Some time ago there was a foreign language education project in which localization files for Grim Fandango and The Sims were gradually mixed between English and the target language. That still strikes me as a great idea, avoiding the frustration of plunging completely into the other language (as anyone who has changed their phone's language for all of 30 seconds can attest).
Video Games Are the Future of Education
151–160 of 392 posts
Re: Video Games Are the Future of Education
#152I 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…
We also tried to make educational games and came to a similar conclusion. The truth is, kids (or adults) don't want to play "educational" games. They just want to play fun games. And, let's be honest, games that try to teach you math or science are just not as fun as Fortnite or Minecraft. Now, you can make the case that some games are educational by mistake. Like Minecraft, Age of Empires, Sim City or Kerbal Space P…
They can't compete with Fortnite or Minecraft, but Castle of Dr. Brain was so good I played it back in the day and didn't think of it as educational ;)
Re: Video Games Are the Future of Education
#153I 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…
Spot on. I received a small ($150k) NSF grant back in 2010 and made a semi-popular science education app/game for iPad. It was featured by Apple a few times and was even in an iPad commercial - it made basically no money.
Can you share the name and does it still exist?
Re: Video Games Are the Future of Education
#154I'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…
Ok, so many things to comment on here.
Firstly, there are a lot of other countries than America.
Secondly, re grade progression system, the issue is not what broken system you have now, we should strive to improve the education of our children.
There are clearly a million was that software can make assessment better. Software will eventually be able to read an essay and provide feedback on how well the argument was made, as well as the nuts and bolts of how sentences are put together. Software never gets tired after reading 30 other essays. Never grumpy, never phones it in. Teachers are human.
We study intrinsic vs extrinsic motivation in the games industry as well, but to be clear, _almost all_ motivation in education is extrinsic now. Nobody is doing their math homework because its fun. They do it so they won't "fail".
But I agree that just bolting some lame point system on top of exiting work is mostly a waist of time. The work and rewards need to be tightly coupled and the hard part is to blur the line between intrinsic and extrinsic motivations.
Imagine for example the task is to convince an AI to buy you a pony. You have to write a persuasive essay as to why you should have a pony. The AI can respond to your essay with their own arguments. You can then respond to their augments and pushing the discussion forward. You could do it every day in 10th grade. How good would you be at persuasive writing?
Re: Video Games Are the Future of Education
#155I 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…
We also tried to make educational games and came to a similar conclusion. The truth is, kids (or adults) don't want to play "educational" games. They just want to play fun games. And, let's be honest, games that try to teach you math or science are just not as fun as Fortnite or Minecraft. Now, you can make the case that some games are educational by mistake. Like Minecraft, Age of Empires, Sim City or Kerbal Space P…
I would think Maxis actually tells you the best way to be a success. Maxis doesn't say their games are educational and players don't feel like they're trying to be. But they were, and Maxis wanted them to be. I've heard Will Wright talk about giving his kids things like microscopes as "toys" that let them play and explore which causes them to sort of learn against their best intentions. If I were to get into the educational software space, I would go the Maxis route of making games for gamers, marketing them as wholesome for all ages, and then having a secret educational agenda. That is, I'd try to straddle the line, and maybe if I were good at it, word of mouth would spread and the school administrators would hear positive feedback from their students and teachers about how engaging the games are. You would essentially have to create your own market since one doesn't exist; you'd create a need administrators don't know they have.
Alternatively, you could go Minecraft and hack in education through mods and stuff to existing games kids are already engaged in.
But I fully admit as much as I admire Maxis, I don't work in that space and unless I win the lottery I won't be quitting my job to get into educational software any time soon.
Re: Video Games Are the Future of Education
#156I've always thought that the civilization series are actually pretty educational: You spend hours and hours in this game, full of real world countries and leaders, and a huge wealth of information is stored in the "civipedia". If you get curious about a leader you can research them and who they were. You learn, at very high level, how society progressed from sticks and stones to the modern age, and what level of soph…
Civilization is a strategy sandbox with a historical theme but no attempt to replicate historical events. But in general that can work - for example, the various grand strategy games by Paradox (Crusader Kings for early middle ages, Europa Universalis for late middle ages/rennaissanse, Hearts of Iron for WW2 era, etc) can bring a lot of perspective in the relevant eras and their events. It also was very useful in learning geography, as it forced me to learn the relative locations and properties of various regions I've never been to.
Re: Video Games Are the Future of Education
#157Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 strengthen…
My kid was very into Prodigy, but after a couple of months I discovered he was spending more time going around decorating his house and trying to talk to other kids through their limited chat feature. He ended up avoiding battles because he said it slowed down what he wanted to do.
Wait, Prodigy the ISP? (I'm 33, so old frame of reference)
Re: Video Games Are the Future of Education
#158I've always thought that the civilization series are actually pretty educational: You spend hours and hours in this game, full of real world countries and leaders, and a huge wealth of information is stored in the "civipedia". If you get curious about a leader you can research them and who they were. You learn, at very high level, how society progressed from sticks and stones to the modern age, and what level of soph…
Civilization is a strategy sandbox with a historical theme but no attempt to replicate historical events. But in general that can work - for example, the various grand strategy games by Paradox (Crusader Kings for early middle ages, Europa Universalis for late middle ages/rennaissanse, Hearts of Iron for WW2 era, etc) can bring a lot of perspective in the relevant eras and their events. It also was very useful in lea…
Paradox is notorious for almost too steep learning curves.
Re: Video Games Are the Future of Education
#159I 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.
> Bonnier, apart from being a media empire they can destroy your life in seconds
I've never heard that the Bonnier group goes around destroying lives. Do you have any examples of them doing so?
Re: Video Games Are the Future of Education
#160For those who fervently believe that "Video Games Are The Future of Education", I would like to recommend two books:
"Geek Heresy" by Kentaro Toyama, and "The Flickering Mind" by Todd Oppenheimer.
The former offers a voice of caution, and is written by the former head of MSR Asia.
The latter is filled with historical examples of "x is the Future of Education" (for x ∈ {"radio", "television", "computers", ...}) each of which has failed to replace human instruction, showing that there's something about human interaction that appears to be crucial for education.