Finding the Magic to teach our students 21st century skills

This is what my classroom is starting to look like during IS.

Like most people, I take a sort of guilty pleasure in watching the videos on social media of people so engrossed in their cell phones that they walk into street posts, glass doors, and off steps. I draw the line at videos of people actually getting hurt, like the one I saw yesterday of a woman walking off of a curb and getting sideswiped by a van while engrossed in her phone. Normal people shouldn’t really want to see people getting hurt and things like that make me cringe. There is no doubt that technology, for all of its positives, certainly has some drawbacks that are affecting us culturally. The Internet, once seen as a place where the playing field is leveled and everyone has a voice has become a cesspool of fake news, half truths, poorly reasoned opinion, and cat videos.

So naturally, as a teacher in a school district trying to prepare students with the skills they need to compete in this information age, I was thrilled when our school decided to issue a MacBook Air to every student in grades 7-12. No signing up for trashed computer labs! No reserving a cart of maybe-charged laptops and rolling it all the way across the school and up two floors! Obviously this endeavor came with a whole host of problems we have had to deal with, such as students who want to listen to music at inappropriate times in class or binge watch their favorite Netflix episodes over the course of the day. For all the positives our school-issued computers provide, there is a negative that must be managed. The lure of constant entertainment or FOMO (fear of missing out) often proves too much for our students to handle.

An amazing thing has been happening in my Independent Study period at the end of the school day, though. One of my students, Tim, has been attempting to form a Magic: The Gathering community at the school for his Civics class. The directive is to identify a need or problem in your community and work through the appropriate channels to meet the need or fix the problem. Students have been trying to form a Magic club at school for a few years with varying degrees of success, but Tim has one thing going for him that is proving beneficial: An atypical group of people who are interested in the game. A pair of “jocks” along with a student who enjoys hunting, fishing, and motorized recreation have a raucous good time while playing the game. Other students see that and want to see what is happening and they want to be a part of it. The cries of exultation and the moans of lamentation are so over the top that it makes me grin and appreciate the enthusiasm and fun they are having with their poorly-conceived decks. The number of players has grown and students from other rooms now ask to come over and play.

What does this all have to do with technology? Two of my students bought Planeswalker decks and have been bringing them to IS. I mentioned that I have been playing MTG Arena lately, and both of these students asked if I wanted their codes so that I could have their Planeswalker deck online. Of course I do, but I encouraged them to install the free MTG Arena client and keep their deck for themselves, but they assured me that they have no interest in doing that. I told them they might want it in the future, but they instead insisted that I take the code and use it because they won’t.

Students, who grew up with a cell phone in their back pocket and with school-issued computers do not want to play a game they so clearly enjoy on their computers at home? Students who could pretend to be doing schoolwork while instead playing one of the countless web-based video games do not even open their computers. With Magic, they are, however:

• Doing quick math (am I going to win this damage race at this rate?)
• Learning new vocabulary (sophic, scion, pulmonic, basal, ophidian, etc)
• Problem-solving (How will I squeeze this last point of damage through all these blockers?)
• Collaborating (I once took on two students at once and they squeaked out a win by working together)

All the benefits of the game aside, the students WANT to play it together, in person, and interact with each other. I think it is because these students crave interaction and have found something that scratches an itch that they probably didn’t even know they have. Instead of chastising students who are playing Magic during this Independent Study time, I encourage them as long as they are caught up in their classes. I believe they are learning important things that we talk about as 21st century skills but sometimes struggle to teach, not the least of which is how to put down their phones and interact with real, live people.