Sunday, October 04, 2009

Edutainment?



It sounds like a cop-out, but the future of schooling may lie with video games

SINCE the beginning of mass education, schools have relied on what is known in educational circles as “chalk and talk”. Chalk and blackboard may sometimes be replaced by felt-tip pens and a whiteboard, and electronics in the form of computers may sometimes be bolted on, but the idea of a pedagogue leading his pupils more or less willingly through a day based on periods of study of recognisable academic disciplines, such as mathematics, physics, history, geography and whatever the local language happens to be, has rarely been abandoned.

Abandoning it, though, is what Katie Salen hopes to do. Ms Salen is a games designer and a professor of design and technology at Parsons The New School for Design, in New York. She is also the moving spirit behind Quest to Learn, a new, taxpayer-funded school in that city which is about to open its doors to pupils who will never suffer the indignity of snoring through double French but will, rather, spend their entire days playing games.

Quest to Learn draws on many roots. One is the research of James Gee of the University of Wisconsin. In 2003 Dr Gee published a book called “What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy”, in which he argued that playing such games helps people develop a sense of identity, grasp meaning, learn to follow commands and even pick role models. Another is the MacArthur Foundation’s digital media and learning initiative, which began in 2006 and which has acted as a test-bed for some of Ms Salen’s ideas about educational-games design. A third is the success of the Bank Street School for Children, an independent primary school in New York that practises what its parent, the nearby Bank Street College of Education, preaches in the way of interdisciplinary teaching methods and the encouragement of pupil collaboration.

Ms Salen is, in effect, seeking to mechanise Bank Street’s methods by transferring much of the pedagogic effort from the teachers themselves (who will now act in an advisory role) to a set of video games that she and her colleagues have devised. Instead of chalk and talk, children learn by doing—and do so in a way that tears up the usual subject-based curriculum altogether.

Periods of maths, science, history and so on are no more. Quest to Learn’s school day will, rather, be divided into four 90-minute blocks devoted to the study of "domains". Such domains include Codeworlds (a combination of mathematics and English), Being, Space and Place (English and social studies), The Way Things Work (maths and science) and Sports for the Mind (game design and digital literacy). Each domain concludes with a two-week examination called a “Boss Level”—a common phrase in video-game parlance.

Freeing the helots
In one of the units of Being, Space and Place, for example, pupils take on the role of an ancient Spartan who has to assess Athenian strengths and recommend a course of action. In doing so, they learn bits of history, geography and public policy. In a unit of The Way Things Work, they try to inhabit the minds of scientists devising a pathway for a beam of light to reach a target. This lesson touches on maths, optics—and, the organisers hope, creative thinking and teamwork. Another Way-Things-Work unit asks pupils to imagine they are pyramid-builders in ancient Egypt. This means learning about maths and engineering, and something about the country’s religion and geography.

Whether things will work the way Ms Salen hopes will, itself, take a few years to find out. The school plans to admit pupils at the age of 12 and keep them until they are 18, so the first batch will not leave until 2016. If it fails, traditionalists will no doubt scoff at the idea that teaching through playing games was ever seriously entertained. If it succeeds, though, it will provide a model that could make chalk and talk redundant. And it will have shown that in education, as in other fields of activity, it is not enough just to apply new technologies to existing processes—for maximum effect you have to apply them in new and imaginative ways.

This is a subject currently at the forefront of my consciousness.

In that David Albert book I'm reading, he mentioned something about the massive appeal kids have for video games. He said that the brightest behavioral psychologists have designed them that way. That kids get so addicted because video games put incremental challenges just at the cusp of the players' abilities - this way they LEARN enthusiastically and effectively.

Kind of makes sense, right?

Also, if y'all remember, I found that great US Map Quiz that my son has been playing with. It's a great little exercise that has taught him the states' names and relative locations faster than any other device I could imagine.

It's not just that example that's got me thinking.

Personally, I feel like KNOW that I have learned MULTIPLES, from surfing the web in the past 4-5 years, of what I learned in factory schools.

I sincerely believe the internet is the greatest boon for education this planet has ever seen. AND, I've probably only scratched the surface of what lays ahead.

At a minimum, all of the basics like phonics, arithmetic, geography, etc. could be taught to brats effectively and efficiently via computer gamey software.

There's probably already a ton of good educational stuff out there on the web, disguised as games and whatnot - and I'm going to have to go find it in the interests of my scant free time!

Think of all the money, effort, and CARBON(!) that will be saved when the scope and scale of the World Wide Web is leveraged to promote basic numeracy and literacy.

I just googled learn to read online and came across a site for y'all with toddlers.

Other stuff to explore:

free math games for kids

learn geometry online free

how to draw

how to read music for kids

how to start a business for kids

history lessons for kids

The list is obviously infinite. Some of y'all really need to get going on this front!



IMO, all three year olds should be *at the computer* already. Y'all should see my daughter. I set up her email account recently and I have her type out the alphabet (and her *numbers) and email them to grandparents, aunts, et al.

She asked to *change the color* which she witnessed me doing, but only that once. I left the room and she started switching the font color up every two seconds! My 'old coot' parents probably can't even do that.

Kids' learning curves, especially in the the modern age of computing, are probably steeper than anyone in history could have ever conceived.

Since I've done the bulk of my personal learning online....how Moronic would I be to not get my brood fully engaged with computing and the Web?

Along with pushing newspapers, roadmaps, phonebooks,....into effective extinction, Google has probably made teachers, classrooms, and textbooks obsolete as well.

Thank God!

6 comments:

Taylor Conant said...

C,

Maybe my public factory school was ahead of its time but they had us on a solid dose of Speedway Math, Number Crunchers (by MEC), Oregon Trail, etc. for a good two-three hours every week.

I remember kids (and I was one of them) used to voluntarily stay inside during recess for the chance to play Treasure Mathstorm -- and it's related derivatives, the names escape me at the moment but one took place underwater and one on a plain mountain without the proverbial snowy 'mathstorm' going on -- if you can believe that!

I love games, always have (did you guess), but I think there's something to be said for non-electronic variations such as chess, etc. Additionally, many a child managed to become much more than literate in numeracy and letters without the help of computer aids throughout history, obviously, though I don't think that's the argument you're trying to make.

I definitely agree with you that kids have incredibly high learning/auto-didactism proclivities if you just give them the right environment and the right opportunities to make use of them! Maybe start the Prince on basic programming now... by the time he's 12 he'll be writing his own learning games and might have a fighting chance at getting a job from all the mathtard IMMIGRANTS in this country!

Anonymous said...

we just started to see internet take over education/schooling. Give it 5 to 10 years or thereafter, we maynot see "regular" schools or universities in 50-to-100 years.

Visual Computing, virtual reality, video games can totally change the meaning of education/diplomas/degrees.

If the right methodologies are applied, very good business or venture capital opportunities here.

Coach G said...

Being a teacher that teaches computers..the biggest challege you will have is obviously from the teachers..#1..We will not need as many of them..#2 they will be slow to adapt and #3 probably the biggest challege is thatnow the teacher is not the "sage on the stage"

CaptiousNut said...

Taylor,

Think about poker. Kids today play 8 games (or more!) on multi-monitor displays at home. They have easy access to *the odds* and consequently can master the game in a year or two - at least as far as I can infer from all the arriviste winners on the World Series of Poker and whatnot.

If that doesn't speak to the power and efficiency of computer-based learning I don't know what would.

As for math, with my kids I may stop at arithmetic (i.e. real soon!).

And I agree that programming is a fecund intellectual exercise for kids. I went down that path hard in 7th and 8th grade - even had the rep of a *hacker* - before going on to a stricter liberal arts HS.

Anon,

Yep. Business opportunities galore. My browsing has brought me into contact with scores of fortune-dreaming, edu-entrepreneurs. Software has some pretty enviable margins!

Coach G,

But the networks still need to be managed, no?

Also, I don't think that the web is just a low-cost replacement for teachers.

Actually, it should make their jobs easier and more rewarding. It's just got to me more efficient to *mentor* a bunch of kids and *steer* them in the direction of their curiosities than it is to force-feed them information, no?

Anonymous said...

"Personally, I feel like KNOW that I have learned MULITPLES, from surfing the web in the past 4-5 years, of what I learned in factory schools."

perhaps learn to spell multiples when making a point like that

CaptiousNut said...

Thanks. Corrected.

I make occasional typing, spelling, and grammatical errors on purpose....just so people can post legitimate criticism.