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Playing at the highest level Darrell Greer Northern News Services Published Wednesday, January 25, 2012
And the source of that learning may come as a surprise to some. Jeremy Chippett, 33, hopes to show video games can be used as an effective learning tool by Inuit youth. He has been teaching in Repulse since 2005, and he's been preparing to start research on his idea for the past 14 months. Chippett is working towards a master's in curriculum teaching and learning at Newfoundland's Memorial University. He spent about six months getting approval for the study, receiving his researcher's licence from the Nunavut Researcher's Institute during the Christmas holidays. Data collection will take place by the end of March and he'll present his findings this coming fall. He said connecting video games to learning has captured a lot of attention. "When you see video games in the news, it's usually 99 per cent negative because that's what the media catches onto," said Chippett. "But there's a whole academic subsection talking about the positives of video games right now." Today's students focus a lot more on technology than their parents, who learned through memorization. They learned by going over something again and again until it got into their heads. Chippett said his original idea was to wonder which is better, the focus on technology or memorization? He said his interest was spiked by American professor James Paul Gee, who decided to learn how to play video games so he could spend more time with his son. "When he sat down to play, he soon realized how difficult they actually are. "His research had always been on linguistics, literacy and learning, so he kept track of the ways video games had the potential to become a learning tool. "He came up with 36 learning principles that occur in the games that could lead to educational purposes. "Gee sparked a ton of different avenues being explored, so when I saw that, being a lifelong gamer myself, I thought it was an interesting concept." Chippett began thinking about how his students succeed at video games, and then he came across research on traditional Inuit teaching. One Baffin researcher, Arlene Stairs, used two terms for Inuit education. One (isumaqsayuq), refers to traditional education before European contact. Chippett said a lot of the different features of that type of education are, sort of, echoed in the techniques being used in video games. He said any time you play a video game, you learn. "I'm not saying you play Super Mario Brothers and then you know math. "But when a student plays a new game today, they don't read the manual. "The game, itself, teaches them how to play and, in order to succeed, they have to learn its laws and rules. "So, a number of researchers are saying a game can be built from the ground up to teach a concept." The approach has been tried in physics and chemistry, with students learning the periodic table or the centre of balance in a physics problem as they play. Chippett goes so far as to argue that some Inuit societal values (IQ principles), are very much a part of the games. His next step is to hear what his students think. Chippett said during this stage, he'll focus on getting information from the students on the types of games they play and the process they go through while playing. While some games can take more than 40 dedicated hours to complete, Chippett's talked with students who beat a game and then started over to see if they could achieve a better result. He said that tells him there's something positive going on that has the potential for use in the education system. "A game was designed in a part of Alaska to try and help keep a traditional culture and language alive. "It takes members of this particular society back to play the role of one of their ancestors. "It's all in their traditional language and deals with their traditional culture. "There's a lot of potential here if we build a game from the ground up in Inuktitut that deals with Inuit values, stories and legends." After completing the information gathering, Chippett may look at particular games with the students, such as simulations that look at history. He said this is not an idea he wants to spend on his master's and then forget. "Three things I'm incredibly passionate about are teaching in the North, Inuit culture and video games. "I've created a way for the three to potentially interact and, after my master's, I'd like to look at what the next step could be. "At the end of the day, this is about creating a more effective learning experience for my students."
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