Learning By Playing 49
theodp writes "This week's NY Times Magazine — a special issue on education and technology — is tailor-made for the Slashdot crowd. For the cover story, Sarah Corbett explores the games-and-education movement, which she notes is alive and well at Quest to Learn, a NYC middle-school that aims to make school nothing less than 'a big, delicious video game.' Elsewhere in the issue, Paul Boutin writes about Microsoft's efforts to inspire The 8-Year-Old Programmer with its Kodu Project, and Nicholas Carlson reports on Columbia University's efforts to mix journalism and hard-core computer science with its unique dual-degree master's in journalism and CS. There's also an accompanying timeline that nicely illustrates how learning machines have progressed from the Horn-Book to the iPad."
Hidden Math in MMOs (Score:5, Insightful)
Kudu is insulting to 8-year-olds (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not so sure about Kudu and the ilk. The problem I have with it is that it isn't programming. The description of Kudu from the article (making a motorcycle racing game) sounds an awful lot like Racing Destruction Set or that Hypercard adventure game authoring tool I had for Macintosh that lead to some truly dreadful games. Also, I find the idea that you need some gimmicky, technicolor GUI for an 8-year-old to explore programming is a tad insulting to the 8-year-olds. I started learning Commodore-64 Basic when I was 6, and actually wrote a mildly sophisticated database program for my Little League Baseball team when I was 8 or 9. From the comments I've seen on Slashdot, my experience is certainly not unique. I think if I had started with Kudu I would have gotten bored and moved on. I'm an engineer now, largely I think from my childhood goofing about with computers.
I can't remember the name, but I saw a great book written by a Dad and his son about Python. I think that is a much better exploration into computers than Kudu.
Stupid politics are stupid (Score:3, Insightful)
Why must one side frame games as "The work of the devil, corrupting our youth!!!1" and the other as "The university of life, teaching useful skills!!!1"? Can't we all just be reasonable people and say "Games are games, they are only supposed to be fun. If some people are able to learn from them, that's good for them (I know I have done, but not everyone can, so don't abolish schools just yet). If some people are homicidal maniacs, it's because they are homicidal maniacs, it's not because of the games they play."? We don't need to pass games off as good or evil.
Disappointed in the attitude.... (Score:2, Insightful)
toward the medium of games as an educational tool. I'm in the field, and many people who are taken seriously talk about games used properly as a tool by educators and caregivers. This is a relatively new medium that needs to be researched and experimented with so we can establish how it is most effective for different subjects and in different situations.
Here are some of the challenges in this field as I see it:
- Most educational games are made in silos. Games made by publishers are mostly reused engines or game designs with an educational goal slapped on (many edu games for young kids on Nintendo DS are like this). Games made by researchers and educators are generally some sort of mix of whatever subject they're interested in and whatever game that is big at the time. The truly effective and fun educational games are often made when good game designers, researchers and educators collaborate from the beginning of a project.
- Due to the fact that people are working in silos, researchers working the edu game field are often working to figure out game design issues that the non-edu game field covered long ago.
- My work is in the preschool - grade school edu game field and I work with top publishers and content owners. Most of the people I work with, especially decision makers and content people, do not and have not ever played games. I think this will even out over time as younger people who are more likely to play games come into the field, but it will take decades.
- Games are just a tool. We need the pedagogy established to help teachers understand how to use the medium. Until we have this available to all educators, game use will be all over the place.
- We need an established body of good examples in different subject areas and for different ages for future game makers to refer to when making edu games. This will take decades to create in my opinion.
To reiterate my main point, games are just a tool like books, video, hands on activities, etc. They are only as good as the educator or caregiver who is working with the student makes them.