Not the best chess example when the white queen is toast in the next move.
Video Games Are the Future of Education
11–20 of 392 posts
Re: Video Games Are the Future of Education
#12Nope. Human contact is the future of education. Rent-seeking scumbags trying to shove technology into education where it isn’t needed can find another industry to ruin.
Technology is a good replacement for existing technology. Replacing a worksheet with digital problems can work well. Replacing a textbook with a virtual lecture can work well for many students. Replacing an instructor with digital problems doesn’t work.
Re: Video Games Are the Future of Education
#13Not the best chess example when the white queen is toast in the next move.
It's white to move
Re: Video Games Are the Future of Education
#14The author claims “where games mostly fall short is that they’re not that transferable to the real world. The skills you learn are highly specific to that game,” but “this will change,” because the cost of game development is decreasing. But his conclusion doesn’t follow; we might get more educational games, but not necessarily ones with skills that are more generalisable. As someone who’s spent the last 15 years mak…
That latter part is important: there's currently no incentive for the outcome the author envisions, at least not enough to produce truly great outcomes that are better than education as its exists today. Consider that many teachers have some pretty strong emotional and non-monetary incentives (they have to if they want to stick through all the bullshit) to do a good job, and it still produces educational outcomes that aren't great.
While I do think student-driven activities within game-like feedback systems have a lot of promise for education, the educational system today could not use them effectively, and developer incentives today are not aligned with the outcome. However, you don't necessarily need actual software to come up with these systems. Consider Rafe Esquith's classroom economy, where students paid rent for their desks, could get income for different extra credit activities, and could buy other students' desks so they collected the rent instead of the teacher. Not a bad way to teach a whole host of complex economic issues without any software, and he did it for fifth graders. https://www.thinkadvisor.com/2012/05/22/teachers-charge-stud...
Imagine if all teachers were incentivized to experiment with these kinds of systems, and if they had the support to design and implement them, software or not.
Re: Video Games Are the Future of Education
#15Nope. Human contact is the future of education. Rent-seeking scumbags trying to shove technology into education where it isn’t needed can find another industry to ruin.
My view is that technology can deliver education of equal quality to each child, and this baseline should constantly improve over time. A small fraction of children has access to high quality educators, and they might end up being highly motivated, encouraged and empowered. What about the rest?
Re: Video Games Are the Future of Education
#16The author claims “where games mostly fall short is that they’re not that transferable to the real world. The skills you learn are highly specific to that game,” but “this will change,” because the cost of game development is decreasing. But his conclusion doesn’t follow; we might get more educational games, but not necessarily ones with skills that are more generalisable. As someone who’s spent the last 15 years mak…
> "where games mostly fall short is that they’re not that transferable to the real world."
I'd argue that this will change because the "real world" will begin to more and more resemble games. Sports are a good analogy for this. There are entire cultures and subcultures, people's entire lives based around sports.
Re: Video Games Are the Future of Education
#17Video games style learning are great. But I don't know if a classroom of children systematically playing video games on a time based limit to learn a subject will be the same experience. Freedom and pace is what makes them a great medium. That's the opposite of our education system.
My kids go to a fairly highly-rated public elementary school in the midwest U.S., and in addition to live math instruction, they also have time allotted within their class to play www.prodigygame.com
This is basically a turn-based RPG, but to make each turn successful, you solve a math problem whose difficulty has been selected based on your past performance. They also play it at home, and I believe it has strengthened their math skills and given them a way to go at their own pace rather than that of the classroom. They earn levels, avatar mods, pets, and many other things to keep them coming back.
They also occasionally play chesskid.com at home as recommended by their chess teacher.
One thing I worry about is whether exposing them to such addictive games so early in their development will cause behavioral or even neurological side effects. I have heard about similar studies of teenagers revolving around drug use [1] but I don't know of any studies around video games (which also can cause addictive behaviors) and/or around children younger than teenagers. I would love to hear from others on HN about this.
Re: Video Games Are the Future of Education
#18Look at what the “elites” do to educate their kids. Do they long to put their kids in front of a computer to play video games or do they pay top dollar for tiny teacher:student ratios at great facilities with competent teachers/leadership?
I can’t imagine anyone dealing with kids learning from home this lockdown and thinking education should be more technologically driven.
Re: Video Games Are the Future of Education
#19[deleted]
Re: Video Games Are the Future of Education
#20Nope. Human contact is the future of education. Rent-seeking scumbags trying to shove technology into education where it isn’t needed can find another industry to ruin.
My view is that technology can deliver education of equal quality to each child, and this baseline should constantly improve over time. A small fraction of children has access to high quality educators, and they might end up being highly motivated, encouraged and empowered. What about the rest?
Pay teachers more. If you are a smart person and could have a great career in industry, why would you ever go teach unless you come from a financial background that can support you (aka wealthy parents) or are extremely altruistic. If you pay teachers competitive wages that are in line with their contributions to society, you'd see better teachers overall.