Learning Problem-Solving Strategies by Using Games: a Guide for Educators and Parents
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Learning Problem-solving Strategies by Using Games: A Guide for Educators and Parents David Moursund (Email: [email protected]) This book is available for free online use and download. Website: http://iae-pedia.org/Learning_Problem- solving_Strategies_by_Using_Games:_A_Guide_for_Educators_and_Parents. PDF File: (Not yet available. Ken will provide this.) Microsoft Word File (Not yet available. Ken will provide this. ) Comments and suggestions are welcome. Please send them to the author. Cite this book as: Moursund, D. (2016). Learning Problem-solving Strategies by Using Games: A Guide for Educators and Parents. Eugene, OR: Information Age Education. Available online at http://iae-pedia.org/Learning_Problem- solving_Strategies_by_Using_Games:_A_Guide_for_Educators_and_Parents. Publisher: Information Age Education: Eugene, Oregon, USA. See http://iae-pedia.org/. Copyright © 2016 David Moursund. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License United States (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 US). See http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/. About David Moursund, Author David Moursund, Ph.D. Professor Emeritus, College of Education, University of Oregon Email: [email protected] • Doctorate in mathematics (numerical analysis) from University of Wisconsin-Madison, January, 1963. • Assistant Professor and then Associate Professor, Department of Mathematics and Computing Center (School of Engineering), Michigan State University, 1963-1967. • Associate Professor, Department of Mathematics and Computing Center, University of Oregon, 1967-1969. • Served six years as the first Head of the Computer Science Department at the University of Oregon, 1969-1975. • Promoted to Full Professor, University of Oregon 1976. * Retired in 2002, with the last 20 years of his service to the UO being in the College of Education. After retirement, worked 1/3 time in the UO College of Education 2002-2007. ================= • In 1974, started The Computing Teacher, the publication that eventually became Learning and Leading with Technology, the flagship publication of the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE). • Served on the Board of Directors of the Math Learning Center (MLC) since the MLC’s inception in 1977. • In 1979, founded the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE). Headed this organization for 19 years. • In 2007, founded the Information Age Education (IAE), an Oregon non-profit organization. IAE works to improve the informal and formal education of people of all ages throughout the world. and website. See http://IAE-Pedia.org and http://I-A-E.org/. • Author or co-author of about 65 books and several hundred articles in the fields of computers in education and math education. About 40 of the books are available free online at http://iae- pedia.org/David_Moursund_Books. • Presented over 200 workshops and many talks in the fields of computers in education and math education. • Served as a major professor for 82 doctoral students (six in Math, the rest in Education). See http://genealogy.math.ndsu.nodak.edu/id.php?id=8415. • For more information about David Moursund, go to http://iae-pedia.org/David_Moursund and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Moursund. 2 Acknowledgements Thanks to Ann Lathrop for her work in copy-editing the book and her many content suggestions for the book. A substantial part of the content of this new book was originally published in: Moursund, D. (2007.) Introduction to using games in education: A guide for teachers and parents. Eugene, OR: Information Age Education. The book is available for free download. Microsoft Word file: http://i-a-e.org/downloads/free-ebooks-by-dave-moursund/20- introduction-to-using-games-in-education-a-guide-for-teachers-and-parents-1.html. PDF file: http://i-a-e.org/downloads/free-ebooks-by-dave-moursund/19-introduction-to-using-games- in-education-a-guide-for-teachers-and-parents.html. 3 Contents Preface................................................................................................. 5 Introduction........................................................................................ 8 1, Thinking Outside the Box............................................................ 15 2. Background Information............................................................. 32 3. Learning by Solving Puzzles ....................................................... 52 4. More Puzzles................................................................................. 65 5. One-Player Games ....................................................................... 90 6. Two-Player Games ..................................................................... 106 7. Games for Small and Large Groups......................................... 126 8. Game-based Lesson Planning and Implementation................ 137 9. Miscellaneous Other Topics ...................................................... 149 Appendix 1. Summary of Problem-solving Strategies................ 163 Appendix 2. Games & Puzzles Discussed in the Book ................ 174 4 Preface In this work, when it shall be found that much is omitted, let it not be forgotten that much likewise is performed. (Samuel Johnson.) This book is written for people who are interested in helping children learn through games and learn about games. The intended audience includes teachers, parents and grandparents, and all others who want to learn more about how games can be effectively used in education. Special emphasis is given to roles of games in a formal school setting. As you know, education has many goals, and there is a huge amount of research and practitioner knowledge about teaching and learning. This book is well rooted in this research and practitioner knowledge. Four of the important ideas that are stressed include: • Learning to learn. Through study and practice, a person can get better at learning. • Learning about one’s strengths and weaknesses as a learner. Even a simple game can provide a good environment in which one can study his or her own learning processes and habits. Metacognition and reflection can be used to identify one’s strengths and weaknesses as a learner in this game environment. Specific instruction plus growing cognitive maturity help the learner to transfer learning from the game-learning environment to other learning environments. • Becoming better at solving challenging problems and accomplishing challenging tasks. Learning some general strategies for problem solving is a unifying theme in this book. • Intrinsic motivation—students being engaged because they want to be engaged. This idea is illustrated by the following quote from Yasmin Kafai, a world leader in uses of games in education: If someone were to write the intellectual history of childhood—the ideas, the practices, and the activities that engage the minds of children—it is evident that the chapter on the late 20th century in America would give a prominent place to the phenomenon of the video game. The number of hours spent in front of these screens could surely reach the hundreds of billions. And what is remarkable about this time spent is much more than just quantity. Psychologists, sociologists, and parents are struck by a quality of engagement that stands in stark contrast to the half-bored watching of many television programs and the bored performance exhibited with school homework. Like it or not, the phenomenon of video games is clearly a highly significant component of contemporary American children's culture and a highly significant indicator of something (though we may not fully understand what this is) about its role in the energizing of behavior (Kafai, 2001). [Bold added for emphasis.] Educational Goals Copied from Chapter 8 The research on the use of games in education strongly supports the value of having clear learning goals in mind and of specifically teaching to these goals. A few of the ideas in the list given below (copied from chapter 8) may not be completely understandable to you before you have read later parts of the book. They are given here to reassure you that there is some “method to the madness” in the organization and content of this book. 5 Here is a short list of possible goals for making educational uses of games in a classroom setting. 1. To help students learn more about themselves in areas such as: a. Learning to learn and understanding how concentrated, reflective effort over time leads to an increasing level of expertise. b. Learning about one’s cooperative versus independent versus competitive inclinations both in learning and in demonstrating or using one’s learning. c. Learning about oneself as a giver of feedback to others and as a receiver of feedback from others. This includes learning to complete and to make use of both self- assessment and peer assessment. 2. To help students better understand problem-solving strategies and to increase their repertoire of and use of problem-solving strategies. This includes: a. Learning about low-road (essentially, rote memory) and high-road transfer of learning, especially as they apply to problem solving. b. Learning how to recognize/identify a problem-solving strategy and explore its possible use across many different problem domains. c. Learning how to do high-road transfer of learning of problem-solving strategies that cut across many domains. d. Increasing fluency in making effective use of one’s repertoire of domain-independent problem-solving strategies. 3. To help students learn some games