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More Videogames, Fewer Books at Some Schools?
A News.com article highlights a plan that may please word-weary students: more games, fewer books in some educational settings. That's one plan put forth by some educators who feel that current learning plans don't fully engage today's classes. By offering real-world dilemmas in a virtual setting ('discover why fish are dying in a park'), teachers hope that games will turn kids onto the idea of learning, and eventually lead them back to books. The article covers several of the projects geared towards exploring this idea, as well as research on the subject. "A game designer, Salen is working with a group called New Visions for Public Schools to establish a school in New York City for grades 6 through 12 that would integrate video games into the entire curriculum. 'There's a lot of moral panic about addiction to games. There's a negative public perception, and we know we have to deal with that. But teachers have been using games for years and years.'"
I strenuously object to the hasty, ill-concieved rush to computerize education by turning everything into a video game. Pretty soon, everyone will think science only takes place inside a computer. Let me give an example.
One of my favorite childhood memories was going to the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago. Up on the second floor, there was a permanent display of historic scientific apparatus, like a Wimshust Generator about 20 feet in diameter. I went back to visit it about 10 years ago, all those exhibits were gone, replaced with computer kiosks. Really BAD computer kiosks, uninspiring, ill-planned junk that had all the bells and whistles, but little educational content. I thought about the tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of dollars spent on developing and deploying those horrid, amateurish kiosks, and how they replaced a whole museum wing that represented the technological development of America, and I can only consider it the greatest educational tragedy I ever saw. I remember being inspired, as a little child, seeing those monuments to science, but that will never happen again. And it's a damn shame.
I agree with many of your assertions, but as an educator, I see too many students in middle school and high school who lack basic reading and writing skills. It is extremely important for students to have a strong foundation in cultural literacy and in the "basic skills" or it becomes extremely difficult for students to succeed. It takes hard work to become proficient in reading, writing, and arithmetic. It seems to me that too many young people today want everything to be fun and easy.
This seems like a never ending cycle of catering to attention deficient children. Western culture is so much more media driven, than ever before, that attention spans are dwindling. There is a reason we didn't need jazz up science 100 years ago to get people interested. That is because science is interesting. If we start catering to an inability of focusing and building desires by yourself, we are more hurting the children then helping. They will get to a point where they expect everyone and everything to cater to them, especially if they show a lack of interest about something. It just seems like a bad idea. It almost seems like dropping computers altogether, and getting back to basics in a way that forces them to focus would be of utmost benefit. The only downside is the lack of information sharing that the internet brings, simulation capabilities that computers offer, and disability services that computers give.
je suis parce que j'aime
I think many educators do not understand that engagement in a game does not mean a child will be learning anything from it. Here's the difference:
The information you gain when playing a game is very fragmented, because you only absorb enough that you need to get you closer to winning. As the parent poster noted, you don't know what dysentery is, you only know that it's bad and it kills your characters.
Teach these kids how to learn, not how to play a game. (Perfect example: MadTV Hooked on Phonics Parody)
Games are a media, like books and film and images, and each media has its strengths. Books are good for teaching because (Besides touching on literacy skills), they can be read over again, at the reader's own pace; films are good for teaching because they compress information relatively densely, and are much better at giving a sense of scale or displaying events than a book (What's better? Telling people about the size of the universe, or showing them Powers of Ten?).
Games are good for helping students understand complex systems by interacting with them. Being able to play with a historically accurate strategic wargame is more interesting, and provides a deeper insight, than just reading what happened during a war. Being able to watch small simulated lifeforms reproduce on a screen is a stunning display of natural selection. There are some subjects which are better explained through a particular media.
I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: "O Lord, make my enemies ridiculous." And God granted it.
I agree that reading and writing is much more important than math and science in the real world...
Your employer does too. That way he can pay you for 30 hours when you work 40, and you'll never know the difference. And let's not EVEN get into telephone bills.