10 Days of Pokemon Go: One Educator's Perspective

There's something about summer that makes us feel whimsical.  As we don our sunglasses, feel the sun, and open car windows, our inner self starts to relax.  I was in a summer mood when my friend Tim- a working IT professional in his mid 40s - told me that he was playing Pokemon Go, and found it to be fun.  My usual dubious, anti-gaming, mom self was inexplicably set aside, and, in the name of education and  exploration,  I decided to try it. Together, we downloaded it, and took our first Pokemon Go walk.

Day 1: Go!

This is amazing!  It actually knows where I am; I can see the streets appear around me as I walk, and blue "PokeStops" appear in the distance as I walk. I create my avatar with purple hair and a matching outfit and we set forth into our shared space. My world is now filled with PokeStops and Pokemon (Pocket Monsters)  buzzing my phone, challenging me to catch them.  The fact that when you click on the stops they fill in with an actual photo of the area made me wonder about the blurring of lines between virtual and real for young kids. The Pokemon move with a liveliness and animation that teases me to just try to catch them; my PokeBalls were jumped over and dodged time and time again with ease. Each Pokemon has a name and type, and points are given by the type of catch you make. Once you catch one, it is added to your Pokedex.  Points. points, points for everything. Spin the Pokestop medallion, and the balls and other useful tools fly out to you....not unlike a roulette wheel, except you win every single time. Gambling addiction, anyone?

Day 2: Scaffolded Learning

Breaking learning into chunks and then providing a way to approach each chunk is scaffolded learning. Pokemon has this concept down pat.  You start with easy-to-catch Pokemon at first.  "Gotcha!"  There is music and sound effects as well, but I never had my sound turned up.) There are PokeGyms that appear on the screen, but when you click on it as a beginner, it says, "You will be able to go to the gym after you reach Level Five." You get good at what you are doing in steps.  Every time something new appears or is caught, there is a one-sentence explanation of what it is and what that means. There are lots of chances to succeed - PokeStops everywhere! Pokemon appearing again and again!  - and no one knows how many times it takes you to catch one; if you keep trying, you can keep winning. Pokemon-Go is constructed like a  "safe assignment," something I have been promoting  in my courses; giving students lots of chances to self-assess without worrying about being graded; lots of smaller assessments for students to check and see how they are doing as they learn, rather than one or two large tests.

It is a very upbeat and positive distraction. Emphasis on distraction; since it is so immediate and intertwined with your own life (when I went to the beach, Pokemon-Go went with me; when you play in the evening, the screen turns to night-time colors.)  It is almost like your own life has expanded. The Google orange man has been around for a while, what was missing was the engagement. There have to be ways we can incorporate these concepts into learning.  I imagined a Quizlet-Go; a program that has vocabulary words that you have to "catch" with their definition of things around you and related concepts. 

Day 3: Growth Mindset

Perseverance is worth a lot when it comes to learning; seeing yourself as being able to succeed and failure as a chance to learn are keys to a growth mindset.  Pokemon Go helps to hone this mindset, as you have numerous chances to fail and then try again and again to win.  You can move ahead, as I did, with no experience in gaming culture, but simply the determination to make it to the next level. I did not feel frustration at having to keep finding PokeStops to gather more balls, but enjoyed the process. By deciding to move to another level, I then did so simply by persevering; no matter that some were caught easily and some not.  Along the way I collected some badges that also worked to nudge me forward; 10 Water Pokemon! 10 Insect Pokemon!  These things encouraged me to keep going, in spite of the fact that it often took me numerous attempts to catch those silly things.

Day 4: Walk to incubate!

There is a lot of research that points to the benefits of exercise and the brain; learning is increased when the body moves. Many educators such as myself make sure students have a chance to shift gears every once in a while to increase learning, and moving to another table in the room, shifting from listening to a lecture to group work,  is enough of a change in the environment to refresh the brain. Pokemon Go not only refreshes the brain with new Pokemon, they slowly bring in various types of winnings at PokeStops besides the beginner's PokeBall. Occasional eggs started appearing at PokeStops, and I learned how to put them in incubators. I have 2 km and 5 km incubators; those eggs will hatch with even more powerful Pokemon after, and only after, I have walked those distances. This means, walk with your phone. This means, keep playing.  Constant engagement: brilliant. "Gamification" in education is huge, but we are nowhere near this level of engagement. Yet.

Day 5: Level Up!

I became a Level 5 and was eligible for the PokeGym.  This could be my nature, it could be because I don't know enough about it, but the thought of battling other Pokemon did not interest me.  I kept walking, catching, and incubating. By this time, my husband John was way ahead of me.  The points pulled him in, and I noticed that he was reading the information more carefully than I was,  (when you capture one and it says "Great!" you get more points than when  you capture one and it says "Nice!" (Or maybe visa-versa; you can see how important this is to me.) I have to say this struck me as a male/female thing. He was going for the gold. I was enjoying the process.

Day 6: Trampled

Soon after, my husband John  confessed that he had gone to a PokeGym. He had used his strongest Pokemon, a crab type creature called Paras.  He had expected that a trainer would be there, and he would be able to learn what to do, in a step-by-step style, as we had been doing all along.  Instead, his crab had been instantly beaten. In his words, Trampled.  We ain't in Kansas no more... This is a PokeGym.  It was like walking into a final thinking you are fully prepared, and flunking because none of the material was covered in class.  Whoops. Pokemon Go dropped the ball here - so to speak -  at least from a beginner's perspective.

Day 7: A Community...of Sorts

When you play Pokemon Go, you talk to others who are playing too. That means the UPS driver, the guy next to you in the parking lot, the people sitting on the bench near you.  People exchange tips and ask what level you are. Most of the people I talked to were in their 30's and younger. Other players seemed happy to see someone of my generation (= old) playing.  Non-playing friends thought I was joking; they shook their heads in disbelief; my esteem visibly falling before my eyes.  They all but said it: "What a waste of time."  For the first time in my life, I was at the other end of the disappointed glare that I have given my sons in the past.

You notice duos, and trios of kids playing as they walk down the street, completely engrossed. "Watch where you are going" and "Do not Trespass" the game warns in intervals. The game has brought them outside, and has brought them together.  This is impressive and important. It is a community builder; if you consider they are all in a classroom, it is the kind of classroom community where people are sharing and helping each other.  Both the educator and mom parts of me appreciate that, but both the educator and mom parts of me also know that real community needs more interaction than just playing a game next to each other. We have to be careful when we talk about community, as (in my mind)  it involves interactions. There is also some level where race plays into this, as I (white) am not worried about walking around randomly with this game in hand, but someone else may be perceived as a threat.   On some level, it is a game of privilege, as you play it on a smartphone, with a lifestyle that allows you to choose this diversion.

Day 8: Free Catches!

We visited our 24-year old son Brian  in Bellingham, WA, and my husband discovered with excitement a Lure Module; someone had switched on a feature that lures Pokemon to the area and anyone there can benefit by being able to capture Pokemon easily.  We went near the area and stood on a street corner and there were Pokemon everywhere to catch, sprinkled into the air were cherry blossoms-like petals of celebration. We busily caught Pokemon.  Our son stood next to us and watched, incredulous.

Day 9: Perspective Shift

On Day 9,  I started to notice the "distracted listening" syndrome in myself and others. We are pretending to listen - and even feeling like we are participating - in conversations around us, but one eye is on the game. We casually attempt to catch a Pokemon as we wait for an order to arrive, or while walking to the car, for example.  I knew I was doing it, but it didn't start to bother me until I was driving, and my husband John, riding shotgun, was trying to catch Pokemon and get balls from Pokemon stops at 50 mph.  I felt like I was chauffeuring a young teen around, even though he tried valiantly to cover.  I began to feel myself turn from experimenting educator to exasperated mom mode.   I could see that this could potentially affect our relationship if we continued along these lines.  (Playing "a little" is probably not an option that will work very well. How much is a little?)

Day 10: Pokemon Stop

The next day I  reached Level 8, and  I decided it was time to stop.  At this point John is a Level 15.   This is probably a typical female/male sample of difference in gaming. I could see how it could be fun to keep playing, of course, but I also felt like actively playing was interfering with too many thoughts and ideas that I am compelled to use in my work and life, and at this incredible moment in education, there are too many other things to explore.

I am happy I experienced Pokemon Go, and actually had more fun than I expected.  It has been truly educational, and I know it could easily be used for subjects such as local geography (PokeStops are usually small places of distinction that we often don't notice)  math (distances walked, points, percentages) and even writing (who is your Avatar?)  You could even get creative with surveys of Pokemon Go users for communication studies, and there must be ways this can be tied to coding.  It reinforced my ideas about scaffolding and engagement, and as an online teacher, I am convinced we need to find ways to utilize more of that. Pokemon Go was exactly what is it supposed to be: Fun. But I don't want it to take over my life, so I am stopping.

At least for now.

#OUTCOMES

     
     I am just finishing checking and collecting course outcomes for almost 500 courses at our college. That means over 2,000 outcomes, in an epic spreadsheet, ready to be added to our website. It so happens that this year I have also become a co-facilitator in several Quality Matters workshops offered by our state system as well, all of which focus on course outcomes, alignment of outcomes  with assignments, and assessment. That means that this year I have had the opportunity to take a very close look at hundreds of course pieces; syllabi and modules and rubrics and discussions on how to improve all of the above. For someone who loves building curriculum (I also spend a lot of time developing and facilitating other professional development courses for educators as well) this has been a fantastically fascinating (albeit time-consuming) experience.

     The outcome of this?  I have a new respect for the power of outcomes and what they can do for both faculty and students. They help faculty deeply consider the main aspects of their course and how to best bring that to the students.   To not get too distracted or stray too far off course. They help students see what it is they are going to get out of a course, and - especially with the help of rubrics - what the expectations are for how they will get there. Clear language regarding outcomes helps to bring an immediacy to the learning experience.  Together, the faculty and students strive to work through the activities;  to remember, understand, apply, analyze, evaluate and create.  (I have made a list of Bloom's action verbs available on our Canvas LMS help tab for faculty to easily refer to when writing their outcomes.)

     Writing outcomes takes some thought; it is a process that is something akin to painting an abstract picture. It requires expressing your thoughts about a whole course in a few succinct sentences. (Later, this helps you to break down each module you teach to support those course outcomes as well.) Many faculty teach with a very general idea of what needs to be done, adjusting as they go based on student needs, time, and materials.  Most have no time to write formal lesson plans, per se. Outcomes should respect this need for creativity and on-the-fly adjustments; they should not confine that very important personal aspect of teaching. They need to convey the general underlying concepts, not the details of any given course. And they are most powerful when they address the truly meaningful aspects of learning.  

    Thoughtful outcomes create an improved pathway for both faculty and students. I look forward to the continued journey in working with more and more faculty on outcomes and their related aspects. Outcomes, like online learning, are becoming a part of the 21st century learning experience, and can be artfully embedded into any course. If we embrace them and allow them to help us teach, our classes will become all the more vibrant. 

PARK | Flickr - Photo Sharing! : taken from - https://www.flickr.com/photos/winnybiets/27862291556/Author: winny biets https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

Online Learners all get the Front Row

     In the online classroom,  every student in the class is in the front row.  Everyone can see and hear. You don't have to worry about your voice carrying, or that someone can't read your writing on the whiteboard. No one is jumping up and leaving when the bell rings, questions unanswered.  No one is dominating the class so that others can't talk.  There is less chance for the conversation to go off-topic, and zero chance that you have to repeat yourself because someone is late. 


     This means that online teaching can be as surprisingly time-consuming and exhausting as it is rewarding and exciting. While we have the chance to interact with each student as an individual with our feedback, that can take a lot of effort in larger courses.  And while there is a growing array of tools to use to create active learning environments for our students,  becoming experts on what and how to use them takes time and effort.  We have to stay on our virtual toes all the time; it is a different mindset to being "on" for a class period.  It is a shift in perspective that requires intentional adjustments. 

    But the more I teach online the more I think it is ultimately well worth the shift. I have found that I get to know so many students on a personal basis online, and the format has given them a chance to help me  not just by with my typos (which happens more often than I like to admit) but by pointing out relevant articles and contributing amazing posts and ideas that there simply is no venue for in a ground classroom. Hybrid has long been my favorite format, but as my schedule has become filled with creating and facilitating more and more online courses, I am gaining a deeper appreciation of what it can bring to our learning experiences. 

Care and Feeding of Online Students

A few weeks ago I attended a conference for Higher Education administrators from Community Colleges with a focus on Big Data. Big Data, we heard, is Huge. Massive. A Big Deal: We can now look at user behavior by counting  mouse clicks as people navigate a website, see how many page views and what time of the day a student is doing homework, and break that down even further; maybe we can even start to tell students what time of day they study best, by looking at their results.  We can see where online students get stuck, giving educators an idea of how to better explain things.  With Big Data, we don't ask questions and look for the answer; the "data-first philosophy" mashes together the information from social networks and everywhere else on the web and we gain insights from what it tells us.  And the cost is low; we can experiment often, looking for correlation rather than causation. It has turned analysis on its head, and everyone is bubbling with its potential.

The burning question among educators, as we shift our courses to various new models of blended and online learning, is: How can we make our students (especially those online students) more successful? (In other words, retention, retention, retention.) Obviously the online class has incredible potential; besides the time and money in transportation alone it frees up for the very busy community college student -  many of whom are studying in a second language, are single parents and working at least part time - the online environment offers pathways to information and tools that can enhance, supplement and support learning at every level.  The answer to that, from what I could gather from the Big Data experts, is to use the now-incredible power of data to analyze performance, use course analytics and hire very specialized experts in Big Data to glean how students are performing and how to make them perform better.   (The "low cost" part breaks down a bit here.)

I am happy for Big Data; what a wonderfully useful tool to come out of our computer lives!  But the whole time I listened to the presentations (many of which were coming from people involved with companies standing to benefit from Big Data users) I felt a nagging concern.

No one was talking about caring.  The way to make any student stay involved is to make a personal connection and recognize that student as an individual.  Even in my MOOC, even more than I expected, I was able to connect with my students by being a part of the discussions, responding as much as possible to as many as possible. ( I facilitated it along with doing my regular job, spending an hour in the morning and a few hours in the evenings checking in and answering questions.) I also structured the course so that the students had a chance to learn about themselves and each other as an integral part of the learning experience.  We had a Facebook page, used twitter (#CnHyBest) and I made frequent announcements and updates, sometimes incorporating student responses.   One of my early tweets was, "This MOOC classroom is so vibrant and international...can feel the energy pulsing from the computer!" Over a third of the active participants completed the final project for a certificate of completion...a very high rate for a MOOC course.

Caring doesn't sound very academic and it certainly isn't as new as Big Data. But I think any course that has a strong element of caring will retain more students than a course with low teacher-student interaction.  The key is having an involved teacher who is trained not just in the subject matter but also to listen, watch for falters, be ready to gently cajole,  try new things, and convey a sense of enthusiasm.  Online teaching allows us so much more than more data; it allows us to have personal conversations with many people, and for them to have conversations with each other.  We should be looking at it as a chance to get personally involved with our student success. MOOCs aside,  the online teacher can reach each and every student in a way that empowers and motivates them.  Each teacher needs to embrace the idea that we can have an effect on student lives beyond the subject matter. This is a skill that needs to be understood and talked about as much as anything else when it comes to student success.

This was on my mind when I saw a quote by the Dalai Lama on a friend's facebook page : "Open your arms to change, but never let go of your loving kindness."  I created the infographic below thinking that I want to get more of a conversation going about this aspect of online teaching among educators.   For increased student success, the answer is so clear.

(By the way I will be teaching the course again starting Oct. 21st; you can find it at The Canvas Network - Hybrid Courses: Best of Both Worlds.)