TEDxBozeman - Paul Andersen - Classroom Game Design

Paul Andersen has been teaching science in Montana for the last eighteen years.  He explains how he is using elements of game design to improve learning in his AP Biology classroom.  Paul's science videos have been viewed millions of times by students around the world.  He was the 2011 Montana Teacher of the Year and he is currently a science teacher at Bozeman High School.  For more information on Paul's work visit http://www.bozemanscience.com.

Paul Andersen has been teaching high school science in Montana for the last seventeen years.  He has been teaching science on YouTube for the last three years. Paul began his career teaching all the science classes at a small rural school in northern Montana. Paul is currently an AP Biology teacher and technology mentor at Bozeman High School.  Paul uses technology and game mechanics to increase engagement in his classroom.  Paul is the 2011 Montana Teacher of the Year and was one of four finalists for National Teacher of the Year.

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Hello, my name is Mr. Anderson

and my classroom is a video game

I can't think of a better way to start

a story better than Alice falling down the rabbit hole

and she comes upon a bottle

and the bottle says simply "Drink me"

and so I am a teacher, so I wanna try to recreate that

so what I did is I left my computer in my class

and I had angry birds on it and then I had a card next to it

and it simply said the word "play"

and then I walked away

but I want to see what happened

so I left the webcam on

so I got a little video that kids come into class

so... Would you like to see that?

(Audience: Yeah!) Yeah... As if you have an option

Ha... Yeah...

I love how they take turns

And I love Jackson's eyes

if you watch him

Yes! Success!

So that look in his eyes, that look of learning

try something new and failing and try it again

is something we inspired to see in the eyes of our kids

we don't do that, a lot of the time it's glazed over look

and so I want to try to apply some of these dynamics into my classroom

so I grew up in 1980s

playing video games, and these video games taught me lessons

that I think we could apply to schools today

the first thing I learned, is the video games are fun

and school should be fun as well

unfortunately, most kids wouldn't say their school day is fun

however there are elements of school that all students love

they love seeing their friends, and they love learning

unfortunately they spend most of the day, just passively sitting down in front

Sitting, listening to a teacher lecture¶

so I think school should be fun

second thing I learned, is that failure is OK

If it takes you 8 times to clear the third elevator stage in donkey kong, that's OK

failure is simply part of a learning process

however, in schools, we tend to stigmatized failure

you don't take a quiz over and over and over agian

until you finally pass it

in fact, failure individuals

right now, failure in schools is highly stigmatized.

so I think we need to send a message that failure is OK!

The third thing I learned is the importance of leveling

This could be applied in schools in two ways

When a teacher decides to move in a specific pace

that's ok for some of the students in their class

but some of the students are automatically to be bored

some of the students are quickly gonna be confused

so I think students should be able to move on their own pace through mastery system

where they master a level and they can move on to the next one

they also should be able to level up

becoming more powerful as they learn new material in the class

I also think that, we give the wrong lecture at the beginning of the year

as I said the lecture at the beginning of the year, I would say,

You all have an A, from this point forward, you will fall precipitously , until eventually you land your final grade

no game will ever be designed this way

so one of the great thing to be a great teacher

is you have a summer break

Summer break is great because you get a break from school, but you also can reinvent your class

make it something that's never been before

if you try to do that during the year, if you try to make a radical changes, kids will just simply be confused

but if you change it during the summer, you make huge, swiping changes in your class

the kids will never know what hit them

So, this was my dream. I wanted to reinvent my class as a video game

but i didn't want kids just sit in front

and watch the video game like Oregon Trail

where the world in common Sandiego

I want to take them in most compelling elements

of gaming, then applied in the classroom

this took a lot of work, and so I had created a class, it's called "Biohazard 5"

It's got narrator, got the narrative, all the kids come together there

I've created about 150 podcast that take them through the lecture

and so when they get that point, they get kind of learned

I have all the special activities in class

that kids can applied the material that we're learning in the real world

I have a bunch of inquiry labs, this one right here, is a photo of synphetheis lab

you can see my students very riveted

they're studying photo synthesis using little chop we cut from a leaf

I've developed hundreds of questions that I have a mastery where the system

students can take quizzes over and over and over again

until they finally get it

I have a leveling system

so they start with zero experience point at the beginning of the year

I borrowed this from Lee Sheldon in the University of Indiana

so basically they coming on day 1

I invented the button level as the primordial soup cause I teach Biology

So they gain their experience point, and they can move their way up like dumble octpus,

and mountain gorilla, and maybe grand master at the end

I also have a leader board, so they play with the avatar

and they can see how they're doing in the class

how they're doing to against everybody else

this is the most popular resource in the class

kids are constantly logged in and see how they're stacked up

I also got a piloting set that of a iPad

so kids got an internet connected devices at all times

Finally, the summer was over

and I stood in front of the class

Like this, apparently

[laugh] and I said

Hello, my name is Mr. Anderson

and my class is a video game, so what I want you to do

is grab an iPad

I want you to logging into Biohazard 5

I want you to watch a video, I want you to do some reading

I want you to take a quiz, and head off the class

now if I have done this with my students' parents

that would be the most frustrating day of my life

but the kids grew up with the technology

and the technology today simply works

so they were headed off on their own

So my class, is a learning classroom

if you come in, you'll find the kids are reading, watching videos, applying,

doing special activities, trying to solve challenges, working together or working alone

so it's really need at the teacher come

we were just talking in the half way through the class

he said " well you created is like a shop class" cause he was a shop teacher once

he said

the shop teacher, you teach them some skills and the kids can apply that

so it's like that

I would love to keep telling you how great it is

how the test score seem to be going up

and how the kids learning how to learn independently

but I am a science teacher

and that's not what get us excited

in science, what gets us excited

is discovering something new

so I wanna talk about 3 ways that I failed

Number 1

a conventional classroom is like a school bus

where all the students were all logged in they just get on

and the teacher is like the bus driver

and it drives from point A to point B

you can make sure that all the students get there

so what I have done is like I get each of them

a brand new car, keys, and I said "Drive"

so some of them stalled out

and some of them raced ahead

and some of them drove right into a wall

so I need to get them more scaffolding next year

next thing I learned is the importance of reading

kids struggled with reading when you make your class independant

and I should've seen this coming because this is the biggest indicator of success

and I think the reason I didn't see it coming is that

I never stopped talking, because that's what good teachers do

we read the book, and then we come out with really good examples

then we present it in a really dynamic way

and the kids can just sit there

and then they can learn it

why would they want to read the book? we read it for them

so when I forced them to read the book

a lot of them struggled and we have to work with that

the last thing I learned, is that we're not Vulcans

In the most recent star trek movie

young Spock sits in a little module and he surrounded by computer screens

and the computer keeps throwing questions at him, and philosophy, and relativity

and that's his school day, just sits in a module like that

so a lot of people think they can change education by somehow use videos

or automating the learning process

that sucks, who would want to be at a school like that?

kids are coming to school to be social

so I add elements of social learning at the class to make it more compelling

This is a TED talk, all the good TED talks always end with a call to action

so what can you do?

I think schools need to move from a passive teacher-centered learning environment

to an active student centered environment

that's what I did

I was off to the side now, there's a mentor in the class

so how do we do that?

If you are a student, you get feedback to your teachers, everything I do in my class all I got

is a result of feedback I got from my students

what you do if you are a parent? Your write an email if you want your schools to change

the only emails I get from parents are complaining about their students grades

I never get "My students had an A in your class,

but I have a problem with the philosophy in your class"

that doesn't happen, so message you are sending to teachers

is that the grade is the only thing that's important

but maybe you're not a parent, and maybe you're not a student

but you are human

so what's the lesson? what's in the bottle?

what's in there it's your passion, it's the one thing you wanna do

can you figure out what my passion is? I love my family and I love teaching

and if you can drink that bottle, also remembering to fail, learn

and repeat the process over again, then I think you'll have a life worth living

Thank you