Esports in Primary - Part 2: Next Steps

I recently got things started with esports in my classroom. I wanted to get started and wasn't 100% sure how I would do it but I did, and I did it in class, and I connected it to the Mathematics that we have been working on. It was a great experience and kick start for my students. You can read about what we did and how it went here.

I want to continue to use video games as a way to reach my students with respect to the curriculum and their learning but I also want to implement esports as an extra curricular activity/option for younger students who don't have the option of trying out for school sports teams; and who may not want to play traditional sports and be competitive that way.

One of the problems I am bumping up against is finding games that are accessible and appropriate for my students. Games where they can actually play video games and compete against each other, head to head - which is what esports is all about - have been hard for me to find. There is a plethora of games where students can compete against a clock but I would like to expose them to actually playing video games against someone else, in real time.

Let me provide you with some information about my context. Students have access to chromebooks which are connected to the Internet via wifi. I have found some games that I think are appropriate but are not accessible to my students via their access to the Internet. This has been causing me some heartache and has been getting in the way of what I would like to do with my students. I needed a solution. I decided that I would move away from the internet and the chromebooks and use a video game console so that my students could compete against each other.

I am fortunate because I have an Xbox 360 at home that is not being used. I have a bunch of sports games that are single and multiplayer. I also have the Xbox 360 Kinect sensor so the students can play games that allow them to be physical. I brought the system into the classroom and then had to deal with how to set it up. The easiest way to connect the system to my whiteboard projector was via HDMI but I didn't start there. The first thought was that I was going to need a VGA/HDMI connector in order to get the Xbox connected to projector. After some investigation and solid support from Michael Leonard (my school board's experiential learning and innovation lead) I ended up learning that my projector has an HDMI port already attached into its setup.

After the HDMI cord was connected to the Xbox and the port in the wall, I plugged the console into a power source and found success!! 

I discovered a car racing game in the Xbox which provided me with the opportunity to see the setup in action. The console is now set up and it works. Next step - what do I do now? Where do I start? 

Now that I have a gaming system that is accessible to all my students, I am going to plan a tournament for them to participate in. 

Here is the process I am going to follow moving forward:

1) I will show my students what games I have and we will decide which one to start with.

2) Have students sign up to show their interest in participating.

3) Provide interested students with time to practice playing the game to familiarize themselves with the controls and parameters of the game.

4) Create a tournament chart/schedule

5) Create and share expectations for students who stay in to compete and students who stay in to watch the competition(s).

6) Start the tournament and adjust and troubleshoot as needed. 

7) Share how things are going by blogging and tweeting about the experience - successes, issues, etc.

One of the things I am considering but not sure about involve having the students wear school team jerseys as they compete. I am thinking about making teams so that students belong to a group rather than being an independent participant. I am also interested in making this available to other classes so we can have add to the tournament results with winners in different classes competing against each other. That is a "down the road" action but it is on my mind and looking forward to moving all of this beyond my students. 

Since the esport extra curricular will be happening outside of classroom time, I am not planning on making explicit curriculum connections but I will be keeping an eye out on possible connections and will bring those to the attention to the students as a whole group and in one-to-one conferences depending on the connection and the student. 

I will be looking at the 21st Century Competencies and the Ontario Catholic Graduate Expectations explicitly and speaking to my students about them and how they fit into the competitive video gaming that they will participate in. Even though the students will be competing against each other, I believe that it is a great opportunity for them to become more aware of and practice such things as critical thinking, collaboration, creativity, effective communication, and what it means to be a self-directed lifelong learner.

It is an exciting time in our classroom. The students and I are pretty pumped about what is to come. They are happy that they will get to play video games at school and I am happy that I can offer them the opportunity while helping them become better learners.   

Esports with Primary Students - Part 1: Jumping In

A few months ago I dove into esports when I took a course called "Build a school to career pipeline with esports and gaming concepts" through the Microsoft Educator Community. It was a good course - quite informative with respect to what esports is, what it looks like in an educational setting, and how to get started (high school and above). My only issue with the course was that it didn't get into esports or gaming concepts with younger students. Having integrated video games into the learning of primary students in the past, I was surprised that there wasn't much on that in the course.

In 2012 I learned about a teacher in the UK who was using video games with students to help them improve their writing. David Andrews was integrating the use of technology (iPads) and video games to help engage his students in the writing process and to help them improve their writing. At the time, I thought that I could have used what David was doing with the last class I taught - a large group of boys who disliked writing very much. Based on his results and consultations with him, I decided to try implement some of what what he had done to help my students along with their writing process and skills. I ended up writing a series of blog posts about the experience. Feel free to check them out here: part #1, part #2, and part #3.

Seven years later and I find myself interested and intrigued with competitive and organized video gaming and how it can be integrated into the curriculum - especially with primary students. One of the reasons that esports is so popular is because a lot of kids play video games - and are good at them. From a global perspective, millions of people around the world tune in to esports events that are streamed online. The fact that "27 Million people watched the League of Legends Championship in 2017 [*more than Game 7 of the World Series (23.5 million) and the final game of the NBA Finals (18 million)]." is mind blowing. "Projections are that over 589 million people will watch esports by 2020.".

Based on the growing popularity of esports, how much kids love to play video games (generally speaking), my enjoyment of video games, and the opportunity to increase student engagement and achievement (academic, social, and emotional) by integrating esports into the curriculum, I decided that I wanted to bring it into my classroom. I started by looking online to see what I could find regarding esports with primary students. I didn't find anything. I went to Twitter next and I found the #esportsedu community which is strong and growing larger each day. I was looking for a model or a template that would help me integrate esports into my grade 3 classroom and hoped that I would find that within the #esportsedu community but I didn't find any such thing. I did find people like @chomoojoo, Mike Washburn, and Steve Isaacs who have been helpful and supportive. So much so that I decided to blaze my own trail based on my interactions with them.

After communicating with them, and thinking about how I wanted to get started, I decided that I wanted to find a game that would be competitive, accessible to my students (free, online, and easily played on a chromebook), and be connected to the curriculum. I went to the Cool Math Games website and started searching. I found Moto X3M - a cool motorcycle game that involves passing levels. At the end of each level, the students are informed how long it took them to complete the level. BINGO! I found a game I could use. Let me explain.

I introduced the idea of esports to the students. They were interested, actually they were pretty excited that they were going to get to play video games in class. I introduced them to the game and told them that their goal was to complete the first level as fast as possible and that I would give all of them 15 minutes to practice. In order to make it easy for the students to get to the game, I grabbed the link and put it in our D2L class site for easy access.

The competition would involve three rounds. In the first round, all the students would have the opportunity to compete. The top ten finishers would move on to the second round. In the second round, the top five finishers would move on to the third round. In the third round the first, second, and third place finishers would be identified.

After the first round, each student had to read their number to me. Up to this point we had only worked with whole numbers - this would be a great opportunity to talk about the decimal and the continue our talk about place value. After each round the students were responsible for comparing and ordering the finish times, which connects with the work we had just formally finished up with respect to Number Sense and Numeration. The opportunity to spiral our mathematics is welcome as it provides the students with points of reference with which they can refer to as they continue to learn. In this instance they could make connections to what they had already learned in math and moving forward they can look back on this esports activity to connect to the 'new' math they will be learning in the future.

Take a look at the data we collected. I recorded the times as they were brought to my attention. The students had to work to compare and order the times. They asked me to highlight certain times but didn't ask me to create a new chart to order them.

The students that were eliminated from the competition worked on improving their times but would stop and work with the rest of the students to compare and order times after each round. At the end of this competition we talked about the experience and whether they would like to do it again. All of the students indicated that they wanted to participate in esports and even had suggestions on what games we could use to compete.

This was a really fun experience. Although the math was a bit challenging, it didn't seem to scare any of the students away. What I was seeing and hearing as they were comparing and ordering the times was great formative assessment data for me. I could see which students were able to do the activity with ease, who struggled, and everything in between. This activity also allowed me to take a look at some of the learning skills like initiative, collaboration, and organization. After all was said and done we took time to reflect on what the students could do to improve their times with respect to this game. Here were their responses:

In terms of next steps I would like to continue to find games that will allow students to compete and that I can connect to the curriculum. At first sight and thought, I can make quick connections between esports and the Language curriculum. I also see how these types of activities can benefit students with respect to "assessment AS learning" experiences. The Global Competencies and Catholic Graduate expectations need to be considered as well as I move forward with this in a more organized fashion. I would also like to move the esports out of classroom time and into recess time as an extra curricular activity. I think it would be a great option for the students who like to play video games and compete. I am also interested in using a console gaming system like a PS3 or Xbox where students can compete 'head to head' in true tournament fashion with traditional sports games like hockey and soccer. 

I think that my students and I did a pretty good job for our first esport activity. With no model or template I took what I had learned about esports so far and put it into action in order to get the ball rolling and start my learning journey and how I can help my students improve their achievement in a number of different areas. 

I would love to hear from you. If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to leave them in the comments.