More playing, less memorizing: Milwaukee teachers learn to teach game creation

By Matt Kulling of the Journal Sentinel

Brown Deer— For many teachers, summer is a time to recharge and retool lesson plans.

Others look for training opportunities to help them innovate in the classroom and make learning more tactile and fun.

The latter is what an effort called Field Day Lab provided to about 25 Milwaukee-area teachers last week: Technical expertise to create mobile phone games and board games for use in the classroom.

Dave Gagnon is the program director for Field Day, which is housed within the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He's in charge of about a dozen software engineers who help produce physical and nonphysical experiences aimed at helping students learn new topics.

Gagnon said the goal isn't necessarily just to have students — and teachers — play games but to untether them from memorization-style learning.

"This is a reframing of what teaching is," he said.

The teachers at the two-day session at Brown Deer High School last week learned to create games so that they could, in turn, help their students create games. Gagnon added that while many students can memorize basic facts, it takes true understanding of a topic to create a game that incorporates the systems, characters and spirit of that subject.

Jean Garrity, associate director for the Institute for Personalized Learning, housed at Cooperative Educational Service Agency #1 in Pewaukee, said games can be an important tool because they can be adjusted based on students' achievement levels.

Milwaukee Public Schools teachers Lynn Mucha and Lynnette Buzzell, from Eighty-First Street School, spent their time at Brown Deer developing a game that teaches students about pollination while using math skills to determine scoring.

This upcoming year will be the first time they team-teach second-graders. Mucha and Buzzell said developing games allowed them to create cross-curricular activities that implement more than one STEM — science, technology, engineering and math — subject.

The aim, Buzzell said, is to use the game as an example for students to create their own.

Earlier this year, Field Day Lab kicked off a yearlong initiative sponsored by the Department of Public Instruction to explore different approaches to using play, games, the outdoors and digital media to explore new ideas, according to its website.

The lab is currently seeking to partner with teachers who want more assistance in fully developing games and other experiences for school classrooms.