The Impending Gale, Coming Soon to a Middle School Near You (Hopefully)

Middle schoolers love video and computer games. And at North Hills Junior High School in Pennsylvania, they're like the spoonful of sugar that helps the learning go down. Daveen Rae Kurutz reports in The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review on a new educational game being tested at North Hills Junior High that mixes algebra, earth science, geography and Spanish.

The Impeding Gale is an online game that is similar in design and play to World of Warcraft. In the game, students are disaster relief volunteers engaged in an adventure. The game, created by Eric Hardman of the National Network of Digital Schools, has the same chat components as other online games, but this past semester, teachers have turned that off so students focus on the adventure and the academics in the game.

Students love the chance to play for a purpose and avoid the boredom of reading textbooks and filling out worksheets:

"A lot of times I get bored just reading a textbook or doing worksheets, but this makes us more apt to pay attention even if it isn't a subject we're really interested in....It's fun, but educational, not like some of the games out there like Guitar Hero where you aren't learning. I'd do this in any class."

"You get so tired of reading out of a textbook it makes you fall asleep....This definitely makes you remember things differently. I feel like I'm catching on better."

The Impending Gale is a pilot project, the National Network of Digital Schools' first foray into the traditional classroom and its first project to focus more on academics than linking teens socially. Only the North Hills district of Allegheny county is participating so far. Hopefully, after this successful semester, The Impeding Gale will be more widely available. We can also hope that NNDS and others will create and test more games like this that combine subjects in a fun virtual learning environment for our middle schoolers.

SOURCE: "Video game supplies adventure for North Hills students" 05/27/08
photo courtesy of ground zero, used under this Creative Commons license

New Programs to Help Middle-School Teachers with Algebra

"Mathematics Teaching in the 21st Century" (PDF), a recent study funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and conducted by Michigan State University (MSU), claims that too often, middle school teachers aren't prepared to teach algebra. Three different surveys are summarized in the report: a Teacher Preparation Institution (Program) survey, a survey for Future Teachers of Middle School Mathematics, and brief faculty surveys. The news is not good:

"Our future teachers are getting weak training mathematically and are just not prepared to teach the demanding mathematics curriculum we need for middle schools if we hope to compete internationally in the future," said William Schmidt, an MSU distinguished professor and director of the study.

In comparison with other countries in the study, future teachers in the United States ranked from the middle to the bottom on measures of mathematics knowledge.

"What’s most disturbing is that one of the areas in which U.S. future teachers tend to do the worst is algebra, and algebra is the heart of middle school math," Schmidt said. "When future teachers in the study were asked about opportunities to learn about the practical aspects of teaching mathematics, again, we rank mediocre at best."

Laura Devaney, associate editor of eSchool News, outlines several math programs created by education companies for elementary and middle school students to help this disturbing trend but the most exciting effort has been spearheaded by the nonprofit National Math and Science Initiative. NMSI has offered grants worth up to $2.4 million each to several U.S. universities to help them set up programs modeled after UTeach, a teacher-preparation program at the University of Texas at Austin. In UTeach, students majoring in math and science earn teaching certifications, financial incentives and early classroom experiences to draw, and hopefully keep, talented people in K-12 classrooms. The program acknowledges that talented teachers are needed to support and train future users and innovators of technology:

"The UTeach program invests in the teachers of those who will become future leaders in key technology industries critical to the development and competitiveness of the United States," said Tom Luce, chief executive of the National Math and Science Initiative. "As society demands more and more technological advancements, investments in those who teach in math, science, and technology become critical for continuous success and long-term growth."

The apparent strength of programs like UTeach is not just in the value placed on developing the math and science skills of elementary and middle school students but also in the value placed on those who teach those skills, something that often seems missing in the scramble over standardized test scores and school rankings.

SOURCE: "Schools aim to solve huge math problem" 02/12/08
photo courtesy of Stefan Heinemann, used under this Creative Commons license