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Video Games Are the Future of Education

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Re: Video Games Are the Future of Education

#121

Post by MattRix »

speeder wrote: post #59

I own a educational game company. Long story short: it doesn't sell. At my company we identified, at least if your target is kids, two ways to sell edu games. 1. Sell them to institutions, like governments, schools, companies, whatever. Thing is, the features they look when choosing a game to buy, are ones most likely to make the game unfun, the end result is often boring stuff noone WANTS to play. 2. Sell them to th…

How does something like Prodigy fit into this? It seems quite successful at being an edu-game.

Re: Video Games Are the Future of Education

#122

Post by jay_kyburz »

I'm a game developer who just finished a few months of home schooling 2 kids, and I agree that games are the future of Education, but not for the same reason as the author.

1. I think we'll eventually have software manage the progress of our children as they learn. It will present new ideas when they are ready for them, and test that old ideas stay fresh in memory. Software can do a better job than a teacher can, because the lessons can be tailored to the student. (rather than the whole class at once)

2. The software can do a better job at encouraging a student to "want" to do the tasks. Teachers can use praise, rewards, and sometimes punishments, but software can open up a whole world of other things. What happens next in a story? Leveling up characters or objects you care about? Competition? Mystery Boxes?

It was never fun to grind through killing 100 Goblins, but you did it so that you could get the magic sword at the end.

The hard part is not software development. The hard part is finding things that students want to work towards, then give them so much of it that they want to do it all day long for 13 years.

Re: Video Games Are the Future of Education

#123

Post by WalterBright »

mettamage wrote: post #31
adrianhon wrote: post #5

The 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…

@adrianhon: here's my trick. Instead of creating serious games. Teach people to be serious players! I have learned a ton from the following games: - Poker (statistics) - Any game (English) - Factorio (programming / software design) - Warcraft 3 (mental arithmetic and resource management) - World of Warcraft (market manipulation -- I created a temporary monopoly on an item and earned 500 gold within an hour as level 2…

> Imperial 2030 (investing)

I expect you'll find that investing for real is very different from investing in a game. Investing for real means trying to control your irrational impulses such as greed vs fear of loss.

Re: Video Games Are the Future of Education

#125

Post by tmaly »

speeder wrote: post #59

I own a educational game company. Long story short: it doesn't sell. At my company we identified, at least if your target is kids, two ways to sell edu games. 1. Sell them to institutions, like governments, schools, companies, whatever. Thing is, the features they look when choosing a game to buy, are ones most likely to make the game unfun, the end result is often boring stuff noone WANTS to play. 2. Sell them to th…

What type of product would be easier to sell to kids in your opinion?

Re: Video Games Are the Future of Education

#126

Post by throwawaygh »

jay_kyburz wrote: post #122

I'm a game developer who just finished a few months of home schooling 2 kids, and I agree that games are the future of Education, but not for the same reason as the author. 1. I think we'll eventually have software manage the progress of our children as they learn. It will present new ideas when they are ready for them, and test that old ideas stay fresh in memory. Software can do a better job than a teacher can, bec…

1. See "competency-based education/learning". I have some experience doing this. First, it's really hard to do in American schools because of the grade progression system enshrined in funding formulas through rigid scheduling of standardized tests by age (instead of by competency level). Second, software can keep track but definitely can't make the assessment. And keeping track isn't really valuable; teachers can do that today with a really simple Excel spreadsheet. So I don't really see a big role for software here.

2. There's a lot of research on extrinsic motivation in K-12 education. I'm skeptical, to say the least.

Re: Video Games Are the Future of Education

#127

Post by cinntaile »

greenhatglack wrote: post #66
speeder wrote: post #59

I own a educational game company. Long story short: it doesn't sell. At my company we identified, at least if your target is kids, two ways to sell edu games. 1. Sell them to institutions, like governments, schools, companies, whatever. Thing is, the features they look when choosing a game to buy, are ones most likely to make the game unfun, the end result is often boring stuff noone WANTS to play. 2. Sell them to th…

Bonner basically owns and runs Scandinavia and parts of mainland Europe, you’re going up against a few countries. It’s hard, I wish you luck. Side note: Bonnier, apart from being a media empire they can destroy your life in seconds also has a schtick where they got a few companies pretending to be startups, like the example you just posted now. Some get acquired others get started by them.

They don't really own countries though, it's just a multinational media company. I don't find it very surprising that you use your mother company to increase your media presence, that seems like the right move to me?

Toca Boca was part of their venture arm [0] until 2016. They invest in companies with growth potential. Sometimes those companies are early stage companies, sometimes they're a bit older.

[0] https://www.bonnierventures.com

Re: Video Games Are the Future of Education

#128

Post by gfodor »

tchaffee wrote: post #84

Hot takes from people with no experience in the field are only interesting to other people who have no experience in the field. It seems developers are particularly prone to this hubris. I don't find many doctors writing about the future of programming languages, or teachers writing blogs about the future of medicine. Yet you can find thousands of these hot takes from developers about the future of education. Or pick…

Modern education is such an abject failure that those “experts” you mention should be begging people from other fields for new perspectives.

Re: Video Games Are the Future of Education

#129

Post by Kiro »

jimbob45 wrote: post #7

Nope. 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.

Why is education untouchable and sacred? If robots can do it just as well I'm all for it. I don't understand what the higher purpose of keeping humans for teaching is.
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