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Gaming In the Classroom
The Guardian Online has a story describing one reporter's goal to see what role games can play in educational situations. Essentially, he found games being used in many places. The major frustration, in fact, with the games was that they couldn't be used to put forward an educator's goals as often as they would have liked. From the article: "As he says, Sim City has its biases. 'It is geared to traffic and subways. But if it was open source, you could build a model more geared to pedestrians and sidewalks, the urban model advanced by Jane Jacobs, and teach her theories with it.'"
It will never work!
/* oops I accidentally made a comment, sorry */
So, if you tweak the simulation to produce the results you want it to produce, this is better how?
Pulp Audio Weekly - Geek News and Reviews
What America needs is more computers in the classroom! We need more videogames! If a few textbooks have to be pitched and music programs axed, so be it. Nothing will prepare our youth for the promise of tomorrow like pointing-and-clicking their way to intelligence and wisdom!
Why does it have to be open source? Why can't you build a new sim game from the ground up that has all of the features you want or need?
Escape from Castle Algebra? Unreal Number Munchers Tournament III? GTA: Mathmagic Land?
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
...can become a city planner by playing Sim City.
I must preface this by saying I am in high school. I am a graduating senior, and will be attending a good school next year. In my experience, gaming in the classroom has been very effective, though it is entirely based on the quality of the gaming. Here are two examples (both of which I worked on, so this is a shameless plug).
1. EscalationSim - This is a Vietnam war simulation game, or more an interactive interface. However, it allows students to choose their actions and see the reactions in the Vietnam war. I administer this at the moment. From the students I have asked regarding it, they have all been very fond of it and preferred it to lectures, homework, and essays. Beyond this, a good portion of the students (those that accept that school can be fun on occasions) truly had a good time with the game.
2. Industrial Revolution - The game was simple, it was essentially a test on the Industrial Revolution. However, again, the students I spoke with preferred this game (shorthand is IndRev) over some of the other activities of the class. This game won Kevin O'Reilly, the teacher of it, the NASDAQ national teaching award of economics (the link, as the IndRev game isn't available online).
In both of these cases, the students preferred the games to the other options. However, I must say this. The quality of the game is important (it must be reasonably designed and accessible), the students must be willing to learn and not just have fun or ignore the game altogether, and the teacher must have a passion for learning (as should be the case in any classroom).
The problem is that you usually have to choose between better gameplay, or a more factual interpretation. This is going to always be the case in any sort of game, because the real world is complicated and has a lot of difficult problems.
Simcity has its biases because there's only so much time to program, only so much computing power to simulate stuff, and only so much complexity that a player can deal with and still have any fun.
I think there's more of a difference between a "game" and a "simulator" than most people realize. If you play a good simulator like you would a game, it's probably not going to go so well. If you play a simulator like it was real life, you'll end up with better results, but it probably will be less fun. Granted, there are people who really enjoy firing up MS Flight Simulator and trying to do a real accurate flight down the east coast. But that's really a different case than a game.
A really accurate version of sim city wouldn't be much fun. Getting things done in cities is a slow and political process, full of frustration and wasted time. Not a recipe for a fun or successful game. If you want something that accurately simulates pedestrian flow through urban spaces, you're going to need some custom software, and it's not going to be as easy as tweaking some existing game.
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
Although the article uses this only talking about the use of commercial games in the classroom, it's every bit as true about games designed to be educational.
And it's not just the curriculum - it's the teacher as well. A kid can play SimCity for weeks, but at the end of it not be able to verbalize in any constructive way what he learned, even if he has learned something. Teachers need to be able to integrate the games (or any other technology) into everything else they're doing so that students are not just learning, but are aware of their learning.
One of the largest gripes by teachers when it comes to technology in the classroom is a lack of training on how to integrate it into their teaching. They often get basic training on how to use a program, then are left on their own to figure out what to do with it.
I've seen the results when teachers do get intensive, long-term training on technology integration, not just technology use, and it's pretty cool. I've seen teachers who used Excel and Acrobat to create their own interactive games that furthered their learning objectives. (Which solves some of the problem this article is talking about.) They were doing stuff with those programs that I didn't even know was possible.
But it takes training - dedicated, regular, ongoing training, not just one seminar a year on the basics of using the program.
Warning: Apple/Nintendo fangirl. Likes her electronics cute & cuddly. May be rabid.
Oregon Trail!
How that game managed to dominate the classroom scene of the 80's, from green/black Apple IIe to full-color Mac, I will never know. Maybe it's because there was nothing like the thrill of getting to shoot some buffalo during computer lab. Did anyone ever actually beat that game? I'm pretty sure my family always drowned/died of syphillis/got eaten by cannibals/however you died in that game. Maybe it was just my impatient, sadistic childhood nature because I'd always tell the horses to try and wade through the river and they usually couldn't. Stupid horses.
Reading comprehension? Spelling? Vocabulary? Analytical skills? Fun?
Text adventures.
Here is a list of games that I compiled from a previous and very exaustive slashdot discussion thought were educational. I haven't played most of them, so some may have more educational merit than others. Sim City Sim Ant* Sim Tower Sim Farm Sim Earth** Sim Safari The Incredible Machine Contraptions Chromatron (puzzle) Enigmo [pangeasoft.net]* Zoo Tycoon Roller Coaster Tycoon Transport Tycoon w/ [ttdpatch.net]** Railroad Tycoon Test Drive Celestia [shatters.net]* Noctis [anywherebb.com] Orbit [head-crash.com]* Orbiter [ucl.ac.uk]** FlightGear [flightgear.org]* Also [tucows.com] and [freshmeat.net] Sobokan Oregon Trail Core Wars (robot program) Mindrover (robot program) Bridge Builder/Pontifex or Bridge Construction Set** Creatures Civilization 3** Tranquility Polygon Worlds [polygonworlds.com] Planet's Orbits [alcyone.de] Partiview [haydenplanetarium.org] Tuxtype [sourceforge.net] Droid Battles [bluefire.nu] MahJong [stevens-bradfield.com] Settlers of Catan [sourceforge.net] [settlers3d.net] JTEG [sourceforge.net] Tetrinet [tetrinet.org] Armagetron [sourceforge.net] Search and Rescue [twu.net] Astrobattle [astrobattle.com] Tower Toppler [sourceforge.net] MyLink [as-netz.de] Airstrike [icculus.org] XRick [bigorno.net] Vegastrike [sourceforge.net] Stoned [cute-ninjas.com] (curling simulation) CarWorld [sourceforge.net] Cannon Smash [sourceforge.net] (virtual Table tennis) Sentry [eicart.free.fr] Noiz2sa [asahi-net.or.jp] rRootage [asahi-net.or.jp] PowerManga [linux.tlk.fr] Spheres of Chaos [streamerp2p.com] Warblade [warblade.as] Epiar [epiar.net] Nethack [nethack.org]** Wall Street Raider WordWars [gamethoughts.com] West Point Bridge Design [usma.edu] Life & Death II: The Brain [mobygames.com] Live For Speed [liveforspeed.net]* Trucks [jet.ro] Alice [alice.org] Physicus [viva-media.com]** Chemicus Frozen Bubble (old C64 titles) Raft Away River (old C64 titles) Sheepdog Trails (old C64 titles) Rocky's Boots (old C64 titles) Goldfields (old C64 titles) The Journey to Wild Divine CyberLearning Technology (for ADD) [www.selfesteemgames.mcgill.ca/] Ben's Game [www.makewish.org/ben/] FloodRanger** Real Lives 2004** Superpower 2** Making History [muzzylane.com]** Crusader Kings [paradox.com]** Victoria [paradox.com] Europa Universalis 2 [paradox.com]** Hearts of Iron 2 [paradox.com]** Pirates (2004)** Colonization* Combat Mission (all 3) [battlefront.com]** Majesty: The Fantasy Kingdom Sim** America's Army** Airborne Assault: Highway to the Reich** Total War (all 3)**
Typing of the Dead.
dang, I forgot to Preview and add "br"
I remember playing simcity as a lab assignment in a college economic geography course. And this was years and years ago.
Myst any of them will provide a great mental challenge. while it wont teach students facts, it helps develop problem solving and analytical skills. The best for the classroom would have to by Myst3:Exile by Presto Studios, its not too difficult and looks wonderful.
I really learned a lot of historical facts while playing civilization, by reading the descriptions about civilization advances and wonders in the "civilopedia", but I suppose that not all students playing this game would be willing to do that, unless doing so would have a benefitial effect in gameplay (maybe including tactics as how to use a military unit or when to build a city improvement).
Anyway, I think this kind of games can be really educational, althought not everyone enjoys playing them, so I guess the solution would be to have various kinds of games to allow the kids to choose (remember, the real target of trying to use games in education is that users have fun playing them, if they get as bored with the game as with a class, you lose the point.)
I'm not saying the whole game, but the start of the Russian campaign with the battle for Stalingrad is unbelieveable. I knew from history class back lo those many years ago that the battle of Stalingrad was a meat grinder for the Russian army, but that level hammered home on an emotional level just how bloody awful it was. The supply shortages, the Comissars reinforcing Stalin's "Not one step backward" directive at the point of a machinegun, etc. That to me brought home how that battle must have been like no game has done before or since.