Esports in Education: Unlocking Potential, Connecting Careers

Hello and welcome everybody to our session Esports and education unlocking potential connecting careers I know the last keynote just is wrapping up so many of you are making your way over here for this session uh while we wait to get started connecting career sorry as we wait to get started please

Let us know in the chat who you are and where you are connecting from while you’re doing that make sure you have checked out the wakelet community week profile that can be found at www.wakelet.com wakelet Community week 2023 where you can find all of the community week related content to poke

Around see what sessions are coming up next to look at the resources and just generally connect with everything from Community week we’re going to explore the awesome potential of Esports in today’s session education discover how Esports can improve student engagement and help Learners think outside the box before we begin

I want to remind you about the social media competition so for all of you that are out there participating all week long please remember that whatever social platform you’re utilizing make sure you share your learning and key takeaways tag at wakelet make sure you use the hashtag wakelet Community week so you

Can win some awesome prizes we’ve got swag packs we’ve got some experienced gift cards that you can use for things in your area like amusement parks or a day out and the big one of course a trip to iste 2024. this session is being recorded so you can play it back later

On in case you missed something or the shenanigans of these two speakers today you know kind of deviate from what you’re looking for because backstage it’s been fun the banter I can tell you is amazing and I’m really excited to host this so this will be recorded you

Can play it back later on and the certificate link that will be sent out with the resources later on throughout this presentation so without further Ado I am super excited I’m really proud to bring on and welcome to the main stage the always incredible Duo and I think she said for

The very first time in the same place presenting together uh Becky Keane and Steven Reed is that right it’s the first time it’s our first Co keynote Keynote as you’re going to find out we’ve worked together a lot but this is the first time we’ve ever co-presented Aquino I’m

Gonna say I’ve often times seen you at events together right you you make the circuit you travel um but the first code Keynotes this is going to be a momentous occasion and we’re really excited for this brilliant and thank you weekly for making it happen yes we’re excited as

Well we’re excited to jump in and you should be able to see our presentation correct yep so in one minute we’re gonna pull it up and uh the stage is yours so I’m gonna fade to the back and Becky and Steven this is all you

Thank you Ryan so fun to have you be our Host this morning so hi everyone around the world it’s really fun to see so many familiar names and also new Connections in the chat this morning my name is Becky Keane you can find me on social

Media I work for iTune edu and we’ll talk a little bit more about that and I’m here with my amazing colleague hi everyone I’m Steven Reed you can find me on social media as Stephen Reed edu I work for Microsoft currently as their game-based learning lead and I also run

The play matters games gaming and game based learning community and you you haven’t been doing much with gaming lately have you oh I’ve been doing many many things with gaming and we’re about to find some of those out [Laughter] and what you’re trying to do she’s

Trying to get me to say something and it’s not happening can we have a look you just start start your talk yeah so I’m just stuck um and so yeah we’ve um as you can see from the pictures we have traveled around the world we have been working

Together for a long long time and we have uh quite a lot of stuff that um that you might already be familiar with Becky what is it that we do we have been working together for about the last five years although Steven’s been in gaming for closer to 20 but we

Have designed experiences for students around the world to empower learning to allow teachers to embrace technology and really bring positive learning experiences and positive programs to schools um it’s one of our very favorite things to do and that’s been in the game-based learning and Minecraft space specifically but it’s expanded in the

Last couple of years into Esports so I work for a company called i2e which is an education Support Agency we provide training to Educators all over the world primarily in the United States for Esports absolutely and I work for Microsoft education as their game-based learning lead

Um I’ve been in education now for over 20 years I’ve been I’ve used over 147 uh sorry over 140 games I calculated just this week that it was 147 games off the shelf games that everybody uh that you know kids know and love um and I’ve used 147 of those to teach

In over 70 countries around the world on almost every and any subject you can think of from Deep curriculum to Social and emotional learning to Career Readiness which is some of what we’re going to talk about today the first game I ever taught with was Command and

Conquer Red Alert and on the PlayStation one thing that’s what Becky was trying to get me to see earlier and um and if any of you remember Command and Conquer Red Alert on the PlayStation one that was the first game I ever talked with to look at European history and geography with students

And together we serve on the board of a non-profit to students in underserved communities and schools so that’s just a little about us but let’s dig into our topic today absolutely we’re going to focus on Esports and education and particularly around careers and creating career pathways

When we talked about this topic we had kind of a brainstorm outline in our heads and we realized part of the reason that Esports is appealing to us is it really helps us solve a problem in education so we want to point that out to you all of the problems we think it

Solves we also want to give an understanding of what Esports is and what it can do what it can look like and also connect it to sports um excuse me to Career Pathways as a sport and also let you know how to get started yeah exactly all of the above

And so let’s start with the gaps um we’re all familiar I’m sure if you’re tuned into this it’s because you’re in education um and so we’re all familiar with the gaps and there are many um and so let’s have a look at what some of those are namely of course that the

Nature of work is changing actually the nature of the world is changing uh social systems AI the introduction of AI and all manner of things are globalization Mass globalization um I once had a a student say to me yeah but I’m only competing with other kids

In Scotland and I said no no you’re competing now for the jobs that exist with children in South Africa and most of the rest of Europe and China and India and America and he just couldn’t get his head around that his exams meant that the jobs he was going after were

Actually globally comp you know competition jobs and um and so and but the nature of that work is now changing and so we are in a position now to look for tools that can help our students to engage in the work that cliches it sounds the jobs of tomorrow don’t exist

Yet and we need to work that out education system technology lag now we’re all familiar with I remember 20 years ago we used to have this and it was almost like we said it with pride we’d say education’s 10 years behind by the time you’ve introduced a technology

You know 10 years later education catches up and says hey we should be doing that it’s not good enough in fact given point one and the nature of work now we we have to move faster we have to start using the tools that our students need today the ones that they’re engaged

With today um and so this tenure this idea that somehow in 10 years time we’ll introduce the Technologies our kids are interested in is is is hopeless we must change that lag relevant assessment I mean we all talk about teaching to the test and almost everyone I’m sure in this room will roll

Their eyes when we say it um but but we have an opportunity to make assessment relevant to the nature of work uh that we talked about um above and so and so Esports can help us to do that but right now that’s still a gap right now we are still assessing

For uh or we’re creating assessment systems around um opportunities and even careers that that are irrelevant tomorrow and so we have to have a think about that digital literacy we’re all aware of just how fast the digital world is growing and how fast it’s moving and how vast

It’s becoming the introduction of AI actually has just turned that completely around again and so we have to start helping our students to cross that gap of digital literacy where are we now where do we need to be and what are the what’s the digital bridge that we need to build

Mental health covert didn’t help and I know you’re all familiar with that anywhere you are in the world children’s mental health is an all-time low on a global scale so what we need to do is start looking at that as a gap and saying well actually where can technology help us to

Grow that like where can technology help us to make that better and you’re going to see a little bit about how Esports can do that digital equity so we are familiar that you know quite often people will say well you know not everyone around the world has the same

Access but there’s no reason why they shouldn’t I mean technology I mean one of the projects I I did a few years ago was literally to build a school in South Africa using one 3D printer and one copy of Minecraft it’s not difficult to change education paradigms using very little technology but technology

Nonetheless and so that digital Equity whether it’s physically getting your hands on the devices or having the Frameworks and the infrastructure around us to access that technology is is really important but it’s a huge gap and we’re all trying to fight it either in our inner cities in places like Britain

And America or literally in the urban um uh sorry the um the the countryside of uh of of countries like um Africa you know countries like South Africa and so on where I’ve been Stephen this is it’s almost depressing we’ve got this black and white I know right traffic with someone

Standing that’s what we did next right and so I get to have the joy of sharing with you uh some positives um the beauty the Positive Solutions so when we think about everything Stephen just went over all these gaps that feel a little bit discouraging in education the reality is

We have this this activity tool engagement strategy whatever you want to call it sport team that brings a lot of Positive Solutions and really Bridges the Gap in between what students you know are currently doing in a Traditional School environment or don’t have access to and something that brings

In new opportunities it gives them an awareness of some new work Styles ways that they can look to their futures for something outside of maybe something they’ve imagined before it shows progress in our Educational Systems it gives students a chance to understand what’s coming next in a in a kind of a

Cutting Edge industry gaming has been at the Forefront of change and Technology technology for a very long time and so putting kids in a space that they’re seeing that happen in real time is incredibly exciting and Incredibly empowering it gives us opportunities for truly relevant assessment that’s

Connected to careers and Futures when we look at student portfolios which we’re going to talk about and giving kids opportunities to demonstrate the skills that they have for a future career instead of you know my son just took a standardized test this morning um instead of focusing all

Of our energy on one test on one day we’re opening up so many doors for our kids we know that it builds digital literacy which Stephen spoke about because they’re engaging in authentic content I don’t know how many times students have had to read huge amounts

Of content in a game they’re reading it quickly they’re processing information they’re making decisions based on their comprehension of that text and that’s today’s comic book you know when I was young and it was like oh we can’t let can’t let kids learn to read with comic

Books and now we’re in a space where we could be letting them learn to read and build fluency and comprehension through games we know that video gaming also improves Student Connection through giving them a sense of community a group of other students maybe their age maybe a little

Older or younger that they can interact with in a really positive way with guidance from adults in those safe spaces in education it also means that we can provide access to students through extract and co-curricular activities where they wouldn’t have had access before many of our students don’t have access to

High-end gaming systems high-end PCS and so we’re creating these gaps where only certain kids have opportunities for those careers because they’re the only ones prepared but by bringing Esports into our schools and and funding Esports adequately we’re giving them an opportunity to see a new future together which I think is just incredibly

Exciting and before we skip to the next slide Becky we’ve had three comments on those two images did you create AI yes we did we actually used absolutely we used mid-journey to create those and here’s the really interesting thing um and running this whole system of the intersection between Ai and gaming at

The moment and trying to explore what that looks like and one of the things that I’ve been doing is I’ve been getting chat GPT to create the correct prompt to generate the exact mid-journey image that I’m looking for so it’s kind of like AI speaking to AI to get the

Results that I want so yes both of those images were AI generated the took some iteration though it did we had to play around with it that was I think the uh the cliff one previously was uh four prompts before I got it right and this one was two

Awesome so little little bird walk there but um I’m glad that people are noticed in the imagery because that was very intentional and carefully selected so we we want to point out that gaming is actually very inclusive and social and sometimes when I speak on gaming uh

Independently I have a whole talk called change in the game and and I really spend some time breaking down the misconceptions around gaming because I know that I had many of those misconceptions as an educator and I want to make sure that the people who were with me in those

Misconceptions learn like I did through people like Steven um the reality of gaming and so one of the books that Stephen recommended to me years ago that I read um because I always take all his recommendations right um is reality is broken by Jane McGonagall and in this book she helps

Readers like me understand the collaborative and interdependent nature of games so I’ve pulled out one quote here that I think is extremely powerful and in case you’re using translation or Support Services I’m going to read this aloud so you’re not dependent on the English translation of this slide it

Says it may have once been true that computer games encouraged us to interact more with machines than with each other but if you still think of Gamers as loners then you’re not playing games and let me tell you who is playing games everyone right Stephen yeah let’s look

At some of the the engagement uh figures for that so uh just some statistics I’m going to take you through some of them uh and and read them out um again for the same reasons that Becky gave there are 3.2 billion Gamers worldwide that’s almost half the entire planet’s population is

Identifies as a gamer someone who uses consciously conscientiously use these games as part of their entertainment part of their education um and so on part of their connectivity um the industry itself is worth 197 billion dollars now you might think most of us can’t even picture what that

Money looks like but if I told you that that is more than the television the movie and the music Industries combined gaming is the single largest economic in Digital entertainment industry in the world uh 35.8 billion of that is in content spend 6 billion is in Hardware think

About it in your own homes those of you who are watching Somewhere In Your Homes you have a gaming machine right that might just be the mobile phone in your pocket but it could also be an Xbox a PlayStation a Nintendo DS a Nintendo switch it could be you probably got one

In the Attic that you put away and you know probably don’t think you’ll ever use again Retro Gaming is super cool by the way um they get out in 20 years time people will love you for it um 60 of Americans gain Daily Now not all games are made equal and not all

Games are the same that doesn’t necessarily mean to say everyone sits down and plays Diablo 4 or Command and Conquer uh sorry Call of Duty yeah go again or Call of Duty for uh four hours a day for example but actually it could just be Candy Crush Saga on your way to work

On the train for example um and another thing that comes that comes along is people quite often say to me when I you know non-gamers will quite often say to me yeah but it’s just a bunch of kids right in their basements wearing like geek t-shirts I

Say to them actually only 21 of all gamers in the world 3.2 billion gamers in the world and actually under 18 years old because the average gamer is 34 years old and is a property owner which we all know is in becoming becoming increasingly difficult these are these are successful independent people clever

People who are gaming as part of their daily lives 45 female 55 male the significant one I wanted to point out though is the parents that game with their children 55 of parents now actively game with their children now what you will notice on the right hand

Side is that in 2021 that number was just 15 now it’s 55. now that is largely in part to do with covet covert saw a massive increase of parents engaging with their children in gaming world something I’ve always said when I’m teaching about um uh gaming is people quite often say

To me I don’t know what they’re doing they’re they’re on the laptop in the in the bedroom and I’m in the kitchen it doesn’t really matter and I say but it does matter this is where your children are choosing to spend their time be with

Them you would be with them on the floor playing Legos you would be with them on the dining room table drawing so be with them in digital spaces it’s changing 55 and then the average gaming uh the average gamer plays 4.2 hours per day think about that in terms of your own days

So those are just some of the numbers that allow us to see just how big and just how prolific this is as part of our it’s it’s a social phenomenon and these numbers are pretty amazing Stephen and I know people in the chat are probably thinking like where did you

Get these numbers we could probably share that out the the sources later on yes sorry I meant to put them in The Boatman I didn’t but I do have this an amalgamation of like five or six different uh sources yeah absolutely so let’s take a look at one example of parents

Parent because just recently there was a pretty amazing worldwide phenomenon in the gaming industry absolutely just one of those games now oops here we go there we are just one game just this month and some of you will be familiar with us you might be playing it yourself you might

Have somebody in your home who’s playing it certainly your students in your classrooms will be playing this has sold 10 million copies made 700 million dollars and it did that in three days and only on the Nintendo switch one single platform no Xbox no PlayStation

No PC just the switch and that is a handheld that if you’re not familiar with what a Nintendo switch is it’s a small handheld device that you can take on a plane and play with 700 million dollars in three days it was one weekend that is that is social movement right there

That’s that’s incredible um so yeah have a think about that it’s definitely bigger than a movie opening it’s definitely bigger than an album drop it’s definitely great bigger than anything Netflix is moving and you know think of all the people just sitting on their couch sitting on their couches

Watching Netflix this game is doing more than Netflix entirely absolutely so we’ve talked a lot about gaming but specifically competition gaming is the focus of this session yeah um so yeah let’s have a look at that because competition gaming of course is is is our focus and it’s also very very

Important in fact competition makes up one of the three C’s that I often talk about when talking about truly engaging children in classrooms and those three C’s are competition collaboration and creativity and so as one of the top three uh it fits it basically commands

What Esports is and you can see here I’m not going to read all of this for you but I will summarize by saying the Esports which of course is short for electronic scores is about multiplayer video gaming in a competitive way usually amateur or professional but it

Also has to be organized the point is that it’s organized it’s intentional people know they’re doing it they know why they’re doing it they’re very often doing it for prizes or something like that um and even a even an amateur level and then significantly what really the

Second part that makes Esports what it is is that people watch audiences watch live via YouTube Facebook and twitch and we’ll talk more about that that watching part as we move on absolutely but but it’s not as simple as that though is it Becky like how do you how do you spell Esports

It’s shockingly complicated um so I put out this Tweet back in February and um it got a lot of uh a lot of excitement and a lot of appreciation so we wanted to bring it up again because we understand why people feel like they need to spell Esports a million

Different ways so I just want to explain for all of you in the audience because I actually happen to be a little bit passionate about this and so do some of our colleagues we have jokes at conferences like you know spot the misspellings and how many different companies are spelling in different ways

But it all comes down to this we add the e in front of a noun when it’s become digital so we have like email ebooks eBay e-readers right all these e things and sometimes we add a hyphen and sometimes we use camel case which is where the middle of the word is capitalized

Um and and those things are true until those tools gain mainstream acceptance and adoption and which time we drop the hyphen or the camel case then it just becomes a new word so in this case like email Esports is a word it’s a common noun it’s one word

Um it doesn’t need a hyphen it doesn’t need a capital letter it’s just a noun like dogs and potatoes so that’s something to just know about when you’re writing about Esports um and the reason behind it it’s because Esports is an adopted mainstream tool in the world

Um it’s also because the AP style book said it was so in 2017. so um that maybe clears it up for you some people really appreciate word history like Charo is posting like oh I love that um we hope you find that helpful and and when we talk about mainstream and all

These statistics of worldwide adoption what I think is amazing is when we see what is happening with Esports worldwide because in my little Community outside of Seattle Washington I might not be aware of what it looks like to really get involved in professional high-level Esports so we’ve brought in some imagery

Of what that actually looks like now let’s look at this this I love these you’re going to see two and I love this this image um because you can see that it’s a full Stadium picture of sports Stadium many of you will be sports fans and you’re pitching

A sports Stadium it’s filled with people the lighting rigs are incredible I know that it’s something like for 24 hours it’s something like 350 000 to hire Madison Square Garden for example so someone has paid something like 350 000 for X number of hours to

Put that show on on and that’s just the hiring cost so you’re it’s an amazing Stadium filled with lights and cameras and videos and and people oh it’s amazing that is the international 2019 League of Legends finals in Shanghai and China look at the number on

The top left a 34 million dollar prize pool 18 teams 90 players some team of six to eight kids are gonna win 34 million dollars compare that to some other sports in the UK for example female rugby where they practically don’t get paid at all think about that

But then I hear you say well of course they can fill a stadium it’s China they’ve got 1.4 billion people but it’s not just in China no this is Paris Paris has a population of roughly the same as the UK League of Legends 2019 finals 2.225 million dollar prize

Pool 24 teams 120 players but 106 million unique viewers look at the bodies in there look at the people that have just turned up now it’s funny because people then say to me I’ve literally had teachers say to me so all these people just like come and

Watch other people play in video games I’m not a soccer fan I I do not watch the sport in fact I live in Qatar with the least recent World Cup was and I left for the World Cup because I just can’t be doing with it

Because to me why would you turn up to a stadium and watch 22 people kicking a ball around it’s the same thing so we just we just can’t somewhere in our psychology we just can’t seem to correlate people watching other people play in video games but we can correlate

Them watching someone play tennis or somewhat you know Wimbledon every year or or or or the NFL that’s hundreds of thousands if not millions of people turning up every year to watch other people run around with a ball um and so that’s Paris the numbers are astounding 106 million unique viewers

That means 106 million people watched online and that goes back to that thing I was telling you about earlier when I said what makes Esports is not just taking part but actually just it’s the audiences that make it people are willing to come and spend money watching this yeah but

It’s probably well said when we show you Shanghai China and we show you all lights camera and action but what does that look like in a classroom Becky well it looks a little different so for example there’s some chatter in the chat about you know do we have these in the

United States are they elsewhere in the world and and to be fair it’s not that this arena is exclusively dedicated to Esports right it’s being used for an Esports tournament we do actually have in the US and Esports Arena um in Arlington Texas it is right next

To the stadium where um the Cowboys play and the Rangers play it’s its own um and and I got to be there in April which was a phenomenal experience and this is an image um from that tournament that I took and this is this is what an Esports

Tournament looks like for kids here in the United States that are you know engaged with a team their parents are there watching their friends are there watching um they’re you know they’ve got their energy drinks with them they’re wearing their team jerseys and and it’s all different types of students and and

They’re being projected on the main stage and we saw students coming up with um you know shirts and ties on and kids in different outfits and they’re being just absolutely you know championed in this Esports Arena it’s a very very cool experience and part of what I think is

Most amazing about that is the opportunity that students have to work as a team to cheer for each other to have these wins and successes you can see the students in these videos getting extremely excited about what just happened cheering each other on giving each other you know high fives and sportsmanship

Um really being a part of something greater than just sitting down and playing a video game independently you can see these students are playing rocket League get very excited and one of their successful moments um scoring a goal getting you know super excited up and down and and this is this

Is what’s happening all the time across the United States in tournaments where students and around the world obviously I just have seen them here but students are being able to participate in completely new and different ways now these are just two tiny videos I I don’t

Have you know every type of student so we’ve grabbed some additional headlines from students around the world who are participating in Esports in new and different ways some students who would not have been participating in traditional physical Sports and some students who are multi-season traditional sport athletes who also play

For their school Esports team we’ve heard stories of you know basketball coaches who are like can you please move your Esports season because it conflicts with basketball whole playoffs and they’re like losing their players to Esports um so one of the really amazing things to watch in the field of Esports is the

Inclusive practice of the fact that any kid can join an Esports program thanks to things like the inclusive Tech Lab at Xbox and Microsoft that design game input devices game controllers for any type of student any type of human actually Esports are traditionally extremely inclusive of neurodiverse students students with different abilities

There’s just this wide range that happens when we take out a required physical component it’s very very cool there’s this example in the middle I’ll let the video play here of a student who is deaf and he’s an observer for an Esports team so he does all of his

Observing which requires his sight not his ears and he’s able to then sign that content through an interpreter and publish his work for the good of their streaming services so it’s just I think extremely exciting to think about this as an opportunity in our school systems to not only reach

Kids who are far out on the sidelines but also build connections with those students with anyone else at the school it’s really able to tear down a lot of walls and boundaries that social structures in schools create because all kids have access to to to win and compete and

Collaborate in the digital environment um so this is a little bit of what it looks like like big picture but we wanted to like drill down even more right Stephen yeah absolutely yeah so let’s do that so uh this is just this is a video actually that’s taken from our one of

Our South African um customers who do use these Minecraft as an esport uh that was the kids getting organized this one I’ve just speeded up this is them laying the foundations of their builds this is a competitive build battle you can see all the belt and now it’s happening super fast it doesn’t

Normally but the kids are all in there these are teams of eight kids at a time here’s another build you can see they’re obviously building a genie and a lamp on the other side this could be part of a literacy program so maybe they’ve been asked to read something and in fact the

Lost library is about reading and then building what you’ve read and so this is just a slowed down example of what they’ve made so they’ve made the genie coming out the lamp having read the book so this is part of a literacy project and this shows their comprehension

Um and I believe this is Upper from um uh avatar The Legend of Aang smashing through an ice wall um I believe that’s what that was this is another one where this was a stem project looking at lighthouses the the history and the engineering of lighthouses and then the kids had to go

Into this world you can see just how many there are this is no longer one versus one this is multiple teams in this Minecraft world and they’re building to show what they’ve learned they’re able to say I learned this this one was about pollination so they had to

Build Gardens that allowed for bees to pollinate different types of flowers um and you can see again they just get in they start building you can see one of them is just laying the green there it’s just and they get organized they’re organized there’s leadership there’s communication there’s planning ahead of

Time uh this one was a fantasy creature this to end on a bit of fun this one was them building a fantasy creature but they they plan in advance um and then they can 3D print directly from Minecraft so they end up with their Creations in their hand

Um so that should just give you an idea of the kind of thing that even just Minecraft can do um for Esports because people go Minecraft an esport but it’s true and you’ll find out more about that at the end absolutely and so what we’ve talked about so far

And we actually made quite an emphasis on this was the competition I even said it was one of the three C’s but here’s the thing that’s what brings the students to the table they love those three C’s and they love the competition but actually we as Educators we look

Beyond that and if we run an Esports program correctly if we get it right many Collegiate programs that are doing it now get it right competition only makes up 23 of what the students are actually doing the highest thing they’re doing is skills development 71 of what they’re doing is skills development they’re

Developing 47 job Readiness 59 General Student Activity um and their academic integration is 36 so what we’re talking about bring them to the table get them excited make it competitive actually there’s so much more gets wrapped around that what kind of things are we talking about so Steve and I brainstormed some

Employability skills and I’m just going to take a moment to talk about what this really means it means that you know instead of focusing on a test score or a GPA or a degree many many of our Industries are now looking for employability skills as one of their top recruiting models and in

Fact colleges and universities who are recruiting Esports players I saw Amanda Macias commented about that earlier in the chat they are also looking for these employability skills first above being a gamer one of the one of the ideas here is that we can we can teach a kid to

Game but it’s a little bit harder to teach self-discipline when we have a player who’s Collegiate University age and has not yet learned that in life so when we’re thinking about Esports specifically if we think it’s something like collaboration you saw in those Minecraft examples that Stephen put

Together for us in time lapse which I think by the way is super fun to watch Minecraft time lapse I love it um so thank you for doing that but it’s so clear that the students are collaborating they’re working together on the same build and so they’re having

To make sure that they’re they’re connecting on their bill they had to strategize and plan that ahead of time um any of the games that we’re playing whether it’s rocket League or DOTA they’re having to to really work together we’re also seeing a lot of leadership with our students some schools have Team

Captains that rotate every week or captains for the season some schools have you know broken their students into Varsity junior varsity recreational programs but regardless of how you structure it they’re looking for students to really be a team lead guide the team and also hold them accountable

To be at practice and get their grades up and be respectful and all the things that go into being a part of a team we see time management as a skill when we’re looking at student athletes who are having to balance match schedules with school work with home commitments

With their school day maybe they have a job in addition to all of that so we’re seeing them be able to manage those things not only within the Esports environment but also in their life as a whole and if I may just jump in on that one someone earlier in the comments said

Um that students she had noticed that students who were involved in Esports were taking better care of their health exactly right self-discipline when we see Esports programs in schools run run run effectively students start drinking more water like consciously and conscientiously they start drinking they start eating better food they start sleeping

Um better they start handing in their homework because part of the program is if you don’t do your homework then we can’t maintain your place on the Esports team because you’re falling behind in everything else and so they create this amazing self-discipline and as part of

The desire to be part of that Esports system that’s right you kind of jumped ahead on me there with the self-discipline shout out sorry sorry I just sorry no you totally blazed it in on it I love it so well we were going to talk about that we also see

Communication right as an option where we make sure that students are talking to each other on their teams um you know just like on a baseball team somebody in the outfield’s gotta yell got it we see these students who are making sure that they’re talking to one another during the match

Um they have developed maybe some roles on the team and so they’re filling those positions but definitely talking to each other um within a match but then we also see the skills of a shoutcaster for example we might have a color commentator or a play-by-play commentator and they’re they’re building communication skills

And this is all audible communication but what about written communication we have gameplay strategy guides we have students creating articles based on the matches um Recaps there’s just a wide variety of possibilities here where students could be demonstrating those things for a future career Stephen hit on self-discipline girls

Mindset is extremely important in life we know that and we see that a lot in in video gaming particular where students are more likely because of game mechanics and game Dynamics to return to a game if they’re not successful where sometimes students you know have a mindset where they are ready

To quit if something was hard if reading was difficult or if you know they keep missing a kick and an American football program but in an Esports environment because of these games and the way they’re designed to keep us playing that really enables students to feel like they want to

Return to the game more often so it’s it’s actually built to keep kids playing which is kind of exciting and also a little bit creepy when you think about the way we develop games to keep people in them um we also see conflict resolution and this is something that is just extremely necessary

Um in our world today I know that many of us in education see that constant conflict and kids not able to use their filter not able to converse appropriately and respectfully when they disagree with someone lots of social media just you know verbal vomit all

Over that you know that now is out on the internet forever and so giving them an opportunity to work as a team and and play with someone else and and lose a match and have to be okay with that and not verbally bash other players and know

The line between kind of teasing another player and oops it went too far now it’s harassment now it’s bullying all those things that are great life skills all of this leads to critical thinking and obviously creativity as well especially in that last build that Stephen showed where students are

Building in Minecraft it’s not just you know whoever scores a goal in rocket League wins it really is about using their full creative capacity because it’s being judged on a rubric it’s being scored by someone subjectively which means they have to bring in more of the

C’s as someone pointed out in the chat more of those critical thinking and creativity skills that really really matter is there anything else you want to pop in on no I was trying to see the thing is I jumped to self-discipline because one of

Us has to keep an eye on time but you never too good honestly Love’s the sound of her own voice this one so next slide this is me too so I’ll keep talking um so what’s awesome about all of this is if you put it together

In an in a portfolio then students can actually demonstrate not only their employability skills but also their gamer skills and what are we using to build a portfolio obviously wakelet um so I’ve been advocating for years students should be building player portfolios in wakelet they can be showing examples of not only their

Contributions to to the games as a player with the streams from their class or screen recordings or anything like that they can also be including their business plan or their design logos or their tournament checklist or anything else they’re creating that goes into the Esports program

Um and then speaking of wakelet I did a search this morning for the word Esports and noticed a lot of content on wakelet so if you’re looking to get started definitely a good place to look for resources yeah all right you can talk now are you sure yeah okay so actually this

Isn’t for this isn’t for either of us this is for our audience so just have a look at these two pictures everyone um we’re back to East Bossier in Dallas and Texas and just have a think about what kind of Industries you see imagine you walk into a room like that

You might even have been in one you might have one in your school or at local College what do you see how many Industries what kind of industry like a minute to post to the chat what you see yeah just pop pop them in the chat for us I’m going to take a

Sip of water yeah me too because as you pointed out I did all that talking okay we’ve taken four of my slaves already but it’s okay no I have not Amanda says Lighting in room environment okay what else Tech communication okay military yeah absolutely oh an ergonomic engineer oh I need one

Of those I’d like a new chair ergonomically it’s terrific that’s from a video game if you can name that video game I will personally send you a prize without internet accepting it I have three without a web search though okay time is up cleaning oh very much nice one Mr Mark

Yes way to throw that I’m gonna get the dishes done yeah I hope you’re not talking to me let’s continue I was speaking to I was speaking to Mr mock so these are just so we’ve compiled up a list of some of the things that you might have seen there are some amazing

Ones in there you were right there was things like Tech in there there’s manufacturing and ergonomics there’s uh there’s cleaning there’s janitorial there’s uh construction there’s all sorts of things that are going on in that room there’s recycling there’s there’s there’s so many things

Um but what I wanted to show you in this one was just how far reaching that is and by the way this is just some this is just the tip of the iceberg so there’s Esports orgs that your students can be pointing themselves at like Excel G2

Esports which is one of the biggest in the world optic gaming ninjas and pajamas and these are these are massive organizations that are looking for all sorts of Esports players but also the people that go around those Esports players which we’re going to learn about as well there’s also tournaments and

Events organizers we showed you the slides with the pictures of the events both um uh uh professionally and amateur but there’s Riot games there’s valve who runs Steam there’s the Esports Awards there’s OverWatch League there’s epic uh for example then there’s the hardware you know your kids could be working for

Dell or Razer or Nintendo or Microsoft a good friend of mine back in my hometown in Scotland is working for Rockstar North and works on the Grand Theft Auto games I went to school with this kid who now works for one of the biggest video games in the world

And creates the character he’s a concept artist for the characters then there’s Communications bad moon Sizzle creative affluence um uh Cairo es Esports Etc uh then there’s the sponsors Red Bull and Monster Energy Levi’s twitch for example a TNT and Marvel are all sponsors so so

Somebody has to be in that space to sponsor those one of our Esports customers in South Africa is sponsored by Acer for example um apero so then you’ve got um Raven Nike Adidas in the US not apparel yeah aluminum um uh and then there’s streaming platforms we talked earlier on about

YouTube and twitch and Facebook for example but someone works for them and they’ve got Engineers of their own and they’ve got they’ve got marketers and there’s just hundreds if not thousands of jobs just in that section and then there’s the journalism for people like Esports news UK Daily Esports the

Loadout the Esports Observer for example and then there’s the Publishers themselves we talked about that 700 million dollars that was made by Zelda on the Nintendo switch that mountains of people made that happen mountains are people at Nintendo so your kids they could be facing a

Career in Nintendo or Capcom or epic or Warner Brothers or Riot or valve like there are millions of jobs millions of jobs that your students could be pointed at just by getting them started in an Esports program absolutely so the the job that we have as Educators is to get them there and

This is of course industry so before they hit industry um we just wanted to point out and this is a very colorful slide um all of the different things that we see happening in secondary education before they head off into their jobs that you could be doing in your schools

Um so broadcasting is one example students leading the live stream doing pre and post interviews um after before and after a match students in graphic design classes can be designing the logo of the team I have to tell you as as a person who believes very heavily in student ownership it

Hurts my heart a little bit when I talk to schools and they go we’re going to start an Esports program we already made the logo and I’m like oh could you have asked the kids to help with that um have your students do it first um and then and then the graphic arts

Department can be designing jerseys and t-shirts and social media and streaming assets using OBS and things like that production assets that’s a whole department these are not the kids who are necessarily playing the game they could be players they could also be ancillary to the the player community so

There’s I feel like there’s room for all marketing it could be running the team’s social media handles um doing some marketing in the school especially when the program is new building up awareness and also out in the community I give that advice to schools all the time time that if they

Are not telling their community and their parents their successes how can they get their support yeah so lots and lots of marketing event planning so we might have people who have a skill set closer to mine who are like I just want to organize something give me a

Megaphone and a clipboard and so to have those students in and involved with your teams you don’t have to worry about the tiny details you know that something’s going to be handled whether it’s planning a term tournament or inviting the community in to watch A Match or or

Even running a charity like gain for good where the students are doing something worthwhile for their Community that’s tied to a gaming event which is really cool journalism opportunities where we can be you know giving those weekly updates press releases interviews media as Chelsea’s pointing out photography getting kids to publish the

Information about the match I think is really exciting um then we get into things like Woodworking and Fabrication Labs what if students were building the desks and the stream booth and installing lighting and being a part of the Esports space instead of Outsourcing that to vendors and partners and adults get kids

Involved in a safe and um and sustainable way which is very and with the introduction of Technology like 3D printing there’s so much more you can do with that in the in the Fab Lab space Oh Yeah yeah absolutely we also have health classes that can be focused like Stephen commented earlier

On nutrition we do find that teams who who in state nutrition logs have students who are paying better attention to their diet and their water intake their sleep habits all these things that make healthy habits as adults we could be thinking about gamer psychology Dr Rachel Cowart I’m a big fan Stephen

Knows her I’m just a fan girl but she does a lot of great work on gamer psychology and then we also have injury prevention with ergonomics and sports medicine and understanding the physical stresses that happen during an Esports match finally it and Hardware I know um I was

Telling Stephen a story that in the school district that I worked for for 15 years our students our secondary students we’re responsible for Imaging computers and installing updates and doing our networking and putting in Wi-Fi network access and on all of those things that we would normally be hiring

For that was student internship work and so allowing students to come in and support your tech labs in a really Hands-On way not only includes more students in your program but also gives them real opportunities that are tied to what we call CTE or Career and Technical education pathways

Yeah so super amazing and this sets them up yeah absolutely and just on that last one there’s a number of programs that I’ve been involved in where the kids don’t get to play Esports until they’ve physically built the computers and so the schools are working in partnership with local computer companies they don’t

Even have to be big companies we’re not talking Dells and acers and microsofts we’re talking Local High Street um uh computer companies and they’re in computer stores and they’re coming in and they’re working with the students to say this is why memory is important this is your motherboard here’s the GPU this

Is why this matters this is why you need this much storage then they build it then they switch it all on install the software and now they can play Esports so that’s and then they upgrade the fix and they also Network so they know what they’re doing with all of them so those

Partnerships are not difficult they’re actually uh they’re actually quite critical and so back to the what industries do you see let’s go back to France let’s go back to Paris 2019 how many jobs do we see in that room now that we’ve talked about it a whole

Lot more yeah right and and we can we’re coming up on time so I’m just going to throw some of them out there but feel free to put them in the chat but really we’re looking at lighting Engineers we’re looking at uh digital screens we’re looking at graphic artists we’ve

Got players in there we’ve got janitorial staff we’ve got security team yeah we’ve got yeah we’ve got security we’ve got the manufacturers that we talked about before we’ve got networking there’s just there’s literally hundreds of different roles thousands of different jobs just pulling that together for less than 24 hours and

Those are the jobs we should be pointing our students at through Minecraft but also a lot of other opportunities yes so these are just some of the other titles we showed you Minecraft but actually there are so many others we also talked to Becky mentioned rocket League I’ve talked about League of

Legends but there’s also OverWatch valorant Super Smash Brothers Mario car Madden DOTA fortnite and many many others there’s actually I I won’t go too much into it but prior to Esports really taken off in education there was a bit of a snobbery about it and they were

Like oh you can’t call that an esport but actually if we can make it collaborative competitive and creative anything can be an indicative and communicative look at you adding another one and critical things um and you could but if you can hit those three C’s anything can be an

Esport so don’t be afraid to bring in something you want to play or your students want to play and make it an esport so there’s a lot of ways to get started this is where you where you screenshot snip this I know that Amy from wakelet is putting

These uh in the chat but also in the wakelet that you have access to but we just listed off some things that we you might want to check out to get started hashtag Esports edu on social media um Steven started a play matters Discord I’m one of the moderators over there and

That’s a really great place to build community around Play and play matters um I developed some iste standards for game-based Learning and Esports um a bit ago and they’re publicly available for download um for free and everything through my website um Steven and his team at immersive Minds develop the Minecraft Esports

Framework and that’s still available online um and then also I mentioned I work for i2e and one of the things we do is support schools getting started from season zero through through success so um you can always reach out to me as well yes and stay connected with us yeah and

Stephanie Russell I saw your comment earlier like you said like 30 minutes ago how do I get started so that slide was for you and she just wrote this is what I needed yes I know I kept an eye on that because I was like oh Stephanie

Wants to know how to get started so yeah do please uh do please join us um on social media join us on the play matters Discord and engage with us Beyond this thank you so much for joining us it’s been our pleasure oh I love these comments thank you

Everyone art good to hear from you it’s been years you two rocked that session the comments like I I didn’t have to do much back here because like I was getting questions prepared and the chat just kept going so it facilitated itself um I’m glad you threw those on at the

Very end because that was my question was you know how can we help them get started so I’m going to shift because you shared that what advice can we provide for them to start having those conversations with the administrators who have to kind of unlock that key to

Allow them to bring these these programs into the schools yeah Steven do you want to start yeah so it for me it’s always about I there’s normally two ways I start I say if you can prove concept then prove concept if you can if you can run a very

Very small pilot and show that success then great but a lot of people aren’t in a position to do that so a lot of people say well I can’t really prove concept because they won’t let me until they see the benefit and so it really is about

Showing them those benefits so you know go back over this if there’s an opportunity to get on those wakelets and find you know put in Esports and find all those way clip resources get into that Esports educator guy I often say start with Minecraft because this is

Genuinely not a Microsoft thing I’m I I’ve Loved Minecraft for 14 years um but I say start with Minecraft because it’s such an easy place to start and such a foundational level before you and you don’t have to deal with any of the complex stuff like does it involve

Shooting things and will it promote violence Etc you can start with Minecraft and make it super pretty easy so look for the benefits use some of those statistics that I showed you look up more statistics reach out to Becky and I we can help you with that but it’s

About really just proving the benefits um and when you can talk and then linking those benefits to what you know they want to hear this is going to benefit our children because a b c this is gonna this is gonna help the mental health this is going to be far more

Inclusive than what we’re already doing this is going to help our academic uh our academic success go up because we’re going to use this esport to do mathematics for example I’m a huge advocate of not just Esports in education we can offer Esports in education but let’s do Esports as education

Love it Becky can I add to that yeah do we have time yeah you’re good um so one of the things like an answer so one of the things that you all can use as a resource is i2e has put out a case study document

Um it’s on our website so if you do a web search for itunesports it’ll come up we’re the only one like it’s the first hit so go to our website scroll to the bottom and and grab it’s a free download um our copy of our case study document

And take that to your administrator like just you know grab the PDF or print it out or forward it take that to your administrator or School leadership and say this is this is what could happen here we could see in Greater inclusion we could see greater attendance we could be

You know reducing Behavior concerns we could be increasing academic achievement we could be balancing our you know male and female identifying players in one Community like there’s all these little charts and vignettes from three schools around the United States that are totally different one’s a small private school one’s a large public

School system so it kind of fits everyone um and I we’ve heard a lot that someone took that to their to their leadership and said but here’s proof that this is what’s gonna you know make a difference for kids so grab them perfect perfect advice and I think

That’s it we would take the culmination of everything you’ve kind of shared today share it out Stephen and Becky too I mean from my time before with with Minecraft and doing those trainings my daughter’s hooked right I mean she’s seven and she sits down here all the

Time during the summer and she’s like all right show me more and what am I going to do and it’s just great to see that and I know um I know Stevie Frank said the same thing in the chat earlier like just watching these things get engaged and finding something that they’re they’re

Rooted on in the summer right I mean it’s the time that they should be having fun and frolicking and on a rainy day like today she’s in here building and it’s I think that’s a testament to the educational value of what it brings so thank you thank you both this is an

Excellent session incredible amazing yeah no problem thanks for giving us our first Co Keynote I’m happy to be a part of it we were laughing because we’ve like trained in real life together for days at a time but we’ve never seen this award show S

I think you should make it a Roadshow I think I think I think both of us still need to go a couple of places on our continent list we have a little competition I love it makes perfect sense yeah well thank you again both of you um just for everybody else keep that

Conversation moving on you know on the socials make sure you throw those tags out uh hashtag Lakewood Community week make sure you tag at wakelet and Stephen and Becky as well keep them in the loop for your conversations I know they’ll be engaging on there as well

And uh yeah thank you everybody make sure you fill out those certificates make sure you check out that new community section inside of wakelet keep the conversation moving over there as well and stay tuned because mispa will be back at 3 30 Eastern time my time uh

For the next session the student project showcase yeah yeah and I know some people out there happy wakelet Community week thank you thanks for joining us and we will see you all soon Foreign Foreign Foreign