This post was originally published at kpk12.com/blog on January 17, 2014
A few months ago I
decided to join the throngs of folks who were playing Candy Crush Saga. My kids
had been playing for a while and other adults I know had dabbled a bit with the
game. At first, I found the game to be a bit sophomoric, but then I hit level
33 and realized that the game can be a little challenging at times. I stuck
with it and this weekend I realized that I’ve actually learned a lot about good
education from my Candy Crush addiction experiment.
When you start
playing Candy Crush, there are only a couple of candy colors to play with and
limited obstacles in your way. Mastery comes relatively easy and encourages you
to play on. As you master the beginning levels there are new colors, new obstacles,
and new episodes (levels where new layers of complexity are added). In
education, when we are learning something new we start at the beginning to
build our foundation. Once we have the basics down we learn more, apply our
knowledge in new ways, and better understand the intricacies of our knowledge.
Think of your K-12 education where you started math by counting but by the end
you were able to understand the derivative of a double angle (hopefully). Candy Crush is a great example of Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development.
In Candy Crush,
sometimes you succeed and sometimes you fail. Yes, you literally FAIL! I know
this because I’ve experienced it first-hand and listen sympathetically (not
really) when my husband complains that he sees the “you failed” message. But
the truth of the matter is that in real life, we fail all the time. Thomas Edison failed 10,000 times, yet we don’t view him as a failure. In
Candy Crush, when you fail a level you just start over and try again, just like
Edison. Failure is an iteration in the Candy Crush world. However, in education
sometimes we accept failure as the end of the event and not an opportunity to
reboot. If my son fails an Economics test at the end of the chapter, that’s his
grade and they move onto the next chapter. He doesn’t have the option to
attempt the material again or show mastery at a later date. It’s pass or fail
at a given point in time and the march goes on.
This model doesn’t encourage real learning or mastery. Instead it sends
the message that failure is bad and can’t be overcome.
In Candy Crush
Saga, you earn a life every thirty minutes, up to a five live maximum.
Sometimes I can blow through all of those lives in a matter of five minutes.
When this happens I have to wait to earn more lives. This is the game’s way of
pacing me so that I don’t rush through everything. It forces me to take a break
(or change the time on my iPad) and clear my head. It’s harder for me to get
burned out this way. We should allow students the same opportunity to take
break and come back to something when the going gets too frustrating. “A
growing body of evidence shows that taking
regular breaks from
mental tasks improves productivity and creativity — and that skipping breaks can
lead to stress and exhaustion” (New York Times, June 2012).
New episodes in
Candy Crush introduce new challenges and objects. If I don’t know what a new
piece is or how it will behave I have two options. I can experiment with it and
see if I can figure it out on my own or I can visit the Candy Crush Wikia and learn more. The wikia is a
collaborative site created by Candy Crushites (I just made that up) that shares
tips and tricks to help you understand and master Candy Crush. I can choose to
experiment or collaborate when I’m confronted with the unknown. These are both
great strategies that may be underutilized in the classroom. In fact,
collaboration and experimentation (problem-solving) are both recognized as
important 21st century skills.
Candy Crush is a
free download and while I’ve never personally paid for any extra lives or
boosters, the Atlanta Journal and Constitution reports that Candy Crush Saga makes over
$860,000 a day in revenue. This is a staggering amount of revenue and clearly
indicates that there is a large population of folks who are willing to pay to
continue on their journey. I think there is more to be learned about education
from Candy Crush and am already drafting part two of this post. In the
meantime, I’m going to continue my Candy Crush Saga adventure – level 263 is
vexing me.
Uh,huh. I can see the expense acct Evergreen gets for 'research keys'.
ReplyDeleteSo I spent this morning looking at MOOCulus from OSU. Along with the videos, it's got the smart engine looking at how you do the exercises and where you are struggling.
Which is interesting if it works for one person. But what happens when 10,000 people do the exercises and the program and its designers can look at fine-grained data about what helps and what doesn't? If you haven't seen Prof. Fowler's video on this, it's worth a look: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pj-C0JVY6mY&feature=youtu.be
For myself, having been distracted from my scheduled work already, I set about to thinking on 'badging' MOOCulus for HS students.
Of course, the real question isn't how Ed would badge it, or how Mr. Johnson in Ashtabula would badge it, but how we get a community around each of these possible things to make the badge design smarter and more available to all.
So what if 2000 Ohio HS students completed MOOCulus next year? Not just from the big, rich schools, but from across Ohio's 600 districts?
What would those students tell their peers and families about blended learning? How would expectations begin to change?
What else is already out there that students might learn in a pre-gamified way?
Great post. But...don't tempt me into this addiction! I'm still trying to make room for The Radix Endeavor http://education.mit.edu/projects/radix-endeavor