Education Week - August 3, 2016 - 8

DIGITAL DIRECTIONS > Tracking news and ideas in educational technology
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As Pokémon Craze Grows, Educators Weigh Game's Value
By Leo Doran
& Michelle R. Davis
Like a thunderbolt from Pikachu's
tail, Pokémon is once again electrifying the nation.
The latest incarnation of the Japanese franchise is a mobile app, Pokémon Go, which puts a digital overlay
on the real world, requiring users to
walk around their neighborhoods to
collect characters and do battle with
one another.
The game has exploded in memedriven popularity to become the
largest mobile game ever, only 10
days after its launch in July.
The unexpected summer surge
has parents and educators buzzing
about the potential for educational
applications, and fretting about privacy and safety risks they'd prefer
children to avoid. Educators say
they see opportunities to capitalize
on students' love for the game in the
teaching of subjects like social studies, local history, math, mapping, and
literacy.
"Pokémon Go is interdisciplinary
in a way that's hard to obtain with
other programs," said Jessica Torres, an assistant principal at Brook
Avenue Elementary School in Waco,
Texas. "I'm tired of seeing science in
one area, reading in another area,
math somewhere else."
The Pokémon world first rose to
iconic pop-culture status in the late
1990s as a trading card game, then
as a TV show, then as a Gameboysupported video game. The unlikely
resurrection of the virtual world of
animated creatures into a socialgaming phenomenon is powered by
a roster of over 21 million daily mobile users, and counting.
Nintendo, which owns a stake in
the parent Pokémon Co., has seen
its stock value rise by the billions as
a result of the success.

Local Landmarks, History
The success that Pokémon's developers have found in stitching
together the real world and the
virtual game goes a long way to explaining the game's appeal to users.
Until now, the convention for
nearly every game on the market
has involved moving a virtual avatar around in a virtual world delineated by a virtual map. But in Pokémon Go, once the app is downloaded
and an avatar is selected, the player
is located by the game via GPS.
In Pokémon Go, users roam to
parks, landmarks, and buildings
in their communities to gather resources. Every once in a while the
gamer's phone will vibrate and shift
the display from a GPS-maps-like
view of the gamer's avatar, to a view
activated by the gamer's camera.
At this point, the game jumps
from a third- to first-person view,

especially since Nintendo will soon
allow businesses to sponsor or purchase Pokéstops as a way of driving
traffic to their site.
The game also borrows from popular iOS games of the last five years
in using a "freemium" business
model. The practice is controversial
because it creates feedback loops
which give players a thrill when
they spend real money and improve
their character that gradually dissipates as improvement plateaus.
Gamers then feel compelled to
spend more money, chasing the rush
of seeing their avatars become more
powerful, said Gee of Arizona State.

and the gamers see a direct feed
of the grass or sidewalk in front
of them, with a digital overlay of
whichever Pokémon was randomly
generated. When the illusion is
conjured properly, the users feel
as though they have "discovered"
a magical creature hiding in plain
sight.
Pokéstops, places where players can
collect free items, are often placed at
parks, historic sites, or monuments,
drawing out local history, Torres said.
By encouraging users to seek out
these real-world landmarks in person,
gamers are noticing their surroundings and absorbing real local history
in ways that are getting educators excited, she explained.
"It is a springboard for learning
urban geography and the history of
a region," said Dawn Casey-Rowe,
a social studies teacher at William
M. Davies, Jr. Career and Technical
High School in Rhode Island who
plans to utilize the game in her
classroom for the upcoming school
year.

Social Component

Geospatial Exploration
Even in other parts of the country where there might not be 400
years of Colonial history, the game
has the potential to be a good introduction to civics, said Casey-Rowe.
A teacher, leading students through
Pokéstops, might be able to take advantage of pointing out "this is the
town hall, this is where we do 'x.'"
But perhaps the most promising
application, suggested Casey-Rowe,
is in teaching students basic skills
about mapping, cardinal directions,
and navigation. "There is so much
going on from a geospatial point of
view."
Meanwhile, Torres also sees potential for young students to practice literacy through the app, which
encourages a fair amount of reading.
Other students might be able to
use math to analyze where Pokéstops will occur, and grapple with the
game's points system, used to have
characters battle to capture virtual
Pokémon gyms. Science plays a part
as well, added Torres, because Pokémon tend to pop up in their natural
habitat areas-for example, a fish
will usually appear near water.
One of the most appealing features of the franchise's latest iteration, especially for adults concerned
that kids are spending too much
time indoors, is that the game cannot be played from a sofa. In order
to catch Pokémon and level up, players have to mill about outside.
Rebecca Randall, the vice president of education programs and
partnerships for Common Sense
Education, noted that physical
education teachers can use the
egg-hatching function-which requires players to run or walk a set
distance for a creature to emerge
from the shell-to increase student
activity.
Math skills can be used to log distances between stops or Pokémon

8 | EDUCATION WEEK | August 3, 2016 | www.edweek.org

Alan Diaz/AP

Does engaging tool
pose privacy risks?

Pinsir, a Pokémon character, is found by a group of Pokémon Go players at
Bayfront Park in downtown Miami this summer. The recent surge in
popularity around the online game has sent legions of players hiking
around cities and battling with "pocket monsters" on their smartphones.

gyms, where characters can battle,
or to calculate probability around
the rarity of some Pokémon species.
James Gee, an expert in educational video gaming at Arizona
State University, sees the app's success as partially derivative of the
way "it enchants the environment."
In a country that Gee and other
commentators argue is becoming
more fractured for a variety of social
and economic reasons, Pokémon Go
seems to cut across class and race in
its popularity, he said.
"Every human would love to think
that there are little fairies running
around-that's been a theme of literature, and many cultures actually believe it," Gee said. "Pokémon
comes along and does that."

Privacy Protections?
Nevertheless, educators should
be cognizant that the game might
not hold the same appeal for every
student, said Casey-Rowe. Some of
them might get wrapped up in "unhealthy competition" over controlling territory, or simply won't find
the game interesting, she added.
As with any new-age digital tool,
Casey-Rowe argued that it is incumbent upon teachers who engage in
these spaces to model professional
uses of social media, and social games.
In addition, as important as the
"augmented reality" features of
the game are to its popularity, the
game's need to track a user's geographic positioning has stirred fears
among data-privacy advocates.
Those fears increased after early

reports from bloggers, later picked
up by mainstream news outlets,
that the developers were gaining
access to users' entire Google accounts, including full email records,
through a broadly worded privacy
waiver.
Bill Fitzgerald, the director of
the privacy-evaluation initiative at
Common Sense Media, said educators need to be wary about data collected by apps like Pokémon Go. "It
was very bad," he said of the initial
glitch. "The issue is: what else did
they miss in their QA [quality assurance] process?"
Randall, of Common Sense Education, also noted that schools
should tread very carefully around
encouraging students to use personal accounts for educational
purposes with Pokémon Go, particularly for those under 13. Laws
like the Children's Online Privacy
Protection Act, or COPPA, are designed specifically to protect these
younger students.
While a company statement said
the digital-security issues have been
resolved, there have also been concerns about physical safety. According to news reports, gamers have
been injured because of not paying
attention to their surroundings, and
in some cases, they've even been
lured into armed robberies.
Some observers are also wary of
the marketing aspects of the game,

But perhaps the most unexpected
criticism for such a popular game is
that many expert gamers find some
of its mechanics wanting. "The app
is very faulty, and it's not smooth
in terms of the user-interface or
the gameplay," said Steve Isaacs, a
middle school game design teacher
at William Annin Middle School in
New Jersey.
As Isaacs points out, Pokémon
Go will inevitably see patches and
updated versions. But to date, the
game lacks an effective tutorial, and
Isaacs found the mechanics used for
throwing Pokéballs to capture Pokémon to be overly simplistic. Other
reviewers who have progressed further in the game have reported that
"battling" can feel like more of an
exercise in reflexive button-mashing
than nuanced decision making.
A lot of kinks need to be worked
out to incorporate Pokémon Go into
the learning day, Torres said. But
teachers can help themselves by taking the time to understand the game
and how students experience it.
"Our kids are going to want to
talk about it when they get back to
school," Torres said. "If teachers are
familiar with it and can talk about
it, that's going to be an easy way to
build a relationship."
"Get a teen consultant" and "make
sure that you are an authentic part
of the community," advised CaseyRowe on how educators can make
the most of the Pokémon Go opportunity. "Use your experts, be invited
in, and learn to use it."
"There are going to be a lot of
naysayers," but teachers who focus
on "how do we use this to promote
education" will find a goldmine, she
predicted. "I'll always use any tool I
can to further the cause."
Coverage of the implementation of
college- and career-ready standards
and the use of personalized learning is
supported in part by a grant from the
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, at
www.gatesfoundation.org. Education
Week retains sole editorial control over
the content of this coverage.

ONLINE ONLY: A Q-and-A about the implications of Pokemon Go with Arizona

State University professor and gaming expert James Gee.
www.edweek.org/go/PokemonGo

http://www.digitaldirections.org http://www.gatesfoundation.org http://www.edweek.org/go/PokemonGo http://www.edweek.org

Education Week - August 3, 2016

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