you wanted.

I will stick with 2DIY after half term for one more week, and introduce some of the more advanced action script programming to satisfy the true coders in the group! I've been pointed to some great resources for doing this with 2DIY written by @skinnyboyevans. Many thanks.

After this, I'm not sure. I do want the final three in my group to complete Level 1 Scratch and get their certificates. I also want to do something with video, which I know they are excited by. I'm considering a week making websites on Weebly too. Any other ideas welcomed (but I only have 5 weeks!).

Games, Brains and Learning - The Importance of Reward Uncertainty

This afternoon I attended a School of Education event, 'Games, Brains and Learning' presented by Dr Paul Howard-Jones from the University of Bristol. He was offering a neuroscience perspective on the effect of games for learning. Apologies for any inaccuracies in my notes - I hopefully recorded the main argument that uncertain rewards makes for the most engaging forms of learning.

Dr Paul Howard-Jones explains neuroscience through games

The opening of the talk highlighted research showing that - yes - Google is rewiring your brain. Brains are plastic, learning anything changes the brain. Kids brains are especially plastic, so we should make sure we understand the effects of technology for them. Comparing studies from the 90s with current studies show that the impact of technology on the brain depends very much on how the technology is being used. This is Digital Hygiene in Paul's vocabulary. Not texting just before bed, exercising moderation etc.

Paul then moved on to talk about games and rewards. Games stimulate the brain's reward system, releasing dopamine, and this has a comparable effect to amphetamines (1 in 5 teens are addicted if you use normal criteria for measuring addiction).

Research looking at dopamine release shows that when the reward from the game is uncertain (optimised at a 50/50 chance) you get the dopamine release even if you don't 'win' the reward. This research proves that rather than games where you know you will succeed, in fact uncertain rewards are best. Our responses to rewards change as we get older, 15 year old boys are the most responsive to that type of reward. Dopamine release explains engagement - it's the "I want it now, sex, drugs and rock and roll" effect.

This mid-brain dopamine also explains learning (Synaptic plasticity) and explains why video games can be fantastic teachers. Playing the games improves many skills that are transferrable outside the game; performance, visual attention, suppression of distraction, contrast sensitivity, inference of outcome. We've seen the articles on how even non-game players can benefit from this: fighter pilots have to play video games now for training, laparoscopic surgeons improve their skills when playing on a Wii. Games provide exceptional levels of engagement and learning processes with the potential for both hazards and benefits.

Pauls research through several studies goes on to show that reward uncertainly increases engagement.
This view conflicts with Ofsted and traditional school approaches who like fairness and reward certainty. It is argued that making learning a game is just sugar-coating on the bitter pill of learning, but the research shows that the games increase the emotional response  for the learning and can transform the learning experience.

Spinning the wheel for a chance of double points on Zondle

In practice this works best when the pedagogy underpins the science of engagement. You need to intermingle the learning and the gaming. Keep raising the stakes to maintain the excitement. Ensure high risk as a reward response when competitors fail. Easy examples are designing multiple-choice questions with the ability to gamble your points. This gaming element allows the teacher to celebrate loss ("ahhh, you lost all your points") which can change the teachers persona.

As a result of his research Paul created Zondle as a platform for delivering learning maximising the uncertain reward dopamine effect. Zondle is free and web-based and has hundreds of questions ready for you to use. The Science behind Zondle explains why this works so effectively.

The takeaway message for me was most definitely the power of uncertain rewards. The higher stakes and risk of losing it all. It is making me rethink some of my own games, such as the Never-Ending Uni Quiz, which has a very simple consistent point scoring model, with no risks. This helps explain why it becomes boring quite quickly. It also makes me think about reward badges being predictably achievable and Pauls statistic that the optimum academic certainty for students is 87% and not the 100% you might have thought.

I don't know if Zondle as it stands has any potential at university, it is designed for schools, but I will be thinking about how to transfer the important elements into HE teaching. The gamification of education continues...

Adventures in Code Club

Code Club is a nationwide network of volunteer-led 
after school programming clubs for children aged 9-11. I heard Clare Sutcliffe, one of the Code Club founders, speak at TEDxBrighton in November last year and was sufficiently motivated to volunteer. Since then I have found out about the volunteering scheme at work, the STEM Ambassador scheme to support my volunteering and of course convinced my local school that they really want to offer this club!

And today, was Code Club number 1!

Code Club uses software called Scratch, specially designed to introduce kids to object oriented programming. I had some experience of Scratch as I'd been using it at home with my own children, so wasn't worried about that.

Getting the software installed at the school was more of a challenge, as that side of things was outside my control. The school uses netbooks and these are the machines the kids are most familiar with. For me, programming on a tiny screen and a touchpad is a no-no, but there wasn't really an option, and the kids didn't mind. I had a scare the day before when I checked and nothing had been installed - and was busy making contingency plans - but the IT support sorted it all out so we could work as planned. 

Checking the netbooks are charged on their trolley

Once you sign up for the club you get access to loads of resource - the activity sheets for each session and also certificates, registers and name badges! I printed up some stickers, which helped me remember the kids names as they arrived. The activity sheets are great - the ICT teacher complimented them especially. Once the kids know the basics they can plough on fairly independently.

Code Club name stickers

I was running the club alongside the school ICT coordinator, and was lucky enough to have additional help from the ICT leader at the local secondary school as well. This really helped as although we only had 11 children (3 girls, 8 boys - one of which was my son), they were so involved and interested they had millions of questions of how to do extra things as quickly as possible. We had some technical issues on the netbooks where the sound didn't work - opening a new project tended to sort this out. Although I might reconsider the use of sound as 11 computers all meowing/barking/drumming/howling gets a bit much quite quickly!

I let the kids customise their work as much as they liked - using their own choice of 'sprites' and backgrounds and sounds. We also introduced the idea of sharing their work on the Scratch website early on so they could see how the others were progressing.

The hour was very quickly over and we hadn't finished the first project - we'll try and finish it next time rather than moving straight on as I think it would be good for them to complete a game and have something they can show their friends and family online.

Everyone seemed to really enjoy the club - one boy proudly announced it was 'EPIC' as he left, so shall try and live up to that accolade next week!

TEDxBrighton 2012 - Sharing and Shared Experiences

Today was a full-on inspiration day for me at TEDxBrighton 2012. I loved the event last year, and this year was even better. A great set of speakers, lovely venue at the Dome and interesting people everywhere.

For a write up on the sessions, I suggest you read Adam Tinworth's live blog posts (includes video of us all being encouraged to be the #TEDxBrighton choir). In this post I just wanted to tell you a few of my highlights, take-home thoughts and actions!

Creating a Doll/Cow toy-hack in the coffee break

Sharing. 

The final session of the day was Benita Matofska on Sharing, and although the conference theme was 'The Generation Gap' for me 'Sharing' was the real message. I want to share, and I do have skills to share. Which means I will try and see through something I've been interested in for a while...Code Club (Clare Sutcliffe). Volunteering in a local primary school to teach kids how to programme. How to go beyond just using software but instead producing it - making the computer do what you want.

Shared experiences was another kind of sharing the day focussed on. The choir as part of Tessa Marchington's talk was a practical example of this, but the whole day was a shared experience. Even down to the lunch - a great model where you assembled your own packed lunch and sat around big open tables which really encouraged you to talk to strangers. Turns out it is quite a small world after all and they weren't strangers for long...

The various events and activities surrounding the conference were also all about sharing. The photo is of me taking part in the 'toy hack' - sharing old toys and creating some new from them. Maybe my cow-with-a-dolls-head is slightly freaky, but I gladly shared it back to the group and hopefully it made someone smile!

There was also a theme of compassion and sharing of yourself. One of the talks mentioned giving your undivided attention to something, which I know is something I am poor at. I was also struck by the comments on being a 'Leader' rather than a 'Manager', treating your team with compassion and working on keeping a young and open brain (Tim Drake) at any age.

So that's my food for thought, and I looked forward to another set of thought-provoking talks next year. It was so good I even bought the t-shirt.

Running a Conference game - Twitter and Leaderboarded at #FOTE12

The final leaderboard for #playfote12

Background to conference games

For a few years I've been interested in ways of making conferences more fun to try and facilitate networking and add an extra layer of playfulness for people who like that kind of thing...first there was Murder at ECEL, then badges for tweets and most recently GPS treasure hunts. So when my colleague Nic Whitton was asked to speak at FOTE on Games and Learning it seemed the logical next step to create a game to exemplify exactly what she was talking about (see my 'advert'), so along with Alex and Simon we brainstormed a game, and here is the story of #playfote12...

How it worked 

Questions and tasks were tweeted from the conference twitter account @FOTiE using the hashtag #playfote12. The main conference hashtag was #fote12 and I elected not to use this to allow people not playing to not have their stream cluttered with the game. The main point scoring opportunities were around a question posted for each session relating to the content of the session, aiming to improve engagement with the content.

Example of a question, first to answer 5 points, otherwise 1 point

I had also requested presenters hide images of potatoes in their slides, which, when spotted, acted as bonuses. The final element was of sabotage - physical evil potatoes were hidden around the sponsors area and when spotted would deduct points from the current leader.

Evil potatoes hiding throughout the day for bonus points

The Technology

Some questions were collated in advance using a google spreadsheet provided to the speakers and then Twitter was used on the day for asking the questions. I used Tweetdeck to manage the different streams - watching the game hashtag to score responses, replies to my tweets as well as the main conference tag.

Managing the game through Tweetdeck

My colleague Marion captured the scores and recorded everything in a pre-prepared Google spreadsheet which totalled the players points across the various elements of the game. The comments feature on the spreadsheet also gave us a simple chat system to discuss any questions.

Then, my favourite element was the use of Leaderboarded.com to pull all the scores and Twitter usernames from the google spreadsheet into the playfote12 leaderboard. It's a simple way to create your own professional looking leaderboard.

Configuring the link between the spreadsheet and leaderboarded - easy!

Leaderboarded also lets you customise and style your leaderboard. So I swapped in some great Tour de France jersey graphics (thanks again Marion) so we could show them on the board and also have physical stickers the players could wear to match their rank.

The leaders showing off their accumulated stickers

10 Hints and Tips for running a twitter leaderboard game at a conference: 

The giant leaderboard and me with the matching stickers

1. Expect 10%* of the delegates to actively join in with the game (35 out of 350), of which a few (3 in this case) will get completely immersed.

 2. Screensavers! Your leaderboard is beautifully projected but next time you check it's all gone black. It's not very green, but for the duration of the event tell the screen to stay on. Even worse if you have to enter a password to unlock the screen and it isn't your laptop...

3. Transparent scoring, people pretend to be cool and casual but are actually miffed when you didn't explain things. Of course I was caught on the hop a few times, I hadn't thought about how to score if someone RT'd someone else's answer, or if bonuses reset. Also make sure points are not so big a leader can't be caught but are big enough points mean movement in the ranks (see 10.)

4. Decide if the prizes are an incentive, and if so, let people know what they are playing for. I didn't, but once handed out people said they would have played if they knew there was a £50 top prize.

5. Too many gimmicks? I don't think I needed the stickers. I wanted to match the virtual leader board with physical badges, but players weren't that fussed about collecting them and I found it hard to give out stickers to people I didn't know as twitter avatars aren't much to go on.

Potatoes in the slides

6. Presenters are game for a laugh. Nearly all the presenters put at least one potato (/chips/potato head) into their slides. It got non-players really curious too. Fun to see the cameras pop out in the audience whenever one appeared. I think you could use the presenters and their slides more with little effort on their part.

 7. Having an assistant was brilliant. I could concentrate on the tweeting and thinking up questions and challenges, while she dealt with the responses and recording scores. It also gave us both someone to double check things with when questions/responses came up we hadn't anticipated.

8. Insist on the hashtag. The main stream is moving too fast to watch and too fast to rewind and look for answers that didn't include the tag. Using the wrong hashtag didn't help either!

9. Write off the conference for yourself. Theres too much to do to try and also follow the content of the sessions well, I was there all day, but don't quiz me on the sessions, I'll have to watch the recordings later.

10. Don't publish too often. I wanted to build suspense - especially at the end, so by publishing updates every 20 mins it gave the leaderboard more interest. I do admit to massaging the scores slightly, as I didn't like the appearance when there were loads of 'no change' ranks, the graphics were nicer when people moved up and down the rankings. So accumulate changes with big enough scores that people move about.

An exciting end game tweeted by the winner @julievoce

Future Research

I asked around during drinks at the end to get some feedback from non-players. They all knew about the game, it had been highly visible, but their reasons for not playing were:

• Following conference and twitter is already too much, adding a game layer on top of that is just ridiculous!
• Some don't tweet. 
• Some think it's silly/unprofessional to get involved

I think it achieved high visibility even if people chose not to join in:

Example tweet from @ChrisParrTHE on the game impact

From those I spoke to who played, their reasons for playing were all the same - because they could, because it was a bit of fun.


And finally...

*Why only 10% who play? Why only 1% who obsessively play? We've seen this breakdown before in other games, and it's the 90-9-1 principle that governs so much of internet culture. Does it govern culture in general? Does it apply to all games or just internet based games? Can it be changed? I will try to find out.

Social Media and Student Retention

I have been thinking lately about how the power of social media can help support students personally and in their studies in order to help them stick with their course when they might otherwise think of leaving.

Alongside their public Facebook pages, the University of Brighton are running four campus based closed groups on Facebook this summer. The groups are for current students and especially applicants to socialise and ask questions prior to arriving at university. The response to these groups is amazing, it's certainly something the students are embracing with open arms. But does Facebook actually make a difference?

Here are two resources I have spotted recently:

9 Signs Social Engagement Helps Student Retention
This blog post from OnlineUniversities.com looks at how social engagement can improve retention. One point it makes, that rings true with my experience, is how important the relationships made in the first year are to continued success. Social media is a great way to build relationships early, especially student/tutor relationships. The post also talks about the transition into university, and the Facebook groups I mention above are a good way of making sure that students have started building a support network for themselves before they even arrive, something not possible just a few years ago.

Northampton University first to use Facebook as student portal
This article describes the decision to use Facebook rather than a local system for communicating with students, and also improving communication with parents, alumni and applicants. In their words: "the new platform is designed to function as the first port of call for communicating with students, providing them with any necessary information that previously would have only been accessible through the university website." Although not explicit in the article I assume the rationale is that Facebook is where the students are already so why not go to them there?

I agree Facebook can be incredibly useful as a communication channel, but think there probably needs to be a line of where it is most effective ie don't use it for everything just yet! Learning Environments such as Blackboard or Moodle have all the features built in to support learning and teaching and Facebook cannot replace these, but it is excellent at providing socialising opportunities. Some things somehow have more credibility when hosted internally. By using the tools available in appropriate ways and integrating the best features we can hopefully provide an optimal experience. Something we're working on!

Running a GPS Treasure Hunt - Hints and Tips!

Yesterday I ran a GPS treasure hunt as part of our staff conference. As this was new to me I sought advice from the ever-helpful @veggieg3ek as well as some friendly guinea-pigs at work so I offer you my materials and some tips based on my results to try this yourself!

My GPS Treasure Hunters heading off into the campus

I prepared this document for the players to take out on the treasure hunt with them. As I was basing the hunt in a venue I had no control over, and little familiarity with, I chose not to hide treasure but instead identify a sign with some words blanked out - completing the missing words would provide evidence they has correctly reached each location. This only required one visit around the site a few days in advance to note coordinates and take a photo, and then a little effort in Photoshop to prepare the clues:

Example clue (...this gate shut)

At the event I paired up the players to make sure there was at least one phone/device between them and one copy of the form to complete (I also made sure they had a bottle of water each as it was a hot day!)

Tips:

1. Only use landmarks that aren't going to change - signs written on windows seem a good idea, but if they are washed off between you taking the photo and completing the treasure hunt you end up with frustrated players....clue 9 (pictured) was a bit of a disaster.

Watch out for window washers...

2. Who knew there were so many formats for giving GPS co-ordinates? The iPhone Compass app gives DMS (degrees, minutes, seconds), Garmin devices give DM and the free apps on a Windows Phone give D. Because I was reliant on participants using their own devices I offered all three formats using an online tool to convert them.

Three formats for co-ordinates

This first clue was at the start point for the hunt, so we used this to calibrate which format coordinates each teams device was showing, so they always knew, for example, to look at the bottom set of co-ordinates.

3. It takes longer than you think! I allowed players 45 minutes to wander round the campus, solve the eleven clues and head back in time for a chat about potential uses of this format. This was nowhere near long enough! The second time this activity ran I removed two of the clues and it still wasn't long enough. I think 6 clues would have been plenty for an activity like this. 

4. What is your 'treasure'? I couldn't actually leave treasure to be found, but if I had more control of the playing area I would have liked to plant clues at each location which had to be found to lead on to the next location. Or, in true geocaching style, I would have liked to leave small rewards. The photo solution I used worked fine and was logistically easier - my 'treasure' was a prize to the team who found the most clues in the shortest time (a mug each).

5. What is this useful for? Well I designed it as a light-hearted competition for people to play as part of a conference with an opportunity to try GPS devices. The feedback from my players was that it was a fun activity and that you could also use it for:

• Students locating residences/classrooms
• Introduction to public ways and other facilities
• finding RFID tagged library books on shelves
• Introduction/orientation to com[us/library for new students
• As an enrolment activity
• As an activity based on a map before students start

If you want to try this particular treasure hunt yourself it is based on the University of Sussex campus, starting at the BSMS building. Skip clue 9 (as it's been washed off) and clue 11 (as it's undercover and the coordinates aren't really accurate enough to find it!).