Myst Exile in the Classroom 3

This article continues from part 1 and part 2 and outlines my thoughts about our Myst project as a whole. It also reflects on how I might change things when I run similar lessons in the future.

Why should we use Myst in the classroom?

• One of the most surprising and impressive benefits (for me) was the amazing levels of enthusiasm and motivation which the game brought out in the children. The beginning of the story seems to 'drip' little pieces of information to the players, building up lots of mystery and making them desperate to keep exploring and find out more. My class were all incredibly keen to begin the next lesson and, as a teacher, it was fantastic to work through the game together, sharing the journey and watching their responses as the story unfolded. I know that lots of the children bought the game for themselves after seeing it in the classroom.
• This motivation also continued into their independent work. After playing parts of the game together as a class, they would then work on the drama / written tasks that they were given with great focus and determination. This applied to all children in the class, regardless of ability. It was wonderful to see some of the lower ability pupils have such enthusiasm for their work, even though they sometimes find Literacy challenging.
• The characters and settings within the game are perfect for Literacy activities. The children thought of some wonderful words and phrases to describe these different things, recording them in their own 'Myst' vocabulary books. They used these books throughout the unit, and were keen to continue developing them. Some even wanted to take the books home at the end of our work to add more to them.
• Looking at the standard of the children's writing before and after the project, I am able to see a clear improvement in their use of vocabulary and description to bring their work to life. This was the major theme running throughout our work, and it is nice to see children continuing to use these new skills and knowledge in other aspects of their writing.
• At the end of the unit, I asked the children to complete a Google Docs form to reflect on their work, as part of their homework. They were asked to indicate how much they usually enjoy their Literacy lessons on a scale from one to five, and how much they enjoyed our Myst lessons using the same scale. The average score for the Myst lessons was much higher, and the children also commented that the game had 'a great story', it was 'full of surprises' and that it was 'a great adventure all the way through'.

Some tips for planning / teaching with Myst:

• Before planning this unit, I played the game in its entirety (using a walkthrough to save time). This was of great help to me, as it allowed me to carefully guide our explorations. I also created a large number of 'save games' at various points, so that we could skip to different parts of the game, allowing us to focus on key points / events quickly.
• How you use the game in class depends on your situation. Having only one copy of the game, we played the game together. I sat amongst the children with a wireless mouse taking their suggestions about where to go and what to look at. This resulted in a fantastic collaborative atmosphere within the class... it really felt like we were exploring these environments together, overcoming the various challenges, with a truly rewarding feeling amongst the group. This also allowed us to share some wonderful vocabulary and descriptions as a class.
• Asking the children to provide running commentaries as we explored provided some really surprising results. At first, I thought that the children might stutter and stumble, running out of things to say. However, their commentaries were really detailed and they provided information about what they could hear, see and 'smell' as they explored, as well as sharing their feelings about moving through these strange environments. On reflection, I would have liked to have used this technique more as we explored.

How might I change things?

• Although I remember reading online that other teachers' Myst lessons were 'light' on planning, I found that planning these lessons took a HUGE amount of time. I remember spending hours over my weekends playing different parts of the game, thinking about how we might be able to use those sections to achieve our objectives and target the children's needs. Maybe I tried to squeeze too much into the three week block?
• When playing the game, we didn't really attempt any of the puzzles - I used my saved games which allowed us to skip past these problems. As this was a Literacy unit, I really want to use the game to improve our Literacy work. However, I can see that there are also benefits in using the puzzles for problem solving / thinking skills.
• At the end of the unit, we used a wiki to create a collaborative story involving the characters from Myst. This was a really interesting experience, but was a little manic for a number of reasons. Firstly, it was the first time that I had used a wiki in the classroom and it was also the children's first time using a wiki at all. I was also out of class for a number of sessions during the week, which reduced the time that we had to write our stories, check and edit them, paste them into the wiki, add images and links, and then make sure that it all worked correctly. Although the children developed some great collaborative and ICT skills by doing this, it slightly took the emphasis away from the Literacy work, so I'm not sure if I would finish the project in this way again.
• I'm sure that it is possible to get a whole term's worth of cross-curricular work from the game. Although the children did a little art work based on the settings within the game, it would have been nice to have developed this more. Similarly, we could have created some music based on the game... I had bought the soundtrack CD, but didn't really use this as much as I would have liked to.

How has this affected my teaching?

Using Myst within our lessons has really brought to my attention the benefits of using these kinds of media inside the classroom. At home, children play their PS3 / X-Box / Wii games, completely immersing themselves in the challenges provided by the game (have you seen this video?). As I now watch adverts, programmes and films on TV, and play my own PS3 games, I often think to myself "this would be great to use in school"!

How have you used these types of media in your classroom?

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