My husband and I love to play the LEGO video games and have played quite a few of them including The Lord of the Rings, Indiana Jones, Pirates of the Caribbean, among others. There is something about these games that are rated E for everyone that makes them irresistible to us even as adults. Here's a quick demo of The Lord of the Rings LEGO game so you can get the gist:
In each of these video games you play through either one movie, or a series of movies in which each level is a segment of the game. To beat a level one must simply make it to the end of level.
As you play through the level you collect coins either by destroying LEGO structures or by defeating enemies.
You also have four health markers and if you are attacked you lose "hearts." If you lose hearts you "die" which is essentially losing a quantity of the coins you collected and regenerating. You lose coins until you have no more but then the game continues and there is no consequence. You continue to collect coins and move throughout the level.
As this game is made for younger children one can always make it through the level, that is not the challenge.
Getting through the level is one accomplishment that counts towards your percentage through the game. The goal is to beat the entire game by reaching 100%. To do this you must collect a certain number of coins in each level, find 10 artifacts, and a red brick. When you reach the number of coins required in a level you get something called a "true adventure" or "true pirate" or true something-or-other depending on what game you are playing. Each artifact that you find is a part of a trophy that is eventually completed (if you get all 10 artifacts) for each level. The red brick that you find unlocks a certain skill, such as one that attracts coins to you, that you can then buy with your collected coins.
To completely beat the game you must do these three things for each level. You do not have to accomplish each of these goals in one turn of the level. In fact it becomes easier if you play again. The first time through the level you are limited to a certain character (or characters if playing with two people) and those characters have certain skills. With those certain skills you cannot do everything in the level and find all of the artifacts. As you move through the levels, you either rescue or unlock characters that can do certain actions. After you play the level once, you can free play the level using any characters that you have available and you can interchange between them during game play.
These games are not extremely difficult but they do require a certain level of team-work (if playing with another person) and strategy.
So why did I just explain this awesome series of video games? Why do you people out there that care about education care about these games built for kids? If my husband and I, as grown adults, find some challenge and fun in these games, imagine how a younger player may feel. These principles are ones that should be applied to education. In the LEGO games you may fail but you instantly get to try and try again. You get to set your own goals and determine whether you want to play through the game to get 100% completion or if you are just content playing through the game or story of the movie. This game is very open ended and encourages exploration in each level. Players are free to choose where the wander, what they want to destroy, and how much time to spend in each part of the level. These are all concepts that would make education truly better. Students should feel that it is ok to be wrong and to fail with numerous chances to succeed. They should be challenged and set their own goals. So many of these concepts can apply to education...this post isn't necessarily about video games being included in the classroom but more about being aware of why students will sit and play video games for hours. Hopefully this post provided some insight about how we can make education more like a video game.
Video game creators and educators have a similar audience in mind, and maybe we should learn a few lessons from them!
Kaitlynn,
ReplyDeleteThank you for your post. It is great to hear that you and your husband enjoy playing these LEGO games together—it's the simple things.
I enjoyed reading your description of the game as well as the connections you made between education and video games, but your last comment, for me, carried significant weight.
Collaboration can be an effective tool for mutual or individual benefit. Before this assignment, I had not thought of the relationship between video game makes and educators. It is interesting to see that even very diverse groups, subjects, or career paths may have common themes or goals. Being such, before dismissing a potential collaboration, it is prudent to first search for and identify those shared themes or goals. There is a lot to be learned from those around us provided that we spend the time and energies to establish the connections.
Hi Kaitlyn!
ReplyDeleteI love your explanation of Lego video games! Personally I played Lego Star Wars when I was a little younger and I absolutely love it and wish I still had it. It was sufficiently challenging and yet the way that Lego pieces were implemented made it seem less blatantly violent than many video games.
I loved this quote from your post: "Students should feel that it is ok to be wrong and to fail with numerous chances to succeed. They should be challenged and set their own goals." I agree with this so much! How can you expect students to do something perfectly the first time? If learning is a process, students need to know it is okay to fail. Also, having them set their own goals (with your guidance) is a great idea because students may want to take away different things from the class.
Kaitlyn,
ReplyDeleteInteresting post. I completely agree that games provide the kind of challenge and require the kind of thinking skills that we want to foster in our students. Still, what if a student lacks basic literacy skills? Are we doing him/her a disservice by spending class time on games? Or is gaming a way to get his/her attention so we can, in a way, "trick" him/her into reading; that is, does it work as a hook? These questions have been at the core of my struggle with incorporating gaming in the classroom. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this.