Teaching the American Revolution with Assassins Creed III

Yes, I played Assassin’s Creed III in class with my students. It’s a hit game amongst the students (especially at an all-boys school), and I wanted to show them I was better than they were… Well, not really. I’m teaching revolutionary Boston to sophomore boys, and I figured I’d show them how the video game recreated the events and locations of the American Revolution. Ubisoft did a good job depicting the history surrounding the Revolution in their third installment of Assassin’s Creed. Regardless, one of the best parts about the lesson was that students were able to call out the game on a few historical inaccuracies since they had been studying the Revolution in class.

What made this lesson even better was that students had their laptops open, and they could Google every location and event covered. The web assaulted students with information about each particular place or event and how it fit into history. So, after I taught the revolution, they saw the Revolution, in a recreation and in real life. And, they got to learn about it in their favorite mediums, video games and the internet!

While my colleague navigated the streets of Boston to find the Old State House, I told the boys the story of the beginning of the Boston Massacre when a colonist insulted a redcoat by, get this, telling him there were no gentlemen in his regiment!

The boys saw the developers’ recreation of the scene, which is pretty accurate. And, if you get to the Old State House at the right time, you can trigger people standing in the square to start a riot!

Fortunately, Ubisoft is ten steps ahead of me. There’s a mission in the game where your avatar gets to play a role in the massacre. While Mr. Davey glided through the mission, we met Charles Lee. So, I interrupted the massacre to explain Charles Lee’s role in the Revolution—the former British soldier, now patriot—just in time for the students to point out that the game’s rendition of the events of March 5th, 1770 contained Crispus Attucks.

Then, it’s on to the Old North Church where the students recall Paul Revere’s Midnight Ride. Fortunately, my colleague had been on a handful of duck tours in his day growing up in Boston, and he filled in (Boston pun!) the geography of the city while avoiding parading redcoats. As Mr. Davey climbed to the top of the church, I explained Revere’s “one if by land, two if by sea” and why he decided to hang two lamps on that fateful night of April 18th, 1775.

And finally, your avatar can navigate Breed’s Hill to slay British commander, John Pitcarin, on June 17th, 1775. As Mr. Davey leapt off a flagpole to deal the fatal blow to Pitcarin, I taught students how Pitcarin actually died—in his son’s arms after being shot on the hill! Remember, he was the commander of the redcoats who were at Lexington on April 19th, of 1775

I’d like to conclude by thanking Ubisoft for producing such a thoughtful recreation of an excellent period in American History. I’d also like to entreat other US history teachers to give this lesson a shot. I had a great time playing video games in class, and the students squeezed more knowledge out of the American Revolution thanks to AC3.

EdTech Expert, Will Richardson Dazzles at Renbrook

Yesterday, I went across town to hear Will Richardson talk about the crossroads of technology and education at a private, K through 9th grade day school in West Hartford. I saw Mr. Richardson speak before at TEDxNYED two years ago, and once again, he was inspiring. As a strong believer in progressive education, and particularly technology in education, I nodded my head in agreement with Mr. Richardson through most of his presentation. There were however, a few poignant insights, supported by facts, that piqued my interest and renewed my conviction to the study of technology, social media, and the future of education. But, perhaps the most interesting part of the whole talk occurred during the question and answer session at the end, when parents and teachers from the Renbrook community began to challenge Mr. Richardson’s points about the importance of teaching students how to use the digital world to pursue information on their own.

Mr. Richardson led off with plenty of stories and statistics that prove we are living through a threshold moment with respect to technology in education. The most salient of his descriptions were accompanied by two graphs he showed the audience. In fact, he showed us these with his hands, because the power went out at Renbrook so he couldn’t project his presentation on technology (oh, the irony). Therefore, Mr. Richardson physically pointed to the grey area in between the graphs of rising college costs, and of the decreasing costs regarding access to information. There he argued, something must change. And, while Mr. Richardson had ideas on how that space would be filled, both answering questions on digital badges and addressing how he encourages his own children to think outside the traditional college model, he allowed the audience members to consider this changing landscape for themselves.

The second fascinating statistic he shared, again with his hands, was that in the fourth grade student interest in school is at its peak, and it only decreases from there. Clearly, schools and teachers need to adapt, especially if they can’t increase student interest beyond the fourth grade. Mr. Richardson pointed out the fact that children don’t need school to learn, a four year old spends their whole day learning. His presentation begged the question, why send students to school beyond the fourth grade, when they are less interested and when they can learn on their own?

After detailing the issues facing schools today, Mr. Richardson advocated for some solutions that are currently being discussed in education. He argued in favor of inquiry-based or project-based instruction, a passion-based curriculum, and personal learning networks (PLNs), citing examples and/or success stories in each of these areas. But, for the educators in the room, he made it even simpler. He detailed five steps teachers can take, today, to benefit their students.

• Understand this moment. 
• Acknowledge the fear and discuss it. 
• Evaluate your own practice, and consider changes. 
• Act on these changes. 
• Scream at people! In other words, engage others in this dialogue. 

Mr. Richardson concluded his presentation with his own catch phrase about the evolving role of a teacher. He said, a teacher’s job is not delivery, but discovery.

After a vibrant presentation (so vibrant that power returned to the cafeteria), Mr. Richardson took questions from a diverse audience of educators and parents. Though some asked questions about his views on the future of education as a means of improving their own teaching or parenting style, some parents tried to poke holes in his arguments.

Audience members argued that Mr. Richardson’s ideas would hurt their child or students’ ability to benefit from face-to-face conversations. However, throughout the presentation, Mr. Richardson made it quite clear that a balanced approach was most important. He even admitted he shuts his own internet off every evening at 9 PM!

Many parents also claimed that the school in which their students were enrolled did a better job teaching character, and giving feedback about their child’s habits and behaviors. To save his own skin, Mr. Richardson reassured them that while some teachers and schools are effective, they are in the minority. He admitted that in his seven years traveling and discussing technology in education, he only saw pockets of schools and teachers integrating technology successfully. And then, once again, he repeated that character development and face-to-face conversations are important, they just don’t have to occur in this institution called school, something that has been static in our society for 125 years. Time and again, he invited the audience to employ their own critical thinking skills to the problems addressed.

I’m overjoyed that Mr. Richardson came to the Hartford area and that Renbrook was willing to open up his presentation to the community. I learned lots of valuable information about how to integrate technology in schools. While it was easy for me to agree with most of his points, his presentation forced me to reconsider what I am doing in my own classroom, and double-down on the things that are keeping students engaged and ahead of the times. These are the innovative assignments and uncomfortable discussions that invigorate students, that teach them how to think about the world they will inherit and that require them to develop skills which will help them succeed in the professional world. Lastly, after hearing Mr. Richardson speak, I can more easily articulate the problems facing our schools and more easily offer solutions, even to teachers who are not as interested in the topic as I am.

Words in Creation, Daniel Greenberg

This essay by Daniel Greenberg perfectly articulates the value of play in education. He works at Sudbury Valley School, where students spend their whole day playing. As more and more schools move away from the traditional style of a teacher teaching to test, and begin to experiment with constructivist and project-based learning, they must not forget the value of play in education.

Below is a fascinating excerpt from Greenberg’s essay:

"There is an absorbing two-faceted character to play: the formation of hypotheses (or rules) and the elaboration of actions within this framework, stretching the rules to their utmost extremes. Both facets are essential to the enjoyment of play, and to its significance as the quintessential model-building activity. To fashion models of reality, a person must learn not only to weave theories — i.e., to create models — but also to weave his perception of reality into his theories as well as he can, thus realizing the purpose for which the models were proposed in the first place. Being a good builder of models of reality means being good at playing!”

EdTech Tools to Improve SAT Verbal Scores

Obviously, the SAT is crucial in college acceptance. Unfortunately this test is only becoming more and more important in college admissions thanks to rampant grade inflation. Fortunately, one easy way for students to increase SAT verbal scores is through pursuing a more diverse vocabulary. If your students are like mine, they’d rather skip over difficult words than learn them.  So, I have compiled a list of tools that make it incredibly easy to learn words that otherwise might have been skipped and ignored.

1) Professor Word
Professor Word is an application that automatically locates and defines what it considers SAT words on any website visited. Imagine every SAT word highlighted and defined on every website visited!

2) Dictionary Extensions
If you use Google Chrome, you should absolutely have the Google Dictionary extension so that you can define any word you double click on the web! There are also options for Firefox (Dictionary Tooltip) and Safari (Dictionary for Safari).
Apple computer users can also use ctrl+cmd+D while hovering over any word to define it.

3. Wordflex Touch Dictionary
Type a word into the Wordflex Touch Dictionary, and this is what you get: a beautiful tree of all its synonyms, antonyms, and derivatives. You can pull up the origin by tapping on the “orig” box on the top left of the root word, and you can pull up each of its definitions by clicking the “def” button at the base of each branch. For example, our friend learned through this app last night that “panoply” can mean “a complete suit of armor” in certain contexts—screenshot below. With its intuitive simplicity yet powerful features, Wordflex feels like what the dictionary and thesaurus were meant to be, and is the type of application that helps students learn and remember a defined word.