Learning is not a Game, but it can be fun

Educators look at the time students spend in video games, and of course wish that these students would have the same level of engagement in traditional learning as a game.

There are several problems with this.

1. Video games often do not successfully mirror real-life decisions. I *know* I am playing a video game. I might be upset that things don't go well, but it is nothing like getting a bad grade on a project I have spent some time on.

2. Most educational video games suck. They lag behind cutting edge stuff. The most engaging games often are the most controversial.

3. Educators don't play video games. They have not immersed themselves in that environment. They read books, talk to game designers, but they often don't really take time (and I mean a lot of time) to play, observe and engage.

4. Educational experiences often do not successfully lend themselves to game technology as it exists today. Using a 3d engine to hammer out some sort of social construct is a good first stab, but students see it for what it is -- candy coated spinach.

The real problems are:

1. Teachers shouldn't be making the games. Students should be. Let them build rule sets, simulations that other students play, let them work through the difficulty of making something that is engaging and tells a story. The bad news is that this takes time.

2. It is tacked on. We are stuck with the same old educational system that hasn't budged since the last big innovation - in my opinion, 100 years ago when progressive education (Dewey) was in vogue. No child left behind is rooted in thinking from the late 1800's, cursed with the desire to teach things that are easy to quantify, easy to test. Our testing tools and learning expectations shape how we teach.

3. There is a denial of multiple forms of literacy. Visual literacy -- it is quite dead in a time when more than ever before it is needed. This is a much longer posting, but go read some Barbara Stafford if you haven't already. Games hook right into visual literacy, but they don't go far enough. It is a passive form of literacy. Students need to make to learn, and that takes time, and time is expensive.

I wince everytime I hear about 2nd life as an educational environment. 2nd life is very fake, a myopic contraption that reinforces specific assumptions - such as the only viable economic system in the world is capitalism. Students don't get a chance to see all the possibilities. Unfortunately most educators are blind to this. I will be writing more about 2nd life soon.

James Paul Gee is a good place to start -- but I think people are being too literal. We should look at games, and learn from them what helps people learn. It doesn't mean that we need to make video games to teach kids -- but that we need to look at successful ones (including Vice City) and figure out what works, and how that can be applied to learning.

My guess is the attraction of using video games to teach is the same as any other technology that is thrown at the task of teaching kids -- it is always about scaling. If we sit students in front of "learning simulations" then we may need fewer teachers, or we can have bigger class sizes. I am not denying that the use of something such as the eternal classic SimCity can't be valuable. If I had a kid, darned right I would have them playing Sim City, but we would play it together, and talk about it. I don't think this can happen in a class of 30 students.

--hal