Reimagining our classrooms through gaming integrations with CodeMonkey

Growing up, I never played many video games. I know that I’ll be dating myself here, but I remember when my older brother would bring home Sega Genesis games that he would borrow from his friends to play on his console. As older brothers do, he never allowed me to have a turn, so much of my “gaming experience” comes from peering over his shoulder as he spent hours playing games like Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter and Sonic & Knuckles.

Though I never had much of an affinity for gaming and will admit that I could have been counted amongst those curmudgeonly voices asking kids to abandon this form of “frivolous entertainment” (Lynch, 2021, p. 120) and get out and play, researchers like Abrams and Gerber (Lynch, 2021) show us just how misguided that attitude is. Abrams and Gerber enumerate the many benefits of video games highlighting them as forms of authentic assessment within educational settings, with Shaffer (2010) lauding them for cultivating problem solving skills. 

The International Literacy Association (ILA, 2018) implored educators to redirect their focus to “contexts of literacies that are used” (p. 3) rather than individual tools, explaining that classroom technology “should more clearly mirror the kinds of work environments that we expect students to eventually encounter” (p. 3). And if we want our classrooms to mimic future workplaces and to dually prepare our students for the future workforces that will demand that they are adept in digital literacy skills like digital problem solving (Vanek, 2019) then video games offer us the perfect conduit to meet that end. Shaffer (2010) tells us, “Digital technologies—including games—are letting young people produce products and knowledge and to participate in learning communities as never before” (p. 4).

CodeMonkey is a K-8 digital platform that teaches kids coding languages through games, helping us bring new literacies practices into classrooms by allowing young people to cultivate “professional level skills” (p. 5). As an early childhood educator, I zeroed in on CodeMonkey’s games and tools for first and second graders. They designed Beaver Achiever with the youngest elementary-aged students in mind. Beaver Achiever teaches the fundamentals of block-based coding by having them assist a friendly beaver with various building tasks around his habitat.

I already have an idea of how students in lower elementary school grades interact with CodeMonkey because it was used as part of STEM education in my last school. Our STEM teacher encouraged classroom teachers to allow the students to play around the game if they ever had any downtime (like when another specials teacher was absent), and that’s just what I did. Students seemed to think CodeMonkey was fun, and they were always proud to show me what they built. 

In my current teaching context, I think CodeMonkey would naturally fit within a second math block in the afternoon that is designed to allow students to think critically to solve word problems by making inferences. Abrams and Gerber (Lynch, 2021) tell us that the problem-solving and self-assessment skills students sharpen while engaging in games like CodeMonkey are transferable and should be “embedded within informal and formal classroom activities” (p. 126), which is why I think it would make a natural companion to our end-of-the-day math block, though ultimately, the problem solving skills they cultivate while gaming will no doubt serve them across the curriculum. 

To launch CodeMonkey in my second-grade classroom, I would first “hook” my students by telling them that they will be playing videogames on their Chromebooks! Other than that, CodeMonkey (CodeMonkey, n.d.) will do the rest of the heavy lifting, touting their “fun graphics, intuitive interface and easy-to-follow instructions” that will allow students to “quickly catch on!” And because block-based coding is the language here, students of all reading and writing levels can access the game’s goodness. With that, I only expect to provide scaffolds surrounding basic computer literacy skills—some students don’t know what to do when their screen freezes or how to open an additional tab on a browser.

So, how could I assess my little second grade beaver-dam coders? Well, for starters, Shaffer (2020) explains that in the new century demands that we assess on a different set of criteria that includes “innovation, collaboration, civic engagement, critical thinking, system thinking, technical skills, ability to produce with digital media, and so on” (p. 7). Taking CodeMonkey’s Beaver Achiever in consideration, I think we could formatively assess students on these skills as we observe them navigate the challenges of the in-game tasks. But as Abrams and Gerber (Lynch, 2021) emphasize, what’s even more significant are the countless opportunities the students will have to self-assess.

Games are remarkable in that they offer students the chance at indefinite revision. Abrams and Gerber (Lynch, 2021) explain that video games provide authentic assessment opportunities because of “the feedback loop” (p. 124) that “continually provide[s] immediate and, thus, current information to help the student understand (a) how a tool or technique works, (b) what moves lead to success, and (c) what moves lead to failure” (p. 124). In CodeMonkey’s Beaver Achiever, students are tasked with an objective like having to figure out the best way to code to build a beaver’s dam, and they can learn from successes and failures along the way. When students know their objectives or standards, they can “continuously compare the objectives to the product” (p. 127) and “gauge what he or she has accomplished in relation to expectations and the final product” (p. 127).

I know that the 11-year-old version of me that learned to code at summer camp using the ancient HTML would embrace gaming knowing that it was tied to an aptitude that could potentially be lucrative. But money aside, it’s essential that we equip our students with a means to produce and innovate in our digital world if they are to fully participate.

When I was in elementary school, we learned Spanish but the digital era we live in now demands that students work on their fluency in digital languages, like block-based coding. CodeMonkey answers that call.

Teachers, I know "Dance Monkey" has probably made a home in your classroom, but could you envision CodeMonkey there, too?

References

CodeMonkey. (n.d.). Beaver Achiever. https://www.codemonkey.com/courses/beaver-achiever?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_content=337690271195&utm_adgroup=codemonkey_bm

CodeMonkey – Coding Games for Kids. [CodeMonkeyStudios]. (2023, May 23). Block-based coding explained for kids | what is block-based programming? | block coding for kids. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWjHgX2SPbU&t=100s

International Literacy Association. (2018). Improving digital practices for literacy, learning, and justice: More than just tools [Literacy leadership brief]. Newark, DE: Author. https://www.literacyworldwide.org/docs/default-source/where-we-stand/ila-improving-digital-practices-literacy-learning-justice.pdf

Lynch, T. L. (Ed.). (2021). Bringing lives to texts (Vol. 1). National Council of Teachers of English. 

Shaffer, David & Gee, James. (2010). Looking where the light is bad: Video games and the future of assessment. Phi Delta Kappa International EDge. 6. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/303856565_Looking_where_the_light_is_bad_Video_games_and_the_future_of_assessment

Vanek, J. (2019). Digital literacy. American Institutes for Research. https://www.air.org/sites/default/files/TSTMDigitalLiteracyBrief-508.pdf