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Videogames, Learning, And Literacy
Thanks to an anonymous reader for pointing to a GameZone.com article interviewing Professor James Paul Gee, the author of a new book advocating videogames as a learning tool. According to Gee, "It dawned on me that good games were learning machines... Many of these [game-contained] principles could be used in schools to get kids to learn things like science, but, too often today schools are returning to skill-and-drill and multiple-choice tests that kill deep learning." He goes on to reference "good learning principles" built into games like System Shock 2, Rise of Nations, and Arcanum, and advocates early gaming for learning: "In my view - and I know it is controversial - kids should be playing games from early on, from three years old, say."
unfortunately games are becoming like the movie industry, only the big titles with big budgets make it on store shelves. Hopefully novel gaming wont go the way of the Bruckheimer.
Also, sim city 2000 and myst were great in terms of general intelligence building. And don't forget the EV series! Now I know a bunch of major star systems. Bernard's Star here I come! Yes, it really does exist, however not all stars from fiction are real. I don't think fiddler's green exists.
Anyhoo, a healthy dose of non first person shooter games can be good for the brain, and while those shooters certainly improve reflexes, the RSI, frazzled nerves and raised blood pressure of a good net match are hardly worth it.
Quid festinatio swallonis est aetherfuga inonusti?
Africus aut Europaeus?
This reminds me of the F-22 test pilot on the discover channel talking about how the new kids who grew up with video games are unbelivably good at flying planes.
Apparently flying a modern jet requires tracking lots of things at once and the gamer kids are pretty good at it.
I also recall many pilots saying that the number one cause of crashes was pilots believing sensory input over guages, and how easy it was to fool your inner ear. I'd say this would be an advantage to vid game based learners, because gauges are all you have to rely on in a PC game. Further, I don't recall ever seeing a guage in a simulator program of any type that gave inaccurate info, ever.
********* sig: If you don't like the law, get filthy stinking rich, and buy a better one.
If you have a kid that doesn't want to learn in the classroom environment, but instead only wants to play games, then, yes, playing strategy, RPG or simulation games is better than just deathmatching Quake for hours on end.
However, if you're wanting to teach that problem kid, there's surely better ways than sitting them in front of a computer with a stack of games.
What's next, computer training by downloading pr0n - think about it - learn all about caching, searching for passwords, virus checking for trojan pr0n, proxies, ad blocking, ftp, IRC, KaZaA, etc. Excuse me, I must go now to write my book and get interviewed on GameZone...
This is a prescient interview. The market for gaming would explode if game publishers consciously took the time to embed learning scenarios into games.
If this was done in a way that didn't seem pedantic; that didn't detract form the 'fun' or 'challenge' of the game; that permitted the player to branch to new experiences once certain 'pedagogic principles' were mastered; gaming would reach a new plateau - both in terms of cultural influence and sales. Every parent would run out and but a game console, no questions asked.
This is the most compelling way to help people to "fail on the way to mastery".
Imagine that a parent hears that little Suzy will do better in school (or on her SAT's) if she plays games that help her to learn the principles of elementary geometry, grammar, etc. as a part of playing the game, *without her consciously realizing it*. Clever game design could accomplish this. (Why isn't Wolfram Publishing authoring math game?)
Of course, in many cases, conscious awareness that directed learning is taking place could also be permitted, as long as the game's design created stimulating scenarios that compel participation.
This is really just the very beginning for games as learning tools. Years ago, in cognitive science seminars, it became clear that the best 'artificial' way we had to instill learning skills was through simulation. This is still true, and remain so for some time.
Really, games are immersive, simulative, experiences. They will become more immersive, and sophisticated (in terms of simulation) as time goes on, processors get faster, broadband becomes a non-issue, and designers realize that learning can be fun.
The future for this sort of thing is absolutely unlimited. In fact, there's no reason why serious simulations and models of very complex environments won't eventually be brought before very sophisticated learners (politicians, medical professionals, genetic designers, etc.) to help them "think through" potential consequences of their actions.
Frankly, this is the most important pedagogical development in that last 100 years, if not longer. It will have import far into the future.
Just about every learning activity that children indulge in is a game. Shape puzzles, lego, etc. Even with animals learning has always been a game.
This makes you wonder why there is so much anti-videogame sentiment, and its sad that its only now that more people are looking seriously toward computer games for child learning.
A friend recently got married and has their first child. Both parents have firmly ingrained computing habits, and hence the child has spent a lot of time in front of a monitor. At age 3, he knew how to operate the window's quicklaunch in order to get to media player (kid loves to watch stuff from Pixar, and they use the PC as a VCD/DVD player). Near age four, he could navigate most of the start menu. And the child isn't a geek either, he runs around much like any other and is a bit of a bully in school actually.
Those same kids, however, are very interested in TEH XBOZZZZ and all that. If you could somehow make education fun, like "Typing of the Dead", and things like that, i think it would work. The problem is, right now, that education games aren't fun. Not to most kids. Even the younger kids are being influenced by the older ones into thinking that anything that even remotely involves something other than porn or guns is bad. As such, i think i have a formula that may well be important to note in this instance:
*breasts* + *violence* + * = FUN GAME
Knowing this, i think we need to add more, like, shooting games and things to the educational genre. Quake III: Preposition Death Match. Dead or Alive Volleyball: XTREME Spelling Mastarz. Things like that.
YES, games CAN be good learning tools, but they also can be harmfull. It depends on the game. Almost "mindless" kill-em-all types of games seem to me as a waste of time as "educational tool" (one might argue "but they improve hand-eye coordination and... - and they would be right... but that's not education). Almost (and I repeat, almost) all games have SOMETHING that is good in them... even the crappy ones (oh well, make you realise that they are crap and help you build your own oppinions). PROBLEM is that not every type of game is good for "teaching" usefull things to the younger people... and the danger exists (in the nowadays MMOGs trend) that you will encounter vulgar language (which by itself, in small doses is not harmfull, but when in excess... no comment). What I want to say is... what happened to QUESTS (Lucasarts, oh where art thou), to REAL strategy games like "Gengis Khan", "Nether Earth"(that one's for Z80)... those were more than usefull, both entertaining and educative. The current "computer game industry" trend of "if more buy it it is good" and "more violence sells better" is a big problem. ___ As a "bottom line": IF it would be SCIENTIFICALLY proven beyond a shadow of a doubt for any dimwit (in the Congress or where they might be) that certain types of games ARE of educational value, it will be a major step forward.
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I am currently learning Japanese by playing Final Fantasy X-2. Maybe more "increasing the knowledge thereof" than "learning," but I do have the dictionary handy and would pause at instances where I don't understand and look up the word.
It works wonders because
1) it teaches you slang that's sometimes not in textbooks but people use often (must have good dictionary, however)
2) you brush up listening comprehension
3) you can pause the damn thing (try that with TV - well, one without TiVO and the likes)
4) subtitle
5) it provides a mental reference about the words, when I see "furikaeru" I would think to myself - ahh, Yuna says this in her final monologue and such and I can use the game scenario to remind me of the meaning; etc.
So, games can definitely be a learning tool. In fact this the most fun I have had learning yet.
Of course, as a friend puts it, an equally effective way may be to find a - ahem - sex toy who likes to talk during - ahem - activities. But looking up dictionary during such activities may be slightly inconvenient.
My life in the land of the rising sun.
Ha, a bit of deja vu here. Wasn't that what they said when TV came out?
Problem: I've played a lot of educational video games, and all of them were boring. It certainly would be cool if a game could unconsciously teach useful things, but in 20 years of gaming it has never been done, and I see no evidence that it's possible.
E.g. I've played a platformer designed to teach math. In between the platform action, you would pick up items that froze the game and forced you to answer an arithmetic problem before you proceeded. Or a ecology adventure game that would bother you with popups about wildlife. Such things can only detract from the game. But can you propose any way to teach arithmetic without posing arithmetic problems?
Educational games are just another futile attempt to "make learning fun". The problem is that you can't make learning fun by mixing it with unrelated things that are fun, like shooting things and jumping around. You have to make children feel that learning is fun for its own sake. And the only thing that can do that is a good teacher.
That definitely depends on which games you play. So long as there's a good mix (ie not just RTS and FPS, like what seems to be dominating these days), it will be just like books. If all you read is war books produced by the army to convince people to join them, you'll probably become a braindead little capitalist soldier. If you read a good mix across all of literature, you probably won't.
I think maybe the trick would be to continually enhance old games to have today's graphics standard to ensure that people have a wide choice. Perhaps generic version of these games should be written, that can plug into any "generic" graphical engine, and be re-used with progressively newer graphical engines...
Daniel
Carpe Diem
My Kids (5 and 7) are AVID gamers. Railroad Tycoon II (History and Music), Sim City 4 (Literacy, numeracy and planning), Theme park world (Economics), Flight Simulator 4 (Geography), Robot Wars (Science) etc. etc with a good smattering of fluffy fun garbage (hand-eye co-ordination).
They will hardly touch a book of their own volition but they have THE highest reading skills in their respective classes (in fact my 5 year old is outpacing my 7 year old gah!! ) because they WANTED to read what was going on in their games.
Combine this with some good old-fashioned school education and some active parental involvement and I have some motivated kids who ENJOY learning about science, nature, mathematics etc. etc.
So anyways - for younger children I personally believe that they have learned more from playing computers games (and watching television) than they have learned from books so far. That said they have learned a great deal more from their parents, teachers and peers than from games...because there really is NO replacement for teaching and good parenting.
Oh one draw-back I should note - their handwriting absolutely sucks because they type everything *sigh*
Games where you have to interact a lot in a non repetitive way might be useful educational tools, as are books, as is a group classroom experiment, etc.
However, I have yet to see a game that really wins on any of these points, although they are all complements to real learning. Chat rooms do not even have conversations in English any more, it's all LOL and ROTFL and smilies. I've even seen people in chat rooms who barely type anything else, in fact they probably just point and click macros that someone else created instead.
Programming and logic, and of course hand to eye coordination, can be learned from computers. Doesn't beat real sport, which adds 3D sensory perception and much better spatial awareness. A good learning game will not beat a good book for improving literacy, but it might help with rule based learning, like mathematics, grammar and vocabulary building by repetition.
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Some of the best games in regards to learning problem solving and logic would have to be the old adventure games. (KQ1, SQ1 etc) none of the point and click stuff, but actually require thought to even guess what was going on. The first time I had played KQ1 was at a very early age and feel it has still had a long lasting impression.
i think the point is that video games can teach thinking skills, not facts. Nothing teaches facts better than boredom and a full set of encyclopedias.
De sig boss de sig
After being in business for myself for awhile, it's dawned on me how similar a lot of strategic management games are like running a business in real life.
The best of such games taught me to watch expenditures, invest in productive items, make more money which gets invested in other productive items and services.
Sometimes I feel like I'm actually in a game,
but with a system of much more interesting and
gratifying rewards.
i kid you not; i learned how to read playing the old school sierra games - king's quest and space quest. you had to be able to read and write (albeit pretty broken sentences, lol) to play them, and i got so jealous of watching my older brother playing them that i learned to read by watching over his shoulder and then playing by myself.
i even got skipped ahead a grade in reading when i entered elementary.
this guy's got a great point.
I grew up on a strong diet of board games, card games, word games and later video games - I thought it obvious that games aid learning.
In fact, this is how most of us learn pretty much everything at an early age.
Why is it that these 'revelations' keep on cropping up when it's been known for so long that kids playing aid thier learning, no matter what form the game takes ?
Have the 'power that be' that critisise video games got so powerful that people have forgotten the fact that games are good learning tools ?
Still, it's nice to see this kind of article and more articles praising games could help to balance out the crazies who blame video games for all social ills.
A slashdotting - you get the stick first and then the carrot !
Basically, if it weren't for Wizardry (and, later on, Matrix Cubed), I wouldn't be posting this now. This is enough proof for me that computer games can be more than just pretty distractions.
>|<*:=
Honestly, I might not have been interested in learning how to count in hex if it weren't for Questron and the Commodore 64.
You could edit the character files in a hex editor and give yourself gazzilions of $ or HPs:)
There was a boy at my old apartment complex who was mostly orphaned, he was being raised by his grandparents. He was well behind his age group at the age of 10 when it came to reading. Be it the Yorky I walked regularly, or the fact he liked checking out all the computer gear I worked on, he attached himself to me. It didn't take long for me to notice he could barely read. I got a pretty good handle on what the kid liked and I hooked him on two video games. I got him hooked on Illusion of Gaia for the SNES which required great amounts of reading admist quite a bit of overhead action. I also got him hooked on Gabriel Knight Sins of the Fathers on the PC (he didn't know it was capable of talking, and I turned the voices off). Granted, a somewhat scary adult targeted (and old) game, but considering his stacks of Playboys and scary movies okayed by his grandparents I deamed it acceptable in his case. After just two to three weeks his reading skills had more than doubled. He never compleated eaither game, but he did spent quite a few hours on each.
Later he found a 486 in the dumpster with Debian installed on it. Well, hated to do it, but I reformated the drive and put Win98 on it, after I gutted it and put a P166 in it. Hey, he was only 10 or 11 at the time. His grandma had heard all about ebay and wanted to check it out. Perfect! I worked for an ISP at the time. I spoke to my boss/CEO, he allowed no setup fee and the first six months free, I paid for the next six months after that. He knew that I was on IRC at work all day (it was part of my job), I showed him how to bring up the JAVA client (I had more control over that than a normal client would allow) and he chatted all day. At first it would take him serveral minutes to type a poorly spelled short sentance in the room, to the point you almost didn't realize he was there if you weren't looking for him. Within six months he could keep up.
It all started with video games.
Before I moved out of that complex his grandmother left a thank you letter under the windsheild wipper of my truck. It's framed and hanging in my computer loft at home now.
Two months ago I got married. That kid, now 16, was my best man.
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