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More video gaming positives from Ode Magazine www.odemagazine.com

~Kelly

Kelly Lovejoy
Conference Coordinator
Live and Learn Unschooling Conference
http://www.LiveandLearnConference.org



Reading, writing and playing The Sims

What video games can teach educators about improving our schools

Marco Visscher | September 2006 issue

The door closes with a squeak and a creak. Oh no! Is it locked? Let’s
check… No, thank God, you can open it… So now, another go at getting to
the ladder. Maybe through this narrow hallway? … No, it’s a dead end.

Fifteen children between the ages of 9 and 11 are staring at the
computer screen, mesmerized, as the adventure game Myst III: Exile is
played. In the middle of the group sits Tim Rylands, the most popular
teacher at the small elementary school Chew Magna, in the village of
the same name near the English city of Bristol. Once more he manuevers
his cordless mouse to guide the cursor along the dark walls of a hollow
mountainside. Rylands then tells his students, “Okay, now write down
which way we should go to get to the ladder. What do you come across?
What do you experience on your journey?” The only sound heard is the
furious scribbling of pens.

Rylands has found a way to make writing fun for kids. Myst is a
beautifully designed series of computer games set on a mysterious
deserted island that can be endlessly navigated. According to Rylands,
the visually rich landscape inspires his students’ creativity.


He can back up that claim with data. An average of 75 percent of
English children between the ages of 9 and 11 reach so-called “level
four literacy levels” in reading and writing (including spelling,
grammar, vocabulary, etc.). At Chew Magna, that percentage stood at 77
in 2000, rising to 93 four years later after Rylands began using
computers to help teach writing. Boys in particular, who normally score
lower in these areas, have made tremendous progress. One hundred
percent reach level four, compared to 67 percent in 2000.


Nolan Bushnell wishes his children had a teacher like Tim Rylands. “The
digital life in which kids live today is turned off at school. That
leaves them with boredom and frustration. A man in front of a
blackboard with a piece of chalk is just very boring.”


Bushnell should know. He watched as his eight children became
increasingly alienated in the U.S. educational system. He believes
schools and teachers haven’t sufficiently adjusted to changes in the
world around them. Young people should not be memorizing facts or
spending long hours on multiple-choice tests, says Bushnell, but
learning to think, analyze, make connections. These are the talents
that more than ever are rewarded in this new century, he says.


Bushnell also sees a solution for the educational system—the very idea
Tim Rylands is already putting into practise: using video and computer
games to inspire learning. He’s an expert in the field. Back in 1972,
Nolan Bushnell founded Atari, the pioneering computer company. As the
creator of classics like Pong—remember the Ping-Pong game between two
discs on opposite sides of the screen?—Bushnell is generally recognized
as “the father of the game industry.”


And because he is also the father of a 12-year-old son who can
distinguish between 200 different Pokémon characters (“If they were
plant and animal species, he would be able to pass sophomore biology”),
Bushnell now spreads the word about how video games can help kids
learn. Games, he asserts, teach you creative problem-solving. They
teach you to formulate hypotheses (“First I have to get the key from
the magician so I can open the door”), to test these hypotheses (“Game
over”) and revise them (“Oh no, I have to drink my elixir to get to the
magician!”). Games can even teach you the fundamental principles of
scientific research.


Back at Chew Magna school, Tim Rylands believes his students are
learning more than writing skills. “While going through a game,
children listen and talk,” he explains as the classroom empties. “They
discuss. They explore. It’s like going on a school trip, but this is a
lot cheaper, and it saves on insurance premiums,” he jokes.

Many people envision that the school of the future—and Bushnell would
love to open one himself—doesn’t use books as its primary teaching
materials, but video games.


In the words of another game developer, Marc Prensky, who wrote Digital
Game-Based Learning: “Because schools haven’t adapted to the world
their students know and live in, they simply get bored in the
classroom. They tune out. You can get engagement, even among apathetic
students, simply because games are constructed in a way so players want
to finish the level. Games offer players the chance to make decisions,
get feedback, level up and become heroes. That’s how education should
be organized. You learn more and more, you apply that knowledge, and
you’ll get a great job.”


Computer games have already become part of the lesson plans in some
schools. But these are usually simple games for elementary-school
children. They use bright colours and amusing sounds to make math or
spelling “fun.” But these only take the edge off the age-old practise
of rote learning. This is not the type of game-based education Bushnell
and Prensky advocate.


Teachers like Tim Rylands (who won a teaching award last year from
BECTA, the British government’s partner in the development and delivery
of its Internet-based learning strategy for schools, for his use of
Myst) who have found ways to include exciting games in their teaching
materials continue to be the exceptions. Some progressive secondary
schools use SimCity (a simulation game in which you build cities) and
Civilization (a strategy game that involves building a complete
civilization).


But supporters of the video-game industry—a $28 billion business in
which annual sales in the U.S. now outstrip the Hollywood box
office—see an opportunity to develop products tailored to schools. The
number of games designed for educational or other purposes beyond play
is a new, growing sector of the industry.

One example is a game recently developed by the United Nations called
Food Force, in which young people learn about hunger issues by leading
their own virtual food-aid campaign. It’s now common in the corporate
world to use computer and video games as part of refresher courses in
numerous fields. And public-health officials are exploring the
possibilities of games that encourage good health (see “Watch out for
that cancer cell!” page XX).


In Got Game: How the Gamer Generation Is Reshaping Business Forever
(Harvard Business School Press, 2004), two organizational-development
consultants explain that gamers are, in fact, ideal employees. They
take more risks, react better to disappointments or mistakes, are open
to the possibility that their plan may need to be adjusted and strive
for excellence and promotions. Surprisingly, they also work better in
teams—perhaps because of their experience working toward the same goal
with others when they are playing computer games.


Many other people, of course, line up on the other side of the issue
and their arguments are well known: The only thing kids learn from
computer games is how to stare at a screen for hours. They’re not using
their brains and imaginations, just a few tendons in their fingers to
operate the joystick. A salient detail: Most gamers are under the age
of 40, while most critics are older and have rarely played the games
themselves.


Parents are concerned that video games will make their children violent
or uncommunicative. They get a lot of backing from vote-seeking
politicians who voice their disgust with the violence and sexism seen
in games. The media tend to focus on extreme examples like Grand Theft
Auto, in which the player is a criminal who must survive by breaking
into cars, robbing people and running over hapless pedestrians, and
gets bonus points for killing cops. While arguably justified in such
cases, the fear surrounding video games makes it difficult to look at
the reality. The fact is that both youth crime and violent crime in
Western countries has fallen spectacularly over the past 10 years as
video-game popularity has risen. If video games inspire aggression, it
is not reflected in the figures.


Moreover, the shooting games are not the most popular. Usually, only
one or two violent titles rank among the top 10 best-selling games. The
Progress %amp% Freedom Foundation, a liberal think tank in Washington,
calculated that over 80 percent of the most popular video and computer
games of the past five years were rated “E” for everyone or “T” for
“teen,” i.e. they are not particularly violent.


There is also the concern that young people will become isolated by
playing video games. But many games, particularly those played on the
computer or the Internet, are designed for teams. Kid’s social lives
have changed a lot over the last 20 years, when few households had
computers. Kids relied more on reading (certainly an isolating pursuit)
and gamers were often lonely outsiders. But today, gaming is a very
normal activity for most young people. In fact, nowadays a kid who’s
never played Nintendo or PlayStation is considered odd and often can’t
relate to others about an important leisure activity.


What is hard to grasp for those who aren’t familiar with video
games—people who grew up playing chess and Scrabble—is that these new
games invite creativity, promote problem-solving abilities and inspire
perseverance. As Marc Prensky points out, it can take up to 100 hours
to complete a video game: “This is not just biding time on a rainy
day.” Games stimulate the development of self-confidence and social
contact with others. For people who have never experienced the
sensation of reaching the final moment of the role-playing game Deus Ex
(for which there are three possible endings!), these positive aspects
are difficult to fathom—just as it’s hard to understand what’s so great
about golf if you have never played it.


The best-selling computer game ever, The Sims, which has sold 6 million
copies worldwide, is a simulation game (hence, The Sims) that allows
you to control the lives of virtual characters. The Sims must spend
enough time on education, physical activities, hygiene, eating and
sleeping or they get sick. Players learn that you need to work to buy
things, that you can earn more money if you spend time on personal
development and social contacts and that you get depressed if your
“pleasure meter” is empty. That’s a far cry from a round of Parcheesi.


Games are interesting because they’re difficult. That is the essential
message the world of game culture offers to education: Learning is fun
when it’s intellectually stimulating. James Paul Gee, a professor of
educational learning sciences at the University of Wisconsin as well as
a fervent gamer and author of What Video Games Have to Teach Us About
Learning and Literacy, explains it this way: “The game industry is
selling products that are complex and hard to master, and take a lot of
time to master. The fact that people are buying them contradicts the
idea that everything should be fast and easy. In fact, a game that is
too easy will get criticized in reviews and will not become a success.
A game should be challenging, fair and deep. If it’s not, it won’t
sell.”


The insight that games are—in Ryland’s words—“mind-expanding” rather
than “mind-numbing” has not (yet) reached school curriculum developers.
They continue to battle apathy among young people by trying to make
teaching materials more fun and presenting them in bite-sized bits so
they’re easier to digest. It doesn’t appear to be working. Kids are
still bored in class. Teachers shake their heads, complain about the
zap culture and the youth of today who can’t keep their focus on
anything, say that kids are quickly distracted and can’t sit still. But
if you put these bored kids in front of a PlayStation, they’ll remain
focused for hours. What happened to the short attention spans? Where’s
the apathy?


Video games support the great gift that young people possess to learn
by themselves. Games call on their natural need to develop themselves,
to feel masterful and competent. When they taste that thrill of
possibility, it can bring feelings of pleasure and pride. Anyone who
has played Legend of Zelda or Morrowind knows what it’s like to
complete the game at last after many lengthy periods of frustration.


In this context, video games present a radically different vision of
education: kids who are able to learn by themselves. Even when schools
fail, students actively look for ways to learn. Experts don’t need to
impose an education program to tap into that innate need.


Making History is a good example of a computer game especially
developed for education that fulfils young people’s requirements for
quality and challenging entertainment. The game is used to teach the
history of World War II. Even before our meeting in Boston, Nick
deKanter, co-founder and vice president of Muzzy Lane Software, throws
out a challenge. “Does the game simplify history? Why don’t you play
first and ask me later?”


DeKanter is right. Making History: The Calm and the Storm sketches a
simplified image of a particular moment in human history. During the
game you take on the role of a head of state who leads his country
based on historical events and data. You have to make decisions (on
spending, trading partners, military strategies and much more) as well
as conduct negotiations with other government leaders. Military,
diplomatic and economic advisers are built into the game and prompt you
at crucial moments. The instruction booklet is 58 pages long.


David McDivitt, a history teacher at Oak Hill High School in the U.S.
state of Indiana, uses the game. His research shows that the students
who didn’t read textbooks or attend classes but played and discussed
Making History learned more about World War II than students in other
classes. Moreover, answers to essay questions in the classes
exclusively using the game were more reflective and better reasoned.


But what most struck McDivitt was that his students talked about the
game outside the classroom. “There were conversations about game
scenarios spilling out in the hallways, the lunch room and even after
school,” he notes, “with some kids coming in after 3 wanting another
turn! Once I heard someone say: ‘Hey dude, you weren’t supposed to
invade my country, we had a defence agreement!’ Extracurricular
conversations about the politics of leadership are not something I
typically see after reading a chapter of a textbook.


DeKanter agrees. “A textbook is much better than a video game at
delivering names and dates,” he explains. “But in today’s world, data
is available anywhere on the Internet. What’s more important now than
learning names and data are the skills to analyze that data and to
apply information to gain insight and make decisions. In the
Information Age it’s all about connecting the dots—and games are, much
more than books, extremely good at helping students learn this.”


But he is also realistic. “People learn from other people, not from
machines. That’s why games should never be played in a vacuum, and they
should never be used as a babysitter. A game needs to be introduced and
evaluated. Have students write a paper on how they performed in the
game and what they learned. I don’t see games as a replacement for
textbooks, but as a valuable enhancement.”


Atari founder Nolan Bushnell disagrees. He would love to set up a
private school at which children learn through games. Textbooks would
not be used. “We don’t need books,” he says decidedly. “Sure, kids need
to read, but not necessarily books. Books are obsolete.” The restaurant
chain he is currently developing as part of his new company uWink (see
“Playing together,” page XX) could be a good model for his school;
there, small groups sit around tables playing stimulating games
surrounded by walls onto which facts and data are projected.


But won’t educational games always lose out to their commercial
equivalents purely focused on entertainment? “That’s not the
competition here,” Bushnell replies. “Educational games are competing
against the boring teacher in the front of the class who is just not
capable of engaging his students.”


The resistance to games shows all the signs of a ritual conflict
between generations. At one time, rock ’n’ roll was thought to have a
clearly negative influence: Parents, preachers and politicians thought
it changed young people into—according to one U.S. preacher—“devil
worshippers” who defied both the law and common decency. Further back,
jazz and even the waltz were criticized as corrupting influences, as
were novels, comic books and movies—all said to dull the minds of young
people. In retrospect, I think we can all agree those influences
weren’t so bad.


More to the point, we currently consider books a higher form of
culture, but one of history’s most eminent philosophers, Socrates, was
a declared opponent of reading. Books would render people forgetful, he
claimed. According to Plato’s Phaedrus, Socrates believed you shouldn’t
even write down a speech because the written word always provides “one
unvarying answer.” This recently led The Economist to suggest that
Socrates was criticizing books’ lack of interactivity and that if alive
today he might be a champion of video games.


It is evident that digital culture has society ever more firmly in its
grasp. It is clear that computers and the Internet are creating endless
new opportunities. And it is inevitable that this powerful cultural
influence won’t stop at the classroom door. Standard classroom
teaching, from which Tim Rylands’ students momentarily escape when Myst
is played, would appear to be better suited to a time when young people
were being prepared to work in an economy based on factories and mass
production. 


It doesn’t take a lot of insight to recognize that the modern economy
requires very different talents—talents that may not be fully developed
using traditional textbooks. The advance of video games into classroom
education, therefore, is not only unavoidable; it is necessary.