One thing I wonder as I'm starting to read -- It's a 1998 article -- Haven't "educational games" changed a lot since then? (I'll have to check out the related presentation for more up-to-date info.)
"Shavian reversals—offspring that keep the bad features of each parent and lose the good ones" -- The idea is that this is all too common: Educational games that have the WORST features of both schooling and video games, instead of the BEST features of both.
"The result is shown in a rash of ads that go like this: "Our Software Is So Much Fun That The Kids Don't Even Know That They Are Learning" or "Our Games Make Math Easy." . . . What is best about the best games is that they draw kids into some very hard learning. Did you ever hear a game advertised as being easy? What is worst about school curriculum is the fragmentation of knowledge into little pieces. This is supposed to make learning easy, but often ends up depriving knowledge of personal meaning and making it boring." --> Summary: Kids like games that are challenging, not games that are easy. Kids dislike school not because it's easy, but because the fragmentation of learning into little tiny pieces makes it seem irrelevant and therefore boring. Too many "educational" games make learning fragmented and easy instead of cohesive and challenging!
In contrast, game designers' "livelihoods depend on millions of people being prepared to undertake the serious amount of learning needed to master a complex game. " He says that kids like learning that's challenging, as long as it's also highly engaging and the challenge has to do with solving a bigger problem that's interesting to them. [I get an image of those Dungeons and Dragons -style games where players are trying to find tools and clues to figure out how to get to the next level of the dungeon. Personally, though, I don't like games like this. . .]
[As I write this, Dennis is talking about Second Life being used to treat PTSD in returning veterans. That's really cool!]
www.papert.org/article... [Unfortunately the whole link isn't coming through.]
More, later.
I agree. Games are good not because they are easy, but rather because they encourage some strategy, decision making, and choices.
ReplyDeleteI found a great website for online games today. It's Nrich. These games focus on critical thinking skills: strategy and higher level mathematical reasoning. A lot of them involve discrete math skills such as networks, etc.
http://nrich.maths.org/public/search.php?search=All%20Games
Check it out. I think you'll agree.
--Lauren
FYI, I checked out the link to the article and it is working for me right now as intended.
ReplyDeleteDennis