Week 6: Inquiry Learning

Inquiry learning is a process of education that focuses on the cognitive process more that simply producing results. So long have we been stuck in the stagnant puddle that is traditional 20th century education. This process of education focused more on teaching "What?" than "How?" and gauge a students capabilities by their ability to regurgitate facts. This process isolates may students because of on top of being boring, it does nothing to stimulate new ideas. 


Inquiry learning is like an ocean of relief, washing over the shores and cleaning the disease out of that old puddle. Students live in a world where they are literally swimming in information at all times. Inquiry learning teaches them how to stay afloat among this chaos and navigate there way to their learning goals by incorporating a structured process that forces them to make connections, practice,apply and reevaluate information to produce quality results. Its not simply finding an answer, its creating new ideas and providing a platform for further inquiry.






I plan to apply the eight principles of inquiry based learning to my area of focus, below is a breakdown of ideas and how i plan to apply the concepts.



Authenticity:

 I come from a background of teaching students video game design. I find that the best tactic for engaging them into wanting to do something as boring as video games is to first give them an example of a video game. Since Super Mario Bros is  essentially the archetype of what good game design is I usually start by showing it being played by projecting a game on the smart board. I then ask students to identify elementsof the game that make it fun. By identifying these elements I am planting seeds of what I expect from the games that they develop.








Deep Understanding and Performance of Learning


In order to gain a deep understanding for videogame design students must learn how to think in an abstract manner, that is, learning how to distinguish what an interaction looks like on screen from the logic behind making it happening. Students must learn the importance of the relationships between objects and how to use if-then statement and coding logic to simulate reality and create a game. This means I must provide them with tasks that require them to utilze these concepts in real  time, like having them build a simple game that introduces them to each concept in a simple way.



Assesment



The assessment element will be in the form of having daily performance goals, for example by day 3 having a three level game with different boss types. The goal will be general and as they race tp perform them, you add challenges that require them to dig deeper into how to apply concepts they learn into making a more professional looking product.



Appropriate Use of Technology


The very foundation of video game design is technology use, but traditionally ive limited what technology I used to the technology that I taught. Moving forward I will no longer limit my class to such constraints. I will discover ways to “extend” my content by use of a social interacting element like “Google Docs” or blogging so that students can continue to form conclusions about Game design even after they have left the physical confines of the classroom. I will also make use of
web 2.0 to create complementary material for my lessons.



Connecting with Experts



Due to my years with iD tech I have a few relationships with indie game designer.I could see if they are available to skype in and answer questions about the game design process and have them relate some of the tenants I teach to what actual game designers do when they are creating their art.



Success for All Students



One thing that will facilitate more moving forward is making sure students are active in each other projects or even having one whole class produce simply one game, with each student filling a role in the “game design company”. I think that students feel like they succeed most when it is among their peers and I want to provide as many opportunities for that in the way that I design my course. When they are not working on the same project I want them to have as many opportunities as possible to give each other feedback about their games.



Ethical Citizenship



I’m still searching for ways to add this component to a game design course. I feel like maybe the best and most natural avenue to awaken this concept is to have students understand the legal elements of piracy and copyright that they will have to address as they design their games.