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Your Homework is Play Video Games
GuitarNeophyte writes "Four schools in the UK will be testing a new program idea to use video games for educational use. An IT researcher, along with Electronic Arts (the software game giant) are funding the proposition. 'We're looking at developing some of the softer skills that are needed for the 21st century, such as problem-solving, resilience, persistence and collaboration.' "
A lot of American schools have eliminated drivers ed. It would be useful for a driving simulator (not racing) that is designed to help new drivers with both normal driving (merging, heavy traffic, navigation) and emergency situations (accident avoidance, skids, bad weather, etc).
[Insert pithy quote here]
Right. Too bad they will be lacking in social skills and cultural values.
But then again, he did say "needed for the 21st century"...
Carol vs. Ghost
Sure, but rather than have them PLAY video games, have the MAKE video games. Yes, you can start that in elementary school - I did, and so did every other kid lucky enough to have a computer prior to 1980 - the masses were getting ATARI though. Besides, you don't need to pay EA to make games: Python and PyGame - now get started.
Some work just can't be fun.
You are a product of the industrialized education system. So am I. We were taught that work wasn't fun, it was work. And it wasn't something we had a choice in, regardless.
My daughter *loves* school. She loves the work, and looking it over, so would I ( and would have, at her age. ).
When I was in 2nd grade, my math homework ( for example ) was a sheet of numbers and operators. She brings home these little booklets that have word problems, stories, with numbers. Both accomplish the same thing, but hers also teaches problem solving ( figuring out which numbers go where in the equation ) AND she enjoys it because it's a story.
I won't even get into the science. They do some awsome things with science now.
History, for some reason, they still teach like they did when I was in school. On this date, this happened. On this date, this happened. And then they test you on the dates. idiotic.
My overall point being, we were taught by our schools not to have fun while doing work. Now a days, teachers have better tools at their disposal, and kids are actually learning to have fun while working.
Now if we could only get the parents to show some interest in their child's education and get the ID people to drop it. A scary world where a teacher feels too threatened to teach science theory because of religous nuts.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
That old game is pretty much the reason why I am now a programmer. It was pretty boring at first, but then someone showed me that we could modify how it worked, that you could change it's behaviour, that you could make it do what you wanted. I fell in love with programming right then!
:P
:P
So basically, I'm a programmer because of *almost* open source code.!
Thanks whoever made this and to my old school for buying that software!
http://gvr.sourceforge.net/ is an interesting concept to build upon.
Actually, kids don't have more freedom. When I was a kid my parents let me walk all over the neighborhood and explore. I can't image that hapenning today. Video games just make a good babysitter and help us get fat. That's about it.
Depending on how it's implemented, I see no reason why games can't be developed that either (A) require a printout when a student completes a level/course to prove that it was done or (B) reports back to central repository so that the teacher can determine if the work was done.
:)
So, for example, a student plays a game that deals with the multiplication tables. The game is entertaining and informative at the same time, so the kid enjoys playing it. Once the "work" level has been "won", out goes a signal (or a report) stating that little Johnny has completed the work. The teacher has proof that the game was played and little Johnny had fun with it to the point that he looks forward to the next assignment. I don't see this as being difficult to achieve, nor to I believe that this is something that is unattainable as TFA suggests.
Obviously, there are technical issues with this (being cynical geeks we can always find flaws), but I don't see any reason why this could not be done to the point that video games, classwork, homework, and education are synonymous.
So, let's see. A boring book or a complete multimedia experience. Gee, which one do you think the kids will want more? Apparently, the cynics here have not heard of the still-popular Reader Rabbit series.
And give Taco some slack. After years of having to deal with "All Your Base Are Belong To Us" derivative posts on Slashdot, it was only a matter of time before that type of fractured grammar became a part of the Slashdot mentality.
The Overrated mod is for reversing inappropriate, positive mods, not for voicing disagreement with a post.
It worked fin in the ol' U.S.A. before we starting catering to the LCD, you know, lowest common denominator. gmuller
As I recall, this has been done already... when I was in kindergarten (circa 1993), we had two or three old Apple IIe computers in the classroom and we were on a scheduled rotation so that every week or so every kid would get a chance to play with it for a period of time. As educational games were the only ones available (at least to us), we were learning while we played. I loved playing and always looked forward to it. Number Munchers and Word Munchers were excellent games (among many others) and I still pull out the ol' IIe from time to time to revisit some old games that were truly educational. (This is not to say my education hasn't advanced since Kindergarten, but my future children will definitely be playing some of those same games if they still work by then)
This sig left blank for page turns.
US literacy rates as reported by the census bureau:
1900: 89%
1910: 92%
1920: 94%
1930: 95%
1950: 97%
1960: 98%
1970: 99%
I guess MA is just behind the rest of the country.
The right to be heard does not automatically include the right to be taken seriously.
Camping in my mind is sniping a spawn point or putting automatic turrets near a spawn point. Either way, the poor sucker spawning in gets it before realizing what's going on.
I am 37 and have heard our generation refered to by some as the last "free range" generation. Some kids got out of line and ended up in trouble, but in balance kids learned where reasonable limits were and were held responsible for their behavior. I later observed in college as a Resident Assistant that the kids to watch out for were the ones who's parents tightly controlled them. The ones that had a longer leash growing up knew how to negotiate the wild wild world without going bonkers. I think the key was that other adults (besides your parents):
It will never be the same, but I hope to provide for my 4 kids some of the life experience I had that I feel is critical.
When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.
Increasingly, Computer Game Playing (or, rather, Computer manipulation) is becoming a skill of some importance. For example, there was a recent article in the Washington Post about Coal Mining in Virginia:
c le/2005/08/14/AR2005081401174.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/arti
Try Gatto's writings:
o -on-literacy/
Cited:
http://www.timboucher.com/journal/2005/07/25/gatt
Gatto says:
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/3j.htm
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/3b.htm
(And so on).
He cites military test results in particular.
People used to learn the basics from their parents. Gatto and others like Holt argue it doesn't take more than a hundred hours or so of instruction for almost all kids to learn the basics of reading, writing and arithmetic, and then bootstrap from there on their own, once a kid actually decides they want to learn those things. The notion that it takes years of study is just self-justifying propaganda put out by the school system.
Gatto writes: "Looking back, abundant data exist from states like Connecticut and Massachusetts to show that by 1840 the incidence of complex literacy in the United States was between 93 and 100 percent wherever such a thing mattered. According to the Connecticut census of 1840, only one citizen out of every 579 was illiterate and you probably don't want to know, not really, what people in those days considered literate; it's too embarrassing. Popular novels of the period give a clue: Last of the Mohicans, published in 1826, sold so well that a contemporary equivalent would have to move 10 million copies to match it. If you pick up an uncut version you find yourself in a dense thicket of philosophy, history, culture, manners, politics, geography, analysis of human motives and actions, all conveyed in data-rich periodic sentences so formidable only a determined and well-educated reader can handle it nowadays. Yet in 1818 we were a small-farm nation without colleges or universities to speak of. Could those simple folk have had more complex minds than our own?"
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.