Welcome
My work explores what happens when we give young people access to cutting edge technologies, with purposeful work, and opportunties to develop classroom goals that align with student formation of personal goals.
Add to this well-designed curriculum, created with the kind of challenge, useful feedback and interaction that games provide and I propose that this will lead to more engagement, which should lead to more time on task, thus developing success and confidence and competency.
3RTEAMS Lately I am teaching engineering and have begun creating projects that accelerate the 3rs: Reading, wRiting, and aRithmetic through TEAMS curriculum: Technology, Engineering, Arts, Mathmatics, & Science. The design of the curriculum is to allow for students to engage in design challenges in simulated careers. I have done this with studio recording and sound engineering, naval architecture and marine engineering, and game design.
What makes this an effective instructional design strategy is that the work is all purposeful.
Four words tell it all: Alignment of the Assignment
If there is a reading, it is because this article is what an engineer would read. If there is a tool, it is because they would use that in their work. Roles and identity are powerful and engaging, and when mixed with a design challenge, the learner gets to become an engineer for a day, and learns the tools, vocabulary, and strategies and habits of mind that professionals use. This includes the scientific thinking, reading for purpose, writing to document, and mathematics for description, modeling, and prediction.
My background in cognitive psychology and curriculum and instruction has led me to examine possibilities for exploring ways that reading comprehension and critical reasoning skills can be embedded within a digital curriculum.
The intention is to embed what are often considerted rote style tasks into highly motivating activities. In a project using video games in the classroom, the games were used as a model for designing instruction and assessment, as well as using the technology to facilitate instruction and data collection. I am currently in my third year of teaching a course at the University of Minnesota called Video Games as Tools for Educators. Along with this, I am an editorial member of the new journal for the Center for Cognitive Sciences, Cognitive Critique, and I have recently joined the editorial review board of the International Journal of Gaming and Computer-Mediated Simulations. I have worked in the past on a variety of topics related to reading and cognition. Specifically issues related to prosody, formatting, and comprehension. This has led into investigations of readability, text complexity, and ways this can be measured.
Currently I am learning about the processes of comprehension as a foundation for manhy of the new literacies.
- A key feature is the consideration of literacy as pattern recognition;
- that all of us do this naturally;
- that comprehension is not exclusive to text;
- many of us can develop decoding skills to support our intention to gather information from texts;
- that our beliefs about our learning are the best predictors of our future success;
- that reading instruction can and should be embedded in activities that are interesting and relevant to learners;
- and that new media like video games, media production, and interaction with technology can be used to develop comprehension.
I have found that given purposeful activities, most if not all young people can recruit the skills to become successful readers with the support of understanding the reading process, awareness of formatting, relating to the oral language experience, slowing down with confidence, and the ability to create situation models.
RECENTLY SUBMITTED CHAPTERS
Dubbels, B.R. (in press) Video games, reading, and transmedial comprehension. In R. E. Ferdig (Ed.), Handbook of research on effective electronic gaming in education. Information Science Reference.
O’Brien, D.G. & Dubbels, B. (Accepted) Promoting technological literacy. In Wood, K.E. & Blanton, W.E. (Eds.)Promoting Literacy with Adolescent Learners: Research-based Instruction. Guilford Publications
Dubbels, B. (in press). Students’ blogging about their video game experience. In R. Beach, C. Anson, L. Breuch, & T. Swiss, T. Engaging students in digital writing. Norwood, MA: Christopher Gordon.
RECENTLY SUBMITTED ARTICLES
Kwon, M. Dubbels, B., & Legge, G (2005) Developmental changes in the visual span for reading. The Journal of Vision. Volume 5,
Number 8, Abstract 807, Page 807a. http://journalofvision.org/5/8/807/
Dubbels, B., Kadakia, M, & Squire, K. (White Paper) New Media, New Literacy O’Brien, D., & Dubbels, B. (In Press) Reading-to-Learn: From Print to New Digital Media and New Literacies. North Central Regional Educational Laboratory. www.ncrel.org. You will notice in the sidebar to the right there are two banners for video games as learning tools. One is a social network that I would encourage you to join, and the other is a wiki that I started using for my video games course of the same name. Underneath that, you will notice the television network this will be used for students and people involved in the network to produce programming from machinima to presentations of research findings. This approach is an attempt to build on the power of web 2.0 applications for the public production and sharing of knowledge and performance -- two very important pieces to engagement.
I have been a yoga and meditation teacher for 9 years and one of my goals is to learn how to surf. I enjoy my work doing research, teaching, and thinking about big ideas. I like making long solo hiking trips, visiting historical sites, snorkeling in warm ocean waters, playing guitar, reading good fiction, learning to sail my boat, and mostly having family time with my wife and kids.
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