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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.' "
They have to play EA games? Wow, I feel sorry for them.
IIRC, Doom had a lot of very graphic anatomy lessons built in.
You know - Readin', Ritin', and 'Rithmatic? After all, it worked for decades here in the USA!
If it's work, it won't bring the same satisfaction as playing a game for pleasure.
And in related news, the TEA are consulting Ouija Boards to determine the next Social Studies curriculum.
Your Homework is Play Video Games
Apparently someone skipped their English homework.
--riney
I wonder what their adult education games are like.
*moves to UK*
Note to mods: I'm probably being sarcastic.
The way I see it, at least they're considering if this is a good idea, rather than going down the "games=bad" route. All of the skills they want to teach the kids, from the article, are present in games.
I'd be interested to see how this turns out, and if it's actually teacher-led "gaming", as it were, rather than "I'll sit here with a cup of tea catching up on my mountain of paperwork when you play these games and hopefully learn something".
At the very least, it's a start.
Just another harmless drunk
Does this mean the next generation will procrastinate by reading Socrates and performing Fourier Transforms?
I don't really get it though. My parents told me "listen, quit the fucking apathy and do your homework." If I didn't, I was sorry (no, they didn't beat me up, but they punished me, y'know... like parents). I'm not really sure why grade school kids get to decide whether they wanna do work or not these days.
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]
Hey, what a great idea! We never needed those before, but NOW there's some serious demand for brand new skills like problem-solving.
The owls are not what they seem
There was talk early this year (or was it last year), about the game developed by WHO, to teach young kids in the developed countries, about the plight and standard of living of people in third world countries. However, it met with the same fate as the others that I heard of in the past... the launch of such a game is covered a lot by the media, but fizzles out with no updates posted about the effectivness.
On the other hand, how does one measure the effectiveness of such an initiative?
As for this trial, one has to wonder how much of a push is it from the gaming giant to lure more children into the gaming world?
http://efil.blogspot.com/
When I was little, I had all the computer games like Operation Neptune, Super Solvers Midnight Rescue, Where in Time is Carmen Sandiego, Number Munchers, and so on. Those were totally awesome. I'd play them again if I had them. When I was even younger (like maybe 4), I had an awesome baseball game where at each at-bat, you choose a level of difficulty and they give you an appropriate arithmetic problem. You get it right, you get a hit. You get it wrong, you're out. /No point to this post, just waxing nostalgic...
Top three reasons why I don't want EA involved in this
1) Homework will take 10 hours a night to complete, but "only during crunch time".
2) There are always other students willing to participate in the program if you don't want to
3) Students won't get extra credit, no matter HOW much homework they do
On a more serious note, I've been saying for YEARS that we need to focus on these so called "softer" skills. Current education is too hooked on what a child knows and how well they can memorize, not how able they are to figure things out. I realize that the subjects are supposed to be vehicles to teaching these "softer" skills, the problem is many teachers don't. They teach facts to be memorized ( especially at the higher levels ), not concepts to be thought about.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
Ummm no. If it is necessary to keep the brats entertained at all times and constantly stimulated in order to get their attention, then there is a serious problem. The correct response is to not allow them to have their toys and games at all if they can't be bothered to come out of their fantasy world and do some work.
Pandering to them and trying to keep them interested because they have the attention spans of fruit flies will only make the problem worse. It is the kids that need to change, not the entire world in which they live. If little Johnny can't be bothered to do his Math homework because it's not as fun as playing Quake, then little Johny should get teh $#!+ beat out of him until he decides that maybe he SHOULD do his work. His math teacher should not have to wear a clown nose, dance a jig, and assign video games for homework just to keep him awake.
How very true.
But then since you can seemingly get branded a child-hating monster of a bad parent nowadays by even looking at your child in a disaproving manner while they rape and old woman... this isn't really surprising.
Children nowadays are given more and more freedom and less and less resonsponsibilites. You can get away with pretty much anything short of murder if you're under 16. What are parents getting in return in order to combat this? Well they're told that it's not their responsibility, and this is reinforced over and over. For those that realise that this is completely stupid and dare actually try and rase their child sensibly, they're attacked for doing so.
Homework is just a tiny fraction of the overall problem here.
Problem-solving... Get into difficult-to-reach sniper spot.
Resilience... Survive long enough in difficult-to-reach sniper spot to make a difference.
Persistence... Inflict as many headshots as possible without missing.
Collaboration... Can someone get me some more sniper ammo?
I find that children respond better to positive reinforcement and supportive counselling than savage beatings. What is this, 1920?
YMMV..
I never spellcheck and I freely admit it. Save your karma for more worthwhile "lol erorrs" replies
Oregon Trail
Dino Park Tycoon
Odell Down Under
and the endless other games we played in school. How is this new?
+5, Truth
The idea here is to make homework more engaging. Even though the term "video game" is being bandied about, what they're really talking about is "computer simulation." This technology will make it easier to introduce the concept of *case studies* to kids at an earlier age. As anyone who went to college knows, the best way to learn something is by doing case studies.
When I was in grade school and high school, we just did pages full of math problems, with no real explanation of what use they are. While I still think that is necessary just to build up practice, I would have appreciated going to the next level and learning how some of those concepts actually applied to real life. As a result, there is a lot of stuff I learned in algebra and trig that I have simply forgotten over the years because I never had a chance to apply it to a real life situation, albeit a simulated one.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
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!
People coming out of the 1920's education system were far smarter than what the system is producing now. They could actually read, write, and perform mathematics. Imagine that! Today you'll find many university-level students who struggle with such basic tasks.
The strict discipline of the early 20th century gave children only one choice: to learn! And so they did.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
This is nothing new, until the Windows platform completely wiped out the homegrown competition, we always had educational games in schools in the UK. Companies like Sherston, 4Mation and others released loads of 'games' for schools. Googling about now, I've found a few of the old-skool education games still knocking aroung (for example Granny's Garden), and some others that never seem to have made the jump from the 8 bit days (like Suburban Fox).
Some of the games that were created back in the 90s were very closely tied in with specific National Curiculum targets, and still manages to be quite fun to play - albeit made on quite a small budget, with the sort of money that EA has to throw at production, these new generation of education games could be really good.
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.
Computer games giant Electronic Arts and education IT researcher NESTA Futurelab, are to conduct trials to see how computer games can be used as educational tools in schools.
Sales Rep: Sir! We have a problem, no one is buying our shitty games!
CEO: Hmmmm.... is it because 25 of our last 26 games have been sequals?
Sales Rep: That's part of the problem, sir, but all of our games contain a copious amount of um, shit.
CEO: Interesting. We need a new market approach.
Sales Rep: Sir?
CEO: We sell our games to schools, and say they our educational!
Sales Rep: Brialliant!
CEO: We have to make sure they buy our utter crap too, so let's say "all our genres have something to offer"...
Sales Rep: Oh Sir, the school districts will love it! I'll get the board on the phone right away. Hello Add'em '06!
You are in a 21st Centurty school, your teachers are underpaid, the facilities are obsolete, your fellow students are apathetic. It is dark. There is a computer in front of you.
>>turn on computer
The computer is on.
>>play educational game
You are distracted by the bright colors and cool sound effects. You are supposedly learning problem-solving, resilience, persistence and collaboration; skills for which there is no test to measure your progress. You graduate.
>>get job
Your attempt to get a job fails. It is dark.
>>get job
Your attempt to get a job succeeds! You are now a fry cook at McDonalds.
>>get better job
Your attempt to get a better job fails. Your education never prepared you with either the intellectual tools or actual knowledge to succeed. You have no health care, you don't vote, and your kids will turn out even worse than you. Oh, and you've been eaten by a grue.
Your dead
'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.'
And, in the back of the package, in small print: Social skills not included.
I agree that there are some children with real mental problems that need professional treatment. The problem is that we are getting to the point where ALL children are being treated that way. Drugs are being given to children who don't need them because adults don't want to have to deal with thier naturally overactive personalities instead of teaching them that there is a time and place for different kinds of behavior. Constant counseling given to genuinely 'bad' kids who learn that they can do anything they want and get no punishment at all except having to BS their way through a talk with a boring old guy every few days.
Technoli
Video games feed information at a relatively accelerated rate. They contribute to low attention span, impatience, and quickness to boredom. Bad qualities to nurture.
But hey, theres always Ritalin.
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.