21st Century Skills for the Great Recession

There's a lot of the buzz in the field of education these days surrounding the topic of 21st century skills.  That's the latest term for practical skills we all need to learn, beyond basic reading, writing and arithmetic, which are still important, too.  But what are 21st century skills? 

The Partnership for 21st Century Skills does an excellent job of pursuing the answer to this question, and their many reports are recommended reading for anyone working in educational media.  Their preferred method of determining what skills students need is to poll executives and HR professionals at Fortune 500 companies.  There’s nothing wrong with that, and many skills they've identified, like creativity, collaboration and critical thinking are useful in many realms of life.  But the current economy makes me wonder.  What skills do we need when those Fortune 500 companies aren’t hiring?  Here is a partial list of additional 21st century skills for hard times, built from my own experience with the job hunt.

Relevance.  Knowledge of social media technology tools like blogging, video production would make many people's lists of 21st century skills.  But YouTube has amassed millions of video files, and there are thousands of blogs out there that never get read.  It isn't enough to simply know how to do social media.  You need to know why to do it, and you need to know what your audience wants.  The Gregory Brothers are a terrific example.  They're an innovative young group who fueled their comedy career on YouTube, parlayed it into hundreds of thousands of sales on the iTunes Music Store, and have recently been invited by Comedy Central to create a pilot for their own series.  That’s how to use YouTube. You've got to make relevant content.

The same applies to game design and production.  I can’t claim to be a connoisseur of student-produced video games, but I have played a fair number.  Enough to know they're often quite boring.  Kids certainly know what they like in a video game, but sometimes we all need motivation to push ourselves harder, in order to produce something beyond the minimum requirement.  If a game a student produced isn’t something a student would choose to play in his own free time, what is its relevance?

In the 21st century, you can't afford not to be competitive.  Jobseekers have to compete with more people than ever before.  Manufacturing jobs have been exported overseas for decades, but now service and support positions, technical jobs (like design and programming), and creative positions are starting to go, too.  When someone in another country can do your job over the internet for less pay than you can, because they live in a place with a lower cost of living, how will you compete?  What will you offer that is unique?

Just do it. You don't have to wait for someone to pay you to do what you love.  If you're a writer, write.  If you're a game designer, design games.  The Henson Company often gets asked how a person can become a puppeteer or puppet builder with their organization.  Their answer is that you don't have to work for them to make and perform your own puppets.  Do that on your own, if that's what you want to do.  You must be self-directed.  Then, when an audition opportunity for Henson does arise, you'll have a body of your own work to show off.  You simply can't sit on your hands and wait for the audition notice.  This metaphor extends to many creative disciplines.

How to sell yourself.  When you're unemployed, you have to sell yourself every day.  What is your value to other people and organizations?  What can you contribute?  If you can't articulate this, it will be very difficult to get a job.  Knowing how to convince others is a 21st century skill.  So is being concise.  An essay might need to be 15 pages for your high school civics class, but it's doubtful that anyone will read something that long in the real world.  Know how to get to the point.

Stick-to-it-iveness & Dedication.  In this economy, you're going to encounter a lot of failure and disappointment.  The number of unemployed people is far greater than the number of job vacancies.  You're likely going to face a great amount of rejection, and you really can't afford to let it get you down, or accept defeat. 

Life is not a set of steps that have to be carried out in any one order.  High schools like to be able to show that a high number of their graduates go to college after graduation.  Consequently, many high school students are pushed in that direction when they are not personally ready for it.  There's nothing wrong with working before pursuing higher education, and in fact, your life might be improved and enriched by doing so.  Follow your passion!  I have two friends who work for the same company.  One has a degree from a prestigious university, and the other has 'only' completed high school.  It is the HS grad who is earning more.  This is an atypical example for certain, but one thing about the 21st century is that typical is becoming less and less common with each passing year.  It's important for students to understand that success in school does not entitle you to much in life.  Degrees alone do not get you jobs.  

I've never had the challenge of teaching a classroom of students, so I feel presumptuous suggesting how to incorporate any of this into formal education.  But here are some things that could easily be included in the classroom.

• Media literacy.  In June of last year, I was working with a small group of graduating high school seniors in one of their school’s computer labs.  The task I had given them encouraged using the internet to inform their solutions.  One student expressed frustration that a search return listed by Google appeared to be just what she needed, but she couldn’t load the page, because her school had blocked the domain.  She thought the school should have Google unblocked and used language that indicated she was under the impression that things in Google were in Google, much like articles in the encyclopedia are in the encyclopedia.  A classmate explained to her that this would be problematic, because a person could find just about anything with Google, including things the school might be justified in blocking, such as pornography.  Personally, I was shocked that someone could graduate from high school in 2009 and lack a basic understanding of how an internet search engine works.  I think we as a society should be just as concerned for this young woman as we are about a student who gets a high school diploma without having learned how to read. 

• How to design things.  Everyone has an object that frustrates them because of design flaws.  Could be a can opener.  Could be a video game or TV series.  Could be our government.  Why is it flawed?  How could it be improved?  How will you explain your suggestions clearly to someone who might have the power to effect change? 

• Passion.  It's difficult to shine in anything if you don’t care deeply about it.  Whenever possible, students should be encouraged to incorporate their passions in assignments, be they essays, dioramas, or media creation projects.

In an interview with Tavis Smiley, Frank Oz recalled the best advice he received when he moved to New York City to start his career.  He said it was that "Talented people are a dime a dozen.  What matters are the opportunities you take."  I couldn't agree more.  Seeking out, making, and taking advantage of the right opportunities is the key to making good progress in life.  I think that's the most important 21st century skill a person could obtain.

Photo of a rejection letter by Jen R.  Shared via Creative Commons license.

Leveling the Playing Field in Early Math Learning, With Games

I had the pleasure this evening of attending a lecture on preschool math education by Dr. Robert Siegler, who is a visiting professor at my grad school alma mater, Teachers College, Columbia University.  Math is my favorite educational topic in children’s games, because I hated math so much as a student.  I can really identify with students’ frustration and confusion, and I think that makes me a better designer of math games.  I came to the lecture hoping to hear tips on ways math topics can be presented, so I could use them in designing games.  I was pleasantly surprised when he began to present research on board games similar to Chutes and Ladders and Candy Land.  I blogged about this research back in August, but I had forgotten Dr. Siegler’s name, and my invitation to the lecture didn’t say anything about games.

In the United States, there is a correlation between a child’s socio-economic status and his or her eighth grade math achievement scores.  This is not as true in Canada, Germany, Sweden or Japan.  In the US, differences increase with schooling.  In other words, preschoolers in poor communities test behind preschoolers in wealthier communities, and the gap only gets bigger as students progress through school.  What can we do to lessen this gap in the US, and at what grade level should this problem be addressed?

Siegler argues that we need to correct this problem in preschool.  Sample number line estimation taskStatistics show that if you start behind, you stay behind.  It is important to improve preschool students’ understanding of numerical magnitudes, or meanings.  A kid who can count from 1 to 10 may not know which is bigger, 6 or 4.  We need to help children create a linear representation of numerical magnitudes.  Students should be able to perform well on number line estimation tasks (see illustration).  These tasks allow assessment of relation between numbers and magnitude.  Chinese kindergartners are ahead of US kindergartners in number line estimation.

Playing numerical board games might play a crucial role in forming numerical magnitude understanding.  The greater number a game token reaches, the greater number of discrete movements the child has made, spoken, moved in distance, and time spent playing. Thus, playing the game provides visuospatial, kinesthetic, auditory, temporal cues to numerical magnitudes.  Students who played a number board game (similar to Chutes and Ladders) did far better on four math tasks than students who played a color board game (similar to Candy Land). 

What features of board games are critical to student learning?  Siegler & Ramani (2009) studied linear counting board games, and circular counting board games, both clockwise and counterclockwise.  They found that linear board games are much better for the improvement of numerical understanding, addition, and other math skills.  Perhaps most encouraging of all, children who started out testing the worst showed significant improvement in post-tests after playing linear counting board games.
Siegler & Ramani also discovered that it matters how you play the game.  Counting on from where the player was on the board (i.e., 32, 33, 34, 35) led to more improved skills than counting from one each roll.  Playing the game with students four times was enough to have significant effect on math skills.

Implications for game design: Siegler recommended exposing kids to numbers bigger than 20 in preschool.  Instead, we should go up to 100.  Video games, and adults playing board games with children, should count on when possible, rather than counting from one each time.  The child can count along from one with their fingers, if it helps the child to keep track of how many numbers they’ve counted off.

Chutes and Ladders Boosts Preschoolers' Math Skills

This article was also a featured post on gamasutra.com.

According to a recent article in Ed Week, research at Carnegie Mellon University and University of Maryland showed that preschoolers who played Chutes and Ladders showed significant improvement in math skills. Another experimental group in the study played a different board game, and a third group did non-game math activities. The children who had played Chutes and Ladders demonstrated greater understanding of numbers and numerical magnitude. The Ed Week article also says this group did best in the post-test of "learning to learn" new arithmetic tasks. The study was published in the Journal of Educational Psychology. I have not read it myself yet, but I look forward to doing so the next time I'm at my alma mater's library. I'm very curious to learn more about this measure of "learning to learn" new arithmetic tasks.

The article also mentions that previous research by the same team, Robert S. Siegler and Geetha B. Ramani, showed no such improvements among children who played Candy Land. How interesting!

I confess that although I did play both of these games as a child, I had to search for images on Flickr to jog my memory. The Chutes and Ladders board is a grid of 100 squares, which is a great visual representation of counting 10s, 20s, 30s, 40s, etc. You move by rolling a die, so the game play is accessible to any child who can count to six, and yet players are still exposed to the idea of higher numbers as they progress on the track.

Candy Land, on the other hand, has no numbers in it at all. The path on the board is made of different colored spaces. You do not roll a die to play. Instead, there is a deck of cards with different colors on them. On your turn, you draw a card and proceed to the next space on the path that matches the color you drew. The game does not encourage you to count at all, even as you move your piece from one spot to the next!

This is an excellent demonstration of how a simple design change can greatly influence the experience a player has.

Chutes and Ladders image courtesy of shawnblog.  Candy Land image courtesy of daveparker.

Games as a Learning Environment

“The question is not whether children learn from television, it’s what children learn from television.” - Joan Ganz Cooney, creator of Sesame Street

In the 1960s, Joan Ganz Cooney grew tired of making documentaries about educational inequalities. She could make a film that showed how children from low-income families were getting a raw deal from public education, and she could make her audience care, but she couldn’t compel them to ignite change. That’s when she decided to harness the power of television to speak directly to the children themselves. Children were spending a great deal of time watching television, even when the programming wasn’t designed for someone their age. The children were surely learning something. They were learning about how adults behaved in the situations presented. They learned the commercial jingles and sang them after the TV had been switched off.

Today, children’s consumption of video games is the focus of concern as much as, or perhaps more than television. We recognize the educational value of certain games that focus on reading and arithmetic skills, but what about the rest of games? What do they teach?

Without going to the extremes of considering games children shouldn’t even be playing, such as Grand Theft Auto or God of War, there is plenty to be learned from just about any video game. I’m not so naive as to say kids don’t play M-rated games, but that’s a different discussion entirely.

Video games are environment simulations. There are experiences you can have in video games that you can’t have anywhere else. And just about every experience a person has is bound to teach her something, or enrich her life in some way.

Take, for example, role playing games. To the eye of a non-gamer, a Zelda game might be about slaying foes with a sword. But there’s really much more thought involved. There’s a great deal of story reading, there are riddles to be solved, and decisions to be made. When you aren’t sure what your next move should be, and nothing you’re trying is helping you advance in the game, you face the decision of sticking it out on your own, or consulting the internet or a book for help. What teacher wouldn’t love an activity that has children eager to research for more knowledge?

It’s also important for children to have an environment where it is safe to experience failure. Failure is an important step in the process of learning. The real world can be a harsh place to experience failure. If you fail in context of school or a team sport, the consequences could include embarrassment, ridicule, or punishment. Sometimes, failure in school is often flat out unacceptable. Students are simply expected to study and memorize until they can perform well on exams.

In video games, failure is a very natural part of the learning process, and it is expected that you will fail at a given task several times before you succeed. What better way to learn resilience and perseverance?