About the creator, Dr. Derek Skaggs.
Dr. Derek Skaggs (aka Dr. Khan) is passionate about helping students who have emotional and behavioral struggles and have historically had severe gaps in their education. His goal is to create a strong connection between our school and our families so we can ensure that our children are able to achieve their highest potential. Every child matters and every child can achieve success…no matter what
His educational background, trauma-informed practices, and experience with therapeutic supports, skill-building, education, leadership, and online gaming can give any child that enjoys gaming a chance to build crucial skills. Dr. Skaggs has spent nearly 20 years serving our most vulnerable student populations in three different states. He has served as a special education teacher, a special services coordinator, a special education director, and an assistant principal, and he is currently the principal at a school for students with disabilities that have a history of behavioral issues. This school mainly supports students with emotional behavior disorders and autism.
He has a Ph.D. in educational leadership with an emphasis on special education, a master’s degree in special education teaching, and a bachelor of science in computer information systems. Dr. Skaggs has presented at multiple state and national conferences, including the National Youth-At-Risk Conference and the Southeastern Behavioral Health Conference. He certified in Applied Suicide Intervention Skills (ASIST), a Registered Behavior Technician (RBT), and certified to teach special education and practice school administration in multiple states.
Dr. Skaggs understands how gaming can change a child life’s because it was gaming that made him the man he is today. In middle school, he made some bad choices that led to incarceration. When he got out of a juvenile facility, he spent a lot of time at home. It was 1995, and the internet was still a pretty new concept. His parents bought him a computer, and he was soon playing online games, including beta testing the first major massively multiplayer online game (MMO), Ultima Online. Dr. Skaggs chose his gamer name, Khan, during this period and joined one of the first online gaming communities ever established. This gaming community has played nearly every major MMO since then. Dr. Skaggs has played with and eventually helped lead one of the most successful and long-lasting gaming communities in the MMORPG world. The community is still going strong after 24 years and is made up of hundreds of members from all over the world.
Gaming has been an integral part of Dr. Skaggs’s life. It not only got him through a rough time in his own life, but it has helped him learn valuable skills while making real-life connections. Through online game facilitation, Dr. Skaggs will help children develop skills that will have real-world application. These same children will also be developing lifelong relationships and a sense of belonging!
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to serve you and your family. I look forward to our continued partnership!
Game-based learning has the potential to drastically improve the way children are taught.
Games have peculiar qualities that let them engage hard-to-reach students in a way lessons cannot. Researchers have begun to explore the intrinsic qualities of games that make them promising learning tools, and anecdotal evidence is available everywhere.
All human behavior is influenced and shaped by our experiences and exposure, both offline or online. In 2019, the Anti-Defamation League reported that 74% of online multiplayer gamers in the US experience and are exposed to actions from other gamers (aka – griefers or trolls) that are purposely cause annoyance, distress, or harm to other players. Sadly, gaming online without proper supervision, modeling, and facilitation, many children are exposed and experience this toxic behavior and develop inappropriate skills from this exposure. As much as gaming can build positive lifelong skills, it can also do the opposite. If not facilitated correctly, children start imitating these skills they are learning from other toxic gamers, and there is a drastic increase in cursing, bullying, aggressiveness, and a decrease in self-esteem, social skills, and many other inappropriate behaviors. It’s the same as hanging with a really bad crowd or getting bullied at school, but typically even worse due to the lack of intervention online vs in person due to no one to intervene. Dr. Skaggs helps to eliminate exposure to toxic and sometimes predatory behavior that so many of our children are exposed to online.
I personally know a student who struggled in history until Assassin’s Creed sparked his interest in the French revolution; he is now an honors history student. I know many students who spend hours playing Minecraft and many hours more learning new skills and techniques on YouTube, which they then apply to Minecraft. Clearly, a good game is a powerful motivator for learning. It engages the mind and the passions simultaneously, with obvious results. But why, and how, does this work, and how can we harness it?
Why Games?
According to Educause’s article, 7 Things you Should Know About Game Based Learning, gaming can create a dynamic that can inspire learners to develop skills and competencies as they focus on the activities of the game.
They can:
- function as individual learning activities
- a powerful content delivery mechanism over several sessions
- last for the duration of the course.
In order to deliver content as a game, faculty members tend to divide the syllabus into levels through which the students must progress, with students getting feedback rather than grades.
In order for it to be effective, the game:
- must align with learning outcomes
- should not be competitive in the conventional sense
Sometimes, in fact, the game might require students to work collaboratively in order to solve problems, while in other contexts, game mechanics might make students compete against one another in order to reach a personal best.
Why use games?
According to the UMass-Amherst, Centre for Teaching and Faculty Development “The Pedagogy of Games,” FAQ, goals, rules, challenge, and interaction can be used to engage students and increase learning outcomes. It can help:
- build an emotional connection to learning and subject matter
- provides opportunity for feedback and practice
- can be customized to individualized teaching
Dr. Khan Education 