Here is an 1985 60 minute special on Dungeons and Dragons. While the retro aesthetic of the video and reporting style might be reminiscent of a spoof, this news report had serious impacts regarding the general reputation for Dungeons and Dragons. This was over 30 years ago, and was in regards to a later edition of the game which should shed some light on the extent to which the game’s stigma prevailed from the time of its conception. And what point did the Dungeon and Dragons reputation slowly switch over from something which causes teen suicide, to one of the biggest grossing games of all time. While other factors would have had an impact, I’m confident that the critical success of the Lord of the Rings movies – not just amongst fantasy fans but within the Academy, with the third movie taking home 17 Oscars – had a part to play. Another popular piece of fantasy theatre that would have opened up the social barriers of nerd culture would be Game of Thrones. A show so massively popular – again not only amongst fans but within the film community as demonstrated by the amount of Emmys it has won – that television networks are scrambling to find the next epic fantasy show to start filming.
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Here is the website for Classcraft which I was introduced to on my Wednesday visit to Belmont. The teacher, Mr. Martin, uses it for his IMPACT classroom and has had some previous success with it in elementary classrooms. He expressed a desire for an updated version or for someone to take this concept and make it applicable to an older audience.
This video I found via Dave’s 352 blog post and I think it ties in wonderfully with the question – “what are the educational applications of digital roleplaying for K-12?”
Implementing videos within a lesson plan is certainly a way to keep the pace of the lecture dynamic and not purely dependent on lecture notes or listening to the instructor. While ready to use videos are widely available throughout the internet, making your own videos for lesson purposes using Open Educational Resources might prove more of a time consuming challenge than is worth the effort. Of course I am biased in this claim as I found the iMovie exercise embarrassingly frustrating. I say embarrassing because I can appreciate how user friendly the interface is designed to be which only fuels my frustration when I find I’m not comprehending the tools as fast as I should be. Aside from the time it takes me to become adept at such programs, I have so far found that the free videos for backgrounds and green screens to be… limited? If limited is not the right word then perhaps my hesitation rests on what the purpose would be of a video I create using green screens and backgrounds – aside from showing how to use green screens and backgrounds. It should be evident that I am already limited by my own creativity at the moment which I fully suspect will shed away the more I engage with these tools. At the moment I can envision more utility with Screencastify, especially as it concerns demonstrating how to navigate the exact tools I’m currently having difficulty mastering. Perhaps what I find will be most helpful is to teach students Screencastify so that they might make me a master of the various video and audio editing software available.
A relevant YouTube video tracing some of the developments regarding a rise in the popularity of Dungeons and Dragons https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9gUcx45ryT0
Regarding my EdTech inquiry of the educational applications of digital roleplaying games for k-12 classrooms, I will look further into the following titles: Gaming for Classroom-Based Learning by Baek, Young Kyun, Dungeons, Dragons, and Digital Denizens: The Digital Role-Playing Game by Steven A. Torres-Roman, Cason E. Snow, Dragons in the Stacks: A Teen Librarian’s GUide to Tabletop Role-Playing by Steven A. Torres-Roman, Cason E. Snow and Teach Like a Gamer: Adapting the Instructional Design of Digital Role by Carly Finseth.
Greg Whiteley’s documentary is a very encouraging ,and for the most part uplifting, film about the possibilities and new “trends” regarding our education system. I say our when really the film is addressing the American education system, although I’m confident that the two share some similarities. I appreciated that the movie showed an example of what it would look like when a child did not achieve what he set out to within the parameters of the teachers’ free range on course work. I liked how the instructors stressed that they were not interested in stamping out the young man’s curiosity, but rather were interested in his self-assessment regarding areas he could improve upon. I understand that the film has a necessary bias towards advocating for an alternative approach towards education, but I am interested to see what a classroom in which too much free range on curriculum did not work for the instructor. The examples the film used were of very competent and confident teachers who were able to collaborate well with each other and had enough mastery over their chosen subject that they were able to coherently structure a semester’s worth of instruction in a seamless manner (of course this is how the film portrayed the process, in reality there may very well have been some hiccups along the way). The end result as shown in the school’s year end gala further supported this teaching style but it left me with a selfish concern: what, if anything, is an area I’m an expert enough in to be able to construct my own semester around? English will be my teachable but I did not do a master’s in literature, I don’t have a particular period or movement in English literature that I love or am more familiar with than others. Really what I bring to the table is a love of reading – more specifically a love of buying books. With the switch over to literature circles as oppose to one classroom novel taught at a time, I’m left with some… considerations to take into account, and until I teach a class myself I won’t really know what the implications of this model are (as they concern me of course). None of this is to say that I do not support the education style from the film, but that I personally might very well benefit (at least for the first couple of years) from some guidelines as provided by a curriculum, or at the very least some advice as provided by a community of instructors.
As it stands, our group has decided on the question of “what are the educational applications of digital roleplaying for K-12 within the classroom.” While the question might be a little too broad at the moment, the hope is for our initial research, questions, browsing, etc to lead us towards something more specific – perhaps a specific roleplaying tool, or the extent to which “agency” factors in. We will be using a Trello board to keep our findings organized and assign individual tasks along the way.
As it stands, my free inquiry will address the rise in popularity of roleplaying (digital or tabletop, I haven’t decided yet) and/or world building (Minecraft being the prime example I can think of for the later). I’m interested to see what other factors aside from Stranger Things have contributed to activities like Dungeons and Dragons evolving beyond a guaranter of social pariah-ism to something that people (at least within my social circle) freely admit to either playing or being interested in. This inquiry might lead towards the broader subject of Avatar-creation and whether or not the curating of one’s online presence might share some similarities to role playing. My initial research will involve googling some relevant articles and books concerning digital roleplaying.
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